Wine Chords

White Saumur at Vinkontoret, Stavanger

Published 29. November 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I went with some musical friends to Vinkontoret, Stavanger. (See also my previous post about the bar.) This is a tradition we have established to shorten the waiting before attending a premiere party for a show (at another place, with a much poorer wine selection).

During the hour or so between the show and the party we had three glasses of wine this time. Vinkontoret (the Wine Office) is a real cathedral of wine, with hundreds of bottles to chose from, and Christoffer Ingebretsen knows more or less what we are after. So we let him chose something, and tasted them blind. The other wines were Heimbourg 2016, a pinot noir from Zind-Humbrecht, Alsace and the Mas la Plana 2015, a cabernet sauvignon from Torres, Penedès. Before this we had this Saumur chenin blanc.

Brendan Stater-West is a young American from Oregon. To make the story short, he was an English teacher in Paris, but had a passion for wine, got married to a French girl, and moved to Saumur in the Loire valley. There he asked the celebrated Romain Guiberteau, whose wines he admired, for a job. Brendan currently leases a one hectare vineyard from Romain, next to his famous Clos du Guichaux in Bizay. It is this vineyard, classified as a lieu-dit, that is Les Chapaudaises. The vineyard’s soil is tuffeau limestone with calcium-rich clay and sand, with many seashell fossils. He has recently met a family who owns an old cellar in Chacé in Saumur. He has begun to renovate this old and magnificent cellar.

This is Brendan’s first vintage, and as such it is very promising. It’s made from indigenous yeast, gently racked from ageing on the lees, and aged for 18 months in old barrel.

Saumur Blanc Les Chapeaudaises 2015 (B. Stater-West)

Light yellow. Vibrant citrus-fruit (mandarin peel), yellow fruits, some white pepper, and also a touch of sweetness on the nose. Slender on the palate, with good acidity and a salty minerality.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

A light monastrell, for a change

Published 22. November 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

While being focused on the light, delicate wines of Beaujolais, we throw in a Mediterranean wine that I have had on my list for some time.

And it shares in fact some of their characteristics. For a Jumilla monastrell it’s lightly extracted, focused on fruit and a, should we say, relatively modest 13,5% in alcohol.

Part of the Vinival group, Parajes del Valle is their Jumilla project. Winemaker is the young María Jover Sánchez, who worked for Vega Sicilia for a year, before she returned to her native Levante.

The soil here has a high limestone content, and the monastrell grapes are old. The variety has dark skin, small berries, and in the warm Mediterranean climate the wines are often big with elevated alcohol. Here the farmers are instructed to go for the opposite. The grapes are destemmed, subject to a light pressing and a careful maceration. It’s made mostly in steel, except for malo-lactic fermentation that is carried out in concrete.

Parajes del Valle Monastrell 2018 (Parajes del Valle)

Dark young colour. Quite concentrated berry aroma (raspberry, dark cherry), with aromatic herbs and a touch of lickorice in the background. Juicy, quite cool with smooth tannins.

Price: Low

Food: Stews, Murcian paella, light meat, fried fish

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Articles

Beaujolais Thursday

Published 22. November 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Every year 3rd Thursday of November sees the launch of the new Beaujolais vintage. This is nothing less than a 65 year old tradition in the wine home region. This year I haven’t participated in any comprehensive tasting, so I went to my local store and grabbed four wines. Luckily the store has a knowledgeable staff, and I could pick from some of the producers that I value the most.

Three of them comes from what have been called the “gang of four” of Beaujolais, producers who followed Jules Chauvet’s teachings and decided to avoid artificial fertilizers in the vineyard and sulphur in the wine, so as to better reflect the terroir of Beaujolais.

Here you can read about, and see a picture of Marie Lapierre and Jean-Claude Lapalu. Lapierre’s Cambon Nouveau was featured a few years ago too. See here. The regular Cambon was also featured here this summer. The two other wines I bought were from Jean Foillard and Guy Breton.

A gang of four, an appropriate term for Beaujolais

To sum up, the two lightest wines were from Lapierre and Breton (number 3 and 1 from left, respectively) with the former as the most energetic of the two. Foillard and Lapalu (4 and 2 from left) were more “natural”, with the latter as the most “wild” and with a good deal of sediments.

Beaujolais Nouveau Cambon 2019 (Ch. Cambon – M. Lapierre)

Ruby red. Flowery with raspberries and cherries. Soft on the palate with just the right touch of acidity. Lovely, elegant.

Cuvée Fanchon Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau 2019 (Guy Breton)

The village here is Villié-Morgon (where Foillard is located). Light ruby. Rhubarb, raspberry. In the mouth it’s fresh, the body is very light but still with a touch of tannin, dry finish.

Beaujolais Nouveau 2019 (J. Foillard)

Cherry red. Red berries and something chemical at first – red and black berries after some time in the glass, also a lactic tone. Meaty, juicy, but also some tannin, a touch of bitterness, dry. It’s on the wild side; I don’t say it’s mousy, but it has something funky that’s not easy to detect on the nose.

Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau 2019 (J.-C. Lapalu)

Lapalu’s village is Saint-Etienne-la-Varenne in Brouilly, a southern location that partly explains the relative power of his wines.

Smells of dark fruits, a touch of raspberry with some lickorice and earthiness. Fresh in the mouth, lightly structured and ends dry. Some carbonic at first, but it disappears with time in the glass. Just like the former wine: On the wild, or natural side (a bit funky retronasal aroma).

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Wine of the Week

La Fusta, Penedès

Published 15. November 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Toní Carbó is maybe better known for his collaboration with his friend Ramón Jané at Mas Candí. But he started unofficially to make wine under the Salada label in 2012, together with his wife Ana, from his family’s old farm Celler La Salada.

The family vineyards have never been sprayed, and Toní and his wife have also planted new ones, that they tend organically. These are wonderful wines without any additions of sulphur.

We are in Penedès, in the Barcelona province. La Fusta is the name of this particular vineyard, planted in 1988 in soil with limestone and some clay.

The wine is a varietal xarel·lo. The grapes were hand-picked, pressed in whole bunches, before spontaneous fermentation in old 1000 liter chestnut barrels. Unfiltered.

La Fusta 2018 (Celler La Salada)

Light grapefruit colour, somewhat turbid. Smells of yellow apples, white flowers and mature citrus. It’s a bit waxy and mineral with a lively acidity. Long.

Price: Medium

Food: Fish and shellfish, paella, and the power and the acidity suggests that it goes well with many meat dishes

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Wine of the Week

The spell of muskateller

Published 8. November 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

The dynamic Fred Loiner has 40 hectares of vineyard in and around the Langenlois village in Kamptal, some of them of really high quality and reputation. Here he makes wines mostly from riesling and grüner veltliner, but also from local heroes like this one, the muskateller. Everything is from his own vineyards, all tended organically, with some biodynamic practise.

Muskateller is an ancient grape, probably of Italian origin. It’s a member of the big Muscat family, and shares some of the well-known characteristics, such as a flowery aroma. In the vineyard it can be difficult, and it likes warm, airy places. A speciality is a spicy character, sometimes towards nutmeg.

Pét Nat 2018 (Weingut Loimer)

Light yellow with greenish hint and medium+ bubbles. Smells of flowers, pears and yellow fruit, slightly spicy. Fresh and mellow at the same time, integrated acidity, finishes dry.

Price: Low

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Wine of the Week

Eco from Esporão

Published 1. November 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Esporão has been among the leading wineries of Portugal since its foundation in the early 1970’s.

The vineyard that gives birth to the Colheita

Not only are they big. Well they are; their Alentejo property is vast, the sales are good, and they have several well-known brands in the market. So when in Portugal, if I’ve had a plain bacalhau at a modest restaurant, there is almost always an Esporão at hand, such as the Monte Velho.

But they are also leading the way with many sustainable projects, such as reducing the bottle weight, fighting to stop the dam at river Tua, Douro, where they have a second winery. But more than this, then have a holistic approach, and in every aspect they seriously take the responsibility they believe that they are given.

I keep coming back to this wine. Made from touriga nacional, aragonêz and cabernet sauvignon in equal parts, the grapes are destemmed, fermented in open lagares for 10 days, and kept in steel. Eco-friendly, eco-nomic.

Esporão Tinto Colheita 2017 (Herdade do Esporão)

Deep purple. Fruitdriven (mature dark berries), plums, aromatic herbs, some lickorice. Round, juicy, fruity with some acidity.

Price: Low

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Wine bars and restaurants and Wine of the Week

Pét nat at P Franco

Published 25. October 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Finally I managed to visit P Franco in the Clapton area of East London. It’s small, I don’t know if the workers find it functional. But there is one big table in the middle of the room, so I found it cosy and social. How nice isn’t it to be surrounded by so many good bottles; used bottles from the bar, and bottles from the shop waiting to get a new owner.

The owners also have other venues in town, like the Bright and the Peg. There is always something interesting going on, and many are the guest chefs that have been visiting.

Daniel and the rest of the staff being very attentive

This night I had been in Hackney, and just popped in. No problem to find a place by their one central table.

I had three wines, and I let Daniel and the others decide. For every wine I got the choice between two or three, so it turned into an interesting tasting also.

I tasted, among other wines, a very good natural verdicchio, Terre Silvale 2018 from La Distesa di Corrado Dottori from the Marche, an unfiltered Grüner 2018 from Arndorfer, and A toi nous 2018, from Andrea Calek, a Czech in the Ardeche.

For this post I chose the Silvaner pét nat from 2 Naturkinder of Franken. They have a small production from 30 years old vines on shell limestone by the river Main in Bavaria. The grapes are hand harvested and left as whole clusters. The bunches ferment in stainless steel for two weeks without temperature control. Then the bunches are pressed, and the wine finishes the fermentation in bottle. It was bottled with close to 10 grams residual sugar and the pressure became 2.2 bars. The alcohol is low at 11%, and as for the total SO2 (nothing added) it’s as little as 4 mg/L.

Silvaner Pét nat 2018 (2 Naturkinder)

Orange/brown, slightly turbid. Aroma of yellow apples, white flowers and herbs. Yeasty, with a creamy mousse, grapefruity, with a nicely integrated acidity.

Price: Medium

Food: I had it with “Smoked ivory cauliflower, cacao flower and horseradish” at P Franco, but it should tackle a lot of dishes; white fish, smoked fish, charcuterie, lightly spiced Asian…

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Wine of the Week

Passalacqua’s Puglia project

Published 18. October 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I am in London, mainly for music. But I never miss a chance to visit some of the many good natural wine bars and restaurants in town. Yesterday I visited Brawn again (see an earlier, more detailed report here), that’s owned by the people behind the classic Terroirs.

At Brawn one of the highlights was the orange wine from Valentina Passalacqua’s Puglia project.

The wine and light logo

Her farm is found inside Gargano National Park in Apricena, Puglia, and has belonged to the family for well over 100 years. The soil consists mainly of limestone rocks rich in minerals, at about 200 meters of altitude. It’s now worked biodynamically. All the wines are spontaneously fermented, never fined nor filtered, and they all come without sulfur addition.

The “calcareous project” came to life because Valentina felt the need to isolate some plots characterized by exclusively Kimmeridian calcareous soil. These are defined by terroir, the wines are mineral, and full of life. Falanghina is just one of the many varieties that can be called indigenous, but also with Greek influence or inspiration (along with nero di Troia, greco, aleatico, to name a few).

Valentina informs that the numbers indicated on the labels are the atomic number (20) and the atomic weight (40.08) of the chemical element of calcium (Ca). The designation is IGP Bianco Puglia, and it comes in a one liter bottle.

As you already have guessed, the fermentation was spontaneous, and it was macerated on the skins for 7 days, in open vats with manual hat break. It was racked in steel, and bottled without filtering or clarification.

Calcarius Orange Puglia (Valentina Passalacqua)

Light orange, with a reddish tone. Fresh on the nose, citric notes (mandarin), aromatic herbs and oriental spices. A slight touch of fine tannins in the mouth, saline notes and an appealing citric finish.

Price: Medium

Food: White fish, light meat, vegetarian, not too spicy Asian

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Wine of the Week

Bartulović’s Dingač

Published 13. October 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

When coming out of the Dingač tunnel a mighty landscape lies before us. Some of the steepest and most dramatic slopes in the world of wine are bathing in glittering light. Here the grapes are hit three times by the sun; directly, from the limestone rocks and from the sea.

We are in Dingač, the first appellation of Croatia (or rather from Yugoslavia, 1961). And we, we are a bunch of jazz musicians taking a break from the Makarska Autumn Leaves Jazz Festival. Our jazzmobile is parked back at Bartulović (next door to the Kriz winery, see the former post), because here one needs a mountain goat of a car.

Maro Bartulović is one of the pioneers in organic and sustainable farming. The family business got a new start, or a new boost, in 1989, after generations of delivering grapes to the local cooperative.

-We are traditional vintners in the modern world, says Maro. -My kids are the 17th generation.

There are around 3 hectares of vineyards scattered around at 16 different places on the peninsula. Most of the grapes are plavac mali, the equally historic and difficult variety that with its long growing season can’t grow further north than Split, according to our host.

Maro showed us the differences between the valley and the Dingač slopes in a very good year like 2018, of which we can only wait. Now we can appreciate the 2017, that was a dryer year. The grapes were picked from 17th August. Still there is a lot of sweetness, which results in a high alcohol. Farming practise is traditional, that is completely organic. Fermentation is spontaneaous and the wines are not fined nor filtered. There is never more than 1.200-1.400 bottles made of this wine.

Dingač 2017 (Bartulović)

Deep cherry red. Smells of red fruit and wild berries (blackberry, elderberries), and balsamic (menthol, eucalyptus), and also with a stony minerality. It has powerful tannins, retains some freshness (maybe from the balsamic notes), and it’s a bit raisiny towards the finish.

Price: High

Food: Calls for some powerful meat with a tasty sauce, but stews would be fine, and I imagine that hard cheeses would be perfect

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Articles and Wine of the Week

Križ’s Grk

Published 6. October 2019 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I don’t blame you if you have trouble reading or understanding the title of this post. But let us first get the basics clear: Križ is the producer, based in the settlement Prizdrina (Potomje) on the Croatian peninsula Pelješac. Grk is the grape variety.

Grk is an indigenous grape, grown mostly on the neighbouring island of Korčula, and to a lesser extent here. There are only 15 hectares of it in Croatia (and the world). The word literally means bitter, but the main characteristics are high acidity, high natural sugar content (because of the sun reflection from the sea), balsamic aromas and saltiness. Although the name hints to a Greek origin, modern studies show that it is a close relative to crljenak kaštelanski (a forerunner to both zinfandel and the Adriatic grape plavac mali).

A special feature is that grk has only female flowers, so to able to produce fruit it needs to be planted alongside another variety. On Pelješac the norm is to plant three rows of grk, three of plavac mali, and so on.

The jazz musicians on tour enjoyed both wine and poster

Vinarija Križ

Just a few words on the producer here, that I visited a few days ago together with fellow jazz musicians taking a break from a festival held nearby. Maja and Denis Bogoević Marušić grow 2 hectares of grapes on limestone in the Postup region (plavac mali) and sand on the Križ hill (grk). Some of the vineyards in Postup are very steep (up to 45°inclination), so it has been necessary to build stone walls. They work by hand. The cultivation is traditional, exclusively organic (with some biodynamic practise), and only natural yeasts are used.

Their grk stays 4-7 days on the skins, depending on the vintage, before a one week fermentation. It’s matured in old oak barrels (not toasted, to give a gentle treatment). There is no sulphur added, and the total is less than 10 mg/L.

Grk 2018 (Vinarija Križ)

Golden colour towards orange. Smells of mature apples, some citrus (mandarins), pine and figs. Dry on the palate, very fine-tuned tannins and with a fresh, integrated acidity.

Price: Medium

Food: It’s very versatile: Fish, shellfish, risotto, pasta, and it performs surprisingly well with tasty meat

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Vinarija Križ