Alibernet

This is a bottle of varietal Alibernet from Slovakia that I tasted in last year's Wine Fair. Alibernet is a crossing of Alicante Bouschet with Cabernet Sauvignon bred in the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute for Wine and Vines in Odessa in 1950. It is planted in Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. This is the dry red wine from Alibernet made by Elesko win Slovakia, who also makes a sweet version. Deep ruby, with a berry woody nose having some green leafy notes, the palate was soft leafy with red fruits and a hint of wood. A tannic leafy backbone provided structure.

Exploring older Burgundies

Older wines offer the opportunity to explore the effects of maturation, and one of the wines that mature to a glorious climax is Burgundy. Unlike Bordeaux, whose young wines can be tough and unpleasant to drink,. Burgundy wines are often quite pleasant in youth, but they can mature to an amazing complexity, showing notes of game, truffles, etc. Peter's Wine Circle explored a slew of Burgundies from the 1990s, including a white from 1995. The reds included a Village Gevry-Chambertin, a Beaune Premier Cru, as well as three Grand Crus: Corton, Echezeaux and Chambertin. It proved a most interesting experience. The individual wines will be explored in different tidbits later.

Bergerac

Bergerac is a wine growing area in South West France to the east of Bordeaux. Geographically the area is Bordeaux 's eastern extension, though of course the Bordelais would not want Bergerac to viewed in that way (especially in regards to their wine). The soils are very similar to that found in neighbouring Bordeaux, and the grapes are much the same, except some more varieties are allowed into the appellations such as Fer for reds and Ugni Blanc, Ondenc and Chenin Blanc for whites. A number of sweet and semi-sweet white wines are grown in this area, with the most famous being Monbazillac, with its iconic Chateau Tirecule la Graviere, whose Cuvee Madame has garnered the coveted RP100 on a few occasions.

Touriga Nacional

This is a varietal Touriga Nacional that I tasted some years ago, during a tasting of ports as well as table wines. Touriga Nacional is considered one of if not the finest red wine grape of Portugal and it plays a very important part in making port. It is also increasingly used for dry table wines in Douro as well as in Dao. A vigorous vine which gives low yields with concentration in the harsh conditions of the Douro (even then severe pruning is still needed), the small berries produce intense wines with high extract and tannins, and flavours of black fruit.

Chateau La Conseillante

Chateau La Conseillante can be traced back to Catherine Conseillan, who inherited the land which was to form the basis of the estate in 1734. Buying more land in 1741 and then embarking on grape planting in the mid 18th century, she built up an estate which she testamented to her favourite niece to avoid partitioning. The estate was then acquired by the Nicholas family in 1871, in whose hands the estate still remain. Located on the border between St Emilion and Pomerol with Ch Cheval Blanc on one side and Ch Petit-Village, Vieux Chateau Certan and Ch L'Evangile, Ch La Conseillante is considered amongst the top estates in Pomerol. Hugh Johnson remarked that the wines are enjoyable both young and with age.

Vilana

This is a bottle of varietal Vilana wine from the Greek island of Crete. Vilana is an indigenous wine grape from Crete, considered to be the star of white Crete wine grapes. It can also be found in the Greek appellations of Peza and Sitia on the island of Crete, making light bodied white wines with a lemony acidity. I tasted this wine in last year's wine fair. A deep lemon gold colour, it had a fruity nose with definite grapefruit notes. It was off-dry and lemony on the palate with a lemon acidity giving support and structure to the wine.

Global warming or a change in style

f you have been drinking Chablis for say 20 years or more, you will notice that there has been a perceptible change in the way the wine tasted: Chablis used to be more acidic, less fruity, with more or less minerality, this last depending on producer, but now, everything is fruitier (hinting even towards sweetness even) and less angular, sometimes even with hints of wood. Improved methods, including better temperature control during fermentation keeps the fruity notes better, and better bacterial control keeps the unwanted elements away (including an excess of volatile acidity). Global warming means higher sugars and lower acidity at harvest too. Somehow, I still wonder about the globalization of tastes and whether certain winning styles have been sought for commercial success  with typicite and regional characteristics sacrifised on the altar of profitability. I am a wine drinker who likes his Chablis to taste like Chablis, leaning towards a certain austerity and not wanting the voluptuousness of Puligny-Montrachet. I'll buy that when I want to drink that, but give me Chablis when I buy Chablis!

The Mouton 1994 Label by Karel Appel

I had previously blogged about how I found the individual variation between different bottles of a couple of cases of this wine to be incredibly large; now I shall write about the label, something which I had started many moons ago, with the nude on the 1993 label. This label was designed by Karel Appel, an avant garde Dutch artist and one of the founders of the COBRA movement. His art generated such controversy that he moved to Paris. Working mainly on paintings, drawings, print-making and some sculpture, he also  explored textiles stained glass and even teamed up with Japanese choreographer Min Tanaka in 1987 to produce "Can We Dance a Landscape?" for the Opera Comique in Paris, which got a mixed reception. He famously declared that "If I paint like a barbarian, it's because we live in a barbarous age".

Pinot Gris with a difference

Now Pinot Gris, or Pinot Grigio, has many incarnations: from crisp quaffable numbers to serious stickies; from Italian aperitifs, to nobly rotten German or Alsatian dessert offerings; but surely the wine above, a Ukranian fortified Pinot Gris must rank as one of the more unusual wines made from this grape. Made only since 1991 from Pinot Gris grown in the South Coast mountains, it undergoes two years of oak maturation before release. This 2007 South Coast Pinot Gris was amber in colour, with an orangey sweet fruity nose. The sweet orange notes followed through to the palate where it was well supported by an acid backbone full of orange notes.

Getting to know Chateau La Conseillante

Chateau La Conseillante was one of the favourite wines for me and my wife, until a recent dinner which has disappointed us. In fact we love La Conseillante 1996 so much that we are still pacing ourselves through the three cases we bought some 10 years ago. It was a wine that was recommended to us at a shop, not the 1996 vintage but I think the 1993. We bought a bottle and loved it, but it did show up the meat we had with it as being of an inferior kind (That however belongs to another tidbit). I think we must have tasted a couple more vintages before deciding to buy the cases. Of course having the disappointment over Mouton 1994 added to our appreciation of La Conseillante (see previous blog).

Blandy's Madeira

The only one of the original founders of the Madeira wine trade to still own and manage their own company, Blandy's was founded in 1811 by John Blandy who first came to work in the accounting offices of another wine merchants three years before. The company joined the Madeira Wine Association in 1925 and this merged became the Madeira Wine Company in 1989 when Symingtons joined, though the latter only has a minor shareholding, leaving Blandy maintaining its own independence. Blandy's has also made recent innovations in Madeira, introducing the colheita wines in 2002 and Blandy's Alvada in 2002. The latter combines two noble varieties, Bual and Malmsey, to give a balanced wine more likely to appeal to the younger drinker.

Alicante Bouschet

This is a bottle of varietal Alicante Bouchet, a grape more often associated with Portugal than say Australia where this example comes from. Actually it was a grape bred by a French grape breeder, Henri Bouschet, who crossed Petit Bouschet (a crossing made by his father) with Grenache in 1866. This resulted in a grape with deep colour and high yields, but prone to give flabby wines with little character. (A note about colour is that it is a teinturier grape with coloured flesh and juice). Though planted widely in Southern France at the turn of the 29th century, it is now extinct there. It was a popular grape just after the Prohibition in the USA, but it remains largely forgotten now. Which is why it is often associated with Portugal these days, especially Alentejo. The example above is yet another illustration of bold Australian experimentation. I would like to taste this soon.

Mouton 1989

The label for Mouton 1989 was painted by Georg Baselitz, who commands some of the highest prices at auction for contemporary German art today. He belonged to a Neo-Expressionist group of German artists, the Neue Wilden, who focused on deformation, the power of the subject and the vibrancy of the colours. Baselitz painted his first picture with an upside-down image in 1969 with his Der Wald auf dem Kopf, and he has become famous for these inverted images. His art label for the 1989 vintage of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild contains two upside down sheep in contrasting colours, something that one might have expected from this artist.

Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey

Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey is an estate situated on high ground near the commune of Bomme. It was classified as Premier Cru Classe in the 1855 classification of Sauternes and Barsac. The oldest buildings on the estate can be traced back to a fortified keep in the 13th century but it was the first known owner, Sieur Raymond Peyraguey who settled there in 1618, that gave ithe estate the second half of its present name. Baron de Pichard, who owned many other estates including Lafite and Coutet, bought the property in 1742 and set about establishing a profitable vineyard here. After his execution by guillotine, Monsieur Lafaurie bought the estate from the Republic in 1796 and it was during his time at the estate that the quality as well as the reputation of the wine grew. Bought in 1917 by the Cordier family, the estate has undergone recent renovations to take it right up to date in the 21st century.

Dornfelder

This is a bottle of varietal Dornfelder from the Pflaz, which we tasted at the non-Riesling German Wine Dinner some time ago. Dornfelder was crossed by August Herold in 195 and received varietal protection in 1979. The result of a cross between Helfensteiner and Heroldrebe (both crosses by Herold in earlier times) it gained popularity in Germany because it performs well uinder conditions better suited to white grape growing. Easier to grow than Pinot Noir, more rot resistant than Portugieser, with stronger stalks than Trollinger and earlier ripening then Lemberger, Dornfelder achieves higher must weights and produces dark wines with good acidity and the ability to benefit from oak aging. Deep ruby with a slightly sweet fruity nose, the above wine was off-dry with a touch of fruit on the palate. A sweet acid backbone held everything together.

A semi-sparkling party wine made from Negrette

This is a semi-sweet lightly sparkling red party wine made from Negrette and Syrah, and it comes from Fronton in the South West of France. I found it on the promotion literature for the 2012 Wine and Dine festival and as it contained a grape I have never tasted before, I sought it out there. Negrette is a grape of South West France where it is the principal grape in the Cotes de Frontonnais appellation; it is thought to be descended from Mavro rootstock. This wine was a deep rose colour, with a fruity spicy nose, marred by a slight metallic hint. The palate was sweet and spicy with an acid prickle with support provided by a sweet acid backbone.

A Viognier vin de paille

Now Viognier, the grape that is made into Condrieu in the Rhone Valley, is not a grape that is normally associated with sweet wines. However, it does make very fruity wines that seems sweet (actually a reflection of its fruity nose and palate) whilst sugar measurements are low (meaning that it really is a dry wine with little sugar in it). However, I seem to have met more than my fair share of sweet Viogniers. I had already blogged about a botrytised example from Australia as well as a late harvest example from Gaillard in the Rhone. This is another twist - a vin de paille made from Viognier from the Ardeche. Golden orange with a sweet apricot nose which was a touch spirity, the palate was sweet rich and crammed full of apricot notes, albeit with a touch of alcohol heat on swallowing. This alcohol heat persisted into the acid backbone, which was somewhat disappointing for a wine with only 14% alcohol.

Mount Horrocks Cordon Cut Riesling

According to Matthew Jukes, this Mount Horrocks Cordon Cut Riesling is Australia's most famous Riesling. Certainly the above example won the Trophy Australian Sweet Rieslings in last year's International Wine Challenge as well as the Regional Trophy for Australian Sweet over GBP10 in last year's Decanter World Wine Awards. Made from some of the oldest wines on the Mount Horrocks estate (planted in 1993), the wine gets its intense sweetness from the cordon cut method (see previous blog), but for this vintage the estate website informs us that there was a touch of botrytis on the grapes (a first for cordon cut). I found this wine in a small shop near my hospital. I must say I was surprised to find it there. I shall look forward to tasting it.

Albarino

When I used this picture previously in a blog entry, it was to introduce the method of vinification of carbonic maceration. I now realized that I have not really dealt with the wine itself which is a varietal Albarino, nor of the grape from which it was made. The wine was drunk at a restaurent in Barcelona in May 2006, when I was there attending a Catholic doctors' conference, but my first encounter of a wine made from Albarino was a few years before that, at the last wine dinner that was held at the Furama Hotel in November 2001. It was the welcome drink, and I initially thought it was a Riesling as it reminded me of the German examples.

Albarino is grown in Galcia as well as north west Portugal, its Prime Name Alvharinho indicative of its Portuguese origins. It is one of the recommended grapes for white Vinho Verde, whilst in Galicia there has been a fashion for aromatic varietal Albarino wines from Rias Baixa since 1986. There the wines produced are fruity (suggestive of apricots and peaches), light bodied with high acidity and moderate alcohol strength of 11.5-12.5%.

Chateau Haut-Marbuzet

I had previously blogged about how this estate impressed me by beating Mouton-Rothschild in a blind tasting. Founded in the 18th century by Alexander de Segur (who also owned amongst other estates Ch Calon-Segur), the present estate was established when the Irish MacCarthy family bought a portion of the estate that became Le Crock in 1825. The next significant development came when Henri Duboscq bought the estate in 1952. He set about building it up from the 17 acres he bought to the 143 acres of the present day estate. Initially only a Cru Bourgeois, it got classified as one of the nine Cru Bourgeois Exceptionelle in 2003. Many consider the estate the equal of a cru classe (confirming that the group blind tasting result in 2001). With 40% Merlot and long oak aging, Haut-Marbuzet has a suppleness which is not in keeping with the austere style of other St-Estephes.

Poulsard

This is a varietal made from Poulsard, a red wine grape from the Jura, where it is often labelled Ploussard (an authorized synonym there). I remember tasting it in a blend from the Jura at the Wine Fair a few years ago, but recently I tasted the above varietal. A native of the Jura since the 15th century, viticultural difficulties as well as changing trends have caused the grape to decline in popularity, though it is still the second most widely planted grape there.

Although technically a noir grape, Poulsard has low levels of colour pigment in their thin skins, so the resultant wine is more deep pink than red. The grape is also used for white and rose wine production. The grape has distinctive floral aromas, and so is often used in blends. As for this wine, it was a deep pink with a tuna leathery nose.  The palate was acid with some notes of red fruits, and the acid continued to the finish providing ample structure.

Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2008

The label for Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2008 was the second one painted by a Chinese artist and I blogged about this earlier. As for the wine, I tasted it in the 2012 Wine and Dine Festival. I was pleased that they have these top wines for tasting in the Riedel Pavilion, so it was a good opportunity to add another vintage of Mouton to my limited experience. The wine was a deep ruby and the nose was of vanilla wood and berries. The woody berry notes continued into the palate, which was supported by a nice acid backbone with notes of wood.