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Tag: France

Wine of the Week

Matassa’s Cuvée Alexandria

There are some posts from Southern Spain these days, and the bulk is yet to come. So a French wine is this week’s pick.

Tom Lubbe, originally from New Zealand, makes wine in the French part of Catalonia, in the hills of the Coteaux du Fenouillèdes, to be precise. The altitude is 450 meters, quite high for this region, and the soils are granitic. Biodynamics are practised, and the winemaking is as natural as possible.

Nowadays his grapes are picked early, and musts from aromatic grapes like muscat are often given a long contact with skins and stems – here 30 days.

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Matassa Cuvée Alexandria 2015 (Dom. Matassa)

Orange-brown, slightly cloudy. Smells of orange peel, apricot and aromatic white flowers. Medium full and concentrated, yet light (in the meaning uplifting), light tannins, quite refreshing, and with a salty, mineral aftertaste. Delicious.

Price: medium

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Wine of the Week

A gluggable Gamay, tralala

This is an all time favourite, a nice ‘n easy summer drink. I admit I don’t fully understand the name, but still I feel that it says it all – an invitation to drink, to sing and whistle.

François and Pascaline Plouzeau run their Domaine de la Garrelière, near the Richelieu village just outside Tours in the Loire valley. Here they follow strict biodynamic principles. The wines carry labels made by local artists that reflect the wines’ names.

The Gamay Sans Tralala is made from 100 gamay, and is fermented naturally. It’s just lovely, joyous, gluggable… Need I say more?

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Gamay Sans Tralala 2015 (Domaine de la Garrelière)

Delicious, light wine with aroma of berries and flowers, and a slight touch of spices. Luscious and fruity in the mouth, low in tannin, and with just enough acidity.

Price: Low

Food: Salads, light meat and some fish dishes too, but this joyous song doesn’t really need any accompaniment

 

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Wine of the Week

Painting Beaujolais

Laurent Gauthier is another interesting grower in Beaujolais. Based in Villié-Morgon he consider himself lucky to live in, and live with, his vineyards, to ensure the sustainability of the project.

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He likens himself to a painter whose palette has many colours. There is only one basic ingredient, the gamay noir variety, but it is expressed differently according to the terroirs.

The family vines planted on a light slope and oriented east – south east.

This particular wine underwent a (for the area) traditional vinification, with 16 days of maceration with 80% whole bunches, and 9 months in big wooden vats.

Morgon Côte du Py 2014 (Laurent Gauthier)

Cherry red, on the dark side for a modern Beaujolais. Still smooth and elegant, it’s however also a bit tougher than the rest, not in acidity, but maybe in fullness and concentration due to the treatment (more batonnage) in the vats. The aftertaste is dominated by sweet fruits (I was also thinking about toffee, but I am not sure if I dare to write it – it disappeared with airing anyway).

Price: Low

Food: Try with light meat (chicken, rabbit), game, and salad dishes

 

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Articles and Wine bars and restaurants

More surprises at Egget, Stavanger

Egget (The Egg) didn’t come first, only around a year ago. But it managed to bring new concepts to the already varied gastronomic scene in Stavanger, a Norwegian town with more than its fair share of cafés and restaurants. This is mainly because the country’s most important culinary educational institutions have been located here. Add to this the nearness to the oil industry and university students from across the country, and I think you are beginning to get the big picture.

What is special then? The obvious features are the facts that the responsibles at Egget don’t have written menus, nor wine lists – and they don’t take bookings. Other than this they seem to have a rather holistic approach, and I doubt they have fixed prices for every dish or every wine.

But maybe the most important: I can’t think of any other restaurant in the area with extremely high ambitions in wine and food, without being formal and pricy. One of Egget’s nearest neighbours just up the street, the first one outside Oslo to receive a Michelin star, can exemplify this. (No offence, that one is excellent too, but more “formal-normal”.)

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Left to right: Diego Gimeno, Roy Klausen, Benoît Berthail (not present that day: head-chef  Anthony Orjollet, creator of most of the dishes)

This time I visited at late lunch-time with a friend. And when we sat down at a table of our choice the relaxing reggae music was turned down to a perfect level. We shared tapa-sized dishes throughout the meal. Our waiter, Ben, made it clear that it was squid day, as the food is always based on today’s catch, and the squid was especially good that day. So along came squid in its own ink, in a salad – and a dish that looked like a chocolate cake, but it was in fact a risotto that included squid with ink as well. There was a ceviche of cod, and a hot dish made with skate (you know that fish that looks like a kite in the water), fermented carrots, grilled milk-marinated lamb… The ingredients and techniques are taken from anywhere in the world, but quality and creativity are common denominators.

The wines are what I like to call natural wines; you know, artisan, low-intervention, organic wines, even without added sulphur, and they are without exception served by the glass. For me Egget is a place I go to get surprised. Sometimes I want to discuss a few options with the waiter, but most often he will suggest a wine, and I will say “ok”. And what to serve with the wines? Well, the kitchen is absolutely free to chose. The food is always superb, often with a creative twist, and with the wines they serve here it has never struck me that the food and the wine didn’t match.

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When you enter the place, you notice oak barrels from Rioja producer Muga in their yard. But you better look upon them as tables, as the wines served are neither oaky nor old-fashioned (and with all respect, Muga is not in the avant-garde of Spanish wine any more, if they ever were).

The first wine this time was the white Amphibolite Nature 2015 from producer Joseph Landron in Loire’s Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine. Landron disposes of 45 hectars with varying soil. Amphibolite is the name of the stones that can be found in this particular vineyard, containing magnesium and iron silicate. When the mélon de Bourgogne vines are rooted deep in this soil it can transmit very mineral character to the wine. The wine was slender, citrusy, mineral and structured.

Next was a light red grenache-based wine, Cuvée Romanissa 2014 from Domaine Matassa, on the French side of Catalunya. The grapes are grown in schistous soils rich in iron, and it’s very luscious and fresh, with aromas of red berries and herbs.

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We were also offered the Flotsam & Jetsam Cinsault 2015, from Hemelrand (Alheit Vineyards) in South Africa’s Darling region. Also light coloured, this one had more roundness, and a sensation of sweetness from the cinsault grapes. Strawberry is maybe the dominant aroma, but it showed some spiciness too.

Éric Texier’s Chat Fou (Crazy Cat) is a long time favourite, now in the 2014 vintage. This time we ended with this lovely unfiltered Côtes du Rhône, with its blend of 50% grenache, the rest a mix of four other Rhône grapes, including the white marsanne and rousanne. It was the darkest wine of the lunch, but still deliciouis, luscious summer drinking – yet concentrated and with a hint of spices. Éric isn’t one who uses many tricks to make his wines darker, fatter, more tannic… On the contrary his minimal intervention philosophy seems to maintain a perfect balance in his wines.

Egget_logoYou never know what is coming out…

This was a few days ago, when everyone was preparing for Norway’s national day. I bet many people were crowding up on that day too. Lucky the ones who managed to get one of the 5 or 6 tables. New surprises. Hooray!

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Wine of the Week

A red Ganevat: brilliant as usual

Anne and Jean-François Ganevat continues to deliver fresh, fruity, and almost completely natural wines from their Jura property. This time I have tasted the new edition of their Cuvée Madelon Nature, the 2014 vintage. Gamay-dominated, it also contains 10% of poulsard and 10% trousseau. Only natural yeasts are used, and the wine is not fined, nor filtered, and has not been added SO2.

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Cuvée Madelon Nature 2014 (A. & J.-F. Ganevat)

Light coloured red with blueish rim. Smells of red fruits, some blueberry. Very juicy, grapey in the mouth, with low tannin, moderately high acidity, maybe a slight touch of brett (but so what?); simply delicious!

Price: Medium

Food: Light meat, pizza, pasta, white fish

 

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Wine of the Week

Clos Espinous of Corbières

Rémi Jaillet, from a family of wine growers in Loire, is now one of the rising stars in Languedoc-Roussillon. The largest wine area here (almost half of the AOC production) is Corbières in the Aude département. Corbières is a varied area in terms of soil and climate, but it’s predominantly red wine land, and carignan is the most common grape variety.

Here Rémi has 7 hectars of vineyards that he tends organically. The Clos Espinous comes mostly from more than 80 year old carignan vines. This makes up for around 60% of the cuvée, while granache and syrah stand for the rest. The must underwent spontaneous fermentation, and the wine was matured for 9 months in used oak before release.

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Clos Espinous 2014 (Rémi Jaillet)

Dark red with blueish hue. Quite concentrated, slightly earthy aroma with hints of mature dark berries (morellos, blackberry), and some spiciness. In the mouth it’s full, but refreshing too. Maybe a bit on the rustic side, and reductive at opening, so airing is recommended.

Price: Low

 

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Wine of the Week

A pure Jura yellow wine

 

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With the typical comté

This wine I tasted today in the Remedy wine bar in London. It comes from a single vineyard belonging to Château Chalon in the French Jura region, a so-called “vin jaune” (yellow wine), and a very good representative for the species too. They are aged under a layer of yeast, like fino sherry, and like this one they typically come in 62 cl bottles.

The producer puts “Vin de Garde” in the middle of the front label. And many tastings have shown that even if they are delicious now they are able to develop over several decenniums as well.

Domaine Macle 2007 (Château Chalon)

A yellow to orange coloured Vin Jaune. Pure scented with elements of almonds, citrus, apricots and some salty mineral notes. Grapey, silky-smooth on the palate, nutty and long.

Price: Medium/High

Food: Comté (cow’s milk cheese from the region), a variety of white and light meat, a whole range of tapas too

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Wine of the Week

Bourgueil wine for a drunken night?

Anyway that’s the meaning of the expression Nuit d’Ivresse. It’s in the middle of the Loire valley that this wine starts its life, on limestone and clay-silex ground. Catherine and Pierre Breton has 6 hectars of vineyards in the Borgueil-Chinon-Vouvray area, and they made their first Ivresse wine without addition of SO2 in 1992.

The wine is certified organic, made from cabernet franc grapes, and has undergone a three week long fermentation that startet with indigenious yeasts. Both malolactic and a 12 month ageing was done in two year old barrels, and the wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered – and again without addition of sulphur.

I first tasted this wine in a wine club in 2014. Now I came across it again, and while slightly more evolved it still had a lot of lovely fruit.

Nuits d’Ivresse 2011 (C. & P. Breton)

Dark red. Aromas of blackcurrant, raspberry, a bit balsamic, Earl Grey tea. Less structured than last time, but still with a certain grip, just lovely, and with just the right acidity and concentration for “inspired” drinking.

Price: Medium

Food: Red and light meat, game, hard cheeses

 

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Wine of the Week

VDN for Christmas cookies and more

Based in the village of Rivesaltes just north of Perpignan, Domaine Cazes makes a variety of wines from around 200 hectares of vines in the amphitheatre of the Roussillon area. For several years now, with Emmanuel Cazes as winemaker, they have had a biodynamic approach.

The Ambré is a naturally sweet wine (VDN) from grenache blanc that is not made every year. The grapes were grown on calcareous clay and big stones, and the wine has spent 15 years in old oak casks for a slight, controlled oxydation. It clocks in at 16% alcohol, and the residual sugar is 120 g/L, so it’s not overtly sweet.

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Rivesaltes Ambré 1997 (Domaine Cazes)

Deep amber in colour. Aromas of nuts, dried fruit, lemon peel, with some caramel. On the palate it’s voluminous with a nutty flavour, some caramel, and just enough acidity to keep it from cloying.

Price: Medium

Food: Roasted almonds, nut-based cookies and desserts, try to some soft cheeses

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Wine of the Week

Another rich wine from Zind Humbrecht

Zind Humbrecht has for long been one of the leading lights for biodynamic wines, rich, fullbodied, yet balanced – and wonderful for the season that’s now approaching.

The company was set up by the Zind and Humbrecht families in 1959. Today it is represented by Olivier Humbrecht who sees himself in a father-to-son tradition that goes back to 1620. In total the domaine has 40 hectars under vine and has been biodynamic certified since 1991. Since 1992 it has been located just outside Turckheim, on the Colmar side.

They prefer long growing periods to achieve ripe and concentrated grapes, often with botrytis that gives sweet, exotic aromas. Fermentations are slow, and the minimum of time spent on lees is 6 months. The result are very impressive, intense, rich, alcoholic wines, often with residual sugar, that nonetheless keep the characteristics of their different vineyards. They will keep, and they will “dry up” after some years in the cellar. Last year I tasted the 1989 version of this week’s wine, a wine in excellent condition.

clos-jebsal Clos Jebsal

The Jebsal is one of the steepest vineyards in Alsace with a surface of 1.3 ha. south-exposed in the commune of Turckheim. It lies on grey marl limestone, rich in clay and gypsum, with numerous terraces. At a time abandoned and divided into many smaller plots, Leonard Humbrech managed to restore it in 1982. It was then planted with pinot gris, and the first vintage to be bottled was 1987.

Despite the ability to produce sweet, botrytised wines (in fact all vintages have been sweet, most often a vendange tardive) this vineyard also is the first in the domain to see flowering and véraison (the changing of colour, beginning of ripening), and thus produce wines often characterised by cool soils. The soil has a good water retention capacity and prevents stress, so it can yield wines with a natural balanced acidity.

Pinot Gris Clos Jebsal Vendange Tardive 2005 (Zind Humbrecht) 37,5 cl.

Yellow-gold colour. Aromas of orange, herbs, dried fruits, honey, and a touch of smoke. Very intense and (I would say) moderately sweet, but the acidity comes out after a while. A concentrated, flinty and very long aftertaste.

Price: High

 

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