Rotling from a mix of red and white grapes

This is a bottle of Rotling wine from Juliusspital of Wurzburg in Franconia. Now with the exception of Champagne, pink wine cannot be made from mixing red and white wines. Normally pink wine is made from red grapes (which normally have white juice) in which skin contact is limited. The lightly coloured juice is then run off and fermented away from the skins. Rotling, a specialty of southern Germany on the other hand is made with a mix of red and white grapes fermented together to make a pink wine. This wine was tasted at this year's Wine Fair. Deep rose pink in colour, the nose was sweet and fruity but with distinctive note of swede (the vegetable). On the palate it was sweet and slightly fruity, with good acidity following through to the finish.

Erbaluce di Caluso

This is a bottle of Erbaluce di Caluso, a DOCG Piedmont white wine made from the local Erbaluce grape. An ancient variety first mentioned in writing in 1606, it is thought to originate from the alpine foothills of northern Piedmont. The grape is named after the coppery pink tint of the fruit nearing harvest, which was likened to the light at dawn (erba/alba=dawn, luce=light). Naturally high in acidity, erbaluce can be made into dry and sweet wines, with the top designations being  Erbaluce di Caluso and Caluso Passito respectively. I tasted this wine at this year's wine fair.

PS. one of the synonyms of the grape is Uva Rustia, which is seen as La Rustia on the label.

A Sparkling Cabernet from Russia

Now Russia is not the place to think of when talking about sparkling red wines. One might think of Australia with its sparkling Shirazes and the like, or even Lambrusco, with sparklers of all types of dryness and sweetness, but not Russia. This however is a sparkling Cabernet Sauvignon from Russia. Abrau-Durso was founded by Imperial decree in 1870 and Prince Golitsyn brought in soem French experts in 1896 to advise. Abrau-Durso produces only sparkling wine up till now and 15% are made by the traditional method, as the wine above is made. The rest is made using the Charmat method. Apparently plans are afoot to produce still wines too. As for this wine, it was a deep ruby with good streams of medium bubbles. The nose was full of leafy and currant notes whilst the palate was sweet and fruity with an acid prickle. An acid tannic backbpones provided strusture and support

A Bali sparkler

We tasted this wine this past weekend, not really knowing what to expect. The first obstacle was opening it: instead of cork and wire cage, there was a plastic cap with a strip that one pulls off. After fiddling around for a while, someone pushed the red button at the top and it open! Apparently the cap can be resealable, but that's another tidbit. The grapes are also different. Hatten makes a number of wines from the table grape Alphonse Lavalee and this grape also features in this wine. There is also something called Chasselas Loulou, which I cannot find in VIVC, except that there is a pink skinned grape called Chasselas Rose Loulou; I wonder if that is the same grape.

The wine itself is a golden yellow, with few streams of medium sized bubbles. The nose was rather reticent, with slight fruit flavours and the palate was very dry with mild fruit flavours, with an initial acid prickle.

PWC-10: 10th anniversary celebrations for PWC

This is the line-up for the PWC-10 dinner last Friday, when we celebrated the 10th anniversary of my wine dinner group, Peter's Wine Circle. The original concept was 10 successive vintages of Chateau Pontet-Canet, which would have been 1996 to 2005, if I had been able to obtain a couple of bottles of 1997. I had located some bottles of 1997 with a wine merchant in England, but despite a couple of phone calls and a number of emails, I was not given a quote for courier charges and the order proceeded no further. As the anniversary approached, I decided to drop the "10 consecutive vintages" and just go for 10 years. Bottles of 1995 were sourced and this became the line-up. On the day, a friend bought his last bottle of 1994, which was given to him by Alfred Tesseron (the owner); it was his first vintage. So PWC-10 ended up celebrating 11 vintages of Pontet-Canet after all.

A thoroughly mixed up wine

This is Vino della Pace - or Wine of Peace, which is a project of Luigi Soini of the Cantina Prouttori Cormons. A vineyard was started in 1983 along the River Isonzo, in which was planted some 600+ varieties of vines donated from all over the world; the Vineyard of the World. The first harvest was in 1985, producing 3120 bottles (0.75L) of this Wine of Peace. This was repeated every year since then, with the growing season dictating the production which varies between some 6500 to a bumper 16000 bottles. The web site contains the list of different varieties of grapes growing in the vineyard, which runs to nearly 3 pages of 3 columns per page. Three labels were commissioned each year from artists - two of the three were on show at the wine fair this year. The promotion says that the above vintage is a blend of 838 varietals. My wife and I went and had a taste of course, but I don't suppose JC will let us count them in our Wine Century proformas!

Erste Lage for Austrian Wines

Austria is in the process of developing its own Erste Lage classification. Like the German system, it is at present only a system of the  Association of Austrian Traditional Wine Estates (Traditionsweinguter Osterreich) and it is very new. The first classification was in 2010, when 52 vineyards were designated Erste Lage. The classification was revised this year, with the number of sites increasing to 62. Like the German Grosses Gewachs designation, only wines made from two grape varieties can qualify - Riesling and Gruner Veltliner. Like GG, it is for dry wines. The logo is the figure 1 with O umlaut WT and I saw the above bottle at this year's Wine Fair. Scheiben is an Erste Lage vineyard in the commune of Fels am Wagram.