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.