Tag: natural wine

Black Friday

Published 25. November 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

The grape saperavi is so dark in color it’s called black in Georgian, according to producer Pheasant’s Tears. During the last few years I have tasted quite a few saperavi wines, and the colour varies from very deep, dark red to opaque black. This one is probably the Georgian saperavi most widely found outside its homeland.

Georgia has a 8.000 year long unbroken history of fermenting and ageing the wines in qvevri, big clay vessels lined with beeswax and buried under the ground, where the temperature is stable. All Pheasant’s Tears’ wines are made according to this tradition, and with a low-interventional approach.

As pointed out in many blogposts I appreciate this way of making wine, without any oak to disturb the natural flavours of the grape. One could also say that the way the beeswax is treated, or whether it is applied at all, is also a topic (and a discussion too long for this post), but generally speaking clay is more respectful to the grape than wood.

(photo: courtesy of Pheasant’s Tears)

Pheasant’s Tears is found in the Kakheti region. Here in the eastern part of the country, besides the snow-covered Caucasus, the family of winemaker Gela Patalishvili has been making wine for more than 8 generations. In summer there is more than 14 hours of sunlight a day, and the evenings are cooled down by the breezes from the mountains. The soil has limestone, chalk and dark clay over sandy loam mixed with gravel, that gives good drainage.

Though the family has been farmers for a long time it was only in 2007, when American John Wurdeman joined forces, that the modern company came to being, and 2009 was the first vintage to be bottled.

The must underwent a spontaneous fermentation, 10 days maceration with skins, and the finished wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered. Just a slight amount of SO2 (10 mg) was added before bottling.

Saperavi 2013 (Pheasant’s Tears)

Black as ink, as a november night, dense. Ink, peppery, raisiny aroma. In spite of the black colour saperavi wines are often juicy, grapey, with not at all the extremely powerful body and tannin structure as indicated by the colour, nor a very long aftertaste. This one is just like that, surprisingly drinkable. Highly personal, deliciously different!

Price: Medium

Food: Lamb, pig, fowl and game. Try with mature, hard cheeses

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Wine of the Week

Ch. Ste. Anne, a natural Bandol classic

Published 15. November 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This week’s pick comes from a winery that never converted to organic growing. It wasn’t necessary because it has always been, as they count on a history of five generations and 200 unbroken years of making natural wines. They were also key figures in establishing the AOC for Bandol during the German occupation. François Dutheil (father to current owner) was one of the people behind AVN (l’Association des Vins Naturels), where Marcel Lapierre of Beajolais participated and soon became a leading figure. The only ingredient except for the grapes is SO2, only in tiny amounts and only in the vineyard against fungus.

Raphaël Etienne

The vineyards of Bandol lies for a great part on south-faced terraces in the in-land from the seaside town that gives the wine its name. As for the rest of the region rosé is dominating in quantity, around 80% even here. And much wine is classified as Côte de Provence. Myself I am drawn towards the red wines of the region, often a bit mystic, not lightweight, neither heavy and «clumsy». They can have a fresh fruit, but they are never sharp. They have long oak-ageing, often more than the obligatory 18 months. But the best will never smell of wood, as they are subject to a treatment in big, used foudres that make them «breathe». At Ste. Anne, red is the most important wine.

The mourvèdre grape is king. Just like its equivalent monastrell on the Spanish Levante coast Bandol is one of the few places where you can be sure that the grape will mature. But still the general alcohol levels in Ste. Anne’s range of wines are low. This is due to the special microclimate below the Gros Cerveau peaks, that gives very cool summer nights. The cold air is accumulated because of special metheorologic phenomena between the mountains in the area. The tannins are soft and rounded. Mourvèdre is harvested later here than other places, around mid-October. It must be fully ripe, otherwise the wine will be hard and bitter. A way to understand when the time is right, according to Raphaël, is that the skin is no longer elastic and that the pips are brownish.

The Bandol 2010 is made from 60% mourvèdre, and equal parts of grenache and cinsault. This is their main wine, and 30.000 bottles are made. Their bandol stays 20-22 months in foudres, and the various vintages are released when they are considered «ready». As a result the 2003 was released after both ’04 and ’05.

Bandol 2010 (Château Ste. Anne)

Deep purple in colour. Very complex aroma of red fruits (raspberries), flowers, balsamic notes (red lickorice), combined with some mineral notes. There is a slight touch of volatile acidity too, that is by no means disturbing, but in my opinion it adds to the freshness. Medium to full body. When I last tasted this wine, at the winery before the release, the tannins were more evident, now everything is in perfect harmony. Mature, but will keep.

Price: Medium

Food: Beef, game, duck and other full-flavoured meat. Cheese, both manchego type and some blue cheeses. Fiona Beckett writes about steak pie that red bandol can be a perfect choice. The possibilities are endless.

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Wine of the Week

Matassa’s Cuvée Alexandria

Published 8. July 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

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.

Price: medium

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Articles and Wine bars and restaurants

New wine bar with top artisan beer in downtown Oslo

Published 23. June 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

For a year the name of this cosy new bar was identical with the title of this post. The new name is En Trapp Opp, that translates to something like One Step Up (trapp means stairs). It’s headed by Jonas Jonsson, and has quite close ties to Norwegian importer Falchenberg & Nærlie, where Jonas is himself a partner. This means that the bar offers a wine selection from this particular importer, but by no means exclusively from them. Today they have some 50-60 different wines on offer, and they use Coravin (you know the needle that takes the wine out through the cork and replaces the empty space with gas, to keep the quality intact). They have also other activities, like visits from wine producers and importers, and you shall not be too surprised if there is some ecclectic downstripped live music in the room either.

A hidden pearl in the centre of Oslo

Their aim is to present wines as natural as possible, in other words from organically grown grapes, made with natural fermentation, without excess oak treatment, or without too much treatment of any sort. However, there is little fundamentalism here. If the producers want to protect their wines with a little sulphur they can still have a place in this bar.

The food is made by Thomas Moen, who has a long experience from the gastronomic scene in town, and who also work for the import company towards horeca. I visited twice during last weekend. The first time I had a cockerel confit with a lot of delicious vegetables that was meant to be part of their new takeaway offer.

Jonas

Jonas in front, Thomas in the shadows

Here are some of the wines I tasted: It was only natural to begin with Falchenberg & Nærlie Riesling 2015 (Blasius), the importer’s own brand. This Rheinhessen riesling has become a relative bestseller, and deservedly so. The new vintage was even more generous than the previous, with a more focused fruit, and a smooth yet stimulating, and fruity taste. Trebbiano 2014 (Casale), from the Chianti area of Toscana, is a “prolonged skin contact” wine, light brown-orange in colour, and quite interesting for this relatively neutral grape.

We discussed the Coravin concept. The reason for this was that Jonas had been in doubt whether the bottle variation of some wines was due to just that – bottle variation – or if the device could have its limitations. The Red Car Pinot Noir 2012 from California’s Sonoma Coast was for some reason lacking in fruit richness. But the second bottle was better, and when I returned the day after it was in a very good shape, with all its cool, fresh pinot character intact. We also tasted two bottles of Langhe Nebbiolo 2014 (Elio Sandri), where the first bottle was little more than tannin structure. The second was delicious, with a much richer fruit, some of the usual underwood aromas, and where the structure only added to the complexity and typicity of the style.

On the second day (or more accurately: late night) I got the chance to taste the 2014 vintage of Karl May‘s Spätburgunder, a very luscious and refreshing German wine with a slightly “pétillant” feeling on the tongue.

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Completely wrong, according to some people’s etiquette, I had a champagne after this, the pure and lovely Pierre Gerbais Cuvée de Resérve, made from 50% pinot nois, and the rest pinot blanc and chardonnay. This one is quite dry at 6 grams of sugar, and has rested three years on its lees. Very good ageing character, with freshly baked bread, and in the mouth it’s quite rounded, though the continental terroir shows through in the steely acidity that is inside. Interestingly enough I rounded off the whole séance with a cider from the western Norwegian fiords, Aalholm Cider Medium, a round and mild drink that was delicious with the shrimp cocktail, a leftover from a Swedish party earlier that night.

En Trapp Opp will hopefully be known to a lot more people in the future. In the long run it will maybe benefit from the waiting time, as it’s now probably more fit to meet a wider market.

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Articles and Wine bars and restaurants

More surprises at Egget, Stavanger

Published 19. May 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

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.

Egget_fasade

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!

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Wine of the Week

A red Ganevat: brilliant as usual

Published 13. May 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

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!

Price: Medium

Food: Light meat, pizza, pasta, white fish

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Wine of the Week

Malvasija, spelled the Slovenian way

Published 19. February 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Here is a really lovely orange wine, and it’s not produced in one of the countries that we would call “classic”. But not far away either, because both sides of the Italian-Slovenian border share many winemaking principles, such as the “classic” ones of organic cultivation, prolonged skin contact for white wines, and maturing in clay vessels.

This wine has been a favourite for several years, and when I met Vasja Čotar at RAWfair a couple of years ago I took the opportunity to taste through most of the range, wines made from vitovska, friulano, teran, and some merlot, cabernet and such – and a very interesting passito from refosco too. The Čotar family has been in the forefront of organic winemaking in Slovenia since they started in 1974, in the small town of Gorjansko in the hills of the Karst region, close to the border against Friuli. All of them express the limestone ground with its red, iron-rich topsoil, where the cool winds from the coast some 5 kilometers away have a temperating effect on the climate. There are also quite harsh winter winds struggling to have an impact on the wines.

Vasja Čotar at RAWfair, London

The 2006 from malvasija istriana underwent an 8 days fermentation with skins in open vats, matured in big wooden vessels (2000 liters). Needless to say, no added yeast, enzyme, sulphites…

The whites bear Vasja’s fingerprints

Malvazija 2006 (Čotar)

Deep yellow, towards orange. Aroma of mature apple, citrus, dried apricots, and a hint of sweet spices. Full on the palate, grapey and quite smooth, but with a touch of tannin, and with a saline farewell.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Els Bassots, a Catalunya chenin with character

Published 12. February 2016 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

There is a huge clay vessel at the entrance of the Escoda-Sanahuja winery in Conca de Barberà, that gives us a hint of what to expect. I have reported on Joan Ramón Escoda and his wines several times, so I will make this short. Let me just say that I simply love this wine. Made from all chenin blanc, fermented spontaneously, matured in 720 liters amphorae, un-fined and un-sulphured. Light and full of taste at the same time, delicious on its own or with almost any food. It’s one of those wines that I really feel have a story to tell, but where the plot is somehow hidden in some mysterious cloud too, one of the wines that make me want to quote long passages from some favourite novel, and where title of the so far un-written tale The bearable lightness of being is especially apt.

I would have called it an orange wine, as it smells like “long skin contact”, but the colour is quite light; yellow, just on the verge of going over to orange. Smells of red berries, flowers, yellow tomatoes… Concentrated yet light, grapey, long and dry, with a hint of salty minerality.

Price: Medium

Food: Delicious on its own, for meditation… But try it to almost any kind of food, from the shells of the sea to the partridge of the forest, or the thrush that bathes in the puddle (that I believe is the translation of bassot)….

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Wine bars and restaurants

Plateau: On a high level in Brighton

Published 21. December 2015 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I heard about this Brighton winebar from Fiona Beckett, blogger with many years in the business, and whom I met at the RAW fair a couple of years ago. You can see her blog here. Strange though, as I have been there a few times because one of the world’s best sax shops is just around the corner, in West Sussex. Sax, yes. Now after two visits to Plateau this year I must share my experience.

Plateau is a word play on French plateaux (platters/dishes), says bar responsible Johan Claesson, who is on duty the during my second visit. But at least for me it also signifies the high level of cooking, the selection of natural wines and the presentation of it all. Located just opposite the city hall it is easy to find in the heart of the town, near the beaches and the pier too.

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Shelter for the evening rain

Plateau is for people with a pleasure in eating and drinking. The staff take pride in good quality ingredients, served in a friendly and fun environment. Their ‘bites’ are based on ingredients that are fresh, local and organically grown. Today’s main menu is written on a chalkboard on the wall, and the dishes are built around the idea of sharing (they can be made into main courses also).

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Christian & Johan

Among my choices were mackerel with beetroot puree, green apple and walnut, a lamb carpaccio with broad beans and dukkah (a nutty dip from North Africa), and from the chalkboard: duck with springroll, melon and more, and a delicious goat’s cheese gnocchi.

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The wine list is full of unpretentious, easy-and-fun-to-drink organic, biodynamic and natural wines, always with as little additives and corrections as possible, some of them none, and many by the glass.

The wines are not listed by origin, but by style. The whites for instance, come in categories like «mineral, citrus, zingy», «aromatic, fragrant», «skin contact, oxidative», and «rich, nutty, fullbodied» while among the reds you can chose between «carbonic maceration, fruity, gamay», «pinot noir, jura and friends» or «aussies gem» etcetera.

I have mostly chosen from the by the glass selection, and several wines on the staff’s recommendations too. I tried some new and interesting wines, but I also took the opportunity to taste new vintages of old favourites.

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The first wine, La Pythe 2013 (a grenache rosé from Dom. Les Deux Terres) was new to me, but a very light, fresh and delicious wine made by natural principles in Ardèche, France. I was surprised to find the Gabriela manzanilla (Sánchez Ayala), a natural, grapey fortified wine I didn’t expect to be sold very far from their bodega in the center of Sanlúcar (Cádiz, Spain). One last example of the many unlikely starter wines here: La Perle Noire 2014, a sparkling wine from Dom. de l’Ocre Rouge to the north of Nîmes, France, a pinot noir with 5 months on the lees. At my second visit I went for a champagne, Pierre Gerbais Cuvée Préstige Brut NV, a very tasteful non dos, no added SO2 wine, with notes of mature apple, some marmelade, and a nice acidity to go with it.

Among the whites I went for a very light coloured sylvaner from Alsace, Dom. Rietsch Sylvaner 2014, that was smelling of flowers and some apricot, and was round and grapey in the mouth. Then an orange wine with some brown, oxidazed tones, Dinavolino 2009, from the unlikely combination of malvasia and marsanne grapes, a nutty, mature apple smelling, lightly spicy, richly textured wine from Denavolo Rivergeno in Emilia-Romagna, Italy.

For the reds I tried several Spanish wines. The Gran Cerdo 2012 (a declassified rioja, which is a good thing for several reasons) a pure whole bunch fermented, unfiltered tempranillo, with lots of fresh fruit, blackcurrent, green pepper, good acidity and quite slender in the mouth. This one went well with «goat’s cheese gnocchi» with wild mushrooms and hazelnuts. They also had a wine from the interesting Maybri project, 1.700 meters above sea level in Bullas, Murcia – only in bottle though – that I chose for an ox tongue bite. Interesting to have tasted, the Maybri Wild 2012 was on the oaky side though. Other Spanish wines I tasted were the Tragolargo from Rafa Bernabé (Alicante) and Partida Creus Vinel.lo 2014, a garnatxa/ull de llebre (tempranillo) from Penedès, Catalunya.

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A Murcian highland red

I could have dropped many more names down here, but lastly I wish to leave you a few details about one wine, as I have a special interest in wines like Beaujolais these days. Vielle Vignes 2012, a Beaujolais Village from Jean Claude Lapalu was in a delicate style somewhere between the Sunier brothers and Foillard. Based in his native southern Beaujolais he makes six different Beaujolais gamay wines. Like many others he was influenced by Jules Chauvet, and is now going strictly biodynamic.

Lastly, Johan serverd me an «Eiswein» (from apples) from his native Sweden! A very interesting experience and a very nice conclusion of another memorable visit.

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Beach promenade

At Plateau they also feel that music is neglected. Here it is carefully selected, so keep the beat, don’t miss the bar – and have a bite too.

I round off with a cheap wordplay inspired by the famous writer (there are several to be found around town, my favourite being a bar called The Greene Room):

Brighton rocks, and on a very high Plateau too!

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Articles and Wine bars and restaurants

Solo de Uva revisited

Published 8. October 2015 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

No visit to Madrid without visiting Carlos and his friendly staff at Solo de Uva. This time I came with my friend, wine photographer Kjell Karlsson, after our mostly independent but parallel trips to León, Valladolid and Salamanca.

Another friend was there too, wine producer Fabio Bartolomei of Vinos Ambiz. This was in the middle of the vintage. Fabio had been harvesting two grape varieties in Gredos and Madrid, and we were happy that he took the time to see us. He had to leave “early” too, as he had to start the elaboration of the harvest at 6 in the morning. The wine is not completely natural, you see…

We started with a rosé from Murcia this time, Viña Enebro, a light violet coloured wine with all the flowers of the murcian plains in the glass. But the wine discussion of the night was centered around the next wine, Fabio’s own sauvignon blanc. I have got used to it, and I love the fruitiness and the fullness, and Fabio has made it, so he must stand up for it. But for Kjell it was quite challenging. I don’t say that he didn’t like it. The discussion was mainly about typicity. In my opinion a wine must first be true… Well, here we must demand that it’s made from natural yeasts, because from bought-in or “selected” yeasts we only get the cliché, not the real thing. And so many of the most famous Sancerre brands are already disqualified, many would say Riffault too (not very famous maybe, outside the natural wine world). And next, is sauvignon the Loire or the New Zealand version, or can it come from Spain? (Syrah came from Asia, remember…)

We tasted two red wines as well, «the wine from Mars», aka El Marciano, Alfredo Maestro’s lovely and fruity Gredos garnacha, and the Alpujarras 1368 from Barranco Oscuro from a vineyard of that height (1368 meters above sea level), a fruity and inspiring wine, a decent touch of oak, but with ageing potential.

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