Uccelleria's Brunello 2006

This Brunello which was offered to me (by friends at a neighbouring table) at the end of a wine dinner in which we explored some lesser known grapes of Europe, comes from fruit grown on vineyards between 150-350m elevation in Castelnuovo dell'Abate south east of Montalcino. After fermentation, it is aged for 24 to 36 months in a mix of Slavonian and French oak barrels before bottling and undergoes another 6 months minimum bottle aging before release. The wine was a deep ruby, with a sweet acid fruity nose. The sweet acid fruit carried on to into the palate accompanied by a smattering of tannins, yielding to an acid slightly tannic backbone giving ample support.

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt

The origins of the von Kesselstatt estate go back to the 14th century with the vineyard purshase by the Kesselstatt family recorded in 1349. Some years later the von Kesselstatts had assumed responsibility of looking after the wines of the elector of Trier, and in 1777 the Emperor Josef II elevated the barons of Kesselstatt to Reichgrafs. The estate acquired  four former monasteries of St Maximin and their vineyards between 1854 and 1889, and these make up the present estate.

Gunther Reh bought the estate in 1978, and it has been run by his daughter Annegret since 1983. With 12 ha each in Mosel, Saar and Ruwer, and with holdings in many presitigeous sites, including Josephshofer, Bernkasteler Doctor and Scharzhofberg etc, von Kesselstatt was one of the first estates to offer Grosses Gewaches wines.

Langhe DOC

The Langhe DOC is a relatively new legal entity and it covers a large area of wine growing and wine making territory, which is home tyo many famous Piedmont names, such as Barolo, Barbaresco, Asti etc. Of course this limits what the vignerons can grow and also excludes all the famous international varieties. Sometimes a grower would like to tinker with some aspect of a traditional recipe, or they would like to try their hand at growing and making wine out of a famous international variety; of course they could resort to Vino di Tavola (like the pioneering Super-Tuscan growers did) but the emergence of the Langhe DOC allows them to use this legal category to sell their wines.

Champagne Gardet

Champagne Gardet was founded by Charles Gardet in the late 19th century in Epernay. In 1930 his son moved into a Belle Epoque residence in the premier cru village of Chigny-les-Roses to further develop the establishment. Now owned by the Prieure family, they have continued to balance traditional ways with modern wine making techniques to give a distinctive Gardet style, for example the base wines for their vintage Prestige Charles Millisime (the current brand name for the above wine) do not undergo malolactic fermentation to give better keeping qualities to the finished champagne. Their range include a premier Cru champagne as well as a demi-sec one.

Isole e Olena

Although this is the only product I have tried from the estate, Isole e Olena is a famous estate from the Chianti Classico area producing great Tuscany red wines and it is made up of two farms (Isole and Olena) were acquired by the de Marchi family in 1950 (hence the name). Although the current owner (fourth generation vigneron) Paolo was raised in Piedmont, he has always trasured his Tuscan roots. Initially disappointed with the requirements to add white grapes into the Chianti blend, he was intrigued by the possibility of adding grapes from outside Tuscany (especially international ones like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah) to improve the blend. However he decided that clonal selection of the Sangiovese was the better answer and that Cabernet could overpower Sangiovese in the blend and would consider adding Syrah if the Sangiovese harvest requires some help. Apart from Chianti, Paolo produces IGT wines from his Cabernet and Syrah grapes, just as he also produces a pure Sangiovese (before the laws were changed to allow Chianti to be pure Sangio). Of course he also produces the delicious Vin Santo above.

Azienda Uccelleria

I was offered a glass of this wine by friends on a neighbouring table at the end of a wine dinner earlier this year. I must say I am not familiar with the producers of Brunello but Hugh Johnson's book informs me that this is a good producer. The name Uccelleria means bird house, which I suppose, explains the label, and the estate was acquired by Andrea Cortonesi in 1986. His family has been involved with agriculture in the village of Castelnuovo dell'Abate and the estate comprises more than just vineyards and includes olive trees which produce oil for sale too.Cortonesi built a new winery and cellar, and apart from 2 grades of Brunello and a Rosso, he also produces an IGT Rapace which adds Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon into the blend.

The Josephshofer label

This is a revival of an old label from the 1870s which the Estate has used for its Josephshofer wine since the 2003 vintage. This old label is divided into 4 quadrants, each with a popular maxim and a picture. Clockwise, from top left, there are "Red, was wahr ist" (tell the truth) showing a hunter listening attentively to a story; "Trink, was klar ist) (drink what's pure) with a drinker raising a glass; "Lieb, was war ist" (Love what's precious/rare) with a suitor on his knees before a maiden and "Iss, was gar ist" (eat what has been fixed) with a family seated at meal. The original was sent in by a customer and the estate has decided to use this label for their Josephshofer monopole to highlight the exclusive nature of this wine.

Muscat

Muscat is a diverse family of grapes used for a number of purposes and known since ancient times. It certainly has been cultivated around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea for some 3000 years and was used to make raisins. Pliny the Elder called it the grape of the bees and it is probable that it was the first grape employed to make wine. With such a long history, different sub-varieties began to emerge; it is said that there are some 200 different sub-varieties of Muscat (and you thought 60 different Lambrusco grape variants was a lot!)

Although there are so many different variants, most wines made from Muscat are sweet (from just a little to extremely sticky ones) and only in Alsace has there been any concerted effort to make dry whites from it (although others are trying it now). Muscat is famous for one of the legendary sweet wines that European royalty used to love a couple of centuries back - the South African superstar of yore, Constantia (see previous blog). Nowadays, the Australians have the lead on the really sticky stuff made from Muscat grapes, their Liqueur Muscats. Now as regards to those 200 subvarieties, I wonder how many I had tasted and listed for my Wine Century portfolio!

Buttafuoco

As I mentioned in the blog about Sangue di Giuda, there is another grape using the same grapes but made into a still dry wine, which I tried immediately afterwards. This is the wine - Buttafuoco (literally sparks) and these two names are actually subzones of Oltrepo Pavese as well as being DOC names. Although they were made from the same grapes, the two styles presented two quite different faces of that blend. This wine had seen wood, which was not evident in the sweet semi-sparkler. The colour was also much deeper in this wine in which tannins are also very much in the picture.The berry fruit was similar in both wines.

 A deep ruby, with a berry woody nose, the Buttafuoco showed berry fruit and tannins on the palate, with acidity appearing just before swallowing, giving an acid tannic backbone, in which the tannins had disappeared by the finish in which only acid remains for support.

Of roses, lychees and Gewurztraminer

A colleague went to visit Yunnan and brought these back from Dali - they are pastries with a flaky crust and a rose petal filling, apparently a local specialty. I tasted a quarter of one at tea time. The filling was definitely rose perfumed but was also really quite sweet, but on biting into it, it was much more lychee than rose. Could the lychee flavour be a very sweet version of rose petal, I wonder? I am no food technologist so I cannot give you the answer, but that was what my palate and mouth was telling me.

It is well known that the characteristics of the Gewurztraminer grape can be described using descriptors such as rose petal, lychees, hand cream, etc. I had previously smelt a nurse colleague's rose petal hand cream in the operating theatre and found it a good match of the nose of a nice Gewurztraminer varietal (especially a dry/off dry one from Alsace). I had not really smelt lychee in the glass (except for a German eiswein, but that was something altogether different). Now that I had tried this pastry I can understand the link between lychees and roses and will go looking (or even smelling) for lychees in the sweeter examples of Gewurztraminer.

Unlikely inspiration to chase a grape

I blogged about this book recently. What I did not expect was how it set another target in my grape chasing endeavoursl. The book lists 100 wines recommended by wine critics in the Greater China region, and amongst the familiar and not so familiar names are a couple of wines made from obscure grapes. The first, Pheasant's Tears Tavkveri 2009 led me to check and see if I had tried wines made from Tavkveri before. Indeed I had done so visiting the Georgia Pavilion in the Wine Fair in 2011. The second wine was a Burgundy made by Simmonet-Fevre. It was really a case of a surprise from a familiar maker of Chablis (for that is what I had tasted most from their range). They make a red burgundy from the Cesar grape. I wonder if I can find a bottle here in Hong Kong. Time to check the importers.

Blauer Wildbacher

As noted in a previous blog, Schilcher wines are made from the Blauer Wildbacher grape. An ancient grape which can be traced back to the Celts, this dark skinned grape was first recorded in the manuscripts of the 16th century. The grape is realted to Blaufrankisch and is mostly used to make Schilcher rose. Wines made from the grape tend to have berry fruity flavours and grassy herbal notes, accompanied by a lively acidity. Rarely it can also be made into eiswein. Some is also grown in the Veneto region of Italy, where mostly it ends up in blends, although a varietal oak aged example is also made.

Discovering Champagne Gardet

One of my sisters teamed up with some friends and do a champagne bulk order every Christmas, with the result that everybody stocks up on champagne for the coming year at prices which are much more competitive than retail. I participated most years, but let it go the last few years, as I found my consumption was slightly less than my order and I had accumulated quite a collection already. Previously they go with the familiar names, but recently they have found better deals with the less familiar makers. That was how I got to discover Champagne Gardet.

Gardet was at the time the house champagne for the famous Dorchester Hotel in London. Unable to take a case of the NV wine, I was nevertheless able to persuade my sister to part with a couple of bottles of the vintage offering which sports the above label. I had of course tasted both wines at Xmas and other family gatherings, with the bottle above being drunk a couple of months back.

A Greater China Wine Book for 2013

Having bought a copy of Hugh Johnson in Chinese, I took more or an interest in Chinese wine books. This is what I saw the other day whilst waiting for my little girl who was taking dancing lessons - a 2013 Wine Year Book collated by the Greater China Association of Wine Critics (own translation). Flipping through it, I was struck by the similarity of the contents with quite a bit of this blog. That got me thinking; maybe I should give a serious thought to trying my hand at writing something like that. Well. we'll wait and see what happens.

As for the wines in this book, there are many that I have tasted, even though it might not be the same vintage. There was however one wine that really got my interest as a grape collector. No, it was not the Georgian wine made from Tavkveri, as I had already tasted that grape. It was actually a Burgundy made from the rare Cesar grape - I wonder if I would ever get to taste that grape!

Josephshofer Kabinett and Spatlese 2011

I got so carried away with describing the Josephshofer vineyard that I forgot to include notes on how the Kabinett and Spateles of the 2011 vintage tasted to me. Being from the same site and vintage, the basics are going to be the same, such as the same deep straw colour (both are made from clean fruit) and the same stone fruit nose, although it seemed that the Kabinett was more obviously peachy on the nose. One expects the Spatlese to be sweeter on the palate and the Kabinett to be more obvious on the acid and both ran true to form.

What was a bit surprising was a touch of almond bitterness on the backbone of the Kabinett, a character more usually associated with botrytis. Similarly there was a luscious quality on the Spatlese's palate I'd normally associated with noble rot. Nowadays, with globally warming pushing up ripeness, it isn't simply a case of reaching the minimum Oeschle for the Pradikat, the overall balance and impression counts (as Egon Muller once told me) when making a Pradikatswein after harvesting. On the other hand though, surely there is no botrytis infection at these "low" ripeness levels!

Sangue di Giuda

I met this wine in this year's Food Expo. Having seen that it lists a grape that I had not tasted, I had a try. The grape concerned was Uva Rara, which will be dealt with in another tidbit, though it had already been mentioned in a previous blog that it was one of 4 grapes called Bonarda. Another grape in the blend that makes up this wine is also known in some places as Bonarda - Croatina, which has, I think, been covered in the aforementioned blog. The third grape in the blend for this particular wine is the more familiar Barbera.

Sangue di Giuda (literally blood of Judas) is a sweet mild semi-sparkling (frizzante) red. There is another wine (which I tried next) using much the same cepage but which is dry. (That's for another tidbit.) Ruby with a sweet berry nose, the wine continues with the sweet beery elements into the palate which was livened up by the prickle of bubbles. A sweet pruney acid backbone ensures it does not cloy.

Johnson 2013 and its Chinese translation

When I first took a look at the page containing the copyright info, I had a shock because it said that this was first published in 2012 (correct for Johnson 2013) as the 2012 edition. If it were true, then my efforrt in sourcing Johnson 2013 would have been misplaced. Having checked through the foreword (titled Agenda 2013 in the English), it occurred to me that they just made a mistake in the attribution, for indeed this is the Chinese edition of the 2013 edition. The other thing that occurred to me was that this translation did not come from Hong Kong but Taiwan. For those unfamiliar with the pitfalls in Chinese translations and transliterations, the names will be different depending on whether one takes the Cantonese (Hong Kong) or Mandarin/Putonghua(Taiwan, PRC respectively) pronunciation; and you guessed it, there can be three or more versions of the Chinese name. Of course if the book is from (or even for) mainland China, then there is the problem of traditional vs simplified Chinese characters.

It seems that the translaors and editors have taken an easy way out and left the original European name in. The grape names are the Taiwanese ones. My little disappointment is that there was no use of the Chinese synonym for Rkitaseli (Baiyu, 白玉), but then that was not in the original, although it was in Jancis Robinson's Pocket guide of 1996.

Robert Parker

This entry on Robert Parker will conclude this mini series on wine personalities. There can be hardly anyone with even the slightest interest in wine who has not heard of Robert Parker or his scores. His scores not only affect prices, but also the assessment of vintages etc. There is even a trend to make wines in a style that he is expected to rate highly and thereby increase the profile as well as the prices of the wines.

Parker started off as an in-house lawyer in a bank, with his wine interest starting when he was duing a vacation in France. In 1975, he began thinkin about writing about wines because of a general lack of independant information about wine quality, with many of those writing wine reviews being tied to the industry. He started the Wine Advocate in 1978 and the rest, as they say, is history. He has gone on to write many books (eg above) and contributed many articles to various publications. Parker stood down from editor-in-chief of the Wine Advocate at the end of 2012.

Black Corinth Grapes

To be truthful, Black Corinth grapes (above) are used for at least three purposes, for the table, for wine-making and for currants. This was bought at a branch of the big two supermarkets the other day. The main use of this grape is actually for drying, and its small grains yield the small black dried grapes that we call currants, not because it has anything to do with the fruits of the Ribes genus (ie black and red currants) but because we corrupted the word Corinth. This grape was mentioned in the blog about Mavrodaphne of Patras, because it is the other grape (apart from Mavrodaphne) used in that famous wine.

The oldest of all raisins, Black Corinth grapes were mentioned by Pliny the Elder and came from many producers along the Ionian coasts although they were named in the 14th and 15th century after Corinth, where they were exported. Production shifted to Zakynthos (Zante) in the 17th century and so the name Zante currants was adopted in the USA.

Meeting Favorita

I tasted this wine at the last Food Expo, because I want to try a wine with Favorita in it. There was a bit of confusion about Favorita, not least because some authorities regard it as a synonym for Vermentino. However, it seems that DNA studies have shown that although it is related to Vermentino as well as Pigato, it is a separate species. Favorita is a large berried white grape mainly grown in Piedmont, where it is also used as a table grape. A late ripener with a good deal of acidity, Favorita has distinct pear notes and is more age-worthy than Arneis. Traditionally use to soften Nebbiolo in blends, varietal wines can be minerally when grown on warm sites, but responds to oak with more rounded mouthfeel.

As for this wine, which is Favorita blended with Arneis and Chardonnay, the wine was pale straw in colour with an acid nose accompanied by much fruity notes. The palate was off dry with less fruit but also a touch of lemon, introducing a good acidic backbone giving sterling support.

The Kesselstatt Scharzhofberg

I mentioned in previous blogs that I had tasted wines from four out of the eight growers in Scharzhofberg. The offering from Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt was the second one I had tried. So it was a nice surprise to find the above wine in the Food Expo in which I found my 4th wine. It was not just a Scharzhofberg wine but a special cuvee of their Auslese - Fuder 10 with a long gold capsule and from the small but (for Saar) exceptional 2005 vintage.

The wine was a deep yellow with a sweet luscious nose full of stone fruits like peaches and apricots. This abundance of sweet luscious frutiness carried on in the palate, well supported by an acid backbone that showed some notes of prunes (usually more associated with red rather than white wines). Nice!

So now all four of the Scharzhofberg wines I have encountered are on the blog!