Tag: biodynamic

A classic entry-level Rioja

Published 5. February 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine I brought to a dinner to go with a terrine of grouse, a task that it fulfilled with excellence. Its creator Sandra Bravo is a favourite on this blog, and I wanted to take the opportunity now that this wine celebrates its 10 years anniversary. In fact the same wine has been featured before. Here is a link to the former blogpost.

The cultivation is organic, the must was fermented with natural yeasts in steel, clay and cement, and it spent some 6 months in used French oak barrels. In fact it was probably the first wine in Rioja to be elevated in amphora.

When I last reviewed it in 2017 the wine was at the height of its fruitiness, with a lot of cool, fresh red fruits, and also with a slightly roasted tone. Obviously, now all of that was gone giving way to the usual time markers. Drinking the wine was like a pleasant reunion with an old friend. I have another bottle that I will not save much longer though.

Sierra de Toloño 2014 (Sierra de Toloño)

Deep granate with brick rim. Blackberry, with figs and prunes, leather and hint of underwood. Mature fruit in the mouth, medium weight, with mature tannins, integrated acidity. It’s a bit drying and past its prime, but nevertheless truly pleasant.

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Wine of the Week

Outstanding from Ourense

Published 10. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

We had this wine at the Pura Cepa restaurant in Murcia. It was chosen from a quite extensive by the glass menu to go with a savoury turbot dish.

The Lagar de Sabaríz winery is located in San Amaro in Ourense, Galicia, that is just outside the boundaries of the DO Ribeiro. The founder Pilar Higuero works her vineyards biodynamically, though the climate is heavily influenced by the Atlantic and has high yearly rainfall.

The vineyard covers four hectares, at 400 metres above sea level, high for Ribeiro. The soil is granitic, which is typical for the area.

A Pita Cega is the Galician name for a children’s game. The varieties are mainly treixadura and albariño, with a collection of other grapes.

Grape bunches are pressed with stems and the must ferments with natural yeasts. The wine doesn’t undergo malolactic fermentation and there is no bâtonnage. It ages for 1 year in stainless steel, and a little sulphur dioxide is added before bottling.

The bottles weigh less than 400 g. And they bear no labels, as Pilar herself paints every bottle by hand. The corks come from protected forests.

A Pita Cega 2015 (Lagar de Sabariz)

Pale cold yellow colour. Fresh aroma of apricot, citrus (baked lemon), pears and white flowers, towards a flinty background. In the mouth it’s fresh with a granitic minerality, with a lot of nerve, and with a slightly bitter and pleasant, long aftertaste. This is outstanding quality, The freshness is impressive for a wine of this age, and it should have many years ahead.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Sparkling new year

Published 3. January 2025 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was opened to salute the new year 2025.

Raventós i Blanc is one of the leading producers of sparkling wine in Catalunya. Pepe Raventós has family links to the creator of the drink that came to be called cava. Still he was one of the first to leave the DO Cava, to establish his own appellation Conca del Riu Anoia. It is located in the Penedés comarca (area), in a valley between the Prelitoral and Litoral mountain ranges.

Raventós i Blanc makes mineral and saline wines, at a quality that is incredibly stable. I have never been disappointed.

De la Finca comes from a vineyard known as Vinya dels Fòssils. The old bush-trained vines were planted in 1964 on the highest terraces of the Anoia, on a soil covered with marine fossils. The orientation is predominantly northern, and there is spontaneous plant covers, that contribute to bring freshness to the wine. Viticulture is biodynamic. The grapes are the traditional blend xarel.lo, macabeu and parellada. Each variety and soil is vinified separately before settling together.

De La Finca 2021 (Raventós i Blanc)

Light straw yellow with fine bubbles. Aromas of lemon, yeast, lime and brioche, over a layer of smoke and herbs. Mineral in the mouth, a little austere, with a fresh acidity, completely dry. It’s Mediterranean in its ripeness, but it also shows a fresh side. Wonderfully balanced.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Fresh Mediterranean red

Published 27. December 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

El Tiempo que nos une is one of the entry-level reds from Bodega Cerrón. They regard it as a tribute to family viticultural work. In fact it’s a Jumilla wine that don’t come from Murcia, as the winegrowing area also comprises a part of Albacete (Castilla-La Mancha).

Bodega Cerrón is a family project located in Fuente-Álamo, in Albacete. They are dedicated to recovering abandoned vineyards through organic and biodynamic practices and producing wines with a good balance between acidity, alcohol and fruit.

El Tiempo que nos une comes from pre-phylloxera vineyards with an average age of 70 years. They are old vines planted in mostly calcareous soils at an altitude of about 900 meters above sea level. Organic farming is carried out, and harvest is manual.

In the winery it undergoes spontaneous fermentation with 50% whole grapes in cement tanks, and after gentle pressing, the wine ages in foudres for 6 months.

El Tiempo Que Nos Une 2023 (Bodega Cerrón)

Dark cherry red. Aromas of ripe black fruit, spice and white flowers. Decent concentration. Fresh and juicy in the mouth, balsamic, medium-bodied with fine-grained tannins. Typically Mediterranean and a good representative of its origin.

Price: Low

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Wine of the Week

A fresh ripasso

Published 13. December 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was presented at a bring-a-bottle tasting in my local wine club. It shows a more fresh side of the ripasso style, as opposed to the more heavy and raisiny wines often found in the category.

The Musella Estate is located close to the village of Ferrazze, east of Verona, where their vineyards are biodynamically farmed.

Their ripasso has been produced since 1995. At the winery, unpressed amarone pomace is macerated with the fresh valpolicella (the so-called ripasso method). This enhances the colour and structure of the wine. The wine undergoes 12-15 days of fermentation and maceration on the skins with periodic racking followed by malolactic fermentation. The wine is then transferred to barrels of various sizes for 12 months.

Valpolicella Ripasso 2020 (Musella)

Cherry red. Some fresh fruit, such as cherry, plums and blackcurrant. Behind is a layer of cinnamon and clove, and dried fruits, and also a hint of chocolate. Medium-bodied, with fine tannins, and a refreshing acidity. Finishes quite long.

Price: Medium

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Wine of the Week

Dalamára xinomavro

Published 1. November 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

This wine was one of many good wines in a xinomavro tasting in my local wine club last Monday. Xinomavro is the most emblematic grape in the northern part of Greece and is characterized by a light colour and crystalline tannins, not very unlike nebbiolo. The prices are generally sympathetic.

Kostis Dalamára is a sixth-generation winemaker in Naoussa, the historic region of Macedonia. When he took over the family estate in 2010 he introduced organic cultivation, spontaneous fermentation and reduced sulfur dioxide levels. The soil in the area is sandy loam to clay, which comes from former limestone and marl rocks.

The grapes for this wine are de-stemmed and fermented in steel tanks, macerates for some 25 days before being moved to 300-500 liter barrels to mature for 6 months in 10% new oak. The rest is 1-14 year old barrels.

Naossa 2021 (Dalamára)

Ruby red. Aroma of mature strawberries, raspberry, sundried tomato and an earthy note. Medium-bodied, with those signature xinomavro tannins and a nice integrated acidity. It’s more fruity than most, somewhere between rusticity and elegance.

Price: Medium

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Articles and Wine bars and restaurants

Two Italians at Pergola, Bergen

Published 3. October 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Pergola is an Italian-inspired wine bar near the center of Bergen, established in 2010 by Bjørn Johnsson. They boast a selection of almost 500 different wines to choose from. You can enjoy a glass with a pizza, with your desired topping, or a plate of antipasti. Among the wines, there is a selection of wines that they import themselves.

I was there with some other musicians after playing at one of the city’s jazz clubs. We had two of their own wines, from Toscana and Piemonte respectively, along with a white prosciutto pizza and charcuterie.

Vallone di Cecione is a small family run organic farm outside Panzano in Chianti. They are proud to offer the canaiolo as a varietal wine. The canaiolo grape is otherwise known for giving a mellow, soft character to a blend, such as the classic Chianti wines. Vallone di Cecione let it ferment in cement to keep the primary fruit characteristics intact.

Canaiolo 2017 (Vallone di Cecione)

Light cherry red. Elegant aroma showing some evolution, with a touch of dried fruits, but also with cherry and herbs. Soft and round, medium acidity, but also some freshness, thanks to a slight touch of CO2. Decent length.

Cascina Ballarin is located in La Morra in the Barolo area. It was run by brothers Giorgio and Giovanni Viberti until 2022, and is now actually called Alberto Ballarin, after Giorgio’s son. They are practicing biodynamics and make the usual selection of wines from the region. This is their varietal dolcetto, based on 15-25 year old vines with an eastern orientation at 230 meters height. The wine is raised in stainless steel. No oak.

Dolcetto d`Alba 2021 (Cascina Ballarin/ Alberto Ballarin)

Ruby red. On the fruity side, with a ripe scent of raspberry, a touch of blackberry and white pepper. Soft and juicy with elegant tannins and a nice acidity.

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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

Saravá’s Skin Contact

Published 12. July 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

I have met Miguel Viseu and his wife Leli Dalla Costa several times at the Simplesmente Vinho fair. And I have also seen Miguel at Aphros, where he is winemaker. I tasted their whole range of inspiring wines earlier this year, and got the chance to re-taste two of them when they appeared in my local market. The label of this one reads only Saravá, but it’s the skin contact version, curtimenta in Portuguese, as opposed to the “normal” white loureiro.

The grapes are loureiro 70% and trajadura 30%, grown in the Lima valley. It had 5 months maceration on skins, mostly destemmed, with a short ageing in chestnut and clay.

Brazilian exclamation

Saravá 2022 (Galactic Wines)

Yellow colour. Aroma of citrus zest, white flowers and a mineral touch. Juicy looks the mouth, with a fresh acidity and a saline finish. A vibrant and balanced wine with careful skin contact.

Price: Medium

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Wine bars and restaurants and Wine of the Week

A Douro at Bar Douro

Published 5. July 2024 by Vidar Kenneth Johansen

Last Thursday I popped into the Bar Douro (London Bridge) and had a few Portuguese wines. One of them was Folias de Baco‘s irresistible pét nat.

But first, Bar Douro opened in 2016 with the aim of bringing a piece of the authentic Portugal to London. Four years later another opened in the City. Max, the owner, is in fact in the family of Churchill’s port, and he spent his childhood days in Portugal. The whole staff takes pride in its passion for the country.

Michael, general manager, in front of a blue and white tiled wall

I have met and visited winemaker Tiago Sampaio several times. He is located near Alijó, one of the coolest places in the Douro. It’s him who runs Folias de Baco, and the family also have a wine bar of that name in Porto. Search the blog for more.

This wine is made with the old method, in French “méthode ancestrale”, means it is bottled with some amount of residual sugar left in the wine, so it can continue fermenting and producing carbon dioxide (which creates the bubbles). The yeasts give the natural cloudiness.

Uivo Pt Nat Branco 2022 (Folias de Baco)

Pale yellow colour, cloudy with discrete bubbles. Aroma of white flowers, peach and grapefruit. Medium bodied, lively and energetic, with a fresh acidity and a saline touch.

Price: Low

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