Category: Wine of the Week

Charming Douro

Published 11. October 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Tonight at Tempo wine bar in Sandnes, Norway we were served this wine. This is Niepoort’s interpretation of his fascination for Bourgogne. It’s made from local grape varieties, but it’s light coloured and elegant, and clearly in line with the model.

Whole bunches were lightly foot trodden in granite lagares, before a short extraction. The fermentation was initially carried out in lagares and then the process was completed with 15 months ageing in used barriques. The grapes are tinta roriz and touriga franca

Charme 2022 (Niepoort)

Bright ruby colour. Aroma of red fruits (raspberry, strawberry), flowers, graphite, earth. Smooth in the mouth with fine tannins, aromatic herbs and slight caramel nuances, and a long aftertaste provided by the acidity. It’s an elegant wine, but due to a slight wood presence even better in a couple of years from now.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Fabulous Foillard

Published 4. October 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was from the same Morgon theme tasting as last week’s wine. Jean Foillard is a favourite on these pages. See fx here.

Côte du Py is a prestigious slope in the outskirts of the village of Villié-Morgon, that gives name to the Morgon cru. The soil is decomposed schist, rich in ferrour oxide and called morgons.

Domaine Jean Foillard is a family-run winery founded in the 1980s by Jean Foillard, who took over the estate from his father. Foillard was one of the so-called gang of four, vintners that were inspired by the teachings of natural wine guru Jules Chauvet. The majority of the 14 hectares of vines on the estate are found in the Côte du Py.

The wine is made with natural viticulture and vinification techniques, without the use of herbicides or pesticides, and with minimal sulphur additions. Some keywords: Hand-harvest, whole cluster maceration and fermentation with indigenous yeasts. The wine was raised a good half year in used oak barrels.

Morgon Côte du Py 2022 (Jean Foillard)

Deep cold cherry colour. Intense aroma of cherry, with chalk and earth. Though concentrated it also has a layer of fresh raspberry and flowers on top. Quite powerful in the mouth, with young tannins, fresh fruit, an integrated acidity. Fabulous wine that currently is good with food, but will probably benefit from 5-6 more years.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Morgon Monday

Published 27. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Last Monday my local wine club served a dozen of Morgon wines. Most of them originate from the various climats that make up the appellation. This one is from a small climat called Douby, next to the famous Côte de Py.

Domaine Louis-Claude Desvignes is located in the town Villié-Morgon, that gives name to the Morgon appellation in Beaujolais. Today it’s run by eighth generation, the siblings Claude-Emmanuelle and Louis-Benoît Desvignes. They work their soils in the most natural way possible. No synthetic products are used in the vineyards, and the work in the cellar is carried out with as little intervention as possible.

Their Morgons are made without aging in wood. Instead they spend some time in concrete vats. The macerations depends of the wine. In preparing the tasting I also tried their Morgon Voûte Saint-Vincent. That one is macerated only for ten days and aimed at earlier consumption, while other bottlings see longer macerations.

This wine comes from an 80 year old 1 hectare vineyard in Douby. Here at this place called Château Gaillard the soil is sand and granite. The harvest is manual and the vinification traditional with 10% of the grapes destemmed. Fermentation lasts 10 days, then the wine is aged in cement vats for 7 months.

Morgon Château Gaillard 2021 (Louis Claude Desvignes)

Deep cold cherry colour. Intense aroma of cherry and flowers, with chalk and earth. Quite powerful in the mouth with fresh fruit, an integrated acidity and young fine-grained tannins. I think the 21s in the tasting had benefitted from one year more than the 22s. Still this one is probably at its best after 4-5 more years.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Dry PX

Published 20. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Ximénez-Spínola is a rare bird in the fauna jerezana, in that they are focusing on a single grape, the pedro ximénez, or simply PX.

This week’s wine is a dry take on what’s normally, in this region, elaborated as a sweet wine. It’s made from grapes that are overripe, the producer counts 21 additional days to the conventional harvest. The grapes are harvested by hand, then pressed softly,. The wine is placed with its skins in French oak barrels of between 225 and 300 liters, adding 30 liters to each barrel every day – hence the name, that means slow fermentation – so that the yeasts can finish off all the sugars daily and leave the wine completely dry. The musts are aged on lees with a gentle batonage for six months in the barrel.

Fermentación Lenta 2019 (Ximénez-Spínola)

Light golden with greenish hint, high viscosity. Aroma of dried plums, wax, hint of caramel. Full in the mouth, glyceric, with figs, ripe fruit and a sweet touch like caramel, but rounds off dry. A unique wine with lots of personality.

Price: Medium/high

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Wine of the Week

Lumière, a brilliant white

Published 13. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This is the second article in a series of three, about unfortified wines from the sherry district. This white table wine is just brilliant. It’s a palomino without additions, not even any influence of flor. It’s a sublime expression of grape and place.

Alejandro Muchada and his partner David Léclapart make incredible terroir-driven wines full of saline minerality, and always with a lovely texture. From three plots of a total of 3.6 hectares in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Alejandro works according to biodynamic principles, and in the cellar he shows a hands-off philosophy..

The grapes for this wine is taken from Viña La Platera Vieja in Miraflores Baja, that is a 1.2 hectares plot. The soil is calcareous albariza, with a hard rock albariza type called “tosca cerrada”, under clayey limestone. The orientation is west and the vines are more than 60 years old.

The grapes were hand-harvested, directly pressed for 3-4 hours, spontaneously fermented and matured for 12 months on lees in used barrels. Bottled without filtering.

Lumière 2021 (Muchada-Léclapart)

Yellow colour, slightly cloudy. Aroma of yellow apples, flowers, almonds, black olives and citrus and a touch of salt. Concentrated, medium-bodied, fruity in the mouth with almonds, smooth texture, mineral. Finishes very long. It has this extra nerve that is hard to define, but makes it a great wine. As the name might imply: Brilliant.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Palatable Pasto

Published 6. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Vino de pasto is a table wine, here as opposed to a fortified sherry. The word is probably from the same root as pasture.

But first a brief history. The Pérez family have been winemakers for several generations. In 2002 Luis, a professor of oenology and former winemaker at Domecq, set up his bodega just outside Jerez, together with his children. Most significantly, his son Willy has made his name as a brilliant winemaker that takes the sherry trade in new and interesting directions.

One of their main objective is exploring the historic pagos (vineyards) of Jerez. This wine La Escribana is made of palomino fino grapes grown on Cerro de Obispo, a hill in the pago Macharnudo, on albariza (limestone) soil. This south-east facing plot, approximately 100 metres above sea level, is pruned in the local vara y pulgar pruning method (means stick and thumb, and has some similarity to Guyot). Picking is done twice; early for acidity, then later for more maturity. After a 5-6 hours asoleo (drying) and cold fermentation in steel, it undergoes 12 months of ageing on the lees with a little flor, in 80 years old sherry butts.

This review is the first of a “triangle” of unfortified wines from the sherry area.

La Escribana 2022 (Luis Pérez)

Light yellow. Notes of citrus (lemon peel), green apples, flowers, chalk, and a light yeast character. Full in the mouth, fresh, good acidity, some grapefruity bitterness and a marked saltiness.

Price: Medium

Food: We had it with bacalao, but should go to a variety of tasty fish and light meat dishes, as well as various tapas.

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Wine of the Week

Palo Cortado with personality

Published 30. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was served in a panel tasting of dry sherries for Vinforum magazine.

Bodegas Ximénez-Spínola has since 1729 built its reputation on a single grape variety, namely pedro ximénez, that has always found itself in the shadow of palomino. The current proprietor is José Antonio Zarzana.

Their vineyards between the towns of Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María have chalky chalky albariza soils and are worked organically.

The wine is put together from single vintage casks from 2009, ’13, ’15 and ’19, blended together in 9 new barrels, matured for a year and then bottled. Fermentation was in French oak with wild yeasts, followed by ageing in American oak with some casks developing flor, whilst some not, giving complexity from both biological and oxidative ageing. There has been no fortification. Still it carries the DO Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, thanks to the new regulations from 2022. Alcoholic fermentation brought it up to15%, then an oxidative ageing and evaporation, resulted in a final 17%.

Palo Cortado Jerez Seco Serie 2 (Ximénez-Spínola)

Beautiful amber colour. Smells of apricot, candied fruits, and lightly fried onions. It’s full and glyceric, in a way fruity, with a saline touch, grapey, long with a nutty finish, and with perfectly integrated alcohol. A complex and generous wine, with lots of personality. Truly memorable.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Gorgeous Gorges

Published 23. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

The tasting of mature Muscadets in our local wine club slowed once again that the western Loire can produce perfectly balanced wines at very economic prices. This wine was among my favourites in the tasting.

The domain was founded by Michel Brégeon in the 1970’s and run today by Fred Lailler. Today Lailler disposes of 8.5 hectares of vineyards. Some are on gabbro soils, an old, blueish-green, igneous rock that imparts complexity, length, and an intense minerality to the wines. The Gorges cru is particularly known for this soil. All of the domaine’s vineyards are planted here.

The wine, from 70 years old vines, is aged on the lees in underground, glass-lined cuves for more than 2 years.

Gorges 2018 (Dom. Brégeon)

Light golden colour. Aroma of apples, saltwater and a touch of lime. Textured, with a stony minerality, a fresh acidity and good length. Well-balanced.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Proidl for patience

Published 16. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This Austrian wine was served at the Tempo wine bar in Sandnes, Norway last week.

Proidl proudly proclaim that the most important treatments in the processing of their wines are patience, tasting and observing. And this, they do in the Kremstal, Niederösterreich. Their ancestors emigrated from Germany, near Bremen, in 1650, and they have been making wine in Senftenberg since 1738.

Some keywords are spontaneous fermentation, moving the wines by force of gravity, stirring of the lees and long intervals of maturation sur lie. They have dispensed with any unnecessary additives, any frequent agitation, all pumps and, as they say on their website, “any hysterical filtration procedures”.

The grapes were harvested by hand at the beginning of September, gentle whole-cluster pressing, fermentation in stainless steel and subsequent maturing for three months on the lees.

Senftenberg Grüner Veltliner Freiheit 2022 (Proidl)

Light straw colour. Aroma of peach, lime, herbs and anise. Medium-bodied with good acidity and some white pepper. Good balance and quite uncomplicated drinking at a high level of quality.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Remarkable Ribeiro

Published 9. August 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I visited Luis Anxo Rodríguez Vázquez back 15 years ago or so, and tasted the whole range. I remember well some impressive aged wines. From time to time one stumbles over his wines. This one I found in a shop in Murcia.

Luis concentrates on indigenous grape varieties like treixadura, brancellao and caiño. Today he works 6 hectares in Arnoia, in the DO Ribeiro, comprised of nearly 180 micro-parcels, located on southwestfacing, granitic hillsides. He utilizes native yeasts, low SO2, and practices élevage in steel tank, foudre and mostly used, larger French oak barrels.

The grapes varieties are treixadura, albariño, lado and torrontés. The soils are decomposit granite (called sábrego) with silicium, and the vines up to 25 years old. The grapes were hand-harvested, destemmed and fermented with native yeasts in steel vats, and raised for 10-12 months on lees before bottling with a light clarification (bentonite) and filtration.

Viña de Martín Os Pasás 2021 (Luis Anxo Rodríguez Vázquez)

Light straw-coloured. Fresh aroma of citrus, herbs, quince and balsamic. Medium-bodied with fresh acidity and good power, and a salty mineral finish. The wine just is there, always, without hitting the headlines. But it’s just remarkable.

Price: Medium

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