Aiméstentz is based in Wettolsheim, central Alsace. This is a winery with a strong belief in their soils, and they encourage biodiversity in and around their vineyards.
Generally they keep their wines 6 months or more on fine lees. This particular wine underwent a 4-6 weeks fermentation at 16-20°C and 10 months ageing in big old oak vats.
Pinot Blanc Réserve 2015(Aiméstentz)
Straw-coloured. Aroma of yellow apples, slightly nutty and a touch of spices. Quite vinous, soften, clean and long taste with good balance acidity-residual sugar (around 5 g/L).
This is one of several stars from a recent tasting of wines from Austria’s coolest wine regions, Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal.
Nikolaihof of Wachau is famed for being Austria’s oldest winery, with 2000 years in the business, and built on a St. Nikola’s monastery. The Saahs family was also among the first to convert to biodynamic prinsciples, almost 50 years ago.
The Steiner Hund lies between Wachau and Kremstal, Stein itself lying in the western outskirts of the village Krems. The soils in Kremstal is diverse, and west of Krems, towards Wachau where the valley gets steeper, there is more granite and gneiss. It is here we find the Steiner Hund vineyard, and here riesling has a potencial for great elegance.
The Steiner Hund is a stony vineyard, extremely difficult to work. A local legend says that it once was owned by a wealthy winemaker, who exchanged it for a dog when there was famine in the region. Today producers from Kremstal to the east and Wachau in the west has ownership in the vineyard. The site is south-facing and is comprised of conglomerate rock with a thin topsoil of loess and loam.
In Nikolaihofs vineyards no herbicides, fertilisers, pesticides, nor synthetic sprays are used. The grapes are harvested by hand, fermented without artificial yeast and stored in big, old Austrian oak casks.
Deep yellow with some green. Concentrated aroma. It’s more open than the previous vintage; still young though, but begins to reveal flowers, herbs, honey and fresh berries (gooseberry). There is probably much more to come during the next few years. Quite full in the mouth, rich, mineral (crushed stone). We know from experience that it will keep well.
Price: High (just over the limit to “high” in our classification)
Food: Grilled fish, shellfish, light meat, can do with rich sauces – the food must be good though
The Vaillant family started vinegrowing in La Roche Aubry (Anjou, Loire Valley) in the 17th century. Today they dispose over 55 hectars, and the farming is organic and biodynamic, only chenin blanc for white wines.
The soils vary greatly, schists, quartz, sands… They use composts from animal manure, and only a few treatments like copper, sulphur and some made of infusions of plants.
This wine was, as indicated, made from 100% chenin blanc, spontaneously fermented in big barrels, and it was bottled unfiltered.

La Varenne du Poirier 2014(Dom. Les Grandes Vignes – Vaillant)
Cloudy orange with a greenish hue. Mature apples (cidery), white flowers, yellow tomatoes, nuts and a touch of honey. Good concentration and high acidity wrapped in super fruit, and just a slight touch of tannin. Quaffable indeed.
Price: Medium
Food: Grilled fish, salads, chicken and other light meat, white goat cheeses
This is delicious, unpretentious wine from Bodega La Encina, whom I visited last week. It’s called a varietal, but it’s made from garnacha, monastrell and merlot. La Encina is a small artisan bodega just north of Villena (Alicante, bordering both Albacete and Murcia). The farming is organic and biodynamic, and they work completely without additions.
Cero Tinto Jóven 2016(Bodega La Encina)
Dark red with blue tones. Intense young berry-aromas; blueberry, cherry, flowers, pine, and maybe some ink. Fresh, young taste, with a refreshing acidity, and some stalky bitterness that I find appealing here.
Food: Pizza, pasta, vegetarian, (green) tapas. Without food is also nice
This is Daniel Jiménez-Landi’s Piélago in the 2010 version, that I had tonight in the Los Patios de Beatas restaurant in Málaga. The wine is now offered in the 2014 vintage, so this is a prime example of how it will age medium term.
The wine comes from the DO Méntrida in the Toledo province of Castilla-La Mancha. It is a 100% garnacha from 7 parcels of 40-70 year old vines at 700-850 meters in El Real de San Vicente, to be more precise. The must from the different vineyards are treated separately in small vats of French oak and open 500L vats. The grapes come partly with stalks (between 30-100% depending of vineyard). The extraction is soft, only foot-trodden, for 10-30 days. Alcoholic and malo-lactic fermentation has been in barrel, and it stayed in big barrels (500-1.500L) for around a year.
Piélago 2010(Jiménez-Landi)
Deep cherry red, showing some development near the rim. Mature forest fruits, floral, herbs, some coffee, needs some time in the glass. Potent, astringent in the mouth, with marked tannins that are still to evolve. It has the typical garnacha roundness, a nice acidity, and a long aftertaste. If it’s marked by the wood it’s no sweetness, but dry tannins and some toast. On the way up, to be saved for still another 4-5 years.
Food: Because of the tannin structure it called for the lamb, but it could well tackle other meat, with rich sauces too
I am aware that choosing the 2004 vintage may seem a bit strange, since this producer has launched a couple of more recent vintages, like 2011. On the other hand, the ’04 is still in the market and better than ever.
I visited Arlindo da Costa Pinto e Cruz last in 2010, when this picture was taken. The winery is located in Casais do Douro in the municipality of São João da Pesqueira, on the south side of the Douro, along the river Torto. Schist is the predominant soil in their typical terraces found all over Alto Corgo.
Arlindo Cruz in the main vineyard near São João
Casal dos Jordões dates back to 1870, and has always belonged to the Jordões family. Jordões must have been the first port producer in Douro with organic farming certificates. I even remember a rosé port from my last visit.
Schist in the vineyard
The wine is made from the normal port grapes (touriga nacional, touriga francesa, tinta roriz and tinta barroca) sourced from their main vineyard and a couple more along the Rio Torto. It’s made with the typical port process, with addition of brandy, kept in barrel for less than two years – and when bottled it has never been clarified nor filtered.
Casal dos Jordões Vintage 2004(Casal dos Jordões)
Deep dark, showing some development. Mature dark fruit (blackberry, blackcurrant), nutmeg, some chocolate, and a touch of dried fruit. Rich and smooth on the palate, but not too sweet, very persistant. An excellent port from an “off-year” (Arlindo said everybody could make a good vintage port in 2003, so for him that was no challenge…), and it will still age beautifully.
Price: Medium
Food: Blue cheese, desserts (chocolate-based a.o.)
This week’s suggestion is from the Châteauneuf-du-Pape country in Southern Rhône, between Orange, Avignon and Carpentras (Vaucluse) to be more precise. Here we find Julien Mus, who studied in Beaune, returned to his native village Bédarrides where he joined the cooperative, and then in 2005 founded his own Domaine de la Graveirette, biodynamically certified since 2015.
Harvesting is done by hand, he uses no additives, except for minimal doses of sulfur. In his wines there is always a harmony of body, fruit and acidity, be it bigger Châteauneuf wines or bottlings with more “humble” designations.
This particular wine is made from grenache 35%, merlot 30%, cabernet sauvignon 25% and mourvèdre 10%. The fermentation was spontaneous and carried out in concrete. Aged in steel and concrete.
Ju de Vie 2015(Dom. de la Graveirette)
Dark, quite deep red. Young aroma, red and dark berries, with a slight earthyness. Quite full in the mouth, with a nice touch of acidity and some tannins. Good length. It’s good now, but I imagine it will evolve positively over the next couple of years.
A grape mostly famous for rosés and lightly coloured ‘gluggable’ reds, This is probably the darkest zweigelt I have tasted so far. Having said that, it’s still quite easy to drink, and doesn’t necessarily need food.
It comes from the vast Burgenland in eastern Austria, in Heideboden near the big lake, to be more precise. Here are perfect conditions for that early-ripener; warm, mild and sparse rain.
It’s always spontaneously fermented, aged in big, used oak vats.
Blauer Zweigelt 2015(Weing. Nittnaus)
Blue-blackish colour. Young, fresh aroma with hints of dark berries, spices and aromatic herbs. Medium weight, fine tannins, lovely.
Here is a terrific cabernet franc from Chinon in the Loire valley, maybe the most famous place for that grape.
The winery is located in Cravant-les-Côteaux, near the village of Chinon. Fabrice Gasnier is 4th generation. Together with his wife Sandrine he disposes of mostly old-vine cabernet franc planted on plots with chalk, gravel, sand and clay soils. For almost ten years it has been certified for both organic and biodynamic growing.
For this wine there was manual harvest from the more than 80 year old vines. The must was spontaneously fermented and aged 6 months in big oak vats.
Vieille Vignes 2014 (Dom. Fabrice Gasnier)
Dark, young colour. Needs air, but opens and reveals dark berries, green peppers and aromatic herbs. Lovely, luscious taste, and can be appreciated alone, but with an astringency that makes it go well with food too. Concentrated with good length.
A few weeks ago we presented a wine from the southern part of the Chilean vineyard. Here is one from the Valle de Elquí, located in the very north, at the edge of the Atacama desert (one of the world’s driest places). This used to be pisco land (Chile shares both this sour grape liqueur and the desert with its neighbour Peru). Nowadays Elquí is noted for fresh and fragrant wines, from sauvignon blanc, syrah and other grapes.
Giorgio Flessati and Aldo Olivier (photo: V. Falernia)
Elqui means ‘narrow valley’ in the local quechua language, and it’s still a place with herds of vicuña, a relative of the more famous llama. (Believe me, I have seen them myself!) As expected, the valley is hot and dry, and irrigation is essencial. Host to a number of astronomical observatories, this province is famous for the bright light, the pure air and the clear sky. In fact the number of sunlight hours is higher than anywhere in Europe. But the vineyards go up to 2.000 meters above sea level, and the nights are cool, so the growth cycle can be slow, and it’s still possible to achieve a degree of acidity in the wines.
Vicuña, eh… Well, here is one
While closer to the Pacific coast at lower altitudes, the soils have more clay and silt, the soils up here are rocky with chalky components. There was almost no vinegrowing in Elquí before the 1990’s, when the trade began to seek alternatives to the areas around Santiago. Aldo Olivier Gramola (a native from Trentino, Italy) was one of the people who realized the potential. When Aldo met his cousin, oenologist Giorgio Flessati, Chile’s most northernly winery Viña Falernia was established in 1998.
The grapes for the Sauvignon Blanc was handpicked, the vinification was carried out in steel tanks and stayed on the lees for 6 months. A small percentage of the must was aged 4 months in oak casks.
Sauvignon Blanc 2012(Viña Falernia)
Light yellow with hints of green. Aroma of white flowers, mature berries, aromatic herbs and fennel (maybe from the oak treatment). Mellow in the mouth, with a decent acidity, good concentration and lenght.
Price: Low
Food: Fish, shellfish, chicken, salads, white cheese
Vicuña, eh… Well, here is one