Vinosseur.com

Should a wine be tasted and judged on its own or with food?
I was out with a friend last night. A friend who happens to also be a wine importer of mainly US wines into Norway.
He had given me a bottle of wine to taste a few days earlier. A wine which some critics, outside Norway, give high marks to. I tasted it, and didn’t like it.  My feedback to him was that it smelled too much of yeast (as if the wine had too much stirring of the lees) and lacked that freshness I came to expect from the varietal in question.

On the palate, I also found the wine to be too thin and lacking acidity. Overall, a boring wine which I could not force myself to consume the entire bottle of.

His goal was to figure out what it was about the wine that i didn’t like.  He went on to say that I was supposed to enjoy the wine with Scallops. This got me thinking.
I am a firm believer that wine should be enjoyed with food. This being said, is it wrong to judge a wine solely on its own merits?
Personally, I feel that wine is best judged on its own, then paired with the proper food. Any good quality wine will work with food if the right dish is chosen. But a wine which I find to be of inferior quality, or that I just don’t like, that happens to work well with lets say scallops, isn’t a wine for me- even if the critics don’t always agree.

There are many critics who criticize food and service in restaurants all over the world. There are not enough critics however,  criticizing the presentation and service of wine in restaurants. Well, this is precisely what I am aiming to do with this short story:

I was extremely disappointed with wine service in a couple of  top restaurants on my last trip to Piemonte, Italy. Restaurants that have either earned a star in the Michelin Guide or consider themselves  “wine-oriented”.

Ristorante Piazza Duomo - La Piola

My first negative experience was in a 1 Michelin-stared restaurant in Alba, Ristorante Piazza Duomo – La Piola. When we arrived we were greeted promptly with an open door.  As we moved upstairs, there were 2 or 3 people helping us with our jackets and to our table.  Once we were seated, the server showed up with an aperitif menu, not a wine list, which we promptly asked for.  We were a group of 7 people, 6 of us were educated sommelier’s who work in the business.

amuse-bouche

Among the bottles we selected for our dinner  was a 2001 Giacomo Conterno Barolo Riserva Monfortino. The server was quick to confirm we had made a great selection and quickly pointed  to a table of 12 behind us where the wine maker  was actually seated!  We thought this was a great start to a fantastic evening!  We ordered the rest of the wines for the evening and asked that the Monfortino be decanted right away.  The amuse-bouche from the kitchen started to arrive, 6 dfferent ones in all! Everything  seemed to be going well.

amuse-bouche

The problems started just before our first course arrived, a suckling pig with cauliflower.  The 2006 Heymann-Löwenstein Riesling we ordered (unfortunately, there is an incredible lack of German Rieslings on wine lists in Italy) was opened a few meters away from us on a small work table that was wheeled over. The server never showed us the bottle (label) to confirm our selection before proceeding to open it. After the bottle was opened, the server came over to our host , and poured some in his glass.

Suckling pig

Our host had to make an effort and tilted his head to read the label to see if the correct wine was being poured. This was our first bad wine service experience of the evening.  Needless to say, the wine was great and paired well with the suckling pig, which was also great.

A full 20 minutes had now passed since we had ordered the wines and still the Monfortino had not been presented nor decanted as we had specifically asked. In fact, about an hour passed before our Monfortino was finally decanted;  once again without presentation to confirm our selection. Once opened, our wine was tasted by the “sommelier”.  After being decanted, the decanter was brought over to a shelf on the other side of the restaurant where other bottles of wine were placed until they were served to the guests.  The empty bottle was placed on our table for show.  The sommelier didn’t give us the opportunity to taste the wine at this point as I felt he should have.

2001 Monfortino

Cheese-filled Gnocchi with white truffle

We had two bottles of wine with our next course, the cheese-filled gnocchi with the seasonal and at this point of our trip, mandatory white truffles grated on top. The two bottles selected for this course was a 1979 Roagna Barbaresco (we found this bottle standing and covered in dust in the cellar of the restaurant we had dinner at the night before, which we gladly paid €70 for) and a 2006 Giovanni Almondo Roero (100% nebbiolo ) as a backup just in case the Roagna was over the hill and tired.

Here comes the next wine service disaster.  After letting our host sample the first splash of the Roagna, which brought a big smile to his face suggesting that the Roagna was in surprisingly intact condition,  the server then proceeded to pour the wine around the table for the rest of us. When the server got back to our host, she over poured this 30-year old wine into the glass along with the sediment, rendering his glass of wine almost undrinkable!  This is a 1 Michelin-starred restaurant in the center of the most prestigious wine region in Italy, with one of the top Barolo producers sitting just behind us, and a sommelier  who doesn’t know how to serve a 30-year old bottle of locally produced wine!

Although this was the last chance they had to show us their incompetence, they continued to show their incompetence to the table behind us where Mr. Conterno was seated. As you might have guessed, that table was enjoying some rather old and rare Conterno wines  dating back to a 1937 that  appeared to be in impeccable condition! This wine along with a bottle of 1964 were obviously full of sediment,  so the “sommelier” proceeded to decant the wines  through an ordinary bleach-white paper  towel  from the kitchen (NOT a cheese cloth) to filter the wine! We looked in disbelief, as did Mr. Conterno himself! As we stared over, the sommelier looked over at me and in Italian said “This is what you have to do with the old wines!”. I have never seen a wine filtered thru ordinary bleach-white kitchen paper before! The paper worked so inadequately, that the wine had difficulty passing through and therefore wine was wasted as he placed the still soaking paper towel in a small dish to the side..  Please look at the photo’s I managed to snap so you can understand what we were all in disbelief over..

We were so taken aback by this that we completely forgot about the excellent food and the glass of 2001 Monfortino we had in front of us! What a shame because the food was truly great and deserving of its Michelin Star.

Pork two ways: Served on red beet purée and fennel purée

The next night I had dinner alone at Ristorante Enoclub. The name suggested their expertise with wine. I enjoyed a glass of Dolcetto with the starter, a local veal tartare.  Before finishing the starter I ordered a glass of the 2003 Josetta Saffirio Barolo to enjoy with the main course, roasted rabbit. The server cleared my starter once I finished and over the next 10-15 minutes two different servers told me that my glass of Barolo was on its way. The restaurant was about a third full, and there were 3 servers working. Each of which was quickly passing my table continuously with their hands empty.

My main course of roasted rabbit was finally served. No glass of Barolo yet. I sat with my main course in front of me for no less than 10 minutes. I finally decided that I was going to stand up and leave. As I do, the server comes over immediately and says, your glass of wine is on its way! I told her it was too late as the rabbit had become cold. They said they would re-fire the rabbit. I told them that they needed to learn a bit about the service of wine, and politely asked for my bill for the first course and glass of wine so I could leave. They told me there was no need to pay if I was unsatisfied and so I walked out, unsatisfied.

My attitude may seem a bit extreme to some of you out there, and it probably is. Nobody ever told me years ago when  I started to study and work with wine, that I would become so picky about its service, that I would at times let it ruin my evening.

Oh well, I still enjoy my wine experiences 95% of the time, so I will be grateful for that!

Before I get to the the tasting note, I just want to start off by asking you to bare with me. I haven’t been posting as often as I would like because  I am still trying to figure out this WordPress thing. The posts on my site don’t show up the way I’d like them to. So, until I figure this out, please be patient with the placement of photos within my posts. Thank you. And without further delay:

Detail from the back label:
“….Barolo will naturally produce a sediment as it matures. Before Borgogno will export any of their mature wines, each bottle is decanted from this sediment, checked, and then topped up from the same vintage and recorked. For this reason the corks in the olders wines will be new, but the quality has been guaranteed by the producer before shipment. DECANTED: JULY 2007”

Opened and NOT decanted. Poured into large Burgundy glasses.

The wine was a light rusty red with rusty brown edges – color still quite “intense” considering the 47 year age of this wine

Sniffed immediately:

INITIAL IMPRESSION ON THE NOSE
slight farmyard scents with some crushed rose pedals
eucalyptus leaves
sour cherries
forest floor
some spice in the background
a little burn on the nostrils from the alcohol.

Tar and roast meat emerging on the nose after some time in the glass. Also
some licorice emerging – more perfumed and more intense fruit

INTITIAL IMPRESSION ON THE PALATE
sour cherries and dried sour fruit
gripping tannins (still after all these years) and
high acidity (still after all these years)
finish persisting for 15 to 20 seconds

15-30 minutes after the bottle was opened, the wine started really opening up – fruit was more intense on the nose and on the palate. Acidity more pronounced and tannins a bit softer, but still quite firm. The wine remained well-balance throughout.

A typical aged nebbiolo with classic nebbiolo nose and palate with well defined and firm tannins. Well made, good concentration and balance, but not very complex. I believe that this bottle still hade some life ahead of it – enjoy now or for another 5-10 years.

Although it’s always interesting to taste a mature wine, this wine didn’t leave me desiring more..

And now, the photos:

Colares DOC – An Ungrafted Sandy Oasis

I had the opportunity to taste a very unusual and interesting wine recently, a wine made from ungrafted, pre-phylloxera vines. Something that I have had the opportunity to taste only a handful of times in my life.

thewinedoctor.com

My colleague, on a recent trip to Portugal, brought back a 50cl bottle of wine from the Colares DOC. The Colares DOC sits along the Southwestern Atlantic Coast, Northwest of Lisbon.  The vineyards are situated on a sandy plateau where the vines must be planted deep into the clay subsoil below. Because of the sandy soil, the vines are free of Phylloxera and, therefore, have never been grafted to a different (American) rootstock. Colares is best known for its red wines, which are made primarily from the Ramisco grape (who’s vineyards are reduced to a measly 10 ha, or 100,000 square meters). The wines are generally tannic and full-bodied with spice like aromas that require considerable aging. (Information on the Colares DOC borrowed from epicurious.com’s Wine Dictionary)

The wine I had the opportunity to taste was produced by the Adega Regional  De Colares, and was 100% Ramisco. At first glance, the wine showed its almost 10 year old age, light in color with slight browning on the edges, reminding me somewhat of  an aged Nebbiolo. On the nose, it reminded me of the wines I have tasted from the Bairrada region made with the Baga grape. Scents of roses, (sour) cherries and some tar. The nose promised something special was awaiting my lips. On the palate, the wine’s fruit was “showing” significant age (or was it?) and was overpowered by its earthy tones and aggressive tannins (something I love by the way). Some oxidative notes were also there.  The finish was around 20-30 seconds. Interesting…

Vintage: 1999

My initial thoughts were that this wine was on the decline and the fruit faded. However, I paused and began to think. Maybe this is exactly what the wine is supposed to be like. Is this the way wines tasted in Europe before the devastating effects of the Phylloxera louse more than a century ago? Very rustic, earthy and tannic? Where was the “fresh” fruit we look for in today’s wines that help create balance? Is this the way this wine should be? Or, had it seen better days? I am afraid I don’t know the answer to this. From my research these wines need extensive ageing, so assuming this bottle was stored correctly (should I assume this?), then maybe this is the way wines used to be.  Maybe some of you out there have tasted a Colares DOC wine?

I suppose I should try and get my hands on a few more bottles to make my assessment, but since very few bottles make it out of Portugal’s Colares region, I may have to wait until I take a trip to Portugal!
(Check out TIME’s Rare Earth article from April of 2008 for more on Colares DOC)

Vintage: 1999

Jean Pierre Robinot is a wine grower in the Loire Valley. Here you can read about his organic farming and non-interventionalist wine making. Scroll down towards the bottom of the page to hear the sound of fermenting wine! (wine geeks will love this):

“About 7 minutes of soundtrack with the bubbling of fermenting wine after the cellar master opens the door with his big keys.”

Crude sound of fermenting wine

I hosted a successful wine tasting tonight at Altona. We had more than 25 interested guests. We tasted 6 wines. My overall impression is that, although I love young German Riesling, this vintage needs some time in the cellar. The first wine was a Grüner Silvaner (and the only non-riesling of the tasting) from Weingut Wittmann in the Rheinhessen and was quite open, fresh and good. The next four wines were quite closed and didn’t give much on the nose nor the palate. The last wine, the Fritz Haag, was open, approachable and extremely nice. I have a lot of confidence that this wine will age well over the next 20-30 years.  The Weiser-Künstler was quite reductive. The last four wines were decanted 15 minutes before.

Weingut Wittman Grüner Silvaner – Rheinhessen

Robert Weil Kiedricher Gräfenberg Riesling Kabinett Trocken – Rheingau

Battenfeld-Spanier Riesling “S” – Rheinhessen

Dr. Bürklin-Wolf Wachenheimer Böhlig PC Magnum – Pfalz

Weiser-Künstler Einkircher Ellergrub Riesling Kabinett – Mosel (about 70 grams residual sugar per liter; alcohol 7.5%)

Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer Sunnenuhr Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel – Mosel (about 145 grams of residual sugar per liter; alcohol 7.5%)

– vinosseur

As I was sitting on the bus today, unhealthy I started thinking about my upcoming wine trip to Piemonte in November. As I realized that this will be my second trip to Italy this year, cialis I began reflecting on my last trip at the end of July. That trip took me to an almost unknown wine region of Italy, Liguria, specifically to the Cinque Terre. So “insignificant” is Liguria in the Italian wine world, that it was barely mentioned in the two pages on “North Western Italy” in my 400+ page book “The World Atlas of Wine” by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson.

I noticed that in the Cinque Terre, the vineyards were situated in the most inhospitable, seemingly impossible to get to sites, making the Mosel in Germany seem “flat” (well, almost) by comparison. Small vineyards perched high up on extremely steep hills. And this got me thinking about the similarities between vineyard stress and the human stress factor related to working and making wine from these vineyards. The point that I would like to make is that, just like the stressed grape vine will generally produce better quality grapes, the “stressed” human working those vineyards will produce a better wine!

Grape vines, (the very organisms that produce the grapes that give us glorious wine), are after all nothing more than living and growing things. The vine’s only goal in life is to flourish. If the vineyard site has plenty of water, loads of nutrients and is sitting comfortably in an seemingly “ideal” site, the vine will be “happy” where it is and will concentrate most of its energy on vegetative growth and less energy on reproductive (grape) growth. If on the other hand, water is in short supply (perhaps the roots have to dig deeper down) and the soil is a little less than fertile, the vine will concentrate its energy on reproductive growth rather than on vegetative growth – in other words, the grapes. These grapes contain reproductive seeds. These grapes, and thus the seeds, are eaten by birds and other animals, excreted out someplace else, and left to take root in hopefully a new vineyard site with “better” soil and a more convenient water supply.

The point here is that, the easier the vine has it on its planted location, the more water and nutrients available to it, the less the need to have to “search out” a better location for it to take root, and the more “the vine” will prosper. On the other hand, if the vine is stressed, maybe the soil is less than fertile or perhaps water is a little harder to come by and has to be “rooted deep for”, the more the vine will “want” to search out a more hospitable site; perhaps a site with a better water supply or more fertile soil. To do this, the vine will place most of its energy into producing the juiciest, most beautiful grapes in order to attract birds and animals that will in turn eat the grapes and spread the seeds. The healthier the grapes, the greater the chances of them being eaten and taking root someplace else. Therefore, a stressed vineyard will normally produce better grapes, therefore a potentially better wine. This is the first and most important step in producing a good wine.

I feel that this scenario can also be applied to the vineyard owner. Vineyard owners, like the ones in the Cinque Terre, whose vineyards are perched high up on nearly impossible to reach slopes, will have to work a bit harder to pick those grapes to make the wine. This vineyard owner will have to have an immense will power and passion to work these vines and make wine. No machines here, just pure, hard labor by hand, translating to a hand-crafted wine where a lot of sweat, soul and some blood was shed to create. On the other hand, most large cooperatives normally plant their sites on flat, easy to work vineyard sites (with plenty of water and nutrients) that they can easily maneuver with machines in order to quickly make tons of machine “crafted” wines without much hard work, soul or passion.

To sum up, (these) vineyards located perched atop these most inhospitable of sites were stressed and so were the vineyard owners having to work them and make wine from them. It is therefore no surprise to me that many of the wines I tasted in the Cinque Terre were made in limited quantities and were on the average, very good indeed! The wines generally had a very good mineral character and great concentration, length and a fresh acidic backbone. The wine in the photo is an example of what I am referring to. This was a white wine made in limited numbers in a very traditional way – handpicked, skin-macerated, limited and hand numbered production! It felt “hand-crafted”.

I am glad to see today that more and more care is going into “making” wine   in a more traditional way, by hand, with lots of hard work and lots of passion. Better vineyard management skills and less invasive wine making in my opinion make a better wine. (It is my opinion that great wine is truly made in the vineyards. However, “making” wine must also include careful handling of the grapes after harvest, with just enough “intervention” to create a wine representative of its origin.)

Limited production Cinqueterre wine

Jean-Paul Brun