This is one of several stars from a recent tasting of wines from Austria’s coolest wine regions, Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal.
Nikolaihof of Wachau is famed for being Austria’s oldest winery, with 2000 years in the business, and built on a St. Nikola’s monastery. The Saahs family was also among the first to convert to biodynamic prinsciples, almost 50 years ago.
The Steiner Hund lies between Wachau and Kremstal, Stein itself lying in the western outskirts of the village Krems. The soils in Kremstal is diverse, and west of Krems, towards Wachau where the valley gets steeper, there is more granite and gneiss. It is here we find the Steiner Hund vineyard, and here riesling has a potencial for great elegance.
The Steiner Hund is a stony vineyard, extremely difficult to work. A local legend says that it once was owned by a wealthy winemaker, who exchanged it for a dog when there was famine in the region. Today producers from Kremstal to the east and Wachau in the west has ownership in the vineyard. The site is south-facing and is comprised of conglomerate rock with a thin topsoil of loess and loam.
In Nikolaihofs vineyards no herbicides, fertilisers, pesticides, nor synthetic sprays are used. The grapes are harvested by hand, fermented without artificial yeast and stored in big, old Austrian oak casks.
Deep yellow with some green. Concentrated aroma. It’s more open than the previous vintage; still young though, but begins to reveal flowers, herbs, honey and fresh berries (gooseberry). There is probably much more to come during the next few years. Quite full in the mouth, rich, mineral (crushed stone). We know from experience that it will keep well.
Price: High (just over the limit to “high” in our classification)
Food: Grilled fish, shellfish, light meat, can do with rich sauces – the food must be good though
Portugal came somehow in the shadow of the many Spanish contributions of the fair. However there were some old favourites. Alvaro Castro continues to do an excellent job near the Serra da Estrela national park. Two of my favourites are his lovely, fresh young Saes Dão 2015 from a traditional Dão blend -dark berries, mountain vegetation, a touch of spices-, and its more ambitious touriga-based brother Quinta de Saes Reserva 2012.
From Douro I had the pleasure to retaste one of Niepoort‘s bestsellers, a typical Douro blend that changes its name according to market. If I remember right it started in Germany as Fabelhaft, and in Norway it’s translated into Fabelaktig, now in the 2015 vintage. This one too is a fruity, almost silky red, with aromas of red berries, some spice and just a slightly sweet oak-tone.
Luís Seabra was represented by Xisto Ilimitado 2014. His project is characterized by a wish to express the terroir, low-intervention vinification, ageing in big, used vats. His favours were hired by Dirk Niepoort a.o., but he finally choose to go solo and made good wines from his first vintage in 2013. This wine was dark, with cool fruitiness, a little spicy, surprisingly light, but with just enough structure to bind it nicely together. As the name suggests the wine has a mineral touch, and the acidity gives it a long and lingering farewell.
Yes, it takes a little bit of concentration
Luís Pato was represented by no less than twelve wines. Pato lives and works in Óis do Bairro in the Bairrada region, but for political reasons he chose to declassify his production some years ago. The wines are obviously at a high level, and among the many wines I appreciated this particular evening were two of his whites, the Maria Gomes Branco 2014, golden, rich, glycerine-full and a hint of citrus and tropical fruits, and the Vinhas Velhas Branco 2014 (50% bical, the rest sercial and sercialinho), more concentrated, slender, with notes of green apples, yellow plums and a stony minerality. Among the reds I will limit myself to mention three wines, the Baga Natural 2012, a relatively new wine in the portfolio, a no-sulphur-added, expressive, fruity and a little earthy wine in the lower end of the price-scale. Another budget wine is the Colheita Seleccionada 2013 (baga with touriga nacional), unoaked, cherry red, with red fruits and herbs. Then there was the Vinhas Velhas 2011, nowadays more on the fruity side and less woody than it used to be, although it has seen big French barrels for a year. I have recently tasted ’90 and ’95 versions of the wine, both still drinking very nicely. This wine is for considerably shorter shelf-life. All right, I’ll give you one more, the always lovely Vinha Pan, now in the 2013 vintage. This chalky clay-vineyard is harvested twice, first for rosé and sparkling wines, then one and a half months later to give this red wine, relatively dark, with red fruit aromas, decadent underwood, mushrooms, and some notes in the balsamic/lickorice direction. Very “baga”, very good.
Conventially made ports was not the focus of my visit, but I couldn’t avoid noticing that Symington was present.
In front of the Symington port table
Aftertaste: Yes, another successful fair has come to an end
The Vaillant family started vinegrowing in La Roche Aubry (Anjou, Loire Valley) in the 17th century. Today they dispose over 55 hectars, and the farming is organic and biodynamic, only chenin blanc for white wines.
The soils vary greatly, schists, quartz, sands… They use composts from animal manure, and only a few treatments like copper, sulphur and some made of infusions of plants.
This wine was, as indicated, made from 100% chenin blanc, spontaneously fermented in big barrels, and it was bottled unfiltered.

La Varenne du Poirier 2014(Dom. Les Grandes Vignes – Vaillant)
Cloudy orange with a greenish hue. Mature apples (cidery), white flowers, yellow tomatoes, nuts and a touch of honey. Good concentration and high acidity wrapped in super fruit, and just a slight touch of tannin. Quaffable indeed.
Price: Medium
Food: Grilled fish, salads, chicken and other light meat, white goat cheeses
This is delicious, unpretentious wine from Bodega La Encina, whom I visited last week. It’s called a varietal, but it’s made from garnacha, monastrell and merlot. La Encina is a small artisan bodega just north of Villena (Alicante, bordering both Albacete and Murcia). The farming is organic and biodynamic, and they work completely without additions.
Cero Tinto Jóven 2016(Bodega La Encina)
Dark red with blue tones. Intense young berry-aromas; blueberry, cherry, flowers, pine, and maybe some ink. Fresh, young taste, with a refreshing acidity, and some stalky bitterness that I find appealing here.
Food: Pizza, pasta, vegetarian, (green) tapas. Without food is also nice
This is Daniel Jiménez-Landi’s Piélago in the 2010 version, that I had tonight in the Los Patios de Beatas restaurant in Málaga. The wine is now offered in the 2014 vintage, so this is a prime example of how it will age medium term.
The wine comes from the DO Méntrida in the Toledo province of Castilla-La Mancha. It is a 100% garnacha from 7 parcels of 40-70 year old vines at 700-850 meters in El Real de San Vicente, to be more precise. The must from the different vineyards are treated separately in small vats of French oak and open 500L vats. The grapes come partly with stalks (between 30-100% depending of vineyard). The extraction is soft, only foot-trodden, for 10-30 days. Alcoholic and malo-lactic fermentation has been in barrel, and it stayed in big barrels (500-1.500L) for around a year.
Piélago 2010(Jiménez-Landi)
Deep cherry red, showing some development near the rim. Mature forest fruits, floral, herbs, some coffee, needs some time in the glass. Potent, astringent in the mouth, with marked tannins that are still to evolve. It has the typical garnacha roundness, a nice acidity, and a long aftertaste. If it’s marked by the wood it’s no sweetness, but dry tannins and some toast. On the way up, to be saved for still another 4-5 years.
Food: Because of the tannin structure it called for the lamb, but it could well tackle other meat, with rich sauces too
I am aware that choosing the 2004 vintage may seem a bit strange, since this producer has launched a couple of more recent vintages, like 2011. On the other hand, the ’04 is still in the market and better than ever.
I visited Arlindo da Costa Pinto e Cruz last in 2010, when this picture was taken. The winery is located in Casais do Douro in the municipality of São João da Pesqueira, on the south side of the Douro, along the river Torto. Schist is the predominant soil in their typical terraces found all over Alto Corgo.
Arlindo Cruz in the main vineyard near São João
Casal dos Jordões dates back to 1870, and has always belonged to the Jordões family. Jordões must have been the first port producer in Douro with organic farming certificates. I even remember a rosé port from my last visit.
Schist in the vineyard
The wine is made from the normal port grapes (touriga nacional, touriga francesa, tinta roriz and tinta barroca) sourced from their main vineyard and a couple more along the Rio Torto. It’s made with the typical port process, with addition of brandy, kept in barrel for less than two years – and when bottled it has never been clarified nor filtered.
Casal dos Jordões Vintage 2004(Casal dos Jordões)
Deep dark, showing some development. Mature dark fruit (blackberry, blackcurrant), nutmeg, some chocolate, and a touch of dried fruit. Rich and smooth on the palate, but not too sweet, very persistant. An excellent port from an “off-year” (Arlindo said everybody could make a good vintage port in 2003, so for him that was no challenge…), and it will still age beautifully.
Price: Medium
Food: Blue cheese, desserts (chocolate-based a.o.)
This week’s suggestion is from the Châteauneuf-du-Pape country in Southern Rhône, between Orange, Avignon and Carpentras (Vaucluse) to be more precise. Here we find Julien Mus, who studied in Beaune, returned to his native village Bédarrides where he joined the cooperative, and then in 2005 founded his own Domaine de la Graveirette, biodynamically certified since 2015.
Harvesting is done by hand, he uses no additives, except for minimal doses of sulfur. In his wines there is always a harmony of body, fruit and acidity, be it bigger Châteauneuf wines or bottlings with more “humble” designations.
This particular wine is made from grenache 35%, merlot 30%, cabernet sauvignon 25% and mourvèdre 10%. The fermentation was spontaneous and carried out in concrete. Aged in steel and concrete.
Ju de Vie 2015(Dom. de la Graveirette)
Dark, quite deep red. Young aroma, red and dark berries, with a slight earthyness. Quite full in the mouth, with a nice touch of acidity and some tannins. Good length. It’s good now, but I imagine it will evolve positively over the next couple of years.
A grape mostly famous for rosés and lightly coloured ‘gluggable’ reds, This is probably the darkest zweigelt I have tasted so far. Having said that, it’s still quite easy to drink, and doesn’t necessarily need food.
It comes from the vast Burgenland in eastern Austria, in Heideboden near the big lake, to be more precise. Here are perfect conditions for that early-ripener; warm, mild and sparse rain.
It’s always spontaneously fermented, aged in big, used oak vats.
Blauer Zweigelt 2015(Weing. Nittnaus)
Blue-blackish colour. Young, fresh aroma with hints of dark berries, spices and aromatic herbs. Medium weight, fine tannins, lovely.
In part two I will present just a few highlights among the red wines on the fair. Here you can read about the white wines and some other stuff.
A few words about Rioja: There were many of the old style riojas represented, from crianzas to gran reservas, with their aristocratic names, and gold threads around the heavy bottles. I really have nothing against this style, and once in a while I still enjoy tasting a ‘historic’ wine several decades old. But about this style in general, let me be honest: I have “been there, done that”, as they say. The wine that was selected the best wine of the fair in the high end category was a wine of this sort. I must appologize then, because I didn’t taste it.
I did taste a few riojas though. And in my opinion, what Rioja should do now is what nearly all other regions do, let the vineyards speak, and allow their names to be printed on the labels. If not, dear DOCa. Rioja, you will see many more than Artadi ride away and disappear into the horizon. I will come back to recent Rioja politics in another post. Meanwhile those who are interested can read about a lecture I gave at another Norwegian fair here.
Olivier Rivière is a Frenchman in Rioja (sounds like an echo from the old days maybe, when producers Riscal and Murrieta sought for help and inspiration). Rivière has been a consultant for Telmo Rodríguez, but at the same time he started to buy vineyards. His Rayo Uva 2015 is made predominantly from tempranillo, with some graciano and garnacha grown near Aldeanueva de Ebro, near the Navarra border. It’s a wine made in a natural way, low sulphur, and it has some carbonic. I was tempted to say it has a wild or raw fruitiness, with emphasize on blackberries, cherries, a slight balsamic touch, and it’s as usual very drinkable with a lovely acidity from high altutude vineyards.
Rodríguez himself was also represented by his cheapest rioja wine. When I last visited him in Ollauri he was making the unoaked, fruity, blackberry-focused LZ (here in 2013 vintage) in a very modest winery, and the grapes were partly from Ollauri, partly higher up in Lantziego in the ascendent to the Sierra Cantabria. As I understand at least in 2015 there are only Lantziego grapes used. As you understand both LZ and the Lanzaga wine names (not represented at the fair) are inspired from Basque for the Lanciego village. Only bush wines, handpicked grapes, vineyard selection, only native yeast, fermentation and maturing in cement tanks… Quite unusual for a “commercial” entry-level wine!
All right, I admit that I also tasted the Barón de Chirel 2011, from the historic Marqués de Riscal bodega, as if only to greet an old friend. This was maybe the first of the “high expression” wines that once promised a new dawn for Rioja.
Óscar Alegre from the Telmo Rodríguez company
From tempranillo country over to where that beautiful, underestimated garnacha grape is queen. Sierra de Gredos is a mountainous country in the border-zone between three regions, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León. This region, where once the first of the “paradores” (the state-owned tourist hotels) was opened, is now working towards a DO Cebreros, named after one of its villages. I had the pleasure to travel around this area together with Alfredo Maestro, leader of the Garnachas de Gredos group during a few winter days two years ago, when the termometer showed -13 Celcius in his own vineyard in the Ávila province.
On this trip I met Dani Landi and his Comando G (for garnacha) collegues. The wines from these people have a truly original interpretation of the grape. They would maybe deny this, as they believe they are just bringing out what the terroir and the grapes comand. Anyway, the wines are always highly expressive, often light in colour, very floral and smells of red berries and with a lovely acidity. Las Uvas de Ira 2014(Daniel Landi-Jiménez) and Rozas 1er Cru Garnacha 2015(Comando G) were both among the absolute highlights of the fair. Producer Bernabeleva’s wines (sourced from San Martin de Valdeiglesias village, Madrid) are generally less “wild”, though there is a bear on some of the labels. The Navaherreros Tinto 2014 shown here was quite light in colour, ruby red, with super fruit dominated by dark berries and some spice, and with a mineral aftertaste. Telmo Rodríguez is present in Gredos too, in fact I don’t think it’s wrong to say that he has paved the way for the other producers we talk about. He makes two versions for his Pegaso label in Cebreros, one for each of the predominant soils in the area, granite and slate (‘pizarra’ in Spanish). The Pegaso Granito 2010 is somewhat darker than Landi’s wines, but still only cherry red, with lots of red fruits, fine tannins, generous alcohol and a mineral aftertaste. It’s worth noting that the garnachas from Gredos is quite different from the ones from Aragón/Navarra and the montainous parts of Catalunya.
Enjoying the moment in the busy, bustling atmosphere
Speaking of Catalunya, Terroir al Límit of Torroja, Priorat made a lasting impression, for the reds just like their white wines. They presented two wines made in exactly the same way in 2013: cariñena, old vines (80-90 years), two years in old oak. The only difference was exposition, whereas the Arbossar is from south-faced vineyards the Dits del Terra is north-faced. While they shared many of the characteristics, red berries, flowers, some balsamic notes and minerality, the latter clearly showed a cooler style. Les Tosses 2013 was the most expensive wine, way above the rest at NOK 1.300 (150€/125£). At this point it was quite reductive and needed air, but one could sense both flowers, dark fruits and some balsamic underneath. In the mouth it was powerful, but not overwhelming. So seen in context with the high quality of the rest of their line, I have no reason not to believe that this will be very good indeed.
Luís Romero with Ivan Zednik of importer Vinarius
From the interior of Galicia we must talk about a couple of wines. Dominio do Bibei is located in Bibei subzone of Ribeira Sacra. This project started some 15 years ago when a group of enthusiasts came together to join forces. They found this wonderful place with chestnuts and oaks, lavenders and chamomile, vegetation that can be brought back to memory once smelling the wine. They did not want a monoculture based on mencía. In respect of their predecessors they opted for a blend of indigenous varieties, so that they could add complexity and elegance to the mencía. And with a range from 200 to 700 meters there are optimal conditions for all of them. Their Lalama 2012 is made from mencía, with a 10% of garnacha (the garnacha tintorera/ alicante bouschet version, I think). I often find that mencía alone too has more freshness here compared to the ones over the Castilian border in Bierzo, maybe it’s because of the Atlantic influence, and many of the vineyards are high uphill too. This wine is a little spicy and shows some trace of wood, but it’s by no means heavy, and has an appealing acidity.
While I have known this wine through some vintages the next one was new to me. Just 30 minutes up the Bibei river we enter into the small community of Santa Cruz within the Valdeorras DO. It has a similar approach, and it’s again Telmo Rodríguez (who deserves a special prize for bringing out wonderful wines from so many regions). As Cabarcas 2013(T. Rodríguez): one of the revelations of the fair. I know Telmo, I know Valdeorras, and I know that he’s working there. I knew about the red and white Gaba do Xil, but this one – no. And what a wine! Dark, blueish, young, fresh, natural, very luscious, great drinking! The vineyard has many of the same grapes that Dominio do Bibei posesses, and here they are present in the blend too: mencía, merenzao, sousón, garnacha, brancallao, and even the white godello.
From Jumilla (Murcia) there was a wine from non-grafted rootstocks (there are some of this kind in Jumilla, we have also known Julia Roch’s version for many years). The grapes for Pie Franco Monastrell 2015(Altamente Vinos) are grown 900 meters above sea level. The wine is a typical young monastrell; dark and blueish, spicy, with hints of both dark berries and is a real mouthful. Aged in concrete it’s free from disturbing oak too. One of the people behind Altamente is Fernando Barrena, from Navarra and one of the key-figures behind the company Azul y Garanza. They were represented at the fair too, with two wines, among them the always fruity and lively Fiesta de Azul y Garanza, now in the 2015 vintage. One red from the islands, namely Tenerife: 7 Fuentes(Soagranorte, aka Suertes del Marqués), has been a favourite during the last few years. The 2014, from 110 years old listán negro vines in the cool Orotava valley, aged in cement, is as good as ever before: dark and red berries, flowers, herbs, it’s a little peppery too, a lusicious, fruity taste that rounds off with a volcanic minerality and a charming acidity.
Here is a terrific cabernet franc from Chinon in the Loire valley, maybe the most famous place for that grape.
The winery is located in Cravant-les-Côteaux, near the village of Chinon. Fabrice Gasnier is 4th generation. Together with his wife Sandrine he disposes of mostly old-vine cabernet franc planted on plots with chalk, gravel, sand and clay soils. For almost ten years it has been certified for both organic and biodynamic growing.
For this wine there was manual harvest from the more than 80 year old vines. The must was spontaneously fermented and aged 6 months in big oak vats.
Vieille Vignes 2014 (Dom. Fabrice Gasnier)
Dark, young colour. Needs air, but opens and reveals dark berries, green peppers and aromatic herbs. Lovely, luscious taste, and can be appreciated alone, but with an astringency that makes it go well with food too. Concentrated with good length.
Many happy faces in Stavanger. No wonder!
