Here is a crispy and lively Crémant de Bourgogne, from 20 years old chardonnay grapes organically grown 80 above sea level in the commune of Serrieres.
The grapes were hand-harvested. This wine underwent a malolactic fermentation, and the wine had a period of 15 months of secondary fermentation and ageing in bottle, that gives it some depth.
Crémant de Bourgogne blanc de blancs n/v (Jean-Claude Thévenet)
Straw yellow. Green apple, lime, a touch of bread and yeast. Crispy, almost dry (towards the drier end of brut) and a nice acidity in the aftertaste.
Muscadet by the Loire is maybe underestimated. At least it’s undoubtedly good value. Even this wine, handmade, low-sulphur, natural and with loads of character, is very good value. It’s a wine that evokes memories of summer, flowers and sunshine.
This one is made by Jo Landron, that started to make wines with his father back in 1979 and has since walked the steps via “normal” organic to biodynamic farming.
This wine is from 40 years old melon de bourgogne vines, fermentation in cement with indigenous yeasts, the malolactic was blocked to retain the freshness, and the wine was bottled unfiltered.
La Fief du Breil 2013 (Jo Landron)
Straw-coloured. Bread and yeast aromas from ageing on lees, wet stone. Full, round on the palate, chalky minerality and just enough acidity to match.
And the first 100% organic village for agriculture is Correns, in the inland from the Azur coast between Nice and Marseille.
Much has been said about this property and its affinity to artists throughout the years. Briefly: In 1970 jazz pianist Jacques Loussier used it as a recording studio. (Parts of Pink Floyd’s The Wall are recorded here.) Today it’s owned by actors Jolie & Pitt, and the wine is made by Perrin, the family behind many outstanding wines like Beaucastel.
Covering 500 hectares of land in the Côte de Provence, the wine château is only a small part of this, together with olive groves, woods and wildlife. The vineyards are located around 350 meters above sea level, partly terraced, on clay and limestone soils. The temperature varies a great deal between day and night, given a nice freshness to most of the wines.
This rosé is made mainly from the cinsault grape, with some grenache, syrah and rolle. Rolle? Well, this is quite complicated: Rolle is a synonym for a local grape named rollo. It’s also a synonym for the better known Italian vermentino. It can even be that the two are related…
Most of the grapes are lightly pressed directly. But some of the syrah are made according to the “saignée” method, which means that part of the juice is removed from the must to concentrate phenolics and other components. (Needless to say, it’s not an ideal practice with “naturalists”.) The fermentation was mostly in stainless steel, with a small part (around 5%) in oak, with some batonnage.
Miraval Rosé 2015(Ch. Miraval)
Pale pink. Delicate aromas of citrus, raspberries and white flowers, and a touch of pepper. Quite fresh on the palate, some volume too and a nice concentration that makes it persistent, with a dryness and a touch of a salty minerality in the finish. I find that many of the rosés in the area have too much alcohol for the body and concentration. This one not.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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”.)
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.
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.
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.
You 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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
