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Tag: natural wine

Wine of the Week

Dumenge Calling

No, it’s not a cheap joke, but the name of the wine. I am told it was made for the Garage Bar of Barcelona, in a tiny quantity of 100 bottles. I bought it from the Bendito bar in Madrid. (Read a short article from Garage here and a review of Bendito here.)

Dumenge Calling is monovarietal xarel.lo produced by Celler Dumenge in a garage in Penedès, Catalunya. The winery calls it an “ancestral”, or a pét nat. All their wines are made with a deep respect for the vineyard, seeking the highest possible expression of the grape and the soil. They opt for natural agriculture, always with minimal intervention, which results in original and true wines.

This wine has been aged in amphora, which allows it to perfectly preserve the freshness of the varietal, and at the same time it adds to the complexity.

Dumenge Calling 2017 (Celler Dumenge)

Light yellow, slightly turbid. Fruity aromas of pears, white flowers and grapefruit. Fresh fruit on the palate, vibrant acidity, quite full and with a long finish.

Price: Medium

Food: Shellfish, white fish, tapas, and many Asian-style dishes

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Beaujolais twins

This is a followup to the Beaujolais article last Friday. Today I came across two wines made by Pierre Dupond. One of the twins showed freshness and elegance, while the other was more bold and ripe. We will come back to that, but first a look at the background.

The Dupond family has its roots in Burgundy and the Rhône Valley. It began with Antoine Dupond, who was originally from Beaujolais, but began commercializing his wines in Lyon and St. Etienne in the 1860s. His son Joanny expanded the family’s estates to the Rhône area. Hervé Dupond, fifth generation, is today leading the business. Hervé has expanded production, building partnerships with nearby winegrowers and neighboring families that the they have known for generations. Each year Hervé selects the best possible plots to make his wines. A traditional method of winemaking is practiced to ensure wines produced are reflective of the land. Ageing takes place in concrete vats that allow for ideal temperatures.

The gamay grapes were handpicked and underwent carbonic maceration with indigenous yeasts. These are natural wines, both with low sulphur (one with nothing added). One is with minimal filtration, one without. To sum up: Sans Soufre Ajouté is the most fresh/acidic of the twins, while Non Filtré is the most ripe and fullbodied wine. Both are highly recommended.

Beaujolais-Village Sans Soufre Ajouté 2022 (Pierre Dupond)

Dark red, blue hint. Cherry, raspberry. Medium body, fine-grained tannins, fresh acidity.

Beaujolais Nouveau Non Filtré 2022 (Pierre Dupond)

Dark red, blue hint, a touch more dense than the other wine. Blackberry, eucalyptus, chocolate/coffee earthy tones. Medium-bodied with ripe fruit, a bit structured (more than the other wine), rounded acidity.

Price: Low

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Wine of the Week

A two pinots Champagne

The Olivier Horiot domaine is located in Les Riceys, a commune in Côte des Bar. We are in the southern part of Champagne, and it’s an area that has once belonged to Bourgogne. Here in the Aube département the vineyards are more scarce than in central parts of Champagne, and interspersed with forests, waters and farms.

The Horiot family continues to produce wonderful natural wines from biodynamic viticulture, and has by the way also done a great job to recover the region’s indigenous grape varieties, like arbane.

Credit: O. Horiot

Maybe inspired by nearby Bourgogne, the domain separats its different terroirs into distinct cuvées. The result is champagnes with strong individual character.

The name Métisse refers to the fact that this cuvée is made from several different terroirs in the village of Les Riceys. It’s a non vintage, made from pinot noir and pinot blanc. It has a minimal addition of sulphites and undergoes neither fining nor filtering.

Métisse Pinots Noirs et Blancs Extra Brut (O. Horiot)

Pale yellow, small, delicate bubbles. Aromas of apples, pears, citrus, flowers, brioche and spicy notes. It’s fresh and lively on the palate, with a fine-tuned interplay between the autolysis and the fruit. Completely dry, good length.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

More Biokult

We presented a “cultic” pét nat from this producer last year. (Read here.) We continue with a white one, or more accurately: orange. It’s a group of producers from Burgenland, Austria that have got together, and get some help from Meinklang with the winemaking.

The grapes are grüner veltliner 65%, welschriesling 25% and muscat 10%. They were grown in clay and limestone soils, picked by hand and spontaneously fermented with 7-8 days of skin maceration. Maturation was done in steel, and the wine was bottled unfiltered.

Weisse Blumen 2021 (Biokult)

Light orange. Aromatic with white flowers, white peach, a touch orange peel. Fresh taste, nice rounded acidity, lightly structured, salty finish.

Price: Low

Food: Apéritif, salads, fish (red and white), light meat, pig

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Wine of the Week

Elegant Pirouette

Les Vins Pirouettes is a label created by Christian Binner. The idea is to give selected growers the opportunity to launch their ecologic wines under an established umbrella. Here it is Raphaël who offers his elegant crémant zéro dosage. (You can find more from the project if you search these pages. Here is another, also by Raphaël.)

This week’s wine is a Crémant d’Alsace from 2018, made from riesling 60% and pinot gris 40% planted 1970 in chalky soil. It’s spontaneusly fermented, spent 24 months on lees and was bottled without added sugar.

Le Crémant de Raphaël 2018 (Les Vins Pirouettes/ C. Binner)

Light yellow, small bubbles. Aromatic, yellow apples, lime, bisques. Fresh, dry, good acidity, quite long.

Price: Medium

Food: Apéritif, salads, white fish, shellfish, lightly spiced food…

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Wine of the Week

L’orangeade

Philippe Formentin had worked 10 years at Domaine Chabanon in Lagamas, near Montpellier, before he became a “flying winemaker”, consulting at vineyards around the world. Then he found a small winery in the south of France, just outside Clermont l’Hérault. Here in the foothills of the Larzac, Philippe has brought life to his dream of making his own natural artisan wine.

His wines are made from grapes grown organically and according to biodynamic principles. They grow in different plots with clay-limestone soils and various exposures.

The grapes are manually harvested in the cool, early mornings, then stored in a cool environment 24 hours to slow start fermentation. They ferment naturally, with indigenous yeast and without sulfites.

A manual vertical press is used to gently extract the juice. The wines are then aged in containers, decanted, and bottled without filtration. L’orangeade 2020 is a varietal grenache blanc.

L’orangeade 2020 (Opi d’Aquí)

Light orange. Fresh aroma with apricot, orange peel, eucalyptus, a touch of honey. Medium full, light tannin structure, good length.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Dramatically good

The last xinomavro in this column was a very mineral wine. This one is quite different, a lot more fruity. Oenops Wines was founded in 2015 in the northeastern region of Drama by Nikos Karatzas. The grapes come from selected vineyards from Drama and Macedonia, that are cultivated by various ambitious winegrowers.

The grape for this wine is xinomavro, from Naoussa and Amyntaion, age varying from 14 to 65 years. Spontaneous fermentation was carried out in egg shaped 5 hl amphoras, with 6% whole cluster. Nothing added, and no machinery was used at any stage. After fermentation followed 6 months ageing on lees in amphoras. Bottled unfiltered.

XinomavRAW 2020 (Oenops Wines)

Ruby red. Aroma dominated by raspberry and cherries, and behind there some earth and leather. Juicy in the mouth, some tannin, lots of lovely, natural acidity.

Price: Medium

Food: Duck, light meat, Mediterranean, antipasti

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Wine of the Week

Oh when the saints

No, it’s not an attempt of making a cheap musical joke, it’s the real name of the wine. When the wine is marching in, it’s with the grape saint laurent.

Saint Laurent is ​​an aromatic, dark-skinned grape variety from the Pinot Noir family. St Laurent is perfect for sparkling wines as the variety ripens early and the skin is relatively thin. By the way, portrayed on the label is Swedish jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, in a drawing by Olaf Osten.

Since they took over Gernot’s family’s small-scale wine production in 1985, the couple Gernot and Heike Heinrich have focused on the great potential of the local grapes blaufränkisch, zweigelt and st. laurent. The family currently grows their grapes on 100ha in Gols, Burgenland, using biodynamic principles.

The grapes come from a single location on the eastern Leithaberg, in mica-mixed slate soil. The grapes are pressed in whole bunches, and the must is then cooled for rapid sedimentation, before fermentation begins with natural yeast in steel tanks. The fermenting must is then bottled before the fermentation is completely finished, to get its mousse in the bottle.

Oh When the Saints 2021 (Heinrich)

Light straw, abundant mousse. Fruity aroma of yellow apples, citrus, with white flowers and quince. Creamy texture, adequate acidity, salty aftertaste.

Price: Medium

Food: Seafood, white fish, light meat, aperitif

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Wine of the Week

Vital orange wine

The Lorentz family property is located in Ribeauvillé, Alsace. Georg Lorentz, sixth generation, is currently in charge – while his youngest daughter is studying to be a winemaker. The property has 33 hectares of eco-certified vineyards in the commune Bergheim (that lies within the Colmar-Ribeauvillé arondissement), among them two grand crus.

This wine is made from 54% sylvaner, 40% gewürtztraminer and 6% pinot gris. Hand-picked grapes are spontaneously fermented with skin contact. The wine is matured in steel tank. Unfiltered, without added sulphur.

We had it with bacalao in tomato sauce

Qui l’Eût Cru 2021 (Gustave Lorentz)

Orange, somewhat turbid. Nose of flowers (rose petals), mandarin, acacia honey and almonds. It has an energetic acidity, quite full in the mouth, balanced, and good length. Very vital.

Price: Medium

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Goyo García Viadero, underground hero

The rain in Spain was falling on the plains that day. Castilla, otherwise known for its dry, almost prairie-like landscape, was even less inviting than usual. I met a man in a cowboy hat. His name was Goyo.

I will not embark on a wild west novel. I had indeed been invited to Gumiel del Mercado (province of Burgos) by Goyo García Viadero, one of the new guns of Ribera del Duero. Goyo makes expressive, lightly extracted, terroir-focused wines without additives and without oakiness, in a region rather famous for the opposite.

I had originally been aware of Goyo through his sister, who is winemaker at Bodegas Valduero in the same village. In fact Goyo gets his oak barrels from them. He explains:

-I don’t like oak, it’s not from the grape, not from the soil. So the barrels he uses are always at least 7-8 year old barrels, and from Valduero. He uses oak with ultrafine grain, -because I like a slow evolution.

He has a careful approach to winemaking. All grapes are destemmed by hand, pressed gently, and fermentations are slow in the cold, ancient cellar. For the wines that age in barrel, Goyo uses, as we have heard, more than 7-8 year old very finely grained barriques from Bordeaux. Sulfur and other additives are never used. The resulting wines have a striking sincerity and elegance that communicate a strong sense of place. All vineyards have 800 meters or more of altitude, quite impressive. The sun of the meseta and the high altitudes bring both phenolic concentration and bright acidity to the wines.

His bodega dates from the Roman times. Upon meeting there we tasted through a number of wines from tank and barrel, some of them from vineyards both here and in the Soria province. Among these was the white skin-contact García Georgieva Malvasía 2021 from tank, a wine with a lovely fresh acidity. The wine was pressed in an old basket press, fermented in steel with 14 days skin contact and malolactic fermentation. Bottled without fining, filtration or added SO2. Another was the Finca los Quemados Clarete 2021 from all tinto fino (or: tinto del país), a clone of tempranillo, with its splendid cherry fruit. It’s made with short maceration (5-6 days), according to the most common style of the region. The Los Quemados vineyard has almost 60 year old vines planted on red sands with pebbles 960 meters above sea level.

Here we also tasted one of my personal favourites, a house-wine so to speak. Joven de Viñas Viejas 2021, which means young/unoaked wine from old vines, gets a richness and concentration from the age of the vines and the low yield, and it does not need any oak. It’s from a dry-farmed vineyard planted entirely with tinto fino at 880 meters altitude. The grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed and fermented with wild yeasts in steel tank with 3 months of skin maceration, then raised in tank before being bottled without fining, filtration or any addition of SO2. Dark, lovely, concentrated fruit (blackberry, morello); juicy with fine tannins and and lovely acidity.

All the vineyards are old; the youngest 40 years, the oldest more than 100. Goyo never uses filtration, almost no additives (only sulphur and copper in the vineyards).

-Most important is the quantity of tartaric acid in the grape. It should be 7 or 8 grams tartaric acid per litre, says Goyo. All grapes are destemmed. The maceration lasts for 10-15 days at 6 degrees, and fermentation takes place at no more than 22 degrees. -We only play with temperature and batonnage, says Goyo about possible variables.

His adventure began in 2003 with three parcels of old vines, that he says the French public call “the three musketeers”, named Finca Valdeolmos in Villabuena de Gumiel (90% tinto fino, 10% of the white albillo), Finca el Peruco in Olmedillo de Roa (85% tinto fino, 15% albillo), and Finca Viñas de Arcilla in Anguix (100% tinto fino), that are still the basis of his portfolio. From these he produces his three single vineyard wines and his annual Reserva Especial, all made the same way, with two to three years in barrel. -All this is a nod to the area’s past, before it became too commercial, he says. Valdeolmos, nicknamed “the elegant” has limestone. Finca el Peruco, “the fine”, has white sand and is one of the highest in Ribera, with over 900 meters of elevation. While Finca Viña de Arcilla, “the serious”, has clay, as the name implies.

We tasted the 2017 of the three wines. Finco Valdeolmos 2017 has dark fruits (blackberry), touch of licorice; gentle tannins and some minerality. Finca el Peruco 2017 holds back, is even more mineral: evident tannins, salty (from the white sand). Finca Viña de Arcilla 2017 is more balsamic (pine, encina), evident tannin, but also more fruit. Reserva Especial is made from Goyo’s favourite each year. This wine first ages in the same fashion as the three. Then it’s blended and gets another one or two years before release. We tasted the 2015, a blend of the three. This showed a slight mousiness, so down in the storing cellar we felt like trying the 2016 also. This one was in good condition, in that vintage made only from Valdeolmos. Down in the storing cellar we also tasted the 2018 vintage of all the three muscateers.

Goyo disposes of an ancient 4th century cellar, where the barreled wines rest in a cool temperature. It’s carved out of limestone below the village Gumiel del Mercado.

Goyo also makes wine in Cantabria, the region where his mother comes from. He has 2 hectares of mencía and palomino grapes on slate in the mountainous Liébana Valley. Here he makes a red wine and skin-contact white wine. These are called Beâtum from the 2019 vintage on (formerly Cobero).

Beâtum Tinto is made from 80% mencía and the rest palomino fino. The latter is the same as the sherry grape. This vineyard blend is often found in the vineyards of northern Spain. The vines here are more than 80 years old and are planted on broken slate soils.  The red and white grapes are co-fermented with indigenous yeasts, then raised one year in French oak barrels, without any sulfur additions. The red is typically made of 80% mencía and the rest palomino fino. The latter is the same as the sherry grape. We tasted the 2019: Very dark; super expressive, floral (violets), a touch licorice; lovely mouthfeel, luscious and [a bit spritzy]. Beâtum Blanco is made from bush vines of palomino grown on brown slate soils at 500-600 meters elevation around the town of Potes in the Valle de Liébana, Picos de Europa. It’s fermented on the skins in stainless steel tanks without added yeast, and bottled without sulfur additions. The 2020 smelled of mature apples and orange peel; it was quite full in the mouth, some tannin.

On the way out: One of the wines was Tempranillo a Mano 2019, where he takes the best grapes from every bunch, so it takes 3 parcels to fill a big barrel. The wine was big and bold, darke with some coffee. Finca de Quemado Clarete 2019, with one year in barrel, was lovely scented and perfumed. Graciano a Mano 2019 was dark and very fruity, light-bodied but long. Its origin is the Finca Guijarrales (formerly Finca Cascorrales), a vineyard planted entirely with graciano.

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