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Month: September 2024

Wine of the Week

Morgon Monday

Published 27. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Last Monday my local wine club served a dozen of Morgon wines. Most of them originate from the various climats that make up the appellation. This one is from a small climat called Douby, next to the famous Côte de Py.

Domaine Louis-Claude Desvignes is located in the town Villié-Morgon, that gives name to the Morgon appellation in Beaujolais. Today it’s run by eighth generation, the siblings Claude-Emmanuelle and Louis-Benoît Desvignes. They work their soils in the most natural way possible. No synthetic products are used in the vineyards, and the work in the cellar is carried out with as little intervention as possible.

Their Morgons are made without aging in wood. Instead they spend some time in concrete vats. The macerations depends of the wine. In preparing the tasting I also tried their Morgon Voûte Saint-Vincent. That one is macerated only for ten days and aimed at earlier consumption, while other bottlings see longer macerations.

This wine comes from an 80 year old 1 hectare vineyard in Douby. Here at this place called Château Gaillard the soil is sand and granite. The harvest is manual and the vinification traditional with 10% of the grapes destemmed. Fermentation lasts 10 days, then the wine is aged in cement vats for 7 months.

Morgon Château Gaillard 2021 (Louis Claude Desvignes)

Deep cold cherry colour. Intense aroma of cherry and flowers, with chalk and earth. Quite powerful in the mouth with fresh fruit, an integrated acidity and young fine-grained tannins. I think the 21s in the tasting had benefitted from one year more than the 22s. Still this one is probably at its best after 4-5 more years.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Dry PX

Published 20. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Ximénez-Spínola is a rare bird in the fauna jerezana, in that they are focusing on a single grape, the pedro ximénez, or simply PX.

This week’s wine is a dry take on what’s normally, in this region, elaborated as a sweet wine. It’s made from grapes that are overripe, the producer counts 21 additional days to the conventional harvest. The grapes are harvested by hand, then pressed softly,. The wine is placed with its skins in French oak barrels of between 225 and 300 liters, adding 30 liters to each barrel every day – hence the name, that means slow fermentation – so that the yeasts can finish off all the sugars daily and leave the wine completely dry. The musts are aged on lees with a gentle batonage for six months in the barrel.

Fermentación Lenta 2019 (Ximénez-Spínola)

Light golden with greenish hint, high viscosity. Aroma of dried plums, wax, hint of caramel. Full in the mouth, glyceric, with figs, ripe fruit and a sweet touch like caramel, but rounds off dry. A unique wine with lots of personality.

Price: Medium/high

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Wine of the Week

Lumière, a brilliant white

Published 13. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This is the second article in a series of three, about unfortified wines from the sherry district. This white table wine is just brilliant. It’s a palomino without additions, not even any influence of flor. It’s a sublime expression of grape and place.

Alejandro Muchada and his partner David Léclapart make incredible terroir-driven wines full of saline minerality, and always with a lovely texture. From three plots of a total of 3.6 hectares in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Alejandro works according to biodynamic principles, and in the cellar he shows a hands-off philosophy..

The grapes for this wine is taken from Viña La Platera Vieja in Miraflores Baja, that is a 1.2 hectares plot. The soil is calcareous albariza, with a hard rock albariza type called “tosca cerrada”, under clayey limestone. The orientation is west and the vines are more than 60 years old.

The grapes were hand-harvested, directly pressed for 3-4 hours, spontaneously fermented and matured for 12 months on lees in used barrels. Bottled without filtering.

Lumière 2021 (Muchada-Léclapart)

Yellow colour, slightly cloudy. Aroma of yellow apples, flowers, almonds, black olives and citrus and a touch of salt. Concentrated, medium-bodied, fruity in the mouth with almonds, smooth texture, mineral. Finishes very long. It has this extra nerve that is hard to define, but makes it a great wine. As the name might imply: Brilliant.

Price: High

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Wine of the Week

Palatable Pasto

Published 6. September 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Vino de pasto is a table wine, here as opposed to a fortified sherry. The word is probably from the same root as pasture.

But first a brief history. The Pérez family have been winemakers for several generations. In 2002 Luis, a professor of oenology and former winemaker at Domecq, set up his bodega just outside Jerez, together with his children. Most significantly, his son Willy has made his name as a brilliant winemaker that takes the sherry trade in new and interesting directions.

One of their main objective is exploring the historic pagos (vineyards) of Jerez. This wine La Escribana is made of palomino fino grapes grown on Cerro de Obispo, a hill in the pago Macharnudo, on albariza (limestone) soil. This south-east facing plot, approximately 100 metres above sea level, is pruned in the local vara y pulgar pruning method (means stick and thumb, and has some similarity to Guyot). Picking is done twice; early for acidity, then later for more maturity. After a 5-6 hours asoleo (drying) and cold fermentation in steel, it undergoes 12 months of ageing on the lees with a little flor, in 80 years old sherry butts.

This review is the first of a “triangle” of unfortified wines from the sherry area.

La Escribana 2022 (Luis Pérez)

Light yellow. Notes of citrus (lemon peel), green apples, flowers, chalk, and a light yeast character. Full in the mouth, fresh, good acidity, some grapefruity bitterness and a marked saltiness.

Price: Medium

Food: We had it with bacalao, but should go to a variety of tasty fish and light meat dishes, as well as various tapas.

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