Alsatian Whites

We've made no secret about our tastes in white wines.  We like 'em light, dry and minerally.  If it's summertime and seafood or salads are in the offing, Sauvignon Blanc is our go-to.  If we just want to taste a generally great example of a white wine other than Sauv Banc, we go to Alsace where we have yet to taste one that fails to impress.

There are ten white grape types allowed in Alsace.  For our purposes here we'll concern ourselves with the five biggies: Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Muscat and Auxxerrois.  The first four are considered to be noble types by the locals.  The Muscat name in Alsace is a little different in that it encompasses four different Muscat types.  Auxxerois is genetically the same as Chardonnay and produces a white wine in that vein.  While Muscat and Pinot Gris don't conjure up notions of nobility for us we'll defer to the Alsatians and their classification.  We feel, however,  Alsatian Riesling and Gewurz are bonafide stars within any white wine lineup.

Ninety percent of the wines of Alsace are white with about 60% of those being AOC varietals made from the noble types listed above.  Another four percent are varietals sourced from recognized Grand Cru vineyards.  Another fifteen percent are Cremant sparkling wines.  The rest are either blends of the notable grapes and/or lesser grapes and since the AOC (noble) types are the only types rated, all of these others are considered to be mere table wine.  Since Alsace makes 100% varietal wines, some of the table wine blends consist of the great types while others are of the lesser five types.  In general a Gentil is usually a blend of superior grapes; Edelzwickers are usually lower quality blends.

Alsace has an identity problem, by the way.  For much or its history it has been German including four stints in the last hundred fifty years.  While most French wine labels identify by place names, Alsace, like Germany, labels with varietal names.  In fact, Riesling and Gewurztraminer are German grape types and therein lies the problem.  The public sees the wines as German and generalizes about style and quality based on what they have tasted in the past.  Sweeter mass marketed German plonk doesn't begin to represent the nobility of dry Alsatian Riesling and Gewurztraminer.  Germany has now learned this from Alsace and is currently making drier wines.    

Malbec

Okay, so we've tackled this subject several times in the past.  Hang with me.  We've found a new angle on this one.

Black Cabra is one of the real bargains in Argentine Malbec at a mere $12.99/btl.  We thought we would post about it here only to find importer Vino del Sol really has nothing in the way of relevant information about the product.  Moreover, depending on the vintage, the  "estate bottling" on the label may refer to different estates in Argentina.  So while Black Cabra isn't winery-specific, to our way of thinking, we're fine with it as long as Vino del Sol maintains the quality it has.

So we pivoted to a quick study of the Malbec grape and learned a few things.  While the experts believe Malbec originated in Burgundy, Cahor in southwestern France is the current home for Malbec today.  Now popularly called Cot, in the Cahor AOC the grape produces an inky tannic dark purple version that contrasts with the more popular style from Argentina.  

Why is that?  It has to do with Malbec's vineyard problems in France where diseases like coulure, downy mildew and rot from frost inordinately affect the vines.  It has become so problematic that Bordeaux has largely replaced Malbec plantings with Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

So once again, why is Argentine Malbec so different from the French version?  It's because the Malbec vines in Argentina which date back to 1868 are not the same as what is currently in France.  Over time that clone of Malbec was in all likelihood ravaged by disease into extinction.

Tapiz Extra Brut Malbec Rose

We've gotten a lot of tips on great wines though the years from customers and vendors alike but never before have we gotten a good tip from a truck driver.  The fellow had just dropped off my order when in the middle of some small talk he drops a bomb - Tapiz Sparkling Rose was selling like hotcakes.  His truck was loaded with the stuff.  Everyone was ordering it.  So while this wasn't an actual product endorsement, it struck me as something worth pursuing.

Tapiz Malbec and Cabernet have been staples here for at least twenty years.  They are as good as any in the twenty dollar range but until now we didn't know about the sparkler.  After consulting with the salesman we added that one to the set on the next order.

Tapiz means tapestry (of terroir & innovation.)  The winery is a modern state of the art operation located in the celebrated Uco Valley in central Mendoza, Argentina.  The vineyards are amongst the highest in the world at 4,600 feet altitude.  The winemaking team is led by Jean Claude Berrouet who for forty-four years made the wines at Chateau Petrus, the most expensive wine in the world.

Tapiz Extra Brut Malbec Rose is a 100% varietal methode champenoise sparkler.  The wine color is bright pink; the aromas and flavors feature fresh and fruity cherry and strawberry.  Uco Valley vineyards are known for their diurnal temperature swing that creates berries that are both ripe yet balanced between sugar and acidity.  This wine is fermented in stainless steel at a low temperature followed by eight to ten months aging on the lees.  The finished product is "full bodied and concentrated yet elegant and balanced."  

Angelini Veneto Pinot Noir

Angelini was recommended to us as an example of type that surpasses in quality what we have come to expect in everyday priced pinot, which isn't saying much since these things are pretty disappointing as a category.  As an Italian IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) wine, the juice is sourced from an expanded region and made in the international style but still, according to our research, maintains Veneto appellation characteristics.  This begs the question - What are the typical characteristics of Veneto Pinot Noir?  Try as we might we couldn't find them.  Which probably means they are just playing off the prestige of the Veneto appellation name.  

Veneto, in northeast Italy, has been called "the engine of the Italian wine industry."  As tastes have become more sophisticated in the modern era, it has grown in importance.  Not only is it home to Soave, Prosecco, Valpolicella and Amarone; it has also assumed a heightened role in the production of what California might call "fighting varietals," those everyday wines that are a step above bulk quality.  And that is what we think we have in Angelini...except that's not really fair to our most reliable vendor who, when he says something is good, it just IS.

There may be more to recommend this wine if we consider the long winemaking history of the region.  As we have said here many times, the pinot family of grapes has an unstable genome resulting in a history of vineyard mutations across Europe.  Currently there are fifty clones of Pinot Noir in Europe.  While origins for the grape geographically are uncertain, most ampelographers would put it around the middle of the continent.  Evidence shows this grape to have been around for a couple thousand years which probably means it found its way to Veneto a very long time ago.  Who would doubt the abilities of Italian winemakers with that kind of time to find the right clone and get the winemaking right?  

Pinot Noir is the great red grape of the world if you have an extra hundred dollars or so for that kind of quality.  Descriptors for any European Pinot Noir worth its salt should include finesse, elegance and complexity.  We believe Angelini may have those qualities.  Give it a try!

The Paradigm Shift

The question we pose today is this: When did the historic "nose-taste-finish" model for wine structure morph into the now common fruit forward style of today.  Relatedly, with the ancillary jamminess that so often attends to this style; when did that supercede finesse and sculpture in the body of a wine.  Am I too deep in the weeds?  Let's clear out some underbrush.

The historic model for most wine appreciators starts with the nose, the aroma of the wine.  So much of tasting is done at the beginning, before even getting the stuff into your mouth.  It's a foretelling of the entire experience.  Tasting the wine then reveals a fuller breadth of flavors you anticipated in the nose.  And just like even lighter wines must have some body, even simpler wines must show some breadth of flavors and they must be complementary.  Are you with me so far?  Those flavors that so enticed you at the beginning should unfold into something greater in the mouth and then continue into an extended pleasant finish.

That is the historic model.

To our understanding, two things happened to accelerate the change to the California forward fruit style.  In the mid 1980's Kendall-Jackson emerged as a major player in the industry with their off-dry style Chardonnay.  Before that there was White Zinfandel, of course.  We have a sweet tooth in this country and with KJ's success, wines in general became more forward and a little less dry.  

The other factor goes back much further in history.  We're talking about jug wines.  For most of American wine industry history it was jugs of off-dry muddy red and white plonk that was the norm for what wine was in America.  The better quality wine industry was always there, but always only in the background.  In the 1960's estate producers of better wines began to get a toehold and continued to grow in popularity but, in all honesty, it was probably around 1990 before the jug business waned.  But the style persisted, less structure and more fruity flavors.  

Now here's a factor number three: The old model was European in origin.  This is America.  European-style sauces, stews and soups require a wininess of longer flavors that wrap around the complexity of the sauces.  We're a hamburger and steak culture and we consume a lower fat diet in general than the Europeans do.  So in that light it makes sense that we want a fatter wine. 

Thermal Amplitude

We've written about thermal amplitude in the past.  It's basically the same thing as the diurnal shift, the difference in temperature between daytime and nighttime.  The greater the temperature difference, the better the fruit.  Today's post was prompted by seeing the thermal amplitude wording on the back label of Puramun's Co-Fermented Malbec/Petite Verdot blend.  

Puramun is a prestigious label from Pepe Gallante of the Valle de Uco of Mendoza, Argentina.  For this wine the two grape types are hand harvested and then fermented together, a process they think brings out more of the great Malbec character.  The wine then sees twelve months in oak.

Valle de Uco is a special place within the larger special place of Mendoza, one of the truly great wine venues of the world.  Mendoza is the huge plateau in the middle of Argentina that has received financial investment from many of the greatest international wine companies.  It is a high altitude, sandy soil environment that has never seen the phylloxera problem other wine regions have been plagued with because of those conditions.  Apparently the plant louse behind the problem doesn't care for high altitude sandy soils.

The subject of thermal amplitude was clearly explained in a blogpost by APU Winery: Daytime photosynthesis creates energy and stores carbohydrates (glucose) while at the same time plant respiration converts nutrients from the soil into energy for internal cellular activities.  At nighttime when less energy is needed respiration slows with the colder temperatures.  The leftover energy from the daytime activities is then directed to the fruit which develops rich intense flavors, color and acidity.  If the daytime heat is sufficient, the grapes ripen faster, developing darker fruit flavors and thicker skins for desirable tannins. 

And there you have it.

Diatom Chardonnay

"Diatomaceous earth," she says when I introduce her to the wine, clearly something that stuck with her from prior reading.  She followed with, "It has to do with soil that was previously part of a seabed."  And that is essentially correct.  More specifically it involves all kinds of dead fossilized algae (diatoms) of all shapes and sizes that have been accumulating in certain locations worldwide over the course of a hundred fifty million years.  That onset, if you're keeping score, was in the Jurassic Period.  Prior to that there was some kind of bacteria that didn't require light to exist.  It was effectively killed off by the algae leaving really no trace of what it might have been.

Algae was a gamechanger in the history of the planet because, if you recall your high school science classes, algae is a plant and what do plants do?  Photosynthesis.  They convert light energy into chemical energy.  And how much photosynthesis can a little algae do?  Living algae, which may account for half of all organic matter in the oceans, actually do twenty-five to fifty percent of all photosynthesis in the world.  To state the obvious, this is huge.

The layer of dead algae on the bottom of the oceans may be a half mile thick.  Because of the currents at work around the world, those dead diatoms work themselves up to our soils in certain locations around the world, one of them being in Santa Barbara, California where Diatom Vineyards exists.  The Santa Barbara diatomaceous earth is a siliceous sedimentary rock that crumbles into a powder that has proven useful in winemaking.  It is an abrasive, like pumice, with tiny pores that both filter and polish a wine that is poured through it.

Diatom is the best California Chardonnay we have tasted in quite a while.  It is unoaked with no malolactic fermentation yet tastes rich.  Winemaker Greg Brewer uses low yield, perfectly ripe fruit from Santa Maria Valley to make this wine.  The nose features "fresh melon, key lime, and celery (!)"; the palate has "herbs and zesty citrus fruit."  Most critics scores Diatom Chardonnay in the mid-nineties.