Primum Familiae Vini tasting at Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel, April 23rd, 2015
Can there be a more visceral wine experience than tasting some of the world’s greatest wine estates and all the while their principals just seem to only talk about history and family? Makes me think about parents, grandparents and children. About accomplishments, passing torches and smelling roses. Or something like that.
Perhaps it was the news of Etienne Hugel’s passing that was the impetus for me to relive this day, where giants gathered and mere mortals did their best to take in the magnitude of such a coterie of distinction. That afternoon gifted me and others their five minutes with Mr. Hugel, the epitome of Alsatian, a tireless ambassador for the Hugel brand, Alsace wines and the Primum Familiae Vini congregation of producers. Or maybe it was just the right time, a crossroads one year later where the confluence of circumstance and thought conjoined to let the notes come out.
Tastes of PFV
As a stark contrast to the increasingly agitating globalization of wine, the Primum Familiae Vini members stand out as leading wine families whose aim it is “to defend and promote the traditions and values of family owned wine companies, and ensure that such ideals survive and prosper for future generations.” The PFV is an international association of some of the world’s finest wine producing families from France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Created in 1992, membership into the organization is by invitation only, with a maximum of 12 highly respected families contributing generations of expertise.
PFV
The PFV estate principals arrived in Toronto for an April 23rd, 2015 Press Lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel organized by wine ambassador Christophe Brunet. On hand were Hubert De Billy, Etienne Hugel, Laurent Drouhin, Egon Müller, Miguel Torres, Priscilla Incise della Rocchetta, Thomas Perrin, Allegra Antinori, Julien Beaumarchais de Rothschild, Pablo Alvarez and Rupert Symington. Each arrived to represent eleven of the world’s leading families that at the time of the tasting, made up the association: Marchesi Antinori, Château Mouton Rothschild, Joseph Drouhin, Egon Müller Scharzhof, Hugel & Fils, Champagne Pol Roger, Famille Perrin, Symington Family Estates, Tenuta San Guido, Miguel Torres and Vega Sicilia. Each family owns vineyard estates, is one of its country’s most prestigious producers, and enjoys an international reputation for its wines. Each year in turn, a member of the association is elected President. The 2014/2015 President was Alessia Antinori, while in 2015/2016 she was succeeded by Miguel Torres.
PFV wines
Primum Familiae Vini supports charitable causes, hosting gala dinners to raise funds for a local charity by auctioning a PFV Collection Case. The beneficiaries have primarily been focused on helping disadvantaged children, the handicapped and specialist hospitals including. Some of these beneficiaries have been Childhood Brazil, Brasil, San Patrignano Charity, Italy, Grapes for Humanity, USA, Somdetya Charity Fund, Thailand, Kidney Dialysis Foundation (KDF), Singapore, The Public Welfare of Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo and the The Toronto Foundation for Student Success. In total, over $325K has been raised.
Pablo Alvarez, Vega-Sicilia with Godello and Larent Drouhin, Maison Joseph Drouin
As you well know it’s all about the wine and the tasting note for Godello. The art of composing snapshots of wines tasted is a cathartic experience and the only way to bring about closure. It is a necessary process, cannot and will not be abandoned. The scores attached can stay put or go away. Neither relevant nor essential, scores are merely road signs on the exegetical path through wine. Once you pass them by their use is no longer needed.
My notes for the wines tasted are long and prosaic, even longer than most that I write, which says something about the profundity of such a tasting. That it took me the better part of a year to finalize my thoughts is not surprising. Until now I found no way to serve proper justice to these wines.
Primum Familiae Vini
Famille Hugel Riesling Jubilee 2010, Aoc Alsace, France (731448, $55.00, WineAlign)
The Jubilee’s style mirrors a reflection, of name, its maker and in the ripples it will gently spread as it progresses through time. Riesling that will eventuate to luxe, calme et volupté, like coming home after 50 years, resolved of sin, “in this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property.” Hugel’s Jubilee is sourced from family-owned vines on the steep slopes of the Grand Cru Schoenenbourg above the village of Riquewihr. Terroir of great variegation; Keuper, marl, dolomite and gypsum, quaternary siliceous gravel, Vosges sandstone, Muschelkalk and periphery Lias marl limestones. The vintage is special, with no allowance for yields to climb and rife with sought after Riesling attributes. That of tannic intent, coursing coarseness of mineral condensation and repossessing acidity wrapped up in an enigma. Going forward it will gently give back but also remain rigid, slightly hidden, at times dormant, until such time when paraffin and honey take over. One of the finer Riesling cuvées of Alsace. Drink 2018-2022. Tasted April 2015 @FamilleHugel@HalpernWine@AlsaceWines@VinsAlsace@drinkAlsace
Super #champagne overture. I will always surrender. @Pol_Roger #sirwinstonchurchill 2002 #primumfamiliaevini
Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill Vintage Brut Champagne 2002, Champagne, France (SAQ, 12027016, $247.25, WineAlign)
From one of the great Champagne vintages of the last 20 years, the 2002 ode to the British Bulldog is full of French vigor and supernatant rationalism. In 2015 its hue is golden gingered and the fine mousse causes sensory skips in the heart’s beats. These bubbles pay attention and tease the most sensitive olfactory nerve endings. The brioche baking and crumbs toasting are still just mere twinkles in the aromatic eye. The year 1996 is on many tasters’ minds and this wine has no qualms telling a direct lineage tale. Can there be more proof than what is spoken in the structure of this young wine? The bitters are forged from compression, without weight and void of oppression. A pleasure to taste, this Champagne is a deactivated refugee from an ancient European dominion. It’s hard to imagine it ever being anything but elegant and cool. Drink 2016-2027. Tasted April 2015 @Pol_Roger@Champagne@HalpernWine
Scallop, kumquat, baby leek, caviar #fourseasonstoronto #julienlaffargue #primumfamiliaevini with #drouhin #chablis grand cru les clos 2012 and #egonmuller #riesling #scharzhofberger kabinett 1994
Joseph Drouhin Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos 2012
Joseph Drouhin Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos 2012, Burgundy, France (SAQ, 10998708, $88.00, WineAlign)
Drouhin’s Les Clos is Chablis incarnate. It delivers the importance of form and structure, with the incantatory power of storytelling to foresee the eventuality of its Moirai. It possesses the staying power to reveal the truth and reward with the fullness of gratification. Imagine pears, some dried and some fresh, pulverized and turned into gold stone. That is Les Clos. Barrels used are one to four years old and since 2004 there is no stirring of the lees. This determination arranges to opt for longevity of structure over immediacy in elegance. The enclosure is lacy organza, the interior filled with ripe fruit. Time (60 minutes) induces a mine of mineral wealth emergence, of shifting plates and rising outcrops from the quarry underfoot. Patience is required to bring all the moving parts in line. Drink 2017-2027. Tasted April 2015 @JDrouhin@BIVBChablis@BourgogneWines@FWMCan@Dandurandwines
Keep the car running. Magic 1994 #riesling from #egonmuller #primumfamiliaevini #scharzhofberger #rieslingkabinett
It must first be said that after 90 minutes in the glass the orange blossoms open in the early morning to release their spring fragrance into the room. In a conference room at Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel. Now I don’t really know if the Scharzhofberg vineyard was actually planted by the Romans or if it was occupied by eighth century Trier St Marien ad Martyres monks. If following the French Revolution it was in the possession of the Duchy of Luxembourg I couldn’t say. I can equivocate, with irrefutable conviction that tasting Egon Müller’s 1994 twenty one years after its release confirms the vineyard’s reputation for housing irreverent Riesling. The arcade fire of remarkable hue, life-affirming aromatic energy and sky-lift brilliance is palpable. At 20 plus years the ideology, eventuality and passionate progression of purely distilled Mosel fruit is realized. Currently suspended in jet-trail animation, the sugars over gas of this Kabinett are quantitatively resilient. The relationship has seen a symbiotic feeding for longevity. Riesling of stoicism, classic prevalence and perfect balance. The specific Scharzhofberg tang has been revised to elevate a new order derivative recorded in every pure note. “There’s a weight that’s pressing down, late at night you can hear the sound.” Time held will move forward ever so slowly. Keep the car running. Drink 2015-2034. Tasted April 2015 #EgonMuller@germanwineca
Miguel Torres Mas La Plana 2010
Miguel Torres Mas La Plana Cabernet Sauvignon 2010, Penedès, Spain (129676, $59.00, WineAlign)
The Torres Mas La Plana explains to the world why Penedès is one of the most important Cabernet Sauvignon outposts on the planet. In deference to its moniker, flat is not the operative word. With such lifted exuberance, richness and depth of fruit, it must be dared said that Bordeaux wisdom speaks from its Spanish roots. If Mas La Plana can always be good, this vintage is great. The layering of wood over Penedès soil gives it spice and subterranean pungency; cinnamon, clove, truffle and morel. This wine is now an internationally-styled giant, an expatriate made French wine with Spanish flair. Layered, structured and so much special fruit. All about the fruit. Drink 2016-2023. Tasted April 2015 @TorresWines@dopenedes
The reds of lunch. #vegasicilia #moutonrothschild #sassicaia #solaia #chateaudebeaucastel #maslaplana #primumfamiliaevini
Château De Beaucastel Châteauneuf Du Pape 2005
Château De Beaucastel Châteauneuf Du Pape 2005, Rhône, France (711317, $89.95, WineAlign)
Expectations are high for 2005 and the opening notes of warmth, amenity and avail confirm the dream. Soon thereafter the Beaucastel plays hard to get, walks away and closes down. At this 10 year juncture its evolution is only matched by its elegance, especially considering the initial arterial ardor in mimic of the vintage. Resurfacing to conjure up character in aromatics, mint, eucalyptus, garrigue, coal and tar evince this pure Châteauneuf Du Pape. A wine of global receptiveness, the 2005 rendition tames the conception. There is very little about its personality that is parochial but rather it represents what it means to be a star, everywhere, omnipresent, for everyone. After 60 minutes it actually closes down again. This will be one of the longest lived Beaucastels. Drink 2017-2045. Tasted April 2015 @Beaucastel@RhoneWine@VINSRHONE@ChartonHobbs
Tasting the 2007 Solaia feels like looking directly skyward into the high noon sun with a semi-peeled orange in one hand, juices dripping, zest split and fragrant. Flowers bloom all around, cypress trees stand as sentries, sentient and giving off a savoury musk. The rosemary joins in, as do the lavender and the fennochio, because there is a breeze. Then there is only the pitchy darkness, the iron and the animale. This Solaia exudes sunshine, creme caramel and maturity. As per the style, especially in warmer vintages, Solaia always speaks of early evolved character though you know it will last for a very long time. This I have come to know, expect and believe. Drink 2015-2022. Tasted April 2015 @AntinoriFamily@HalpernWine
Now increasingly accessible, the ripe and ferric Sassicaia ’09 continues to roar but the gamy musk of the wild beast is on the subside. The tannins have begun to relent and yet no holes, empty spaces or time-outs are to be found. With 60 minutes of air time the fruit speaks of plum hyperbole and dried flowers fill the air. Ten more years lay comfortably ahead. Drink 2015-2025. Last tasted April 2015 #TenutaSanGuido@Smarent
Sassicaia 2009
From my earlier note of November 2012:
The raven brunette is anything but sappy or syrupy yet is impossibly viscous. Hints at ripe berries growing in the crags of maritime gravel and the most expected hits of sanguine, animal musk. A huge wine in the making, the adolescent hunter Sassicaia off-roads up a steep incline to go tell it on the mountain of tannin. Disappears into parts unknown and will only reappear as a mature adult. Look to 2025 and it may say “the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey.”
No cartoon. The real deal. Gehry lines. #chateaumoutonrothschild 2005 @PFvini #firstgrowth #paulliac #bordeaux #onceinalifetime #primumfamiliaevini
Château Mouton Rothschild 2005, Ac Pauillac, Bordeaux, France (SAQ 10654286, $965.00, BCLBDB, 649582, $1895.00, WineAlign)
Where to begin? That Cabernet Sauvignon can so facilely lay down the law, with deputy Merlot and deputized Cabernet Franc in support, that it can syncopate and elucidate the infinite, of soil information into warmth and depth, that is does so in such a wondrous way, well, that is the crux. Mouton of incredulous form, of a liqueur that is wholly unique, even to Bordeaux. An intoxicant and yes, funky, a distilled terroir, compressed, eschewing the fractional and essaying to integration. Reduced, layered and yet bereft of cheese, cloy or cake. Healthy as a community of organisms can be, wealthy in its archetypal discretion and drawn of an architectural line to ritualize structure. Precise, innate, insistent and balanced. The cleanest, purest and ripest fruit from 10 years ago had always and continues to cut an exegetical rug on one of the greatest dance floors of wine. An age exemplary Mouton in requiem of Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone’s label design. After 60 minutes it neither closes nor shrinks away. Open for business. Drink 2015-2045. Tasted April 2015 #moutonrothschild
Vega-Sicilia Único 2004
Vega-Sicilia Único 2004, Ribera Del Duero, Spain (702852, $475.00, WineAlign)
In a room full of Primum Familiae Vini no iconic red stands out with more singular parlous deference than the 2004 Unico. Sitting next to Pablo Alvarez and seeing his immediate reaction speaks volumes about its place in time and how it is showing. Alvarez does not smile so much as he simply acknowledges the work put in. Unico is correct and it is priceless. Is Alvarez making a comparison in his mind? Is he thinking 1970 or perhaps 1994? It does not matter because this blend of Tempranillo (87 per cent) and Cabernet Sauvignon (13) obviates derivative characteristics and so exhibits a kind of synoptic insatiability. Its persona is simply me, myself and I. The liqueur is not Bordeaux or IGT. The aromatics are exotic to the nth degree. The succulence and sucking inward grape tension is old and wise but the wine has 30-40 years of undetected evolution ahead. There is no need for a longevity prayer, just let it be. My ears hear “mais qu’est-ce que c’est bon!” perhaps from Alvarez, or maybe it came from Laurent Drouin to my left. The youthful Unico is like Les Enfantastiques, it has the “no se que” and we can call it terroir, from place, soil, climat and culture. Something that advances this early and yet has gone nowhere should be impossible. The precocious wisdom is beyond years, has reached a point at 10 that is palpable and yet so far from what it may become. It should be left alone for five more to find out. Drink 2020-2055. Tasted April 2015 @Tvegasicilia@DORibera
1977 @grahams_port…Oh to live to 111 and re-taste in 2077. @PFvini #symington #symingtonfamilyestates #rupertsymington #port #vintageport #primumfamiliaevini
Graham’s Vintage Port 1977, Douro, Portugal (706663, $109.00, WineAlign)
The year 1977 was a huge one for the Douro and this Peter Symington vintage interpretation echoes the overemotionalism. The pitchy rim seems to be writhing, the aromatics roiling and my first thought is one of a houseguest that wishes he could escape an over vivid host. Vegetative freshness calms the savage beast; bouquet garni, garrigue and savoury herbiage from high yielding fruit. If cherries were roses and vice versa, they too would deter and distract. This VP has presence and distinction. It changes tempo, wades in the waters of age and treads with minimum effort. The toasted nut component is subtle, more than many and certainly in comparison to the modern era of Graham’s and others. The dry florals whiff as if the petals never dropped or ever will. The perfume drives upwards, to the ethereal. Nice little piece of Vintage Port history. Drink 2015-2022. Tasted April 2015 @grahams_port@winesportugalCA
A confession. Herein these pages there might seem to be the appearance of astonishing disorder. With music as a muse and a foil to wine, I prefer to look at it as an enjambment, or, as James Woods might explain it, as “the desire to get more in, to challenge metrical closure.” No form, structure or cohesion you think, you mutter, you say? Oh, well.
Over at WineAlign I share my February 20th VINTAGES release picks in the Buyer’s Guide, along with colleagues John Szabo, Sara d’Amato and a travelling David Lawrason. Here at Godello the list expands. First here, with seven whites for snow days and well, just snow. Look for the reds on Saturday.
The white wines of VINTAGES February 20th, 2016
Hugel Gentil 2014, Ac Alsace, France (367284, $16.95, WineAlign)
A bottle blend soft and inviting, teasing tropical fruit but grounded in the continental orchard. Warmth on the nose and cool effervescence on the tongue add up to a waxy, airy finish. This opens up, rises and elevates on the back end. Terrific aperitif out of 2014 with some legs to last through the night. Drink 2016-2019. Tasted February 2016 @FamilleHugel@HalpernWine@AlsaceWines@drinkAlsace@VinsAlsace
Like a gypsy boy, the idea of Riesling, winemaker Rob Power and Creekside Estates do not occupy overtly obvious territory so here, “come over to the window, my little darling. I’d like to try to read your palm.” In it the perfected Cohen lines of classic Bench Riesling, of stalwarts Thirty and Hidden Bench. Same stoic, non-gentrified possibilities unfollowed and new concepts surreptitiously proposed. Terrifically tart, dangerously darting and tasked for mouth watering righteousness. Such succinct lemon-lime continuous balance. Winemaker Rob Power may not have a storied history with Riesling but now that he has gone Marianne Hill he can’t go back. Drink 2016-2021. Tasted February 2016 @CreeksideWine@hobbsandco
Such potential from Croatia found, packaged and articulated in this bottle. Classic Furmint in Grasevina clothing, right along the wire where Pinot Gris looks over towards Chenin Blanc and says “let’s spend the night together.” Honeyed, unctuous, spicy and floral to the stones and back. For days when “I’m going red and my tongue’s gettin’ tied,” turning to white never tasted so good. You gotta try this. Drink 2016-2019. Tasted February 2016 @WinesofCroatia@RolandRussell
From the town of bedrock, Kevin Judd’s Greywacke is a modern, stone-age Sauvignon Blanc. Grown out of vineyards in the Central Wairau and Southern Valleys in Marlborough, Judd’s exploratory to trailblazing SB announces its aromatic arrival like a pick struck on granite. Tannic from the get go and forged with precise angles and friezes, always tied by an indenture with texture. The vintage is a fruit first forward, neighbourly one and it takes a winemaker to keep things etched in stone. This one strikes me as one that could have got away but the reigning was accomplished in lope, guiding the fruit through a precise pattern of circles, spins, and stops. The success lies in the canter of acidity to extend the effect towards a turning and returning, again and again. Drink 2016-2022. Tasted February 2016 @greywacker@Greywacke@oenophilia1
Trimbach Réserve Pinot Gris 2012, Ac Alsace, France (971762, $29.95, WineAlign)
Immediately reminds of 2008 and will go down a similar, slowly turning and evolving path. So purposed and direct though there is a slight elevation in residual sugar as compared to the four four beat four years ago. Pinot Gris of pears and operas, with some spice on the finish. This will aria into something lovely at the age of seven and beyond. Drink 2018-2022. Tasted February 2016 @trimbach@WoodmanWS@AlsaceWines@drinkAlsace@VinsAlsace
Béjot Les Bouchots Montagny 1er Cru 2013, Ac Burgundy, France (438002, $27.95, WineAlign)
Tidy, tide and vine Chardonnay the way with oak it needs to be. Unobtrusive and just a sheet between fruit and acidity, enough for warmth and not too much to bring on the sweats. Snug, spruced, agitated, resplendent even. Drink 2016-2022. Tasted February 2016 @HannaNealWines@BeauneTourisme@BourgogneWines
Josef Chromy Sparkling 2010, Tasmania, Australia (393629, $29.95, WineAlign)
If 2008 has just recently settled into its low heat unit skin then the consideration here can’t yet touch the thought. So much lees and so much time, so little evolution and so little mind. Jeremy Dineen must be grinning from ear to ear with the thought of where this fizz will go, carrying so much wisdom in its autolysis and Tazzy vernacular in its mousse. Great citrus benchmark OZ outpost where the bubbles work hard for their money and offer up nothing but charm. Drink 2016-2023. Tasted February 2016 @JosefChromy@bwwines@Wine_Australia
First I thatched the nest and then I fed the birds
Why did I choose this image to introduce a Valentine’s Day post on wine? What pairs perfectly with Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, long weekends and Valentine’s day? When restaurants are either swelling with humanity or closed on major holidays and I want to eat out, where do I turn? Chinese. Happy Chinese New Year this coming Monday, February 8th. Welcome to the Year of the Monkey.
This coming Saturday the VINTAGES February 6th release does not coincide with the pink as floyd February 14th holiday so while you wait for next Sunday to arrive, enjoy a mild bite of Chile Peppers. “See what’s in store. Stay all day.” This song merges beautifully into the Love of Your Life. How does YouTube know?
Quite a mixed bag defines the February grouping. The south of France makes hay but I’ve also got Greece, Spain, Barossa, Piedmont and Burgundy in the regional to country mix. Enjoy.
First the pink stuff.
The Rosés of February
Gérard Bertrand Côte Des Roses Rosé 2014, Ap Languedoc, France (373985, $16.95, WineAlign)
The occasions may be rare, but sometimes Rosé needs a half a year to simmer and to show its true colour. What once seemed to be red meets Rosé is now classic, typical, essential blush from Provence. Terrific amalgamation of the holy varietal trinity, with Cinsault the anchor, rock and catalyst to prop up Grenache and Syrah just as they need to be. From soft fruit to a grind of pepper, with aridity and salinity always on stage. Drink 2016-2018. Tasted January 2016 @GBvins@FwmWine@AOCLanguedoc@LanguedocWines
From my earlier note:
Dry, floral, medicinal, quite tight and angled, not angular Rosé. The sea salinity and briny strawberry confluence is quite striking. Doesn’t really linger so in the end it’s a bit of a simple quaffing Rosé but what of it? That’s right. Drink 2015-2016. Tasted August 2015
Pierre Sparr Brut Rosé Crémant D’alsace, Méthode Traditionnelle, Ac Alsace, France (39016, $18.95, WineAlign)
Graceful and pink lithe, like cold smoked salmon, delightful Pinot Noir Rosé fizz. Nothing earth shattering, breath taking or barrier breaking, just well made blush bubbles. The structure and balance are really spot on. Finishes strong and with confidence. Helps to define this genre of Crémant’s creamy texture, matched in contrast by its stony, flinty and mineral style. Drink 2016-2018. Tasted November 2014 and January 2016 @AlsaceWines@VinsAlsace@drinkAlsace@ProfileWineGrp
Lallier Grand Cru Rosé Champagne, Ac Champagne, France (385179, $56.95, WineAlign)
Stoic, startling and nearly, dare I say, revelatory Rosé. Righteously rustic and demandingly devilish. A craftily concocted cool-custard cupid. The talc and the drift are exceptional, wafting aromatics and waving me in, to curl up and be embraced by its charms. This has Valentine’s Champagne scripted with pitch perfect elegance. A Grand Cru effort to be sure. Drink 2016-2019. Tasted January 2016 @LallierAy@azureau
A most consistent Xinomavro untouchable at the price, with the hallmark Syrah-like pepper notes pricking and popping from base and necessary red fruit. This sample is a bit muted aromatically but the palate is alive, kicking and very sound. Think of pomegranates, fresh figs and kalamata olives, a mountain view and the warming afternoon sun. All for $14. Though many Xinos can age for seven to 10 years, this Naoussa is meant for the here, now and tomorrow afternoon. Drink 2016-2019. Tasted January 2016 @boutari@KolonakiGroup@DrinkGreekWine
Clean, direct, massaging Spanish expression of the here and now. A winemaker’s message from an outpost with an endemic grape variety known as Bobal, 100 per cent employed to speak of that place. It does so ripely with cagey dramatics and an acidity seemingly so specific to varietal. This will pave roads for a geek’s obsession and should lay tracks for a consumer’s diversion. It’s worth the detour. Like Aragonese or Catalan Garnacha. Drink 2017-2019. Tasted January 2016 @BSierraNorte@DOUtielRequena@ProfileWineGrp
Sister’s Run Calvary Hill Shiraz 2013, Barossa Valley, South Australia, Australia (222018, $16.95, WineAlign)
On this hill ripe, pure, Barossa fruit fills the glass, “handing out bread and jam just like any picnic.” Don’t be looking for a battle of acidity and tannin on the edge of a savoury, mythical Epping forest. Seek fruit, find fruit. A genesis of material for straightforward Shiraz. If you’ve $16 in your pocket and a deep, rich, red fruit Shiraz is what you’re looking to find, this is the place to stop. “Here come the Cavalry.” Drink 2016-2020. Tasted January 2016 @Gr8TanninWines
Cave De Roquebrun La Grange Des Combes Saint Chinian Roquebrun 2013, Ac Languedoc-Roussillon, France (155804, $18.95, WineAlign)
From Schistous hillsides of Roquebrun, this firm and friendly SGM is the bomb of Beziers. Meaty and wise, its heart beats out of sheer size and from beauty. The opposite of a ferric beast, the valley of the barns wields a weapon but one of glistening, polished stone. The accomplished battle ready fruit knows no limits. Tannins though fierce do nothing to hurt the cause. Syrah (50 per cent), Grenache (30) and Mourvedre (20) adds up to really good Schist. Do you trust a gorgeous wine? Drink 2016-2022. Tasted January 2016 @AOCLanguedoc@LanguedocWines@Eurovintage
Finca Del Marquesado Gran Reserva 2008, Doca Rioja, Spain (384248, $21.95, WineAlign)
A 2008 Rioja that looks, smells and acts like 2008, a plus and a positive rolled into one determinate, fruit roll-up, old-school package. Dried red berries once fervently ripe, now concentrated and dehydrated performing as classic regional flavours would. The acidity persists and the tannins have a leg or two to stand on. This will not improve or go any long distance but for now and two or three years more it’s about as delicious a Rioja red as you are want to taste. Drink 2016-2018. Tasted January 2016 @RiojaWine_ES
Pierre Sparr Schoenenbourg Riesling 2011, Ac Alsace Grand Cru, France (664995, $22.95, WineAlign)
Sparr’s little piece of the Schoenenbourg is a fine one, exemplified in this tidy, gritty and shiny happy Riesling. The tones are not tiny, perhaps tinny and certainly tropical. Mango and pineapple make heady way but the acidity and the tannin are up to the task. This is quite Germanic in my opinion, not new world Alsace. And it’s tasty as need be, with longevity on its side. Drink 2016-2022. Tasted January 2016 @AlsaceWines@VinsAlsace@drinkAlsace@ProfileWineGrp
Joel Gott 815 Cabernet Sauvignon 2013, California (444059, $35.95, WineAlign)
Molten comes to mind from this California Cabernet, as in lava and chocolate. A load of pepper marks its territory and fruit wades through the spicy mocha. Under the sheath there can be no mistaking the grape (with help from Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot) or the place and yet something ionic speaks, leaving me to wonder where this will go. The chemistry is procured by a hint of carbonic, whole bunch pressing and lees stirring for texture. At present they are not in synchronized rhythm. I would say that instant gratification and crowd pleasing was the intent but the opposite happened and that may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. A year from now this could be a true pleasure in value to drink. I think I wanted to hate it but I can’t. It is possessive of terrific, classic character. I will love it instead. Drink 2017-2020. Tasted January 2016
Domaine De Bellene Les Charmes Dessus Santenay 2013, Ac Burgundy, France (435032, $35.95, WineAlign)
From the flats between hills of the lieu-dit Charmes Dessus, a calcaire pebble’s throw away from the 1er Cru Clos Rousseaux. Adolescent acting fruit comes off of young, 10 year-old vines in Santenay, the most southerly wine-producing commune of the Cote de Beaune. Tight, flinty, developing beneficial bitters of a Burgundy that needs a bit of time to accrue a touch of honey to help the medicine go down. Quite rich and reductive. Very good value. Really good value. Drink 2018-2022. Tasted January 2016 @RochedeBellene@Nicholaspearce_
Domaine Laroche Vieilles Vignes Les Vaillons Chablis 1er Cru 2012, Ac Burgundy, France (991893, $36.95, WineAlign)
Gorgeous and wealthy Chablis of all that makes this unparalleled style of Chardonnay tick. Flinty, struck stone entry, vineyard hyperbole of mineral and the geology of ancients. Lithe, lifted, lightness of being but always brought back down by the minerality. Some flavour density by way of old vines wisdom and persistence that just won’t stop going. Superb quality. Drink 2017-2022. Tasted January 2016 @DomaineLaroche@Select_Wines@BIVBChablis
Secret De Schistes 2011, Igp Côtes Catalanes, Languedoc-Roussillon, France (440669, $41.95, WineAlign)
IGP in which schist happens. Such a bruiser this Château de l’Ou Côtes Catalans, an example the likes this market rarely sees. These Schistes bleed hematic into fruit warmed excessively by the sun. Languedoc-Roussillon that runs with the Rhône terribilta to purpose largesse and rocking good times. This is a very demanding wine, loaded with peppery spice and rabid energy. It needs years to settle. Hopefully its secrets will then be revealed. Drink 2019-2024. Tasted January 2016 @ChateaudeLou@AOCLanguedoc@LanguedocWines
Poderi Colla Dardi Le Rose Bussia Barolo 2010, Docg Piedmont, Italy (596890, $51.95, WineAlign)
The Dardi Le Rose ranks as one of the most consistent performers, mired in tradition and crafted without compromise. The 2010 is a spot on example of balance in Nebbiolo, gritty, floral, tannic and ethereal. The weight is an ambient one, the aromatics resourceful and respectful to varietal and to nature. Dried roses and fresh tar, drier cherries and strolls through verdant gardens. Not the beast of Bussia but certainly bussing its weight in age. This will go quite long. Drink 2018-2025. Tasted January 2016 @glencairnwines@regionepiemonte
Plus one, just because it’s Valentine’s Day.
Domaine Bouchard Père & Fils Meursault Les Clous 2013, Burgundy, France (Agent, $64.00, WineAlign)
Essentially 1er Cru pearl of a vineyard in origin, on marly ground, “walking tightrope high over moral ground.” Such a pretty Chardonnay of faith and of love, subtle, slightly smoky, linear and purposed towards the divine. A lemon drop jam without sweetness and a tart edge that is miles from sour. There are no holes, stops or delays, with acidity that drives forward and length stretching to further length. Grace in gossamer layers. A marker in the Meursault sand. Drink 2017-2024. Tasted January 2016 @WoodmanWS@BourgogneWines@bourgognespress
Take this, #quinoa – With today’s post, “New year, 16 new Vintages releases” #beefshortribs
Inter alia, the winter holiday break is behind us and it is time to get down to business. Time to resume the empirical and experiential search for honest wine. Wines that satisfy at some necessary atomic level, avoid oaky embarrassment and hopefully fulfill basic human needs.
What we seek are bottles fashioned from grapes that are lucky to have been handed a benevolent evolutionary line, miraculously fortuitous in their ancestry, through categorical mutation and genetic modification. Varietal luck, pop and circumstance. That’s what we’re after.
The first VINTAGES release of 2016 makes an adjustment to previous editions with no less than a dozen really solid efforts below the $21.95 line to make Messrs. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon proud. You too can save on quality wine this January. Read on to avoid getting lost in aught where unwanted wines are cast into a dull, scattered void.
A return to entry-level glory out of a great vintage for this basic QbA with the acidity to thrive and the tannin to jive. Love the fruit mingling with mineral and the weight even when aridity is the key. A tropical note hits both the nose and the palate. What complexity for $15. Really. Best in many years with a beautifully bitter finish. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted December 2015 @RobLingenfelder@HHDImports_Wine@germanwineca
Mulderbosch Chenin Blanc 2015, Wo Western Cape, South Africa (675421, $14.95, WineAlign)
Properly, distinctly, effortlessly Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc. Of tang and here in 2015, more heft than many though in retention of aridity and super salinity. Has real verve and presence. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted December 2015 @MulderboschV@WOSACanada@WOSA_ZA@AbconWine
Wakefield Estate Chardonnay 2014, Clare Valley/Adelaide Hills, South Australia (711556, $14.95, WineAlign)
Rich and reductive with some Co2 and piercing acidity. Solid Chardonnay that needs a year or two to settle. Last tasted December 2015 @Taylors_Wines@ProfileWineGrp
Rich and dense, temperate in accessibility, splitting the Chardonnay mile. Works barrels with threadbare, throwback constituency and takes a comfortable trip down varietal, memory lane like predecessors in old world California. All in the name of proper and restraint. The palate is rich yet delicate. Good work. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted blind at WWAC15, August 2015
Nice tidy little Valpolicella here. Enough richness marked by tension to make it a real drop. A bit flushed with thickness though the tang in food-gifting acidity and arid tannin is again, very real. Solid stuff. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted December 2015 @Cant_Valpantena@MajesticWineInc@RegioneVeneto
Honoro Vera Garnacha 2013, Calatayud, Spain (432997, $15.95, WineAlign)
Though playing a key of dusty and volatile minor, here Calatayud Garnacha from Bodega Atteca’s 60 year-old vines does its traditional duty in forthright varietal and regional honesty. Reinvents no wheels or identity with ripe fruit, early enough picked for preserving acidity and palate tension. The aridity and tang on the finish perform yeoman’s work in lieu of tannin. Drink now and for another year or two, preferably with cocina tradicional Aragonesa. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted December 2015 @docalatayud@ProfileWineGrp
Sister’s Run Bethlehem Block Cabernet Sauvignon 2012, Barossa Valley, South Australia, Australia (360636, $15.95, WineAlign)
Very ripe, nearly, dangerously young and volatile, yet so very sweet smelling. Plums, cherries, Cassis, a hint of graphite and the wood from American stars ‘n bars. Good acidity burgeoning about with minor, kneeling, equitable tannin. Has a salty caramel taste that will require similar fare; a mole sauce would work. Good length on this varietal wonder. “All you have is memories of happiness, lingering on.” A shining light in the Sister’s Run stable. “Maybe the star of Bethlehem, wasn’t a star at all.” Drink 2015-2019. Tasted December 2015
Here the no lo so of Italian white grape varieties, this Coda di Volpe, the fox vine “Alopecis,” a.ka. “tail of the fox,” with natural history recording creds to Pliny the Elder. A Campania concert of grape tannin and sea mineral melded together as one. A varietal happenstance where land meets the sea in a beautiful bond. This low-cost specimen is a friendship gift from Italy, with ripe fruit and even stronger feelings of subterranean impart, from fringe stone through the ambient abstraction of Roman mythology. Like a river Styx running through carrying the bravery of Herculean salinity. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted December 2015 @DonnaChiara@Reg_Campania@TheCaseForWine
Coda di Volpe and Moscato
Penthouse Pinot Noir 2013, Adelaide Hills, South Australia, Australia (432864, $16.95, WineAlign)
The berries, cherries and plums are a vivid smelling bunch with a cumulative tone occupying airspace at the border of mercurial. A silent request asked of this undomesticated (with 10 per cent whole cluster bunches in the wild ferment) Pinot Noir is “when are you gonna come down, when are you going to land.” With time, the extreme brightness turns to density, of rustic earth and silky encrustation. Its answer sings to the tune of “you can’t plant me in your penthouse, I’m going back to my plough.” Walks well beyond the yellow brick road of the Adelaide Hills and the varietal, to a place in OZ occupied by the curious and the songline follower. There is a lot of Pinosity is this $17 wine. The mid-glass transformation is a true plus. A heel click finish would have really sealed the deal. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted November 2015 @Nicholaspearce_@AHWineRegion
Terra D’uro Finca La Rana Toro 2011, Do Toro, Spain (424135, $17.00, WineAlign)
Terminable Toro, firm to juicy, earthy to mulled plum and liquorice fruity. Acidity rips in the short term and whatever tannin was gifted is quite resolved. Early 2016, in the dead of a northern hemisphere winter is the right time to settle in with a braise and Toro at five years of age. Very solid. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted December 2015 @VinodeToro
Gustave Lorentz Réserve Riesling 2014, Ac Alsace, France (641639, $18.95, WineAlign)
Bergheim terroir in a nutshell to the result marked by the essential, distilled down to this very base and necessary example of what dry Riesling just has to be. Along with Trimbach and in this price range brought to this market, the act is exemplary and export defining as citizens of the genre. From flint to citrus and back by way of ripe fruit. With weight and such a dry, to the point finish “and a crackling in the air.” What it is. Drink 2015-2021. Tasted December 2015 @GustaveLorentz@AmethystWineInc@AlsaceWines@VinsAlsace@drinkAlsace
Pupillo Cyane Moscato 2010, Igt Sicilia, Italy (156430, $18.95, WineAlign)
Wholly Sicilian metallurgy of a character absorption in ode to Alsatian Muscat. That and the weight of the sun bearing down on sugaring fruit. With eyes closed picture this heading into a 20-year honeyed and mineral territory, with ground nuts and fresh cracked pepper foil. Oxidative but just on that dangerous edge so that it can continue to develop for years without losing sight of the prize. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted December 2015 @loyalimportsltd@WinesOfSicily
Familia Zuccardi Cuvée Especial Blanc De Blancs, Tupungato, Mendoza, Argentina (435438, $19.95, WineAlign)
Bready, heady and lees elegant from years of yeasty rest towards an end marked by lactic sour mixed into lemon citrus. The tightest wire-wind of Chardonnay tonic with bitters running here and there. The nearly five years on the lees has made the texture thick and the mousse replete with bubbles popping left, right and centre. Much in the way of complexity for Blanc de Blancs from Argentina blessed with lots of altitude. You’ve not not likely been blown away by South American bubbles as you will be by this Mendozan, from Tupungato to Llullaillaco. Drink 2015-2020. Tasted December 2015 @FamiliaZuccardi@SebaZuccardi@ZuccardiWines@DionysusWines
Gundlach Bundschu Mountain Cuvée 2012, Sonoma County, California, USA (397521, $19.95, WineAlign)
The fruit is ripe, there can be no argument there and the treatment is careful, calculated, restrained even. Exit stage left blend, running all the way. Sneaky, deft, stealthy, cat-like in behaviour. Always landing on all fours. Like a pink anthropomorphic mountain lion sporting an upturned collar, shirt cuffs and a string tie. Red blend with a great desire to be a stage actor, available to please all kinds of folks. “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” Sweet finish. Drink 2015-2019. Tasted December 2015 @gunbunwine@LeSommelierWine@sonomavintners
Domaine Saint Roch Vacqueyras 2014, Ac Rhône, France (437194, $21.95, WineAlign)
Some heat in the nose and even more spice with balance achieved by a lively to energetic, creeping up on frenetic palate. Earth crusts play in to the fray as much as the fruit, the posit tug working with one another in equal and opposing directions. The wine lingers on with grace in magical persistence. A pinch of dusty espresso and wishful fennel marks the back end. The reality check to imagine and realize a real Vacqueyras. Great value. Drink 2016-2021. Tasted December 2015 @VacqueyrasWines@VINSRHONE@RhoneWine
Foris Pinot Noir 2012, Rogue Valley, Oregon, USA (937128, $24.95, WineAlign)
A deft and reeling charmer, easy to drink and well-priced. Dark red fruit of the black cherry realm occupied by the ripe and fashionable Pinot Noir. That it so successfully woos with that kind of Oregon fruit to this kind of advantage in the absence of available underground salinity and tension is a Rogue Valley win. At 13.9 per cent it creeps comfortably under the hot radar gun and many will enjoy the uncomplicated style. Recommended for those who like it fun and unencumbered. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted December 2015 @Foriswine@SouthernORWine@Oregon_Wine
A satisfying and handsomely rustic biodynamic Sangiovese-led IGT blend with lead, graphite, dusty cherry and plenty of hide to leather antiquity. The firm vintage has evolved to this copacetic point, the expatriate meets endemic union no longer obtuse or extreme. This has settled really nicely, thanks to what was and lingers as solid acidity and once grippy tannin. Life from energy persists and though I would imagine there will be some who think it common or non-descript, there can be no denying the solid winemaking and balance struck. The older oak barrels have done their job, even if the fruit was a bit on the riper side of the rows. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted December 2015 @Caiarossa@3050imports
“You can choose your philosophy of critiquing just as you choose how to live. The freedom to personalize or substantiate thoughts on structure sacrifices the detail to meaning and meaning to preciseness.” I wrote that nearly a year ago. It holds true, as before, near, dear and clear to me today.
Extreme cold ushered in January of 2015 and the obvious lede was Coming wine from the cold. Halfway through the month an epiphany of sorts knocked upside the cerebral cortex, elaborated upon in Varietal Spanish wine. That smithy precursor would lead to revelations in October.
As January wound down and I prepared to hit the Niagara Icewine Festival, (revealed in We the Icewine) I first asked a matter of fat cat factual question, Is writing making a mess of wine? “The combined fugitive pieces of wine and its critics pose questions without answers. They must be asked very slowly.”
The weeks of suffering through frozen days and night breeds reflection and thought. While the temperatures remained cursedly south of 20 I begged the question, Why drink that?, “looking for heroic entablature and architectural wonder in bottles of wine. We see them as DNA and in their liquids we can read their entire future. We sip them again and again until we taste them for the first time. To remember generations.” Have wine forget winter.
Good bye and thank you for your hospitality South Africa @WOSA_ZA @WOSACanada @CapeWine2015
In March I explained Why it matters to taste wines again, urged sharing through the practice of Take a bottle, leave a bottle and waxed parenthetical in yet another meaningful soul-searching moment. Why hate wine? was waged with a comment on “the wine geek who hates certain wines. The wine aficionado who picks on specific bottles, bullies them to the point of hatred. Slags them beyond reproach. Rants to the world about the injustice of their existence.” Bugger off.
The Old Third, Pinot Noir 2008
Then April. “The Ontario wine industry is the best kept secret in the world. It has grown, accelerated and advanced with more success than might have been imagined as recently as five years ago. Ontario winemakers have figured it out. The “world-class” comparative humanities of aging and longevity aside, the comprehensive and widespread phenomenon of excellence, regardless of vintage, is now an Ontario reality.” Now you know the answer to Why taste Ontario?
With Pablo Alvarez (#vegasicilia) and Laurent Drouhin (#josephdrouhin) at #fourseasonstoronto for #primumfamiliaevini…Can there be a more visceral wine experience than tasting some of the world’s greatest wine estates and all the while their principals just seem to only talk about history and family? Makes me think about parents, grandparents and children. About accomplishments, passing torches and smelling roses. Or something like that.
Pulled from four vineyards at 650-850m of altitude and from vines 19-42 years old. No skin contact though it shows a light, slight tinge of colour. Nearly platinum in its yellow hue, perhaps attributed to organics says Papagiannopoulos, Eighty per cent was achieved through natural ferment (with zero malolactic) plus “one tank for security.” Roditis can go clean or develop anti-austerity, texture, viscosity in the direction of a dirty projector. The Tetramythos glides “forward through the clover and the bergamot.” I can see what she’s seeing. Tasting like a leesy ripe peach, this is the best “basic” Roditis tasted in Achaia. Serious match of Aleria Restaurant‘s Sea Bass Tartare. Drink 2015-2020. Tasted July 2015
To taste again @lafouceller in @doterraalta is today’s master plan @VINOS_ICEX #lovegarnacha #garnatxablanca #crdoterraalta
Lafou Celler Garnatxa Blanca 2014, DO Terra Alta, Spain (Winery, Agent, WineAlign)
Ramon Roqueta Segalés, winemaker, soothsayer, visionary, seeker of the Garnatxa Blanca of today from “a narrow valley.” Ramon is very concerned with the valleys, the landscape, the geology, how the wind, the mediterranean climate and the ancient rivers that run through, having left their glacial deposits, all combine for this particular and most important expression of Garnatxa Blanca. Established in 2007, this wine was first released in 2011. Combines old and young fruit, some harvested fresher at a greener stage and others picked later, riper, brought together. Vinified separately, with some skin maceration, looking for fat to surround acidity. Ripe fruit (10 per cent) sees oak, the rest in egg shape concrete tanks with six to seven months of lees contact. Smells like a ripe peach, fresh and without sugar but instead a sprinkling of subterranean, ancient riverbed harvested salt. The tang is layered, variegated, mineral, mastered over and in corralling of oxidation, elaborated with gentle but forceful demand. “We learned that you can get a balance by harvesting and an early and a later stage, sometimes three times.” Finishes with lime, fresh squeezed, sweet tonic and distilled flowers. A wine that has succeeded in “mastering the oxidation process.” Plus the tannic (anti-oxidative) aspects offered in micro-oxygenation from the slightly toasted new oak. Approximate price $28.95 CAN. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted October 2015 @lafouceller@oenophilia1
Maps & Legends, from Cartology to Flotsam & Jetsam @ChrisAlheit @ZooBiscuitsWine #alheitvineyards #hermanus #capewine2015
Alheit Vineyards Flotsam & Jetsam Days of Yore 2014 (Winery)
Chris Alheit’s brand might allude to a chapter in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers but Days of Yore must pay some homage to the 80’s thrash metal band and with great irony. This Cabernet Sauvignon and Cinsault blend is no Doomsday for the Receiver and certainly No Place for Disgrace. What it is instead is pure liquid brilliance. Old 1960 Cabernet Sauvignon bush vines are (even if unintentionally) farmed the way they used to be, back in the days of yore. Now cropped, tended and produced in pitch perfect cure, the resulting wine (when Cabernet is blended with Albeit’s dry-farmed, stomped and tonic-singular Cinsault) shows smoky depth and musicality. Sour-edged or tart can’t begin to describe the tang. It’s something other, unnameable, sapid, fluid and beautiful. It brings South Africa from out of the heart of its wayfinding darkness. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted September 2015 @ChrisAlheit@ZooBiscuitsWine
“If you can see the differences of terroir in Gewürz, then you won’t see it in Riesling” @AlsaceWines #olivierhumbrecht
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Gewürztraminer Clos Windsbuhl 2011, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $64.00, WineAlign)
This is the most northerly Zind-Humbrecht vineyard, in Hunawihr. Like oil and water from this to 2012. So much more richness, unctuousness, classic western European riverbank gluck and heavy weighted metal. Layers upon layers of texture though not nearly as dramatically sweet as it might appear to be. Hides it so well, thanks to those remarkable Windsbuhl gifting phenols and intense grape tannin. This has presence so very rare in Gewürztraminer. In the end its a glass full of liquid gems, polished, elegant and refined. Allow the sugars several more years to fully realize its potential relationship with the acidity. Drink 2018-2033. Tasted November 2015 @olivier_dzh@TrialtoON@AlsaceWines@VinsAlsace@drinkAlsace
Concha Y Toro Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon 2010, Maipo Valley, Chile (403980, $70.00, WineAlign)
The 2010 Don Melchor harkens backwards, to years like 2001 and 2003, rephrasing and rewriting the paradigmatic book. From seven contiguous, sub-divided blocks of Cabernet, the ’10 speaks most highly of Lot Two, emphasized by chocolate, menthol and mineral, in cohorts with Lot Four, in elegance and depth. Extended glom and time-lapse picking between April 22 and May 27 was the casualty turned blessing of a cooler growing season in the semi-arid Mediterranean-like scrub desert of Puente Alto. The alluvial motion hauteur of slow-ripened fruit can’t be overestimated. The frame by frame capture has resulted in aromatics wafting off the charts; violet, anise, roasting cocoa bean, garrigue, ferric filings, mortar on wet stone, Cassis and eucalyptus. There is no heat, rendering the 14.6 declared alcoholic irrelevant. Best of all, it smells like Chile as much as it does Cabernet. There is no need to discuss the (97 per cent) CS in terms of Bordeaux, that is until you taste. Then the tobacco angst and silky texture elicit Margaux. Black currants and fine chocolate melt on the finish, still with a mouthful of stones. For winemaker Enrique Tirado, this may be his “El opus.” It will age effortlessly for 12-15 years. For anyone who purchased this wine more than 10 vintages ago, comparing current cost can be a byproduct in natural preoccupation. Who would not want a return to the sub-$50 Don Melchor going back a decade or more? Yet while tasting the present decimus, $100 crosses the fiscal mind and seems completely apropos. At $70 the clarity and sonority of its value is the blazon of an epistle. Few Cabernet Sauvignon dominant wines from Bordeaux or Napa Valley can compare. Drink 2016-2025. Tasted April 2015 @conchaytoro@MikeAikins1@DrinkChile
Mullineux & Leeu Syrah Iron 2013, Wo Swartland, South Africa (Winery, Agent, WineAlign)
If such cure, grip, ferric grab and intense tannin has ever infiltrated South African Syrah it has not yet found its way over to me. In a side by side comparative tasting with the Schist Syrah this one wrestles to win. The Schist is all perfume and soft elegance. The Iron draws power to strength from strength. It is an unrelenting conduit of energy, from soil clearly designed to outlive humanity. The Syrah is a product of geological wonder and winemaking that steps aside to let the terroir speak its mind. Demanding and filled with tension now, time will soften the stranglehold and loosen the wires. Lots of time. Drink 2019-2028. Tasted September 2015 @MullineuxWines@MullineuxChris@Nicholaspearce_
Fleury Père et Fils Cépages Blancs Extra Brut Champagne 1990, Champagne, France (Winery, Agent, WineAlign)
The expediency of weighted oxidation in flight flies effortlessly as a traveller propelled with verve and intrepid behaviour. Dried tangerine and so many tannic aspects are exaggeratedly exceptional for Champagne, fast forward thrusted and draughted with effortless urge. Derived as if from concrete shaped in purest form, of and before life. The dried fruits and a pith so calming are gathered for a level of citrus almost never before encountered. A very, very special 25 year-old bottle of bubbles from a pioneering organic and biodynamic producer in Courteron. Drink 2015-2020. Tasted February 2015 @ChampagneFleury
Most exciting wines tasted in a long time @winesorarg #carasur #bonarda #criolla #argentina #valledecalingasta
Cara Sur Bonarda 2014, Barreal, San Juan, Agrentina (Approx. $140)
Dry farmed, mordant and agile varietal red, a garagiste of a dirt road, in minuscule production, from natural run-off water and wild yeast. Only 500-600 bottles are produced, from north of Mendoza, in the Valle de Callingasta and Zuccardi funded. The natural cure is off the charts, the Emidio Pepe of Argentina, in which winemaking is really just perfect. Smells like the scrape of the amphora, already imbued of the aromatics of years, the answers of age, the design of ancients. You could keep this in the glass for a week and it will hardly evolve. Imagined as a 40 year wine for sure. Purity incarnate. Drink 2015-2040. Tasted August 2015 @winesofarg
As I get on the 707 @penfolds 1999 #cabernetsauvignon carries me far away #treasurywineestates #southaustralia #bookofdreams
Jonata La Sangre De Jonata Syrah 2008, Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Barbara County, California (220517, $150.00, WineAlign)
A tremendously ripe, rich and layered Syrah that has few equals or rivals in California so in that sense the price is benevolently justified. Winemaker Matt Dees is no flash in the pan. His wines are cerebrated and cogitated with no stone left unturned. They are showy, chiselled wrestlers, boxers and ultimate fighters but they are the real deal. This ’08 is a veritable protein potpourri, of wafts from the finest boucherie, all hung limbs and wrapped sheep’s cheeses, in caves, on counters and under glass. The expression is also very Côte Rôtie meets côte de bœuf rôtie, with added luxe perfume, chalk and lacy grain. The fruit boundaries are endless, the chew meaty, cured and smoky. Ultra Syrah of never wavering red fruit in a packed vessel with alcohol declared at a meagre 14.9 per cent. Even if it is really more like 15.5, the wealth of fruit, acidity, tannin and structure can handle the heat. With so much happening, this wine will age like the prized hind quarters and mother’s milk solids it smells of. Jonata La Sangre De Jonata Syrah 2008 says something and I’d love to hear what that is 15 years down the road. Drink 2018-2028. Tasted May 2015 @WoodmanWS@CalifWines_CA
As I get on the 707 @penfolds 1999 #cabernetsauvignon carries me far away #treasurywineestates #southaustralia #bookofdreams
Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon 1999, South Australia, Australia (Agent, $175.00, WineAlign)
The Bin 707 was first produced in 1964 though passed over from 1970 to 1975 and then in 1981, 1995, 2000, 2003 and 2011. With Grange in mind, were it to look in the mirror, it would see its reflection as Cabernet Sauvignon. A true South Australian Claret, multi-regional blend from Barossa Valley, Coonawarra, Padthaway, Robe and Wrattonbully. The ’99 was the 28th and as I get on board in 2015 and taste the 707, it carries me so far away. Today, in this world and how we play it, this is as fresh as Cabernet Sauvignon can be. It reads like a book of dreams. It is a miller of fruit, in secondary ester of refinement. It is a jet airliner, leaving behind a voluminous, velutinous trail of exhaust. “I feel like it’s all been done,” but not like this, aged for 18 months in 100 per cent new 300 litre American oak hogsheads. Not with this precision from veraciously selected fruit. Not like this. Look to 2025 for the tertiary period to begin. Drink 2015-2024. Tasted August 2015 @penfolds#treasurywineestates
Fino, Don P.X. ’86 and ’62 w: @sorgatoBTA @toroalbala @LeSommelierWine Magical, impossible, unchanging. Bucket list to revisit in 150 years #pedroximenez #bodegastoroalbala #montillamoriles #spain
Bodegas Toro Albalá Don P.X. Reserva Especial 1962, Do Montilla Moriles (424085, $205.00, WineAlign)
Unlike the 1986 which under recent European law (because it is not a red wine) must not be named Gran Reserva, this grandfather of a Pedro Ximenez is free to be what it’s supposed to be. A wine that was housed in a home somewhere in the village 10 years before the winery was created. A wine harvested in 1962, then took two months to ferment (to 7 or 8 per cent alcohol). Estate distillate was added to fortify and raise it to 17 per cent, followed by a slumber for two years in concrete vats. The final resting place was in American wood where it slumbered peacefully for 49 years until it was bottled in 2011. In a show of future forward thinking and in retrospect, of historical allegiance, the signature on the bottle belongs to its original maker. Egresses from such delicate aromas, from citrus to coffee and stands in remarkable freshness belying its 50 years. The nuts are smoked with a zesting by citrus and a dusting in nutmeg. Chestnut and hazelnut curiously form a crasis of sensation, airy and creamy like mousse, sabayon or Caudreau. If you allow it, the finish will not let go. The sugar (300 g/L RS) and acidity (5.73 g/L TA) are the tangible aspects of its futuristic longevity. Like the ’86 this is another dessert wine secured of natural preservatives; undefined, magical, impossible. These wines opened could last for 20 plus years, unchanged. Unopened that number could surpass 100, without question, no problem. Like honey, this is an earthly substance that can last, seemingly forever. So, one glass of P.X. every day, going forward, for self-preservation. Drink 2015-2060. Tasted October 2015 @LeSommelierWine
Give Emidio Pepe’s reds thirty odd years to develop and the impossible happens. To postulate in a moment’s assessment without remembering the pious tradition with which this was made would be a crime against Pepe, Abruzzo, the natural world and the wonders of the universe. With this much passage the spice cupboard that emits is wow times a thousand. Clove, cinnamon, cardamon, orange peel, galangal and like golden raisins that pass through quarries to become rubies. This wine is perfect. It has not broken down an iota. It requires no decanting. It defies logic, perception and time. There is no sediment, only energy. Speaks from the glass as if it were a child of destiny and mythology. The 1983 Emidio Pepe Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva arrives from along the same road taken but its transmogrification proves that the result, with thanks again to the endemic froth, is different every time. Drink 2015-2029. Tasted March 2015
Gaia Gaja and 1978 Barbaresco #veryproud #nebbiolo @StemWineGroup
Tasted with Gaia Gaja as an added, as good a bonus as there ever was to an already exceptional line-up of Gaja wines, the 1978 Barbaresco is untangled, untwisted and liberated. Nebbiolo spoken with the utmost clarity. Cherries falling from the tree the moment the tips of fingers come within a hair of the touch. Spring is indeed in the air (despite it being early fall), a trick of the Gaja Genesis tale, “fields of incentive covered with green.” A mesmerizing Barbaresco, pure as driven snow, clear as a pool of fallen rain, quiet as an undisturbed slumber. Ancient longings of leather and dusty cocoa are but pipe stuffing, not yet lit. This Nebbiolo is pretty, feminine, beautiful and forcefully elegant. “When you’re asleep they may show you, aerial views of the ground, Freudian slumber empty of sound.” Only available from Nebbioli of the highest caste and order. Drink 2015-2028. Tasted September 2015
Five little ducks all in a row @BellaVistaVino #anothersongaboutthefizz #franciacorta #largeformats #1987 #1989
Bellavista Winery Brut Sparkling 1987, Franciacorta, Italy (From a Six litre bottle, Agent, Winery)
Tasted alongside a 750 mL, Magnum, Jeroboam and nine litre 1989. The Methuselah is the first wine to show similarly to any of the others so the comfort level rises and yet this rocks out flinty and reductive most like the 3L. The energy is consistent, but here the spice is magnified and the nutty sense that showed in the Magnum has come forth. This seems to combine the pique aspects of both the Magnum and the Jeroboam. A best of all worlds bottle plus what it brings that neither had. Absolute freshness. Does not evolve in the glass in its first few minutes like the others that came before. It evens glistens unlike the others, as if it knows how complex, special and alive it is. This is the bomb for sure. Dart straight through the heart. Crazy exceptional Sparkling wine. It should be interesting to try and assess, which is a major act of liberty in assumption, to gauge with accuracy how format affects age. To close one’s eyes tight and place a number on each wine, to where it has evolved and why. Here, Jeroboam still three to five years away from even that beginning. Truly. Drink 2018-2037. Tasted November 2015 @BellavistaVino@Noble_Estates
Olivier Humbrecht came to Toronto last week to pour recent vintages of Pinot Gris, Riesling and Gewürztraminer. With brix and mortar special agent Ben Hodson of Trialto Wine Group leading the tasting room charge, Olivier also added in a few youthful historical gems in the line-up, including an “important and fantastic” Muscat that he so righteously and necessarily continues to insist on keeping both viable and alive.
Tasting Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Muscat, Pinot Gris, Riesling and Gewürztraminer with Olivier Humbrecht at the Fine Wine Reserve, Toronto
Any time you get the chance to taste with Olivier Humbrecht the inevitable, integral and essential phenol-tannin-sugar-acidity sequence is front and centre. His devotion to ripe phenolics and grape tannin in white wines is now legendary and in many ways, revolutionary. Low pH levels continue to dominate his directive. “Ripe phenols come from the vines and Olivier continues to refer to structure and acidity as a direct consequence of what happens in the vineyard.”
The other blast from the past brought to the Fine Wine Reserve tasting was a 2006 Riesling Clos Saint Urbain Rangen de Thann Grand Cru of such pure acidity it speaks an ancient vernacular and spins in perpetual motion.
Humbrecht is the Cru chief of Alsace because of the plethora of terroir from which he chooses to make wine. It would be hard to name another Alsatian vigneron his equal of hands and with such a spirit of terroir understanding. In the 2011 vintage alone Zind-Humbrecht produced 29 different wines for Pinot Gris, Riesling and Gewürztraminer. Spread thin is not an issue. Each Cru, whether Grand, Clos or lieu-dit are approached with equal heedfulness and perpension. Here are the seven wines poured at the Fine Wine Reserve.
Keeping the #Muscat dream alive @TrialtoON #zindhumbrecht #olivierhumbrecht
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Rotenberg 2012, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $44.00, WineAlign)
Keeping jurassic or neolithic relativities in mind, the young(er) limestone results in a buoyant chemical level of free lime and higher pH, in addition to an earthly, marly tang and richness in clay. With 15 months tacked on there is weight are there are settled flavours, as if mimicking the 24-hour open bottle, tasted last June. “Pinot Gris is the most versatile grape we have,” says Olivier, so matter of fact. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted November 2015.
From my earlier note of June 2015:
The Rotenberg’s shallow, red soils (located on top of the Hengst) bring a whole new set of parameters to Pinot Gris, in stark contrast to the Calcaire. Two bottles were poured. A two-day old sample showed settled and mellow flavours. A new bottle was crackerjack reductive, leesy and with a shocky aridity so unusual for Pinot Gris. The soils bring concentration, here magnified and compressed by the hastened moment. All the hallmarks of the Zind-Humbrecht style are there, if suppressed; tang, herbiage and a spicy spike. Very dry (4 g/L) and really invigorating white wine.
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Muscat Goldert 2009, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $44.00, WineAlign)
Ripeness is a virtue, magnified here, from a very warm year, now six years on in compression from east facing, oolitic limestone and deep marl soil (classified as argileux calcaire). “Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood,” when Muscat was considered in much higher light. The 2009, dramatic at this age, bobs aromatics to the nines, dressed to thrill. Unctuous and magnetic, this has changed gears in ways that the ’12 had not and undoubtedly has yet to click. Lays claim to Olivier’s adage, “any fruit picked unripe will come with acidity but that’s not the kind of acidity you want.” In spite of ripeness this has maintained the correct amount of tartaric acidity and low pH to petrol up the Muscat truck deep into the end of this decade. Muscat to provide shelter from the storm. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted November 2015
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Riesling Clos Saint Urbain Rangen de Thann Grand Cru 2011, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $88.00, WineAlign)
A wine always tough to pinpoint its aromatic desires, especially when so young, but it is not difficult to assess the willingness to thrive in spite of the harshest Alsace geological conditioning. That said, this has seen a minor spectre of development. It has made some new acquisitions; rock spirit outward of expression and ready to party from its early (before the 25th of September) harvest ripeness. Struck Riesling, in flint and some signal clarity of medium to thriving acidity. Southern Alsatian with veins running fine slate and bleeding minerals in steaks running across its salty skin. There should be a willingness to concede this as the most accessible immediate, modern era R de T there ever was. Drink 2016-2028. Tasted November 2015
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Riesling Clos Saint Urbain Rangen de Thann Grand Cru 2006, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $85.00, WineAlign)
From a professed beautiful vintage until a week of rain at the end of September, leading to noble rot in many places without sufficient drainage. In the Rangen the botrytis hit but the cause, effect and reaction remained within reason. Smoke and noble rot, out of aromas and into hues. The smell is sweet (carried by 35 g/L RS) but the acidity hides at least half that number, so it rings across with unconscionable aridity. Still the proposal insists that the late harvest sensibility can’t be denied, with its Ixion hyperbole of mineral and acidity. Acidity keeping this Riesling swirling like a Thessalian king punished by Zeus for his love of Hera, by being bound to a perpetually revolving winged fiery wheel. Drink 2015-2026. Tasted November 2015.
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Gewürztraminer Turckheim 2011, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $27.95, WineAlign)
“What we call a village wine,” says Olivier, “so it’s usually a sweet wine.” From a well-drained vineyard offering blossoms and blessings of full flavours, supple textures that leave the palate with a sense of weightlessness. “In ’11 Gewürztraminer ripened really well and went to a really good level of potential alcohol,” he notes. Here it remains fresh at 12.5 per cent alcohol and at a healthy level of 75 g/L RS, though just short of existing in the land of Vendanges Tardives. A wine made by the vintage. Subsequent wines would and will more often than not be nearly bone dry. Drink 2015-2022. Tasted November 2015
“If you can see the differences of terroir in Gewürz, then you won’t see it in Riesling” @AlsaceWines #olivierhumbrecht
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Gewürztraminer Clos Windsbuhl 2011, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $64.00, WineAlign)
This is the most northerly Zind-Humbrecht vineyard, in Hunawihr. Like oil and water from this to 2012. So much more richness, unctuousness, classic western European riverbank gluck and heavy weighted metal. Layers upon layers of texture though not nearly as dramatically sweet as it might appear to be. Hides it so well, thanks to those remarkable Windsbuhl gifting phenols and intense grape tannin. This has presence so very rare in Gewürztraminer. In the end its a glass full of liquid gems, polished, elegant and refined. Allow the sugars several more years to fully realize its potential relationship with the acidity. Drink 2018-2033. Tasted November 2015
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Gewürztraminer Clos Windsbuhl 2007, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $69.00, WineAlign)
Settled and amenable in an unexpected way, offering up its level of sweetness that 2011 and certainly 2012, do not, at least not yet. The phenols must have been available in an abundance of riches in 2007. They have allowed for an evolution to take this 2007 into its happy place right now. This has travelled the far eastern path to tropical fruit, of mandarin, in apricot and the mineral cream of south asian stone fruits. Those characterics persist and play nice with the Windsbuhl verve, subduing any notion of drama or over excitement. This is drinking well right now. Drink 2015-2027. Tasted November 2015
Olivier Humbrecht was hoping to pour two more wines, two very singular and very different Sélection de Grains Nobles. The LCBO could not find the shipped cases in their warehouse so they were not present at the tasting. Perhaps they will turn up at the same time the ark of the covenant crate is found.
When I visited and tasted with Olivier at the winery back in June of 2014, I had the opportunity to have a go at a younger vintage of the Pinot Gris. The older 2007 is available through consignment with Trialto, along with the Gewürztraminer Sélection de Grains Nobles Goldert 2007 ($120.00, six-packs). The Pinot Gris Clos Jebsal Sélection de Grains Nobles Trie Spéciale 2007 is also currently available ($180.00, six-packs) in limited quantities. Here was my note on the ’09 Jebsal
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Clos Jebsal Sélection de Grains Nobles Trie Spéciale 2009, Ac Alsace, France (Agent, $180.00, WineAlign)
A south-facing, very steep slope of grey marls and gypsum. A vineyard that yielded a miniscule 10 hl/H. A stratospheric residual sugar quotient (in the realm of 500 g/L) and incredulous acidity to prevent the development of the yeasts. A fermentation that finally finished in the late winter of 2012. A wine aged in demi-guid. Selection of grapes of a botrytis so pure and dry. These are the specs of a wine I may never taste again. Olivier concedes he “really tries not to obtain the highest sugar concentration possible” but this 2009 is a “monster of a wine.” It will take forever to assimilate and digest the sugar. Unctuous, lush, rich and gorgeous does not do it justice. Pure distillation of fruit and stone, accented by spice, wild herbs and flowers. Like an injection of pure, Pinot Gris adrenaline. All this from dry extract, slowly rehydrated with magic pixie dust and the wonders of the natural world. Will live for a century and then some. Drink 2020-2115. Tasted June 2014
Only on the rarest of occasions do I consider the Zodiac. Same goes for the constellations though if you slump my tired body into the comfort fitting contours of a Thermarest on a Killarney campsite I’ll happily, dreamily stare up into a near-northern sky. Or on a dock in cottage country if the Aurora Borealis happens to make a magical appearance.
In September I spent some time scanning a South African, southern hemisphere sky with Ken Forrester. Ever the romantic, Ken offered up a short dissertation on one of the special treats afforded a stay in Stellenbosch. I have seen the Southern Cross several times before and yet standing there at 10:30 pm with the South African vigneron-poet, taking in the twinkling balls of time travel, something struck me anew.
I like to line things up. Wine tasting notes with music; a lyric or an artist. You may have noticed. I also find ways to forge bonds, synaesthetic perceptions and Chaldean correlations, regardless of whether they are there for the connecting. Sometimes you just need to fulfill the urge to divide the ecliptic into 12 equal, 30 degree pieces of a pie. Perhaps it’s just the M.O.T. in me.
This coming weekend VINTAGES rolls out the first major release in preparation for the looming holiday addiction. The headlines of “stars of the season,” and “star-studded” can mean only one thing. Expensive and iconic wines will dominate LCBO shelves from now through Christmas. And most of these high ticket items will sell through. Why is that you ask? Mainly because many of them are really good wines. Mostly because desperate people will buy anything when faced with holiday gift-giving deadlines.
My job is to separate the exciting from the boring, the exceptional from the drab. I’ve chosen 12 bottles, each with their own horoscopic identity, wines that illustrate their own idiosyncratic hook-up with a sign of the zodiac. It’s a stretch to be sure but it’s my stretch, so deal with it. If you connect and agree with just one, it may change your perception too.
From left to right: J. Fritsch Riesling 2014, Closson Chase Chardonnay Closson Chase Vineyard 2013, Segura Viudas Brut Reserva Heredad Cava, La Chablisienne Montmains Chablis 1er Cru 2012, Hidden Bench Terroir Caché Meritage 2011 and Stratus White 2012
Sure-footed, hard worker, self-disciplined, over-achiever
J. Fritsch Riesling 2014, Ac Alsace, France (430520, $19.95, WineAlign)
Kientzheim Riesling, full, fleshy, opulent but not tropical in style, aromatically fleshy and full of orange rind, lemon zest and tonic. Has that necessary mineral bleed and rock tang. Schlossberg like but not as tannic and certainly ready for prime time at a much younger age. Hints at sweetness but acidity by way of early picked fruit is key. Granite feel. Drink 2015-2019. Tasted October 2015 @VinsAlsace@Alsace_info@AlsaceWines@drinkAlsace
Closson Chase Chardonnay Closson Chase Vineyard 2013, VQA Prince Edward County, Ontario (Winery, $27.95, WineAlign)
This CCV Chardonnay is one of departed winemaker Deborah Paskus’ final acts at Closson Chase. It will forever be noted as a legacy-cementing, swan song of career excellence. Crafted by Paskus and bottled by the next one, current winemaker Keith Tyers, the 2013 CCV is simply a tour de force. No such combination of richness, tropicality and pure grape tannin has ever infiltrated this Chardonnay, from this vineyard. I’m not sure there is a comparison in Ontario, at this level of excellence and at this price. A wine of pure impression, with Montrachet-like structure and Folatières-like precision. Seemingly capacious, its facile legerity is hypnotizing, quantitatively escalating in assembly of aromas, flavours, through texture and finally to longevity. The wine spent 16 months in a mere (17.25 per cent new) oak. That it notes 12.5 per cent alcohol on the label is next to impossible. The substance is just too buttressed to be so tender and effete. Impeccable balance, refinement and mineral finish. This is Chardonnay to confuse the world’s fine white collectors, to wreak havoc at international tastings for five to 10 years. Only 712 cases are available and at $27.95, is down $2 in price from the 2012. Best ever, hands down. Drink 2017-2023. Tasted March 2015 @ClossonChase
An intricate and elaborate Reserva elevation of Cava, even a bit skunky in the most endearing of ways, like a 55 day dry-aged steak cooked rare. A waft of yet blown sulphur is managed and tempered by smartly sweet yeast. At once clunky and disjointed, then heavy in citrus and the shells of molluscs. Citrus climbs all over the finish, from lime to lemon and into pomello. Complex Cava with the taste of acquired affection in requiem of a very open mind. Drink 2015-2019. Tasted October 2015 @hseguraviudas@imbibersreport@cavaswine
La Chablisienne Montmains Chablis 1er Cru 2012, Ac Burgundy, France (265090, $32.95, WineAlign)
In a word, yes. Beautiful girl this Montmains, layered of delicate aromas, from flowers through kimmeridgian soil and into fresh forest glade. A child of the cooler, Butteaux sub-climat in which the citrus melds into the soft wooden (228L barriques) notes and all is elevated by such pinpoint-posted acidity. The oak lends cream, the lees fine spun silky texture and the talc a grape tannic ingrained sense of fullness. Terrific wine. Drink 2015-2022. Tasted October 2015 @VinexxCanada@chablisienne@BourgogneWines@BIVBChablis
There is so much floral presence in 2011, a showy perfume that parades the relative elegance of Niagara’s Bordeaux reds in the vintage. Structure is comparable to 2010, not in beast mode but rather with a delicacy derived from less burning, high-toned fruit. Still here lays a wine so young, of social encumbrance that might be passed off as a mark of impertinence. This faintly embarrassing condition can be suppressed in a dark cellar, in which the foundation can be laid for the beginning of a cure. The Terroir Caché 2011 will show its best between 2017 and 2020, then develop, slow down, suspend animation and age further, effortlessly and exceptionally. Drink 2017-2024. Tasted April 2015 @HiddenBench@BenchVigneron@LeSommelierWine
Stratus White 2012, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Ontario (660704, $44.20, WineAlign)
In magnified aromatic persistence, on and over top of even two months earlier, in such a hyper-grapey way with terrific dry extract chained to tannin and humid minerality. The many months of leave in gentle oak is stating its technically procured, quote unquote de-classified case.
From my earlier note of April 2015:
In 2012 the blend is Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling. Viognier was left out because according to winemaker J-L Groux “it did not work in blending trials.” The vintage has laid the foundation for the most density and unctuous fruit for the Stratus White in what must be, ever. At the high aromatic end there is peppery beeswax, reverberating and echoing in scales and arpeggios. Like an open string singing warmly, the vintage, extraction and residuum combine for texture in mottled unction. Sapid lemon, more beeswax and lanolin mark the palate and then the White drifts into spaces occupied by smoky back beats and bites. This has great pitch with a knowledge of the path to pleasure. Drink 2017-2025
From left to right: Stratus Red 2012, Bachelder wines Niagara Chardonnay Saunders Vineyard 2012, Ca’marcanda Promis 2013, Versado Malbec Reserva 2011, Flowers Sonoma Coast Chardonnay 2013 and J. Christopher Bella Vida Vineyard Pinot Noir 2011
Stratus Red 2012, VQA Niagara On The Lake, Ontario (131037, $44.20, WineAlign)
The Stratus Red 2012 resides both in a virtuoso’s hollow and in a pantheon inhabited by some of Niagara’s great reds. The fact that such ripe phenology can anticipate and foretell to balance and freedom in the byplace of the blending process is nothing short of amazing. Sinuous and exact, of berries so indefatigable, layering raspberry over blackberry atop strawberry. Cedar and red citrus compound, without jamming the fluidity, but certainly accentuating the Fragaria vesca. Confident and fluid in movement, the ’12 neither shakes nor stirs and its acidity is flat out terrific. At this early point in its evolution it is showing as well as could be expected, or hoped for. Its core of fraises du bois will always be there. Time will be kind, gentle and patient. Drink 2015-2024. Tasted April and June 2015
From a site 2.5 km’s from the lake, right on the highway at 30 Bench. Derives its plushness from mere proximity so “serve it first,” pleads Thomas. So much lush, more richesse and yet today, Saunders is a bit closed, primary even. Will yet need some time to find its way. Drink 2015-2021.
From my earlier note of May 2014:
Though presently showing a bit inferential, no amount of Bachelder reduction can keep good fruit down nor can it dismantle the mastery of mineral impart. An arras of texture conceals the portal to both vineyard and barrel with streaks of salinity, charcoal and chalk. The 2012 rendition is a canvas laden with pure golden paint, concealing “hidden forms and shifting states.” Thomas has found a rhythm in Saunders through thick brush strokes, full and advancing. This warm vintage is not a receding one, its flavours and its texture do the opposite. They jump out at you in waves. For Thomas, the sublime is now.
In the only vintage for which such a trial was performed (2003), the chance was had to taste this 2013 under cork side by side with that vintage under screw cap. The difference was vividly palpable, for good or bad, better or worse. Under cork the young wine is like a perfectly shone lump of cool, refulgent coal with so much spice and accent in permeate of an aromatic fruitcake wheel. Under Stelvin the 12 year-old Promis’s freshness is amplified, of early immortality, with the ripest of tannins. The acidity is markedly formidable and yet both wines display a cured nature in undercurrent. Two 10 years separated Promis of spine, spirit and grounded in earth. Leave this 2013 be for two more years, screw cap or not. Drink 2016-2024. Tasted October 2015 @StemWineGroup
Adventurous traveller, mythological and experiential
Versado Malbec Reserva 2011, Luján De Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina (316984, $59.95, WineAlign)
Peter Gamble describes the ’11 Reserva as “integrated right out of the gate” and blessed with “a little more fruit component.” That is can show such freshness this early in its life span (especially in consideration of the beasts that are 2009 and 2010) is nothing short of a Malbec miracle. This is a wine that saw spontaneous fermentation, which made for very nervous times in the winemaking hands of Roberto de la Mota. Stems were used and their participation lends a Mediterranean feel, in the aromatic impart of sea salinity and kelp. The oak is scaled back a touch so the chalk push, while present, integrates in finer grain within the gritty, iron structure. This is the softest (hyper-relatively speaking) Reserva to date with a newly defined massive attack. The temperature fluctuations of the vineyard are integral in its structure and the question needs to be asked, “how can you have a day without a night?” In the Versado Reserva 2011 you have both. It is a Malbec of unfinished sympathy. Drink this sooner, starting in 2017 and for longer, to 2030. Tasted September 2014 and October 2015 @VersadoWine@winesofarg
If 2013 is turning out to be the first truly great Chardonnay vintage of the century out of Sonoma, the Flowers SC is categorically up front and centre in that discussion. The epic’s lead paragraph initializes here in a wine that is severely accurate, a blinding and gorgeous expression that brings the flowers in its game. A wield of pulchritude and balance by acidity spot on. Pure flavour extract expands and the components zing on the finish. Could there lurk a Meursault notion in its lace? You know what, forget that. Strike comparisons from the record. The Flowers is extraordinary of Chardonnay, by Chardonnay and for Chardonnay. Drink 2016-2025. Tasted July 2015 @FlowersWinery@rogcowines@sonomavintners
Secretive, perceptive, intense, insightful, with a strength of will
J. Christopher Bella Vida Vineyard Pinot Noir 2011, Dundee Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon (432823, $64.95, WineAlign)
Lithe and extremely pretty Pinot Noir, reeking of that ancient underground, saline Willamette stream and above ground, Dundee Hills fresh summer berries. Has the best tense intentions, readily available sultry, soluble tannins and just pitch perfect, happy helping acidity. This has the svelte cure and the natural tug of positivity. Sanguine, hematic, volcanic. Great stuff. Drink 2016-2022. Tasted October 2015 @BellaVidaWine@Oregon_Wine@Select_Wines
Most consumers regard the LCBO as the only source for purchasing wine in Ontario. That is understandable when you consider the blanketing influence a monopoly has over the public. The commodification of wine in this province can be like gasoline and health care. You know exactly where to go when you need a fill-up, a prescription or a bottle of wine. Or, do you?
There are options. The most obvious is a one or two-hour drive west on the QEW or east on the 401 from Toronto, to the Niagara and Prince Edward County wine regions. A bit further west you can find cellar door availability in the Lake Erie North Shore and Ontario South Coast areas. There is something else out there. You can also buy by the case.
The greatest little secret in Ontario lies in the briefcases full of fine wine in the hands of Ontario’s importers and agents. The importers tote portfolios of consignment wines rarely seen on LCBO shelves, often found on restaurant lists, ready and willing to fill cellars, wine fridges and passive wine racks in homes scattered across this province. You just need to know where to look, who to ask and get some sound advice on what’s worth purchasing, by the case.
The thing is, you have to buy by the case when using an Ontario importer as your source and there are many reasons to do so. At WineAlign we break it down for you. Restaurant pours buy the glass, cellar-worthy wines, cases to split with friends, house wines, etc., etc.
There are some who might question the motive and the execution. It’s quite simple really and transparent. The agenda is straightforward and obvious. WineAlign is a dual-sided platform for wine commerce and education. One hand allows agents and local wineries to promote their wares and to introduce their hard work to a public that might not otherwise know they are there. The other hand allows critics from across the country to write independent reviews on their wines, the best of which are included in reports on those agents and vignerons. Some of the wines do not receive favourable reviews. As a consumer, do you want to see those reviews linked to in the article? Would you not rather be informed about what floated the critical boats and to know what to buy? The sponsored content is advertorial. The reviews are not.
“Importers pay for this service. Ads for some wines may appear at the same time, but the decision on which wines to put forward in our report, if any, is entirely up to each critic, as it is with our reviews of in-store wines.”
A Report on Consignment Wines in Ontario
Written by WineAlign
For an explanation of the program, the process and our 10 Good Reasons to Buy the Case, please click here.
Over the past six months we have tasted wines from several portfolios. I wrote about the first Buy the Case with Trialto Wine Group, listed in the link above. Here are some of my reviews from the more recent tastings, from Noble Estates, Treasury Wine Estates, Cavinona and Da Capo Wines.
Domaine Pfister Pinot Blanc 2013, Alsace, France ($22.99, WineAlign)
Hillside Marl sites provide the fruit and fodder for this precise Pinot Blanc. Auxerrois can be used to infuse brio bolstering punch for such a pristine white made by the deft hands of winemaker Mélanie Pfister. I have tasted this 2013 more than 15 times and it always come up the same; clean, polished, lithe and on a sure bee-line away from the honey comb. The need for development is not the crux of this pleasure. Sips alone and swallows alongside much varied gastronomy is the matter at hand and should be on many an occasion. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted many times, November 2014 to September 2015
Planeta Etna Bianco 2014, Sicily, Italy ($29.99, WineAlign)
From Castiglione di Sicilia (Catania) and the most ancient of Sicilian grape varieties, what more could be ingratiated in depth of Carricante and its carbon dating fascination. The rich mineral layering is intense and munificent at the same time. Herbs and salinity in candied flowers grace both nose and palate. This is a near perfect vintage for such a wine. Clearly built slowly by sunshine and long shadows. Finishes as philanthropic as it began. Drink 2015-2021. Tasted September 2015 @PlanetaWinery@WinesOfSicily
Hedges Cuvee Marcel Dupont Syrah Red Mountain Les Gosses Vineyard 2012, Washington ($49.99, WineAlign)
Less than 3,000 cases were produced of this single-vineyard (Les Gosses), 100 per cent Syrah. This has the je ne sais quoi of Syrah meets Red Mountain AVA, in fact it has the JNSQ of anywhere in the Syrah diaspora. The regular attributes of meaty, gritty, peppery, pitchy and prime are all in. What sets it apart is balance and chivalry. “Everybody has their own opinion” and mine of this wine could lead to addiction. Addicted to the mountain song it sings in refrain, again and again. This is no Jane doe of a Syrah. It steals the limelight and puts on a terrific show. Drink 2015-2022. Tasted September 2015 @hedgeswine@WINESofWA
Nickel & Nickel John C. Sullenger Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2012, Napa Valley, California (142546, $174.99, WineAlign)
Gorgeous aromatics from the depths of deep clay, raised on sunshine and held back from crossing any extracted or sullen wood lines. A keen sense of graphite shredded into wheat and concrete streaks through the purity that is pristine 2012 Oakville fruit. This is Cabernet for the cellar, to collect by the half dozen (or more if you can afford it) and open one every two years for the next 12 to 24. This has the legs and the agility to slowly braise and develop for at least that long. The balance and the length are as good as it gets. Drink 2017-2036. Tasted October 2015 @NickelandNickel
Laurent Perrier Grand Siècle Grand Cuvée, Champagne, France (379982, $199.99, WineAlign)
Grand Siècle is a wine paid full attention in detail. The master’s blown glass should make that crystal clear. Chardonnay (55 per cent) and Pinot Noir (45), give or take a few approximating points is culled from a blend of 11 grands crus; Avize, Chouilly, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Ambonnay, Bouzy, Louvois, Mailly, Tours-sur-Marne and Verzenay. If freshness, elegance and structure are the intent, here is a wine in kind of a perfect three for three, though elegance is the clear winner. When all aspects are aligned, where finesse talks in soft spoken tones and why Champagne can be so delicate is the mystery revealed in the Grand Siècle. A walk through this cuvée is getting lost in a ten foot flower garden, canopy overhead. A taste means delicate gastronomy. A glide to the finish is effortless. All this adds up to wonderful symmetry. Champagne can be great when it tows a direct, purposed line. This will last decades and it can certainly, twist my arm, be enjoyed now. Great combo. Drink 2015-2035. Tasted September 2015 @ChampagneLPUSA
Chateau St. Jean Cabernet Sauvignon 2012, California ($19.95, WineAlign)
This California-designated Cabernet is composed from fruit drawn out of the North Coast and Central Coast. The North Coast vineyards stretch from Sonoma to Lake County and the Central Coast fruit in Paso Robles and Santa Barbara. A warm (13.8 per cent alcohol) Cab to be sure but several shades this side of hot. The tones are elevated and a bit jumpy, with fruit noting plum, pomegranate and ultra ripe to sweetened cranberry. Wood spice (from eight months in French and American oak) gives cinnamon and Goji berry. The perfume keeps wafting in waves, intoxicatingly so, prepping the palate for really solid fruit flavours. Though not the deepest nor the longest spoke on the Cabernet wheel, this CSJ works in the simplest, apropos ways. Highly aromatic, well-structured, righteously crafted and respectfully restrained. The sweet finish is dipped in chocolate. Drink 2015-2019. Tasted May 2015 @CSJWines
Always at or near the apex of CCR value, the 2011 is of a rich, modern, pitched deeply and highly purposed vintage. It elevates its game in all facets; fruit, acidity, tannin and warmth. A muzzle of bees seems to add muted, buzzing complexity in a Sangiovese with a faint if unusual smell of honey. In this Riserva, the “sun gets passed, sea to sea…with the breeze blown through.” The natural ripening leads to aromas indicating slow-cured plum, anise, and candied rose petals. The deeper tones are like hot autostrada surface, the gait slow roasted, with charred protein and dehydrating red fruits. In three years the fruit will seem fully dried, slightly oxidized and potentially caramelized. Express compliance of these instructions need heed by agreeing to drink this in the short term with an hour or two of radio air time. This to allow the astringent tannin to be tamed. Roger, Wilco that. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted May 2015 @castgabbiano@chianticlassico
Coldstream Hills Pinot Noir 2012, Yarra Valley, Australia ($29.95, WineAlign)
Culled from the upper and lower Yarra Valleys, the ’12 is a high-toned tome of rusty, dusty, ricochet in fruit. Seemingly warmer than its 13.5 alcohol suggests, but like the Arizona desert, it’s a dry heat. The metal urgency of sloping hillside impart is a bit tense. The is the OZ equivalent of terse Burgundy when mired in youth. The copious quantity of red fruit, both tart and ripe, is admirably in and with more time, beyond the current anxious phase, will come around again. The depth of flavour and grain ingrained in texture pushes the point. The finish is distinctly parallel and long. Drink 2016-2020. Tasted May 2015
Etude Pinot Gris 2013, Carneros, California ($39.95, WineAlign)
Made in Pinot Gris exactitude, of inklings warm, in certitude dry, to intimations Alsatian, with nobly bitter flavours and a wealth of grape tannin. The preceding aromas recalled late August orchard’s stone fruit. With lieu-dit (think Altenbourg) premier cru (equivalent) ability, this is a very stylish Pinot Gris with layers of fruit and acidity. It’s certainly one for the cellar, to forget and allow for a secondary set of developments, in wax, honey and atmospheric, elemental aerified notions. Quite fearless PG. Were it $30, it would surely be a multi-case buy. Drink 2017-2022. Tasted May 2015 @etudewines@CarnerosWine
Mas Las Cabes Côtes Du Roussillon 2012, Ac Côtes Du Roussillon, Languedoc-Roussillon, France ($19.75, WineAlign)
Beautifully funky southern French Syrah-Grenache meld, at once warm and then modern, entrenched in earth and laden with a smother and a smoulder. Syrupy but characterful far beyond simple, with spice, savour and garagiste intent. The garrigue accent runs across the grain in high altitude, windswept ways. Solid protein red for any day of the week and a candidate for restaurant list partner. Drink 2015-2019. Tasted August 2015 @LanguedocWines
Frank Family Zinfandel 2012, Napa Valley, California ($42.75, WineAlign)
A really lovely Zinfandel, of pure red fruits and just a fine, delineating, if zig-zagging swath of bramble. Though the alcohol (listed at 14.8 per cent) is anything but peckish, the heat does not overtake the fruit. This has so many barbecue forms and fetishes written into its DNA. It will comply with nary a complaint. Drink 2015-2020. Tasted August 2015 @FrankFamilyWine@TheZinfandelOrg
Point blank Barberesco, autarchic and traditional, built on memories and bent on making new ones. From a clay-limestone, south facing, single vineyard in a cru called Montersino (in the Treiso commune). Where it differs from the Ronchi is the natural cure coursing in slow food motion through its blood stream, carrying micro-oxygenated blood. There are notes of crushed aniseed and sweaty clay. The mouthfeel is silkier, more refined and the tannins sweeter. Can actually imagine this pleasing sooner and also for longer. Drink 2017-2032. Tasted August 2015 @regionepiemonte
Kudyah is the arabic name for the Sicilian town of Licodea Eubea nearest to Terre di Giurfo’s vineyards. Quite classic, rich, ruby red raspberry and earth Nero d’Avola. Tons of fruit, chews of liquorice and a mineral finish add up to a very direct, simple pleasure. A scrape of orange zest adds a florality to lift spirits and relieve stress. Just a bit salutary and saline on the finish. Very honest Nero. Tasted 2015-2018. Tasted July 2015 @WinesOfSicily
Statuesque, rustic, ancient ruin of Franciacorta, on a clear day, of tall grasses, oxidative apples and slices of hard Lombardian cheese. A total, classical, storied package of gastronomy in a bottle. Not so much Rosé as much as bubbles with a fostered history of age. Arid as the desert and piercing from acidity. This will be misunderstood by some, reveled in by others. Drink 2015-2020. Tasted July 2015 @contadicastaldi@Franciacorta
Fattoria Di Milziade Antano Montefalco Rosso Riserva 2011, Doc Umbria, Italy ($50.50, WineAlign)
From arguably a better vintage than 2012, this Montefalco exhibits a deeper treasury of fruit, thankful and necessary to handle the wood it has been dealt. The fusion into such a sanguine and ferric stream has been achieved with more direct consciousness than the free-feeling and liberismo 2012 normale. The red fruit here is dense, steroidal even, yet still pure and direct. Largesse in rusticity is the plainly assessed goings on, chewy and dusty, a figure head for Sagrantino in Umbria. This is Italian wine to define the meaning of provinciale, deeply ingrained for place, history and tradition. Like its baby brother it will need time to settle but not so much that the fruit submits to the tannin. Drink 2018-2023. Tasted July 2015
It has finally happened. It has come to this. Inflation has hit the LCBO. The old Mason-Dixon line for finer wine has left the building. We are finally rid of the oppressive bar of redundancy and free from the high water mark. First it was the penny, now it’s the $20 dollar bill. The over-under threshold of $21.95 is the new $19.95.
The wines I have chosen to recommend speak to the change, beginning with, going forth and prospering from the VINTAGES October 17th, 2015 release. One lonely bottle from the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia’s west coast stands to keep the frontier from moving north but the tide has risen and prices are no longer safe. Mark my words. Beginning in the fall of 2015, a twenty and a toonie in your pocket is the new requiem to make purchase for the common denominator in competent and felicitous dinner companions. On that note, everyone should be given a 20 per cent raise. Surely we don’t want any drinking of less than stellar LCBO issued wines.
Here are the picks.
From left to right: San Raffaele Monte Tabor Pinot Grigio 2014, Dirty Laundry Gewurztraminer Madames 2013, Palacios Remondo La Montesa 2012, Trimbach Riesling 2012, Southbrook Triomphe Cabernet Franc 2013, and Red Hill Estate Pinot Noir 2013 and Hinterland Borealis Method Charmat Rosé 2014
San Raffaele Monte Tabor Pinot Grigio 2014, Igt Veronese, Italy (204768, $14.95, WineAlign)
Ripeness extended out of extraction leads to slight distraction in 2014, with mineral notes falling off the charts. The vintage is one of hyperbole for this particular Pinot Grigio abstraction, fruit compressed, stones crushed and dry extract seared by arid ice. Salinity and brine are magnified too though the overall impression in ’14 is one of weight, like the elements are being sent substrata, as opposed to the typically aerified course. Still there can be no denying the complexity such a $14 white affords, even if the line here is a bit right of centre. Drink now for hedonistic pleasure, with any savoury sea creature and alongside the next 60 days of increasingly cooler nights. Drink 2015-2016. Tasted September 2015 @oenophilia1
Dirty Laundry Gewurztraminer Madames 2013, BC VQA Okanagan Valley (423228, $21.95, WineAlign)
Illustrated Gewürztraminer of appreciably pointed attributes, on the off-dry side of town but with enough acidity to float on. Les Madames offers up the most sweet and inviting set of vinous virtues for the triple-threat DL schematic. The Summerland vines and warmth make for a fully expected and dramatized aromatic wine with the most unctuous behaviour. Were the pH and the grape tannin of a higher combined force this would also be a wine to lay down, to wait and watch for the sugars to slowly develop into things tertiary. As it is, find some flavourful and spicy fare to seek succulence through osmosis. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted October 2015 @DirtyLaundryVin@winebcdotcom@bottleneckdrive
This perennial confluence of the left and the right, of two oceans, grapes and barrels is the red wine portal into the Álvaro Palacios idiom. The modern polish and sanctity of Rioja conjoin for the most representative first pass at Tempranillo-Garnacha you will and should encounter. The vintage is not a rigid one, the wine a downy entry into the style and the equation. The fruit dominates calcareous longing and leaning but for the time being and the audience reached out to, there are no questions or complaints. Red plum and subtle liquorice meander into clay, get a sprinkle of white rock and distill into a seasoned, approachable liquid. Cracks are filled, bonds are cemented and dinner is properly accompanied. What won’t this work with and for? Drink 2015-2019. Tasted October 2015 @WoodmanWS@RiojaWine
Trimbach Riesling 2012, Ac Alsace, France (734517, $21.95, WineAlign)
“Six plus months will do wonders” is a statement of probability for well-made Riesling and for Trimbach, of the obvious. Coequality between fruit and mineral bobs on the surface of the vineyard and the rim of pale platinum beauty. Illustrative Alsace. Drink 2015-2022.
From my earlier note of March 2015:
To Jean and Anne Trimbach and most Alsatians, this Riesling from their ‘Classic’ range may represent the best that basic can be but when it travels oversees it gains a stature well beyond its humble roots. Here is another one of the those dictionary entry wines meant to depict and define. Quite simply emblematic Alsace. Built with acidity to envelop sweetness, marked by herbiage that is alive and fresh. Weight and density draw from Ribeauvillé rocks. Parity is realized in osmosis by fruit and mineral. As always, there is the tannic underlay, the length and the purposed bitter finish.
Six months have amplified the current, running in a direct aromatic-flavour line from strawberry to black currant. Such healthy up front fruit with nary a moment of humidity shines while the wine remains just grounded enough to call it Niagara.
From my earlier note of December 2014:
Still organic through and through, despite only a small portion of estate fruit contributing to the overall design of the Triomphe Cabernet Franc ’13. Contracted growers fuel and fulfill the Southbrook ideology, to seek purity in healthy berries. The red fruit here shines on with Daliesque impunity. Its agglomeration makes a juicy, gregarious offer to sip. The vanilla-lavender streak brings elegance, more so than in ’12, along with an elevated sense of savour and really compounded red, red fruit. A natural sweetness and long finish are easy on the gustatory senses. Will be available at VINTAGES in February 2015, when the ’12 runs dry.
Red Hill Estate Pinot Noir 2013, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia (58073, $21.95, WineAlign)
The Mornington perfume, distinct, ethereal, lifted, elevated, fresh with a bit sauvage, not of musk, but of a wild road less trodden. A step beyond fresh, into learned territory and also above crisp, into crunchy. Very interesting and complex Pinot Noir, so obvious as anything but, yet unique, tart, striking and long. This should have many consumer fans and expand horizons for broad appeal, but also be a friend to the discerning taster. Most impressive. Tasted November 2014 @RedHillEstate@Noble_Estates
The Ancestral cousin continues its arid ways in 2014, ostensibly a better vintage for the sparkling tank methodology. The fruit, acidity, volatility and tension all elevate and there is nothing surprising about that but where this sophomore succeeds is in the dry take on Gamay bubbles. So many winemakers would be tempted into higher dosage and the soft allure of enticing a younger audience with sweetness. Jonas Newman won’t go there. This is fun and simple but its aridity and dry extract keep it real. Like a September Algonquin campsite gaze upwards at the Aurora Borealis. “The icy sky at night.” Drink 2015-2018. Tasted October 2015 @hinterlandwine
From left to right: Creekside Estate Reserve Viognier Queenston Road Vineyard 2013, Dominio De Tares Cepas Viejas Mencia 2011, Tenuta Rocca Barolo 2010, Cvne Imperial Reserva 2009, Prunotto Barolo 2010, Tawse Pinot Noir Lauritzen Vineyard 2012, Duckhorn Merlot 2012 and Banfi Poggio Alle Mura Brunello Di Montalcino 2010
Exceedingly mineral in 2013, decidedly varietal and power prepositioned for the purpose of small lot, attention to detail Creekside adjudication. Though Syrah and Cabernet Franc would seem to define the winery’s signature strokes, it is this small production Queenston Road Vineyard labour of love that crawls beneath the radar. The ’13 is outright juicy, unctuous, feathered in weight and warm-pitched to verdant greens. The vintage doles out more warmth than expected but acidity carries the weight, over the water and onto the dance floor. I’d wait a couple of years for some more floral and honeyed notes to develop. Drink 2017- 2022. Tasted October 2015 @CreeksideWine@hobbsandco
This is rich and powerful Mencia, even for itself, sheathed and layered by the alternating variegation of French and American oak. From Alliers to Missouri there is comfort to be found in its warm blanket, alcohol (14.5 degrees) and depth of fruit. It might come across as figgy and raisined and indeed those aromas and flavours are imagined, but they are fresh, not dried. Acidity and tannin envelop fruit. Old vines offer substantial heft, concentration and brambly fruit like Zinfandel and Primitivo, but here there is a citrus lift to carry the weight. Emblematic Bierzo that has and will be more exciting with just that much more freshness and tension. Drink 2015-2019. Tasted October 2015 @DominiodeTares@oenophilia1@dobierzo
Modern speak and safely on the pleasurable side of volatile. A real deal for Nebbiolo, ready and willing in afford of whatever’s in your pocket. Framework is well-delineated, wood properly judged, the view clearly visible from multiple correct vantage points. Not earth shattering but at the price reaches more than appropriate goals. Drink 2016-2020. Tasted September 2015 @regionepiemonte
Another impressive, formidable and structured Tempranillo from the Cvne stable, from old vineyards and the comforts of both French and American oak. Such a rich and deep exhalant, as much fruit as tannin, mineral as acidity. There are many moving parts but one day they will align. Like a jigsaw falling into place, “the beat goes round and round,” swirling with tannic noise and plum fruit aromas, with earthy and botanical flavours. This begins with a murmur and ends with thunder. It rocks and wails in between. Rioja made only in the best vintages and the kind of $39 wine to lay down for 15 plus years. It will play on the radio and in your head for at least that long. Drink 2019-2029. Tasted October 2015 @Cvne@vonterrabev@RiojaWine
The faintest hue. The rusty pilgrim. Such a pretty scent. Fresh roses and the beginnings of osseous imagination, to seek a classic pairing, with osso bucco. The real deal in normale Barolo. The righteous Nebbiolo beginning. The jumping off point with no sharks in the water. The effortless offering. Drink 2016-2021. Tasted September 2015 @HalpernWine
Typically Tawse and exemplary of Lauritzen. The highest of the vineyard tones and a plot up on a ridge (now 11 years of age) growing up before our eyes. The fruit is not shy in any way. Possessive of earth alternating with min real neither Cherry nor Quarry nor Laidlaw can lay claim. This is a Pender Pinot that seethes, oozes and owns its vineyard’s fruit, rocks and clay, earth and elements. Upwards and drying, with tannins that shriek. Ripping and yet at once, a few years down the road to be, elegant Pinot Noir. Drink 2017-2020. Tasted September 2015 @Tawse_Winery@Paul_Pender@DanielatTawse
Duckhorn Merlot 2012, Napa Valley, California (992529, $59.95, WineAlign)
Always rich and flavourful, the champion vintage here elicits a nearly massive Merlot in benchmark Napa ideal. This has strength in situation and there is something you can’t quite put a finger on, but it emanates from a special brand of umami. Strength, poise and sweetness that never cloys. There grades a balanced capability and pure, grainy, sweet, supple tannin. Alcohol travels a really grand yet gracious line. It’s not hot at all. This is a Merlot steal, with fruit to match a long, meandering road. Drink 2016-2025. Tasted September 2015 @duckhornwine@rogcowines@NapaVintners
Banfi Poggio Alle Mura Brunello Di Montalcino 2010, Tuscany, Italy (372250, $69.95, WineAlign)
Arguably the most modern and stylishly put together Brunello on the market today yet without an overdoing of oak hinderance. Like the deliciously devilish 2007 this has a wealth of beauty and gregarious aromatics but unlike that precocious vintage there is weight and brooding behaviour as well. The depth of fruit and earth are not weighted down by excessive alcohol (a very good thing) though there is a bit of dried fruit and flowers mixed in to the cure. There is also a bitter almond pith note ties into the aggressive but starry-eyed tannins. This needs three to five years to come together. The hope is for that slight bit of green tannin to find its integrated way with the fruit. Drink 2018-2025. Tasted October 2015 @CastelloBanfi@AuthenticWineON
Niedermorschwihr and Sommerberg Grand Cru Vineyard, Alsace
It has been more than 15 months since I returned from a pivotal, seminal and transmogrifying week in Alsace. The thoughts transposed to words continue to flow freely and with crystalline clarity. This may be the curtain call on that trip. Or not.
Type in the words “Alsace” and “philosophy” into a Google search page and the results will tell a Grand Cru story. The Alsace home page launches from terroir. It has to. Every winery, trade, marketing or governing organization’s website is ingrained to emphasize the rubric, to explain the true essence of Alsace wine. The local philosophy, indicating the cerebral and the spiritual component for producing exceptional wine, is both necessary and fundamental. There is nothing remotely parenthetical about the notion of terroir, not in Alsace.
As wine geeks we are constantly seeking it out and sometimes we imagine it, chat it up when it’s not really there. After we are immersed in Alsace, we cannot deny its existence. Terroir, defined as “the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors such as the soil, topography and climate.” Or, goûts de terroir, as in “taste of the earth.” Wherever wine is made around the world, soil is always as important, if not more important than any facet of the winemaking oeuvre. In Alsace, it is religion. I suss it, you suss it and in Alsace, they might say, “we all suss terroir.”
Alsace presents as a long strip of stupidly beautiful, verdant vistas, wedged between the faults and valleys forged with the Vosges Mountains on its west side and the Germany buffering Rhine River to the east. To consider its location as a province of France, drive 500 kilometres east of Paris and draw a line south from Strasbourg, to Colmar and to Basel. Wars have seen to make sure the region can never be too comfortable with its identity, causing an ever-annoying oscillation in governance.
Godello and Restaurant Laurea Montreal’s Fred Fortin
Alsatians are the possessed refugees of Europe, tossed around like orphaned children from one foster family to another. That they can be so comfortable in their own skin is to accept their conceit as a French paradox, through ignoring its Franco-Germanic past, its passage back and forth between hands and its current state as a region governed by France. The confluence of cultures and of shared borders (and airports) would think to cause a crisis of identity. The names of towns and villages may act out a who’s who or what’s what of French sobriquet and German spitzname. None of that matters. The people, the places, the food and the wine are purely and unequivocally in ownership of their own vernacular, dialect and culture: Alsatian.
Phillipe Blanck in the Schlossberg Photo (c): Cassidy Havens, http://teuwen.com/
When a winemaker wants to lay an insult upon you he will say something like “oh, that’s so Anglo-Saxon.” Ouch. He will mean it, for sure, but he will also grace you with a wink and a smile. He likes you and he respects your choice to come from far away to learn something of his wines. And you like him. The winemaker will also complement you when your palate aligns with his, when your thoughts intuit something about his acuity and his groove. His flattery will be genuine. The winemaker will pour old vintages and without a hem or a haw. She will share generously, not because she wants to sell more, but because she wants better people to drink her wine.
To ascertain a grip on the Alsace codex it must begin in the vineyard. The steep slopes, zig-zagging ridges and fertile valleys are composed of highly intricate, alternating and complex geological compositions. The landscape switches repeatedly from clay to marl, from calcaire (limestone) to schist, from volcanic to granitic rock. Each vineyard and even more parochial, each plot contributes to define the wine that will be made from that specific micro-parcel. The wine grower and winemaker’s job is to treat the soil with utmost respect. To plow the land, to add organic material, to refuse the use of fertilizers and to spray with solutions composed of non-chemical material.
Organic and biodynamic viticulture is widespread across the globe but Alsace is a leader in the practices, particularly in the latter’s holistic, asomatous way. Though more than 900 producers make wines, including many who do not partake in a bio-supernal and subterraneal kinship with the vines and the earth, the ones who do are fanatical about their winegrowing ways. Alsatian winemakers bond with their fruit, by employing the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner’s teachings as a predicate from which to apply spiritual connections to the physical act of tending vines.
Godello and Christophe Ehrhart, Domaine Josmeyer, Kientzenheim
The belief is that great wine can only be made from healthy, natural and disease resistant plants. Steiner’s studies on chemical fertilizers looked into the effect on plants growing near bombs in the earth. The growth was observed to be abnormal and unhealthy. Christophe Ehrhart of Domaine Josmeyer compared this to humans, who eat too much salt and thus need to drink too much. I tasted more than 150 naturally made wines from biodynamically farmed soils. The proof of quality and complexity is in the glass.
The winemaker of Alsace shows a respect for the earth that might be seen as a verduous variation on the teachings of theologian, philosopher, physician, medical missionary and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer. The Alsatian-born Schweitzer gave to the world his theory on the “reverence for life,” a term he used for a universal concept of ethics. “He believed that such an ethic would reconcile the drives of altruism and egoism by requiring a respect for the lives of all other beings and by demanding the highest development of the individual’s resources.” The biodynamic approach, through its human to vegetable relationship, echoes the concept. Careful care not to disrupt the balance of nature allows the vines to develop the strength to survive and to flourish in less than optimum climatic conditions, especially during times of drought. The quality of grapes and in turn, the complexity of wine, is the result.
Grand Cru Riesling, Alsace
The focus on soil and terroir is ultimately disseminated into the idea of tasting minerality in wine, a most contentious aspect of the wine tasting and writing debate. Nary an expert will admit that the impart of trace minerals can be ascertained from a wine’s aroma and most believe that it can be found in taste. An American geologist debunked the mineral to taste theory at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America held in Portland Oregon. “The idea is romantic and highly useful commercially, but it is scientifically untenable,” wrote Alex Maltman, a professor at the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University. Maltman’s claim is simple. Vines absorb minerals from the earth but the amount is far too small for human detection.
Christophe Ehrhart of Domaine Josmeyer in Wintzenheim agrees to disagree. Ehrhart concedes that the quantitative number is small (only three to five percent) for a vine to derive its personality, divined though the earth’s brine. The remainder is a consequence of photosynthesis. Ever the spiritual and natural advocate, Christophe borrows from the writings of David Lefebvre. The journalist and wine consultant’s The minerality from David Lefebvre tells the story of why natural wines without sulfur express minerality. Lefebvre makes clear the argument that naturally-farmed (biodynamic and/or, but necessarily organic) vines are qualitatively richer in (salt minerals) than those raised with chemicals. “All fermentation, from milk to cheese, from grape to wine, is accompanied by the appearance of the component saline, one could say mineral, in the taste of the fermented product.” Chemicals and fertilizers inhibit growth and vigor, ostensibly wiping out an already minuscule number. If food is available at the surface, vine roots will feed right there. They will then lose their ability to create the beneficial bacteria necessary to metabolize deep earth enzymatic material. They essentially abandon their will to fight for nutrition deep within the fissures of the rock. Lefebvre’s conclusion? “All biocides and other products that block mineralization, such as SO2, inhibit the expression mineral.”
At the end of the day Lefebvre is a wine taster and not a scientist and the argument must be considered within the realm of the natural world. “The taste of stone exists in Alsace, Burgundy, the Loire (all France) when the winegrower uses organic farming and indigenous, winemaking yeasts.” American made wine rarely does this, though change is occurring. Ontario winemakers are different. Taste the wines of Tawse or Southbrook and note the difference. Or, taste the difference a vegetable, like a tomato, or a piece of fruit, like a peach tastes when picked straight from the garden, or orchard, as opposed to the conventional piles of the supermarket. There can be no argument there.
A week tasting through nearly 300 wines in Alsace may sound exhausting when in fact it is an experience that had me constantly, “as the expression goes, gespannt wie ein Flitzebogens,” or as it is loosely employed from the German in the Grand Budapest Hotel, “that is, on the edge of my seat.” I watched Wes Anderson’s film on the Air France flight over from Toronto to Paris and enjoyed it so much that I watched it again on my return. That kind of spiritual, dry European humour is not unlike that of the fraternity of Alsatian winemakers and how they discuss their wines. From Olivier Zind-Humbrecht to Pierre Blanck, to MauriceBarthelmé and to Jean-Pierre Frick there is an Edward Norton to Bill Murray, Tom Wilkinson to Harvey Keitel, Adrien Brody to Ray Fiennes affinity. Or perhaps it’s just me.
Alsace is distinguished by a very specific set of vinous attributes. No other area in France is as dry and only Champagne is further north in latitude. The aridity of the summer months, followed by the humidity of the fall fosters the development of a beneficial fungus called Botrytis cinerea, the fungus better known as noble rot, which concentrates the sugars and preserves acidity. Pierre Gassmann of Rolly Gassman says all of his wines are noble rot wines, but he calls them Riesling.
The uninitiated into the wines of Alsace think it is one big pool of sickly sweet and cloying white wine. If perhaps this were, at least to some extent, once true, it is no longer. The progressive and philosophically attentive producer picks grapes (especially the particularly susceptible Pinot Gris) before the onset of botrytis. If a dry, mineral-driven style is the goal, picking must be complete before what Phillippe Zinck refers to as D-Day. Pinot Gris goes over the edge in an instant, even more so because of the advancing maturation due to the warm temperatures induced by Global Warming.
Sommerberg Grand Cru
The global wine community’s ignorance to the multeity of Alsace wines, “as mutually producing and explaining each other…resulting in shapeliness,” needs addressing and so steps in the valedictorian, Christophe Ehrhart. The Josmeyer viniculturalist devised a system, a sugar scale to grace a bottle’s back label. Whites are coded from one to five, one being Sec (Dry) and five Doux (Sweet). The codification is not as simple as just incorporating residual sugar levels. Total acidity is taken into consideration against the sugar level, like a Football team’s plus-minus statistic. In Alsace the relationship between sugar, acidity and PH is unlike any other white wine region. Late Harvest (Vendanges Tardives, or Spätlese in German) is Late Harvest but Vin desprit sec or demi-sec in Alsace should not generally be correlated to similar distinctions in Champagne or the Loire. In Alsace, wines with vigorous levels of acidity and even more importantly PH bedeck of tannin and structure. Perceived sweetness is mitigated and many whites, though quantified with residual sugar numbering in the teens, or more, can seem totally dry.
Returning to the idea of increasingly warmer seasonal temperatures, the red wines of Alsace have improved by leaps and bounds. “We could not have made Pinot Noir of this quality 20 years ago,” admits Maurice Barthelmé. Oh, the humanity and the irony of it all.
This sort of quirky response to nature and science is typical of the artisan winemaker. There is more humour, lightness of being and constater than anywhere else on this winemaking planet. There just seems to be a collective and pragmatic voice. Maurice makes a 10,000 case Riesling called Cuvee Albert, “because I have to make a wine for the market.” Yet Maurice is also a dreamer and a geologist. To him, “Pinot Noir, like Riesling, is a mineralogist.”
Domaine Albert Mann’s Jacky Barthelmé: “Before Jesus Christ was born we have had vines here in the Schlossberg. So it is a very old story.” The Alsace vigneron is only human and works in a vinous void of certitude. They do not fuck with their land or attempt to direct its course. The young Arnaud Baur of Domaine Charles Baur insists that you “don’t cheat with your terroir or it will catch up with you. You will be exposed. You can make a mistake but you will still lose the game.” What an even more wonderful world it would be if he only understood the complexity in his multiple entendre.
Philippe Blanck is a philosopher, a dreamer, an existentialist and a lover. He is Descartes, the aforementioned Bill Murray and Bob Dylan rolled into one, a man not of selection but of election. He is both prolific and also one who buys the whole record catalogue, not just the hits. He opens old vintages freely and without hesitation. When asked how often does he have the opportunity to open wines like these he answers simply, “when people come.”
Pierre Frick et Fils
Then there is the far-out Jean-Pierre Frick, the man who let a 2006 Auxerrois ferment for five years before bottling it in 2011. “After one year I check the wine and he is not ready. I see him after two years and he says I am not ready. So I wait. After five years he says, I am finished. So I put him in the bottle.” On his Riesling 2012 he says, “This is a wine for mouse feeding.” Upon cracking open his remarkable, natural winemaking at its peak 2010 Sylvaner he chuckles like M. Gustave and smirks, “he is a funny wine.”
Few wine regions tell their story through geology as succinctly and in as much variegated detail as Alsace. The exploration of its Grand (and other vital) Cru (for the purposes of this trip) was through soils (or not) variegated of clay, sandy clay, marl, granite, volcanic rock, limestone and sandstone. To complicate things further, a Cru can be composed of more than one type of terra firma and still others have more than one arrangement within the particular plot. All very complicated and yet so simple at the same time. The Crus tasted came from the following:
Domaine Schoenheitz Linsenberg Riesling 1990, Ac Alsace, France (Winery, 196618, WineAlign)
During a picnic, on a plateau up on the Linsenberg lieu-dit set above the Wihr-au-Val, this 24 year-old bottle acts as a kind of Alsatian Trou Normand. A pause between courses, which involves alcohol and you need to ask for its proof of age. Culled from deep dug vines out of stony and shallow granite soil. Soil rich in micas with a fractured basement. From a dream vintage with marvellous semi-low yields and a student of south-facing, self-effacing steep steppes. A sun worshipper prodigy of winemaker Henri Schoenheitz, a child of terroir du solaire. Rich and arid in simultaneous fashion (the RS is only 8-10 g/L), the years have yet to add mileage to its face and its internal clock. It may ride another 15, or 20. Drink 2015-2030. Tasted June 2015 @VinsSchoenheitz
Schoenheitz Picnic, Wihr-au-Val
Domaine Albert Boxler Pinot Blanc Reserve 2013, Ac Alsace, France (SAQ $27.70 11903328, WineAlign)
From fruit drawn off the granitic Grand Cru of the Brand but not labeled as such. Laser focus (what Jean Boxler wine is not) and texture. Possessive of the unmistakable Brand tang, like mineral rich Burgundy. The minerality ann the acidity from the granite are exceptional in a wine known as “Pinot Blanc Reserve.” As good a developing PB are you are ever likely to taste. Drink 2015-2019. Tasted June 2014
Domaine Albert Boxler Riesling Old Vines Sommerberg Grand Cru 2013, Ac Alsace, France (SAQ, 11698521, WineAlign)
A direct expression of winemaker (since 1996) Jean Boxler and his 150 year-old casks. This is Riesling suspended in the realm of dry extract, texture and a precision of finesse rarely paralleled in Alsace. It reads the truth of facteur for Sommerberg, its face, slope and pitch. Exceeds the clarity of the younger parcel in its contiguous continuance of learning, of pure, linear, laser styling. There is more maturity here and the must had to have been exceptional. “The juice must be balanced when it goes into the vats or the wine will not be balanced,” insists Jean Boxler. And he would be correct. Drink 2016-2025. Tasted June 2014
Domaine Albert Boxler
Domaine Albert Boxler Tokay-Pinot Gris Sommerberg Grand Cru 1996, Ac Alsace, France (Alsace)
From volcanic and granitic soils together combining for and equating to structure. A matter concerning “purity of what you can do from a great ground,” notes Master Sommelier Romain Iltis. Perception is stronger than reality because despite the sugar, the acidity reign to lead this to be imagined and reasoned as a dry wine. Ripe, fresh, smoky, with crushed hazelnut and seamless structure. Stays focused and intense in mouthfeel. Takes the wine down a long, long road. Quite remarkable. No longer labeled “Takay” after the 2007 vintage. Drink 2015-2026. Tasted June 2014
Domaine Albert Mann Pinot Gris Grand Cru Furstentum 2008, Alsace, France (Winery)
The Marl accentuated Hengst and its muscular heft receives more Barthelmé limelight but the always understated Furstentum Grand Cru is a special expression of the variety. As refined as Pinot Gris can be, with a healthy level of residual sugar, “like me” smiles Marie-Thérèse Barthelmé. The sugar polls late to the party while the acidity swells in pools, but the finish is forever. “Pinot Gris is a fabulous grape but we serve it too young,” says Maurice. “It needs time to develop its sugars.” Truffle, mushroom, underbrush and stone fruit would match well to sweet and sour cuisine. Flinty mineral arrives and despite the residual obstacle, is able to hop the sweet fencing. The potential here is boundless. Drink 2018-2026. Tasted June 2014 @albertmannwines
Dinner wines at La Table du Gourmet, Riquewihr
Domaine Paul Zinck Gewürztraminer Grand Cru Goldert 2010, Alsace, France (Agent)
From the village of Gueberschwihr and from soil composed of sandstone, chalk and clay. The vines average 50 years in age and the wine saw a maturation on the lees for 11 months. Philippe Zinck notes that “the terroir is stronger than the variety.” If any grape would stand to contradict that statement it would be Gewürztraminer but the ’10 Goldert begs to differ. Its herbal, arid Mediterranean quality can only be Goldert talking. Though it measures 20 g/L of RS it tastes almost perfectly dry. It reeks of lemongrass, fresh, split and emanating distilled florals. This is classic and quintessential stuff. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted June 2014 @domainezinck@LiffordON
Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Gewürztraminer Vendanges Tardives Goldert Grand Cru 1985
Tasted from magnum at Les Millésimes Alsace, a wine described by Caroline Furstoss as “unusual for late harvest,” because the terroir is simply stronger than the variety. Another economically non-viable low yield LH, “from a vintage more on the reductive than the oxidative side.” Even at 30 years it requires aeration and time to open up. Travels from spicy to smoky with that air. There is a density in bitterness, an attrition miles away from resolve and a promise for rebate, if further patience is granted. The spices inherent are ground, exhumed and combine with the base elements to rise atomically. A spatially magnificent wine of sugars not yet clarified and an acquired taste not quite elucidated. A taste of an ancient kind. Drink 2015-2035. Tasted June 2014
Marno-Calcaire/Marl-Limestone (Altenberg de Bergheim, Clos Hauserer, Eichberg, Hengst, Kappelweg de Rorschwihr, Mambourg, Mandelberg, Osterberg, Pfersigberg, Sonnenglanz, Steingrubler)
Marcel Deiss Schoffweg “Le Chemins Des Brebis” 2010, Bergheim, Alsace, France (Agent, $60.95, WineAlign)
A pulsating and metallic, mineral streak turns the screws directly through this spirited Bergheim. From Schoffweg, one of nine Deiss Premier Crus planted to Riesling and Pinots. A pour at Domaine Stentz Buecher from fellow winemaker Carolyn Sipp simulates a trip, to stand upon a scree of calcaire, the earth below a mirror, reflecting above a multitude of stars. “He’s a character,” smiles Sipp, “and perhaps even he does not know the actual blend.” The amalgamate is surely Riesling dominant, at least in this impetuous ’10, a savant of fleshy breadth and caracoling acidity. The Schoffweg does not sprint in any direction. It is purposed and precise, geometric, linear and prolonging of the Deiss magic. This is a different piece of cake, an ulterior approach to assemblage, “a bigger better slice” of Alsace. It should not be missed. Tasted June 2014 @LeSommelierWine
Marcel Deiss Mambourg Grand Cru 2011, Bergheim, Alsace, France (Agent, $114.95, WineAlign)
In a select portfolio tasting that includes a trio of highly mineral yet approachable 2010’s (Rotenberg, Schoffberg and Schoenenbourg), the ’11 Mambourg stands out for its barbarous youth. It seems purposely reductive and strobes like a hyper-intensified beacon. Rigid, reserved and unforgiving, the Mambourg is also dense and viscous. Acts of propellant and wet concrete circulate in the tank, compress and further the dangerous liaison. This is a brooding Deiss, so different than the jurassic citrus from Rotenberg, the terroir monster in Schoffberg and the weight of Schoenenbourg. In a field of supervised beauty, the Mambourg may seem like punishment but there can be no denying the attraction. Five years will alter the laws of its physics and soften its biology. The difficult childhood will be forgotten. Drink 2019-2026. Tasted June 2014 @LeSommelierWine
Rogue Alsace, classic Deiss five varietal field blend specific to one hangout. The steep, terraced, granite Langenberg, terroir from Saint Hippolyte. Deiss coaxes, expects and demands precocious behaviour from four supporting varieties to lift and place the Riesling, with the intent being a result in “salty symphony.” This is approachable, something 2011 could not have been easy to accomplish. The accents are spice, sapidity and acidity, from the granite, for the people. Isn’t this what a mischievous brew should be about? Drink 2015-2022. Tasted June 2014 @LeSommelierWine
Léon Beyer Riesling Cuvée Des Comtes D’Eguisheim 1985, Alsace, France (316174, $50.00, WineAlign)
I wonder is any Alsace Riesling sublimates history, religion and occupation more than Cuvée Des Comtes D’eguisheim. It breathes the past; of popes, Augustinians of Marbach, Benedictines of Ebersmunster, Cistercians of Paris and Dominicans of Colmar. From the limestone-clay for the most part of the Grand Cru Pfersigberg and only produced in exceptional vintages. In 1985 low yields, same for botrytis and then 29 years of low and slow maturation. In 2014, is the herbal, aromatic, limestone salinity a case of vineyards, grape or evolution? All of the above but time is in charge. It has evolved exactly as it should, as its makers would have wished for. It is ready to drink. The defined minerality, with fresh lemon and a struck flint spark has rounded out, without the need for sugar. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted June 2014 @TandemSelection
Charles Baur Riesling Grand Cru Eichberg 2009, Ac Alsace, France (Winery)
Arnaud Baur understands his place and his family’s position in the Alsace continuum. “You can make a mistake and you can still lose the game.” His use of entendre is subconsciously brilliant. In 2009 the warmth went on seemingly forever and so Baur did not even bother trying to make a dry Riesling. “We really respect the vintage,” says Arnaud. Meanwhile at 18 g/L RS and 7.0 g/L TA the balance is struck. Many grapes were dried by the sun, ripeness was rampant, flavours travelled to tropical and acidity went lemon linear. The 14.2 per cent alcohol concludes these activities. Matched with foie gras, the vintage is marinated and married. There is certainly some crème fraîche on the nose and the wine plays a beautiful, funky beat. As much fun and quivering vibration as you will find in Alsace Marno-Calcaire. Drink 2015-2024. Tasted June 2014
Dinner wines at L’Epicurien, Colmar
Charles Baur Gewürztraminer Grand Cru Pfersigberg 2007, Ac Alsace, France (Winery)
A good vintage for Riesling and considering the heat, an even better one for Gewürztraminer. The vineyard offers 50-70cm of clay atop Jurassic yellow limestone where roots can penetrate the rock. They suck the life into this enzymatic white. This, of digestibility, “a wine you don’t want to drink two glasses of, but three.” Delicious, clean, precise Gewürz that Mr. Baur recommends you “drink moderately, but drink a lot.” Arnaud is very proud of this ’07, for good reason. Two actually. Balance and length. Drink 2017-2027. Tasted June 2014
Domaine Albert Mann Pinot Gris Grand Cru Hengst 2013, Alsace, France (SAQ $41.50 11343711, WineAlign)
Tasted not long after bottling, the yet labeled ’13 is drawn from a vintage with a touch of botrytis. “We don’t sell too much of this,” admits Maurice Barthelmé. Along with the sweet entry there are herbs and some spice, in layers upon layers. Almost savoury, this interest lies in the interchange between sweet and savour, with stone fruit (peach and apricot) elevated by a feeling of fumée. A playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Drink 2017-2024. Tasted June 2015 @albertmannwines@Smallwinemakers
Domaine Albert Mann Pinot Gris Grand Cru Hengst 2008, Alsace, France (SAQ $41.50 11343711, WineAlign)
In 2008 the brothers Barthelmé used the Hengst’s strength and the vintage to fashion a remarkable Pinot Gris. It is blessed of antiquity, like concrete to bitters, with power, tension and a posit tub between fruit and sugar. At 34 g/L RS and 7.6 g/L TA there is enough centrifuge to whirl, whorl and pop, culminating in a healthy alcohol at 14 per cent. Quite the reductive Pinot Gris, to this day, with a sweetness that is manifested in mineral flavours, glazed in crushed rocks. “It smells like mushroom you threw into a dead fire,” notes Fred Fortin. This is the bomb. Needs four more years to develop another gear. Drink 2018-2033. Tasted June 2015 @albertmannwines@Smallwinemakers
Domaine Albert Mann Gewürztraminer Grand Cru Steingrubler 2008, Alsace, France (Winery)
From marly-limestone-sandstone, “a fa-bulous terroir,” says Maurice with a smile. The “stone carrier wagon” is mostly calcaire, especially in the middle slope. This has a roundness, an approachability. It really is clean, clean, Gewürztraminer. It’s erotic, gorgeous, certainly not slutty or pornographic. The colder limestone preserves the freshness, with a need for magnesium, to cool the factor further and to develop the terpenes. Gelid and stone cold cool wine. Drink 2018-2035. Tasted June 2015 @albertmannwines@Smallwinemakers
Bott Geyl Riesling Grand Cru Mandelberg 2010, Alsace, France (Agent)
The Mandelberg receives the early morning sun and so this Grand Cru is an early ripener and the first of the Bott-Geyls to be picked. The added warmth of 2010 introduced noble rot into a vineyard that often avoids it so the residual sugar here is elevated to an off-dry (even for Alsace) number of 30 g/L. The rush to pick in this case preserved the natural acidity, allowing the flint to speak. Additional notes of cream cheese and formidable dry extract have helped to balance the sweetness. Truly exceptional Riesling from Christophe Bott-Geyl. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted June 2014 @bott_geyl@DanielBeiles
Pierre Frick Sylvaner Bergweingarten 2010, Alsace, France (Winery)
The vines of southeast exposure are in the 35 year-old range for this Vin moelleux, “young vines” says Jean-Pierre Frick. “I am a defender of Sylvaner.” This ’10 is freshly opened, as opposed to the ’09 poured after sitting open a week. That ’09’s healthy amount of noble rot is not repeated in this ’10, what Frick refers to as “a funny wine.” A two year fermentation and a potential for 17 per cent alcohol (it’s actually in the 14-15 range), a touch of spritz and no sulphur means it goes it alone, natural, naked, innocent. It’s a passionate, iconoclastic Sylvaner, distilled and concentrated from and in lemon/lime. It may carry 53 g/L of sugar but it also totes huge acidity. Enamel stripping acidity. Full of energy, that is its calling, its niche, its category. The honey is pure and despite the level of alcohol it’s as though it has never actually fermented. Natural winemaking at the apex, not out of intent but from a base and simply purposed necessity. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted June 2014 @LeCavisteTO
Fleischanaka at Domaine PIerre Frick
Sablo-Argileux/Sandy-Clay (Schlossberg)
Domaine Albert Mann Riesling Schlossberg Grand Cru 2008, Alsace, France (SAQ 11967751 $48.25, WineAlign)
What a fantastic expression of the Schlossberg, like a cold granite countertop. A Riesling that tells you what is essentiality in granite from what you thought might be the sensation of petrol. Full output of crushed stone, flint and magnesium, but never petrol. Now just beginning to enter its gold stage, just beginning to warm up, in energy, in the sound of the alarm clock. “You can almost see the rock breaking and the smoke rising out,” remarks Eleven Madison Park’s Jonathan Ross. A definitive sketch with a 12 g/L sugar quotient lost in the structure of its terroir. A Schlossberg a day keeps the doctor away. Drink 2015-2025. Tasted June 2014
Pierre Frick Auxerrois Carrière 2006 (Embouteille en 2011), Alsace, France (Winery)
“He has fermented five years,” says Jean-Pierre Frick, stone faced, matter of factly. “That’s how long he took.” Here, one of the most impossible, idiosyncratic and unusual wines made anywhere in the world. On on hand it’s a strange but beautiful experiment. On another there can be no logical explanation as to why one would bother. The third makes perfect sense; allowing a wine to ferment at its own speed, advocate for itself and become what it inherently wanted to be. Auxerrois with a little bit of sweetness (16 g/L RS) and a kindred spirit to the Jura (and with a potential of 15 per cent alcohol). This is drawn from the lieu-dit terroir Krottenfues, of marl-sandstone soils in the hills above the Grand Cru Vorbourg. Tasting this wine is like slumbering through a murky and demurred dream. Drink 2015-2021. Tasted September 2015
Pierre Frick Auxerrois Carrière 2006 (Embouteille en 2011)
Argilo-calcaire/Clay-Limestone (Eichberg, Engelberg, Kanzlernerg, Pflaenzerreben de Rorschwihr, Steinert)
Paul & Phillipe Zinck Pinot Blanc Terroir 2011, Alsace, France (BCLDB 414557 $15.79, WineAlign)
From 35 year-old vines on Eguisheim’s argilo-calcaire slopes with straight out acidity, trailed by earth-driven fruit. Less floral than some and pushed by the mineral. A difficult vintage that saw a full heat spike to cause a mid-palate grape unction. Pinot Blanc with a late vintage complex because of that sun on the mid slope. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted June 2014 @domainezinck@LiffordON
Paul & Phillipe Zinck Pinot Gris Terroir 2012, Alsace, France (Agent, $22.99, WineAlign)
From chalk and clay soils surrounding the Eichberg Grand Cru, this is a decidedly terroir-driven style and far from overripe. In fact, Philippe Zinck is adamant about picking time, especially with Pinot Gris. “The most tricky grape to harvest in Alsace,” he tells me. So hard to get serious structure and many growers are duped by high brix. Philippe tells of the 24-hour varietal picking window, the “D-Day” grape. Zinck’s ’12 is pure, balanced and bound by its earthy character. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted June 2014 @domainezinck@LiffordON
“I like acidity, whoo-ahh,” says Pierre Frick, dry as Monsieur Ivan. The sugar on top of acidity here, it’s exciting. This one is a gift from nature, for culture. So interesting, a dream, a story. This has a citrus sweetness, telling a story never before experienced. There’s a depth of reduced apricot syrup, pure, natural, holy. “Tell no one. They’ll explain everything.” Drink 2015-2040. Tasted June 2014
From Argilo-Calcaire vineyards flanking the Rot Murlé, at a time when a minor amount of sulphuring was employed (1999 was their first sulphur-free vintage). Was Demeter certified, in 1992! This is all about intensity and acidity. An incredibly natural dessert wine, upwards of 150 g/L RS but balanced by nearly 10 g/L TA. The power is relentless, the finish on the road to never-ending. Drink 2015-2022. Tasted September 2015
Domaine Ostertag Tokay Pinot Gris Grand Cru Muenchberg 1996, Alsace, France (Agent, $65, WineAlign)
From clay and limestone, fully aged in barrel, taking, sending and stratifying in and away from its own and everyone else’s comfort zone. Only the best barrels would do and yet the quality of the wood thought aside, this is Ostertag’s unique and fully autocratic take on Tokay-PG. Stands out with a structure wholly singular for the overall prefecture, with a twenty year note of white truffle, handled and enhanced by the wood maturation. Yellow fruits persist as if they were picked just yesterday but the glass is commandeered by the complex funk. It’s nearly outrageous, bracing and yet the flavour urged on by the aromatics return to their youth. To citron, ginger and tropical unction. This is oscillating and magnificent. Drink 2015-2026. Tasted June 2014 @TheLivingVine
Audrey et Christian Binner Grand Cru Kaefferkopf 2010, Alsace France (Winery)
A blend of Gewürztraminer (60 per cent), Riesling (30) and Muscat (10) that spent two years in foudres. Christian has no time for technicalities, specs and conventions. “I just make wine.” At 13.5 per cent alcohol and 20 g/L RS the expectation would be vitality and striking lines but it’s really quite oxidative, natural and nearly orange. “But it’s OK. It’s the life,” he adds. An acquired, unique and at times extraordinary taste, complex, demanding, like Frick but further down a certain line. “For me, to be a great Alsace wine, it must be easy to drink. You have to pout it in your body.” Drink 2015-2019. Tasted September 2015
You see, no wine is poured, tasted and deliberated over without the introduction of the soil (or lack thereof) from which it came. To confine any study to just the Grand Cru would do the entire region an injustice. Though the original 1975 appellative system set out to define the plots of highest quality and esteem, many wines not classified GC are fashioned from terroir comingling with, surrounding, located next or adjacent to a vineyard called Grand Cru. Serious consideration is being given by CIVA and the winemakers to establish a Premier Cru and Villages system. While this will certainly increase levels of definition and understanding for Alsace, it may also disregard some quality wines, not to mention further alienate some producers whose artisanal and progressive wines go against the norm. A further consequence may result in elevating some average wines currently labeled Grand Cru into undeserved stratospheres.
The Grand Cru story is heavy but not everything. Rarely has there been witnessed (outside of Burgundy) the kind of symbiotic relationship between vineyard and village. Perfect examples are those like Schlossberg and Furstentum with Kintzheim, Sommerberg and Niedermorschwihr, Hengst and Wintzenheim, Brand and Turckheim or Steingrübler and Wettolsheim. Domaine Weinbach’s cellars sit across and just down the road from both Kitzheim and Kayserberg. Albert Boxler’s cellar is right in the fairy tale town of Niedermorschwihr, just like Albert Mann’s location in Wettlosheim.
It is time, finally and thankfully, for a return to the reason for such a rambling on. With respect to the “cerebral and the spiritual component for producing exceptional wine” being “necessary and fundamental,” examples tasted in June of 2014 indicate that the notion of terroir grows from nature and is nurtured by the vigneron. These 25 wines surmise and summarize, either by connecting the dotted lines of constellatory figuration or by Sudoku interconnectivity, the imaginable chronicle that is Alsace.
Godello 