Pinot Blanc

If you hang around this industry long enough, you begin to see how trends happen; that is to say, you see things change, but you don't always understand the whys behind those changes.  Like, why did Pinot Blanc seem to get a demotion in Burgundy when fifty years ago it was clearly second best to Chardonnay.  Aligote now holds that position and plantings of Pinot Blanc in Burgundy have become rare indeed.  

Truth be known, we always thought Aligote was the better grape but in fairness, Pinot Blanc is very unoaked chard-like and a very versatile food-friendly wine in its own right.

We recently got in a case of Pinot Blanc from the historically reliable Boedecker Cellars of Willamette Valley, Oregon.  Boedecker says their wine has a honeysuckle nose with peaches, apricots, green apples, lemon curd, pear and minerality on the palate.  It carries a premium price tag but if it is as they acclaim, it may be a bargain.

As we said before, Pinot Blanc (Bianco) is a very versatile, all-purpose white like its sibling, Pinot Gris (Grigio), and like its paisano sibling, Italian Pinot Bianco is exceptional as a summertime pairing with seafood and salads.  This is garden variety pinot we're talking about.  In both northern Italy and Alsace, however, Pinot Blanc makes a richer white wine with ample fruity and floral aromas and flavors complemented by heady minerality.

We started this diatribe with a discussion of changes in this industry over time.  Here's a constant though.  Those everyday Euro pinots are still a bargain and the Alsatians and northern Italians are values at their price points.  And if the Boedecker is true to form, it may be a centerpiece.

Segura Viudas

Segura Viudas is Spanish Cava, the best buy in everyday-priced sparkling wine.  Stack it up up against any other country's bargain-priced sparklers and you won't find anything better.  AND you won't get a headache from it!

Cava hails from the Penedes region of Spain which is within the Catalunya region which includes Barcelona.  The traditional Cava grape composition includes Xarello, Macabeo and Parellada.  Xarello is the most flavorful of the three.  Parellada offers a crisp appliness and Macabeo is basically a neutral filler.  Together they seem to work just fine.

There is a difference between everyday Cava and Reservas.  The inexpensive stuff is citrusy, floral and fruity.  Reservas can show a nutty, creamy complexity.  The Heredad Reserva from Segura Viudas is most definitely of that creamy style and we recommend it highly.

The Heredad Segura Viudas brand was established in 1969.  The current winery was built at about the same time as the sparkling wine industry began in the 12th century.  Vineyard plantings were documented in 1156.  The winery building, which served many purposes through the centuries, was modernized in the 1950s when the Segura brothers bought the place.  In one of its early incarnations, the building was a military fort.

Segura Viudas was sold to The Frexienet Group in 1984.  To their credit, that mega-company has successfully maintained the quality since then.

Segura Viudas is now on our store shelves and if you like good bubbly, you really ought to pick up a bottle.

Alentejo

We recently tasted a couple of fine red dinner wines from Alentejo, Portugal, the largest of thirty-one DOCs in that country.  Portuguese wine law delineates three quality levels starting with Vinho Regional (VR) which is table wine with a regional identification.  One step higher would be IPR which doesn't easily translate into English but in practical usage, IPR wines seem to be on a track to become DOCs.  As the top quality level, DOCs are acclaimed wines that come from the thirty-one finest Portuguese wine regions.  

(Wine industry legalese is confounding in the same way legalese is always confounding in any usage; like, WTF!, Do we have to define everything ad nauseum and then apply that usage chapter and verse to a standard that the rank and file will never appreciate?  Well, yes, I guess we do, in order to ensure that those valued top shelf wines don't get bastardized by wine industry opportunists.)

Alentejo is the largest DOC of Portugal, owning a huge swath across the southern third of the country.  Eight subregions have been delineated in Alentejo and when a subregion's name is hyphenated on the label with Alentejo, each of them may have the DOC classification.  If a wine is just labeled Alentejo it may conceivably be an IPR or even relegated to VR status.  Confusing enough for you?

So why are we dwelling on Portuguese wine law when the post could actually go into what the great wines of the region are?  Fell into a rabbit hole, I guess.  Anyway, the reds are formidable hefty types while the whites are light and crisp and all are exceptional dinner wines (like all Europeans are.)  But there's trouble on the horizon in the form of climate change.  Alentejo is already hot and dry and if it keeps getting hotter all bets are off for not only the wine industry but also for Alentejo's other premier industry, cork.

The Rhone Rangers

The Cotes du Rhone is that sizable expanse south of Burgundy in eastern France which is home to some of the best Syrah/Grenache blends on the planet AND some of the best values in everyday versions.  As always, success breeds imitation and in the early 1980's several Paso Robles wineries came up with the Rhone Rangers name for their complementary efforts.   

Today the Rhone Rangers moniker has been adopted by like-minded winemakers across the country.  Our purpose here today is to introduce you to one of them, Beckmen Vineyards of Santa Ynez Valley in the southern Central Coast region of California.  We very successfully featured them at our December wine tasting.  Established as an AVA (American Viticultural Area) in 1983 during the Rhone Rangers early incarnation, Santa Ynez Valley is the largest AVA in Santa Barbara County and home to four smaller AVAs; Sta Rita Hills, Ballard Canyon, Los Olivos District and Happy Canyon.  

Beckmen was established in 1994 and has vineyards in the Los Olivos District and Ballard Canyon.  Both sites grow Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre grapes.  The twenty-five acre estate vineyard in Los Olivos also grows Cabernet Sauvignon and the 125 acre Purisma Mountain Ballard Canyon Vineyard also grows Counoise, another Rhone variety that adds acidity and pepperiness to a blend.

Sitting less than a hundred miles south of Paso Robles where the Rhone-style revolution began, Beckmen carries the torch very capably judging by our December 4th tasting results.  Since Rhone grapes like warmer weather, the future looks especially bright for Beckmen in sunny Santa Ynez Valley.

Cinsault

It's Nouveau Beaujolais season but that's not what we're writing about right now.  Instead we're looking at a kindred spirit, Cinsault (SAHN-so), which has a similarly light and lively character and like Beaujolais, you may even chill the wine and serve it in white wine glasses.  This is obviously not your over the top, big tannic red.  It's more like a less is more, pleasant, easy-drinking sipper.

Cinsault is a Cotes du Rhone variety that, when blended with Grenache and Carignan, collectively will soften a more formidable grape like Syrah or Cabernet Sauvignon.  It also adds floral and cherry-berry type aromas and flavors along with minerality and freshness.  It aromatically lifts a blend of more structured varieties.

An ancient variety that may have originated in the Herault region of southern France, Cinsault may actually go back to wherever the Phoenicians were sourcing their fruit in Eurasia.  But that's ancient history and on balance, it's the future that should interest Cinsault aficionados more.  It is heat tolerant with a natural benefit from dry environs so climate warming may work for this one.

Why this post subject now?  Because we just got in a case of Lubanzi Cinsault which proved to be a huge hit at a recent tasting.  Lubanzi is from South Africa and Cinsault it HUGE down there.  It's as prolific as Zinfandel in California  and provides half of the parentage of the signature wine of that country, Pinotage.

We're a little late for Thanksgiving dinner wine but do yourself a favor and find some time this season for some tasty Cinsault.  

Alsatian White Wines

Ninety percent of the wines of Alsace are whites.  That should tell us something.  You may figure either reds don't do well there or the whites of Alsace are so good, why bother with the reds.  For what it's worth, Pinot Noir makes up the bulk of the ten percent non-white grape composition and it's pretty ordinary.   

There are six notable white wine grapes allowed in Alsace.  By vineyard plantings they are Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Auxerrois, Sylvaner and Muscat (which is actually a couple of related varieties under that heading.)  By sales, Riesling ranks first followed by Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Blanc.  By critical acclaim, it's Gewurztraminer first, then Riesling followed by Pinot Gris.  What's my point here?  Actually, I don't know, since we've already said everything white from Alsace is great.

All varietally labelled wines in Alsace must be 100% of that variety.  The only blending allowed happens in Edelzwicker and Gentil, which are clearly second class citizens in Alsace.  All of the varietals are AOC recognized by French wine law.  The blends, as a rule, are vin de table.  But like we have said, by world standards, the blends are exceptional also.

The obvious question for this admittedly polemical post is, What makes Alsatian whites so good, and perhaps relatedly, Why are they labelled varietally when no other French appellation does that?  In short, that's because they are so true to type.  They are models for the rest of the world to imitate.  Their charm starts with their very aromatic character which the rest of the world has noticed.  Alsatian wines are ascendent in popularity while other French regions are in decline.

Alsatian Rieslings are always very dry.  The very popular Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer are a little less so.  Auxerrois is genetically the same as Chardonnay, coming from the same parentage, and since oak barrel aging is rare in Alsace, it tastes more pinot-like than what we think of in Chardonnay.  Unfortunately, as the neighboring German wines have gotten drier, in general, Alsatians seem to be getting less so.  

Want to really know why Alsatian whites are so good?  History.  And viticulture.  Alsace displays a diversity in soils, elevations, microclimates and so on and winemakers there have planted the different types accordingly.  They have taken advantage of the natural barrier to oceanic influence in the Vosge mountains to the west and of course, they have utilized the temperature moderating Rhine River influence to the east.  They have high trellising to maximize sun exposure and protect the vines from frost and since viticulture has been here since the entry of the Romans in the first century, the lengthy viticultural learning curve has panned out quite nicely.  In short: Alsatian winemakers just know how to make great white wine.   

Uruguayan Albarino

Uruguayan wines are flying under the radar right now but don't expect that to last.  Their flagship Tannat red has already been recognized for its world class status and now we want everyone to know about their Albarino (alba REEN yo) white.

In the store at this time we have FAAA! Albarino.  Yeah, FAAA! is the sorry name for the wine.  We can't do anything about that but the wine is a great example of Albarino.  Just to recap: Historically, Albarino is seafood wine from Rias Baixas on the Atlantic coast of Spain.  Over there it shows stone fruit, zippy acidity and salinity from the ocean influence.  In Uruguay it is recognized as that country's great white wine with a similar profile but perhaps even more complex and intense than the Spanish version.

FAAA! is from Canelones, the best of fifteen wine producing departments in Uruguay.  The soil is granite and schist yielding minerality and a creamy texture to wines.  Of the same latitude as South Africa and Australia, Uruguay has a similarly temperate maritime climate.

Tannat came to Uruguay with the earliest Basque and Italian immigrants in the 1870's.  It wasn't until 1954 that Albarino made it there.  The 180 small family wineries that make up the Uruguayan wine industry are mostly owned by several generations of the same families that started them, which is refreshing when contrasted with the mass-marketers of California.

Uruguayan wines enjoyed a forty percent increase in international sales in 2024.  They are now fourth over all in South American wine sales.  Uruguay also ranks first in several South American quality of life surveys so they must be doing a lot right down there.