Taurasi

Taurasi is a DOCG for wines made in Avellino (Campania) mainly from the Aglianico grape. Avellino has a white DOCG as well - Fiano d'Avellino made from the eponymous grape, but that belongs to another tidbit. The vineyards are situated on volcanic soils which suits Aglianico and are between 400 to 500m above sea level. Taurasi is aged for a minimum of 3 years (of which 1 year must be in wood) whilst the riserva has a minimum aging requirement of 4 years. As for this wine, it was a purple ruby with a currant fruity woody nose with small amounts of tannins. The palate was smooth with fruit, tannins and acid, with the tannins and acid persisiting to the finish. The wine won the approval of the critics too, with scores of WS90 and RP88.

Aglianico is responsible for another DOCG wine too, Aglianico del Vulture in nearby Basilicata, and this wine is pure Aglianico whereas Taurasi can contain up to 15% Barbera, Piedirosso and Sangiovese. The exploration of Aglianico del Vulture needs another tidbit as well as me getting to taste it.

Alsatian Muscat SGN

Muscat is one of the four noble varieties in Alsace, and it is usually made into dry or off-dry wines (unlike elsewhere, where sweet Muscat wines tend to predominate). However there are two complications, sweeter styles do exist and Muscat is not a single grape. To take the latter first, varietally labeled Muscat can contain any proportion of Muscat Blanc a petit grain or its pink skinned variant as well as Muscat Ottonell. As for sweeter Muscat, they are not often seen. I had seen one Muscat Vendange Tardive from Grand Cru Goldert some years ago in a catalogue, but it had sold out by the time I inquired about it. I fared better with this Muscat Selection de Grains Nobles from Clos St Landelin (Grand Cru Vorbourg) made by Rene Mure.

Aged Bordeaux Blanc

When I wrote about drinking a 21 year old white Rioja, I had not counted on drinking something older very soon, at least not an aged dry white. I was thus pleasantly surprised to find that we were having this 1989 Chateau Bouscaut Blanc for dinner at the KCCWS meeting on Bordeaux 2001. OK, it is a year since the Tondonia and the wine is only from the year before the Rioja, but that still makes it a 23 year old. As is just visible beneath the label it was an old gold colour, in fact suggestive of Sauternes with a bit of age. There was lemony acidity on the nose, but also with notes of bamboo shoot. The palate was slightly sweet with ample acidity, which was lemony at first, turning rather hard and minerally going towards the finish.

The painted bottle

This is a bottle of wine whose "front label" is actually painted onto the bottle. For label hunters like me, a photo of the bottle is the only way to record a likeness of the bottle. (Some port and madeira bottles are also painted; some of these have also got paper labels stuck on the bottles as well. There is however a "back label" with the legally required information and this one has a pull off tab for keeping to remind the consumer of the wine to purchase on the next occasion. Like certain Burgundies, the painted "label" does not have a vintage date (unlike the port bottles where vintage or age is indicated). Burgundies employ a neck label, Nederburg Ingenuity White relies on the back label.

Cape Winemakers Guild and their Auction

This is a bottle of Auction Wine from the Cape Winemakers Guild Auction. It was one of the wines tasted at a KCCWS event (and since I cannot locate the notes yet, I cannot tell you when and what the occasion was). Founded by eight winemakers in 1982, the Cape Winemakers Guild (CWG) has gone on to become a significant force in winemaking in South Africa, through innovation and the exchange of knowledge. There is an auction each year, whereby the members would showcase their rarest and finest. There is a silent auction, through which funds raised are used by the CWG Development Trust to provide schooling and other educational programmes for disadvantaged children in wineland areas. The Development Trust also looks after the wine industry too, by providing for a paid internship programme for talented local winemakers from disadvantaged backgrounds, perhaps to be trained as future members of the CWG.

Macon-Davaye

This is a bottle of white house wine I had at a party a couple of months ago. It is a Macon-Davaye from the Domaine de la Crois Senaillet. The Domaine takes its name from the Cross erected at the village of Benoit Senaillet in 1886 to replace one destroyed during the French Revolution. Founded in 1969, the estate is located mainly in St Veran, with the rest in Macon and less than 1 hectare in Poully-Fuisse. Culture raisonnable is practised in the vineyard with a minimum of pesticides and chemicals used when necessary. This Macon-Davaye 2010 is produced from 7 diffferent parcles in Davaye with the grapes averaging 28 years old. After harvesting at full maturity, the grapes are destemmed, slow pressed and slow fermented, undergoing full malo-lactic fermentation and lees-aging prior to bottling. The wine is unoaked. It was golden yellow with a crisp minerally and mildly fruity nose. The palate was dry lemony, slightly fruity and acid supported by lemony acidity to the finish.

Graciano

Graciano is one of those grapes you don't often see on the labels. It is often used to colour, structure and aging potential to Rioja wines, which normally is based on Tempranillo, although some are experimenting with varietal Graciano Riojas. Graciano wines are deeply coloured, with marked acidity and phenolic content. However it is low-yielding and tends to thrive in limited areas, with Rioja being its main geographic base. This is an Australian varietal Graciano tasted at last year's KCCWS X'mas party. Deep ruby with a mildly fruity acid nose, there was sweet acid and fruit on the palate, supported by sweet acidity to the finish.

Zenit

This is a bottle of wine from Sopron in Hungary which is made from the Zenit grape. Goggle Zenit, and most likely you'll find references to the Catholic news agency of the same name. The grape variety Zenit was produced in 1951 by crossing Ezerjo and Bouvier and this variety thrives particularly on Hungarian volcanic soils. It ripens early (around September) and is often made into pleasant crisp whites, with better examples exhibiting good minerality and good levels of acidity. It can also reach high levels of sweetness and when the conditions are right (as they can occur in Sopron), very good raisined wines can be produced from it.

Gruner Veltliner

Gruner Veltliner is an Austrian white wine grape, which Hugh Johnson thinks is worth a try at any level - from jug wine to fine wine. Known as Weissgipfler before 1855 when the present name was first used, it is a cross of Traminer with an obscure grape St-Georgen-Rebe, of which only one single specimen was somehow discovered in 2000. Gruner Veltliner covers nearly one third of the vineyards in Austria being grown in the north east of the country. Examples from Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal tend to be pure, minerally and capable of long aging. Examples from deeper clay soils of the Weinviertel tend to be more spicy and peppery, though a lot is also made into the wines intended for drinking young in the heurigen of Vienna.

Vereinigte Hospitien

The Vereinigte Hospitien, or United Hospices is an ancient charitable organization, whose history goes back to Roman times. The Emperor Constantine had cellars built in Trier which later became first a palace and then an Abbey. The Abbey was secularized at the end of the 18th Century, but a few years later, Napoleon consolidated all the various hospitals, leper houses, orphnagaes etc in Trier and formed the Vereinigte Hospitien, which still contains a nunnery and is continuing to contribute to medical nursing and social welfare of the area. The products of the vineyard and winery help finance the charity, though unlike its counterpart in Burgundy (Hospice de Beaune), it does not hold an annual auction.

All its wines carry the picture of St James (Sanctus Jacobus) with his staff and the pilgrims shell on the label, recalling the St James Public Hospital of the Middle Ages, originally a pilgrim's hostel for those journeying to the tomb of St James in Santiago de Compostela. The first mention of Sanctus Jacobus wines goes back to 1464.

BTW, the scallop shell was a symbol of pilgrims (especially those journeying to St James' tomb) since the Middle Ages. This association can also be noted in French as scallops are coquilles St Jacques. St Peter has the John Dory (St-Pierre in French) and one story has it that the dark spots on its sides are St Peter's thumb prints.

An old dry Riesling from the Lower Mosel

We were given this bottle of wine, and we think that it has not been properly stored; most likely it has been store at too high a temperature for some time. However, being ever curious, I was interested to see if this would turn out tasting as if it has been aged for a long time. (cf blog on Chinese Cabernet aged at the edge of the Gobi Desert). Well the wine was old gold in colour, something not quite expected of a Mosel Riesling. The nose was crisp minerally and fruity, but there were rich honeyed notes in the off-dry palate with just a slight hint of dried apricots. A core of honeyed acidity carried the wine right through to the finish.

A country wide horizontal tasting

Horizontal tastings can be done to elicit the differences in both terroir and weather that can occur within the area of interest. For a region like Bordeaux, it can show how broadly similar weather can affect the communes in different ways due to the varying cepages and traditions involved in making the wines. For a larger area of interest like a whole country, it can illustrate what the highs and lows that the country has to offer for the year. Often certain areas will enjoy wonderful weather, whereas on others conditions conspire to make the life of the vignerons miserable. Rarely is a year universally good, or bad. As far as France is concerned, the millennial year 2000 was generally good across the board (except perhaps Champagne which is only fairly good). The picture was the lineup of a France 2000 dinner presented by PWC. For a better year than that, one can look at 1990, where it is just about excellent all over France!

Champagne eau de vie

If you speak to anyone about a distilled spirit from Champagne, they would quite often think of the marc. But there are some who also distill an eau-de-vie de vin from the base wines which go to make champagne. I tasted this at Champagne Moutard's booth at this year's Vinexpo, where I was invited to sample their ratafia (see earlier blog). After tasting a number of different champagnes, including their unique six grape sparkler, they showed me this product. It was a more refined product than their marc, leaning heavily towards a cognac style taste profile, with more wood notes but just as fiery.

A pleasant surprise at a horizontal tasting

I have been going to different horizontal tasting and have generally been impressed by only a couple of things: my general inability to identify wines and how Chateau Lynch-Bages always comes in the bottom three (where applicable). So it was quite a pleasant surprise when I actually got the answers right and won a bottle the other day at the KCCWS Bordeaux 2001 dinner (picture above). There 3 St Emilion wines amongst the 8 wines tasted and we were asked to identify these. What they had not told us was that 3 of the other 5 were from St Julien, though this is obvious if one looks down the list. I just took some notes for each wine and thought I can only identify one. Then when they hurried us up for the answers, i looked down the descriptions and chose the three with the most forward and fruity descriptions and submitted them. I was thrilled to be the only one to get them all correct!

The Nederburg Auction

This is a picture of the cover of the Nederburg Wine Auction Catalogue for 2010, the 35th Anniversary auction. Started in 1975 with only five wineries and only 15 top wines, it has now gone on to become a large international event showcasing some of the best wines of South Africa. The Auction is also famous for being where the famed dessert wine Edelkaur is being sold. Apart from being a major commercial event, it contains a Charity Auction which has been an integral part of the Auction from the start. The Charity Auction takes place after the sale of rare wines, when specially donated wines are sold off in aid of a nominated charity. The charities and donated items varies from year to year and for these two years, monies have been split been three community based organizations helping children in poverty.

Duas Quintas from Ramos Pinto

When I blogged about the Cuvee de 2 Soeurs as a champagne with solera aged base wines, I immediately thought of this wine, as this is also made from the fruit of two vineyards. I tasted this in the 2009 Wine Fair and I cannot remember if the representative at the booth answered my question or if he pointed to the two tawnies. You see, Ramos Pintos is a Port firm which has branched out into making table wines. They make a full range of vintage of tawny ports, and their 10yr old and 20yr old tawnies are from different vineyards, the names of which appears of the labels. The 10yr tawny is from Quinta de Ervamoira whilst the 20yr old tawny is from Quinta do Bom Retiro. Perhaps the table wines are also from these vineyards. On the other hand, the 30yr old tawny does not indicate its origin.

Domdechant Werner Domdechaney

The Domdechant Werner estate dated back to 1780, when the father of Dr Franz Werner the Domdechant (dean) of Mainz Cathedral acquired the Hochheim wine esate of Count York. Dr Werner had saved the Cathedral from demolition during the French rRevoluation and helped rebuilt it. The estate passed down the generations and is stilled owned and managed by the family. The estate includes Esrtes Gewachs sites such as Domdechaney, Kirchenstück, Hölle, Stein, Stielweg and Reichestal.

The Domdechaney site refers to the fact that the produce of the vineyard used to be paid to the deans of the Cathedral. Apparently in 1775, the dean attempted to irrigate the vineyard using a firehose and caused an infestation of noble rot and wonderful sweet wines, but unlike in Johannisberg, no one cottoned on to the connection between rot and the outstanding wines.

Chaptal

This is a picture of Jean-Antoine Chaptal, who first developed the idea of adding sugar to the grape juice before fermentation, to boost the alcohol level of the resulting wine. The process is named chaptalization after him. Son of an apothecary, he studied chemistry at the University of Montpellier, briefly teaching chemistry at the university's medical school before going into the manufacture of various acids and chemicals. When he was Interior Minister, he reorganized hospitals and introduced the metric system amongst various notable achievements. His numerous honours and achievements also included the naming of nitrogen as well as being one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

Jurancon Vendange Tardive

I bought this wine in Lourdes in May 2010; it was the first time I had encountered Vendange Tardive for Jurancon. To be truthful, it was the first (and so far only) non-Alsace Vendange Tardive (VT) wine for me. The cepage for Jurancon VT is limited to Gors and Petit Manseng, with harvesting only allowed 5 weeks after the harvest for Jurancon sec. The minimum sugar level for the must is 281g/l, 50% higher than Jurancon sec, and no chaptalization is allowed. Plain Jurancon (sweet if no sec designation) can also contain Courbu, Camarlet and Lauzet, with minimum must sugars of 187g/l and a minimum 35g/l residual sugar in the finished wine. I have enjoyed both plain Jurancon and Jurancon sec, so I am looking forward to tasting this wine soon.

Hospices de Beaune

The Hospices de Beaune was founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, the Chancellor of Burgundy, as a charitable almshouse and hospital and refuge for the needy and the poor. Receiving its first only in 1452, the Hospice has been providing medical services as well as refuge for the sick and the destitute without interruption to this day. Throughout the years, many donations have been made to the establishment, (and notably for a wine blog) including many vineyards. An annual wine auction has been held since 1851, on the third Sunday of November at the end of 3 days of festivities celebrating Burgundian food and wine. The wine, from the 60 hectares of mostly Grand Cru and Premier Cru vineyards under its ownership, are auctioned in barrels with the subsequent maturation and bottling being the responsibility of the buyer. Revitalised when Christie's took over its organization in 2005, it has slowly evolved from a wholesale only auction to attract consumer buyers.

Excuse the label which had somehow become detached from the bottle in the wine cabinet and then got water damage. The Magnum from which this came is still in good condition. I shall look forward to drinking it. Note also that although it has the Beaune AC, there is no indication of any vineyard etc designation. Instead it is named after the donor whose vineyard the wine comes from, hence Cuvee Rousseau-Deslandes.

A Blanc de Noir Eiswein

Eisweins are made from pressing frozen grapes and fermenting the resultant juice. As the pigments are in the skins, very little if any would be able to colour the juice and hence eisweins are usually white regardless of the colour of the grape used to make it. True, most ice wines are made from white grapes but there is usually the odd one that can be found, which is made from dark grapes. This is one such example, from the Rhinehessen. The grape is Blauer Portugieser, which despite its name does not come from Portugal. VIVC lists its country of origin as Austria, and apart from Germany and Austria, it is also grown in Hungary where it is a permitted grape in Egri Bikaver (Bull's Blood). As for this wine, it was a golden brass colour with a sweet luscious fruity nose. Sweet acid and fruity on the palate with a hint of lychees, structure was given by a sour plum acidity turning to a sweet plummy finish. Nice!

NV champagne from solera base wines

Non vintage champagnes normally employ reserve wine from good vintages to maintain a house style. This "novelty" (as they call it on their website) is part of their range of brut nature wines (ie no sugar dosage at disgorgement) and maintains a consistency in style via solera aging of the base wines a la sherry. However this solera system is only 6 years deep so the current release is the result of 6 consecutive vintages of the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines from 2 vineyards. The vineyards are not specified, but they have a trio of single vineyard champagnes - Champ Persin (Chardonnay), Vieux Beugneux and Dame Nesle (both Pinot Noir) - I wonder if this wine comes from these sites?

How does it taste? Golden yellow with good streams of fine bubbles, the nose was crisp and acid. An acid prickle greets the tongue on tasting leading to an acid palate and finish. With all this acidity, I think this champagne should be good for seafood and perhaps triple creme cheese.