Reign of Terroir

David Downie’s Terroir Guides, A New Standard

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:01:30 +0000

I am an an avid collector of travel guides. And the Baedeker series occupies pride of place on my crowded shelves. Begun in the early 18th century by Karl Baedeker, by 1900 this little red book could be found in the knapsacks of poets and statesmen, artists and perpetual tourists. Virtually all of Europe, her countries, regions and major cities, as well as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Canada and the United States were covered by frequently updated individuated editions. Written by hundreds of pens, the guides were quite democratic in nature, providing precise info on everything from thrifty to expensive lodgings, museum entrance fees, front row theater and balcony prices, and train fares in first class or coach. Capturing the spirit of Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘Good European’, even if rather bourgeois, the Baedeker guides offered dignified commentary on the Western World’s shared history and culture, a common language for understanding monumental architectural forms and art, all for the ennoblement of the traveler wishing to learn as much about distant peoples and places as about themselves.

Then the world lost its mind. Two world wars made many a European Baedeker guide into an instrument of espionage and invasion, and transformed the excursion of a living city into a tour of ruins. But to this reader more than a half century later, this is also Baedekers great strength, what gives the guides their enduring value. They offer once living testimony of a vanished world.

Now this may seem an odd way to introduce David Downie’s Terroir Guides, but I am convinced that his work, the patient, herculean task he has successfully completed in three healthy volumes, Rome, The Italian Riviera and Genoa, and most recently Burgundy, is deserving of a similar admiration. And this is why. Focussing on food and wine, his Terroir Guides are generous and rich acts of resistance to globalization and homogenization. As he dryly writes in The Italian Riviera and Genoa,

The Italian Riviera has many excellent, sophisticated and some internationally celebrated restaurants. Most are not included in this guidebook…. [W]hen the authenticity, regional tipicity, and simplicity of the cooking are outweighed by the restaurant’s decor or setting and, above all, when the bravura of chefs focuses on innovation, creative or international cooking, the establishment does not correspond to the spirit of terroir.”

More pointedly, in the Author’s Foreword to his superb Burgundy guide he writes,

“The aim of the Terroir Guides is not to simply aid readers in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, but rather to encourage their appreciation of a slower, more meditative lifestyle based on respect for the soil, the seasons, and deeply rooted cultures capable of producing not only great food and wine, but also a saner and more tolerant world view and way of life.”

What may be found in Mr. Downie’s work are guides to cuisines and winemaking squarely at odds with post-modernist agricultural and marketing trends. Again from the Burgundy intro:

“[T]he battles continue against standardized, adulterated food, factory farming, growth hormones, fresh raw milk versus UHT milk, GMOs, vegetable fats in chocolate, trans-fats, and many other related issues, including the spread of hyper-markets and big-box discounters.”

Here my comparison of his work to Baedeker becomes a bit clearer. On every page is expressed the love Mr. Downie feels for each of the regions in which he travels. Never a harsh note, he writes entirely in the affirmative. His detailed explorations are always quiet celebrations of a vibrant, living food and wine culture he finds tucked away in corners of even the smallest, most decrepit village. There is always hope. Of the Northern Burgundy town of Tonnerre he wonders

“…how, in the second half of the twentieth century, Tonnerre was allowed to implode. Seemingly half of the houses in the upper city are abandoned, many in ruins. [....] With much effort, inner-city Tonnerre will rebound.”

He goes on to describe those dedicated to the work of the town’s re-energizing. And this is the general tone of the Burgundy book: for every sign of ruin or globalizing triumph there are plenty of counter-examples. For every collection of fast food joints and super-markets overflowing with standardized products mentioned, he offers well-described wine bars, restaurants, wineries and open markets. Where might artisanal cheeses and olive oils be found? Where are the best vegetables sourced?

Each of his remarkable 400 plus page Terroir Guides, Rome, the Italian Riviera and Genoa, and Burgundy, are the deepest, most exhaustively researched examples of their kind. I do not believe they will be outdone anytime soon. Further, I insist that as comprehensive gustatory compendiums of these regions, they each stand as a grand still-life, a moment in time. Future explorations of these regions, when a balance sheet is drawn up of their fortunes, the endurance of their multiple terroirs, such explorations will, I believe, require a return to Mr. Downie’s texts as a kind of standard history. Like a Baedekers guide, we need an accurate source of practical information to understand where we are. Mr. Downie’s work provides exactly that.

I contacted the author with a few questions. Knowing full well he was not a ‘personality’, that he did not seek celebrity, I did not hold out much hope for an interview. Neither did I really want one. Of the many haunting charms of guide books is the mystery of authorship. But I tossed a few his way.

Admin What project are you currently working on? Apart from your literary efforts, are you thinking of writing about another wine region?

©Alison Harris

David Downie Right now I am trying to juggle the three Food Wine books–meaning promote them–and decide whether to undertake another. These are very long-term projects, and require a great deal of research, foot work, energy, and investment. If I do another, it might well be of a winegrowing region, though I cannot say which just yet (I am talking to my publisher about this). It might also be Paris, which does have a couple of vineyards. Mostly, Paris has many fine wine shops, and wine experts (winesellers and sommeliers).

My other projects are my recently published political thriller, set in Paris: Paris City of Night. It requires nursing; all books are hard to get airborne, but when you’re known as a food/wine and travel writer and you write a crime novel, the odds are entirely against you.

Lastly, in terms of books, I am trying to finish and find a home for a quirky book about hiking across Burgundy (and much of France) along ancient Roman roads and medieval pilgrimage routes. The book is titled HIT THE ROAD JACQUES. It includes some commentary on food and wine, including an unexpected revelation about French winemakers and their “special” relations with Mr. Parker. I don’t want to steal my own thunder.

Do you have an opinion on wine scores and ratings?

DD Having worked for some years two decades ago on the Gault-Millau guidebooks to France, Paris and Italy, and having lived in France for 25 years, I have developed an allergy to numerical scoring. The French are obsessed with it, because they are traumatized as school children by the 20/20 system (no one ever gets 20/20 in school). Wines are living things, and we are too (most of us). Wines change, we change, constantly. Change is not possible, it is inevitable. That is why ratings of any kind are so approximate and ultimately not very useful. Also, Mr. Parker’s ratings–and those of many reviewers–would not generally be my ratings. Taste is highly variable. I do not worship fat, fruit-forward, oaky wines, and I am a mono-variety man (though I do love some wines made with multiples).

Do you take tasting notes above and beyond those provided in your book?

DD See the above for background. I am possibly less organized than you think. I take notes, in notebooks, and usually I can’t find my notebooks, and if I do, I can’t find my notes in them (I am par-blind, which probably helps me as a taster, but makes life hell otherwise). I also scribble notes on brochures, on wine labels, and so forth. And I realize that a wine tasted at the winery may taste very different at home, or in a restaurant. Winemaking, wine appreciation, and wine education, to my mind, are an art or a craft, not a science. Science and technology have their place in the world of wine, but they are also proving dangerous–like tools handed to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. For me, when it comes to wine, the less “technique” the better. Romanee Conti has been making organic, un-technical wines for quite a spell, and people seem to like them. Many less trumpeted winemakers have too.

Are there wine books from any era, whether historical, popular or scientific, in or out of print, that you would recommend to the Burgundy enthusiast?

DD I will have to give that one a think. I am chaotic in my reading… most of my reference books (which I don’t always own, but borrow) are French…

What camera does the Food Wine series photographer, Alison Harris, use?

DD She has used/uses a variety of cameras. Now she uses a Canon professional digital camera with an EFS 17-55mm lens. By the way, here is her website, (and she is my wife, of many years now).

If you could be a tree, what tree would you be? JUST KIDDING!

DD Actually, I am happy to answer: a live oak. Drought-resistant, tough, a loner, but also happy to dip roots into a river, and stand among other oaks (and any other tree–all trees are lovely). In fact, if I could, I would chuck in everything I do and plant trees. The best photo of me ever taken shows me attempting to embrace an ancient chestnut, in Burgundy. I will attach it for your delectation. Burgundy has some of the world’s oldest and most beautiful chestnuts….

Thank you for your time.

DD Thank you for yours!
———-
For more information on this gentleman, please see this interview.
An additional review may be found on Mr. Downie’s website, as well as notice of his other writing efforts.
And this piece by Mr. Downie himself appearing today (3/09) in the Huffpost.

Admin

Greybeard’s Corner, February, 2010

Greybeard — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:02:02 +0000

Germany, Rhône Grapes and Indian wine all contribute to this month’s Corner post, but sadly, for the second month running, a natural disaster heads the wine news – this time the 8.8 magnitude earthquake which hit central Chile on 27th February.

The epicentre was north of Chile’s second city, Concepción, and hit the key wine regions of the Bio Bio, Itata and Maule Valleys.
Thankfully there have been no reports of loss of life or serious injuries from the wine industry, but there has been significant structural damage and loss of stock. So far estimates put the loss between 150 and 200 million litres of wine, approximately 12.5% of production and worth $250 million.

James Molesworth, the Wine Spectator’s Chile correspondent, immediately started to pass on news from his contacts on his twitter feed (@jmolesworth1) and since then has been the best source of Chilean wine information, with summary posts from 1st March and 3rd March on WineSpectator.com. There was also a moving first-hand blog post from Derek Mossman Knapp of the Garage Wine Co.
The Chilean Embassies in the US and UK are currently accepting bank donations for Earthquake relief efforts; in the US go to Embassy of Chile website while for the UK Jancis Robinson has posted details on her Purple Pages.

Elsewhere it was the newspaper wine writers making their own headlines with the rumour that author and born-again wino Jay McInerney will start a column in The Wall Street Journal from April. Dr Vino dropped the news first, but if true then it shows remarkable prescience from South African Agent Provocateur Neil Pendock who wrote his piece “Jay for the WSJ” back in December after the unexpected departure of Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher from the WSJ pages.
On the other side of the Atlantic Tim Atkin has now moved to The Times shortly after The Observer cut his weekly contribution – read his first Times piece here.

Back in my small northern corner of the UK the month started with a trip to Heidelberg in Germany. Although predominantly business, the visit got off to a good start with an evening meal accompanied by an enjoyable Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), the 2008 Fitz-Ritter from Pfalz, and the Alsace-style Schriesheim 2007 Baden Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir); however, the following two evenings were at a “Tapas” restaurant which only had Italian wine (I had beer) and a nearby Medieval theme-Castle where uninspiring white and red wine was poured from clay pots! I did manage to quickly locate the nearest wine shop, Weinhaus Fehser, where Marius Biskup was very helpful in helping me choose some less common examples to bring home; the Hans Winter 2008 Heidelberger Herrenberg Spätburgunder “S” was the most traditional, followed by Bernd Hummel’s 2005 Malscher Rotsteig Schwarzriesling (Pinot Meunier) and another Spätburgunder, but this time in the guise of Meyer-Nakel’s 2007 Illusion Eins, an Ahr Weissherbst (Blanc de Noir). I’m planning on using these as the core of a German presentation to my local tasting society next year (this year’s slots already being fully booked).

That leads us nicely into February’s NEWTS tasting, Rhône varieties from across the world. The presentation was given by was by Richard Whinney, who coincidentally, after many years in the wine business (including a spell at Oddbins), is currently Town clerk of Prudhoe where I live.
We started with two white grapes, Roussane and Viognier, where Australian challengers were up against the French – in both cases the Australians fared poorly. The brutish, petrol-nosed D’Arenberg 2008 Money Spider paled in comparison to the elegant and fruity La Nuit Blanche 2008 Cotes de Thongue by Domaine Sainte Rose, while Kangarilla Road’s pleasant 2007 Viognier didn’t stand a chance against the Pagus Luminis 2008 Condrieu by Louis Cheze (my first Condrieu) which had a lemon/orange citrus nose with a subtle and complex set of flavours. While I found it a little flat on the mid-palate it was clearly a quality wine which had most of the members enthusing – as it should at over £30 a bottle!
We moved onto the reds with another Australian, Barossa Valley’s 2007 Cigale GSM blend, a comfortable, easy drinking red with plenty of sweet fruit and soft tannins. California then put in a strong appearance with the Cline 2007 Small Berry Mourvèdre which had a strong, slightly medicinal nose, but was superbly balanced in the mouth with good texture and smooth tannins, hiding its 15% abv well – some in the room complained it was too well integrated!
The evening finished with Syrah and two powerful examples from Chile and France, both retailing at £20 (as did the Cline). Matetic’s 2007 EQ Syrah was a formidable wine but far too young, a little harsh at first with pronounced vanilla and a refreshing finish. Given a few more years (or a lot more decanting) this would be a satisfying “big” wine, but on the night Paul Jaboulet Aine’s Domaine de Thalabert 2005 Crozes Hermitage had everyone agreeing on its sophistication; smoky liquorice and bacon on the nose, herbal in the mouth with savoury acidity and a clean finish.

The end of February saw me on another trip, this time to India for a week. A hectic schedule meant little time for socialising so I only had one evening where I could try any local wines, all from the Nashik Valley wine region which is the heart of Indian viticulture and just Northeast of Mumbai (Bombay). Two Sauvignon Blancs provided direct comparison, with the tropical and creamy Nine Hills 2007 much better than the limp Sula 2008, although I’m not sure I’d go so far as to recommend the former. Two-thousand eight was not a great vintage for India so the Nine Hills 2008 Shiraz shouldn’t be regarded as an advert for the best the sub-continent has to offer, with a burnt nose and disjointed, jammy flavours. Unfortunately the best wines of the week were on the Emirates flight from Dubai to Chennai, where I had a crisp Wild Rock Marlborough 2008 Sauvignon Blanc and the light and fruity Torres 2008 Atrium Merlot from Penedès – India definitely has a way to go before its wines are going to be on show in the west as anything more than a curiosity.
As an aside to the visit notes I had planned on picking up some wine from the well-stocked Duty Free section in Dubai airport – on the flight over I had seen Château Musar 2001 Blanc for $15 a bottle. Unfortunately my return flight was late arriving and I had a mad dash to (just) get the gate for my connection, which meant I had to leave the Musar on the shelf.

So to the bookkeeping for February’s purchases and openings and by far the best wine of the month was the Villa Narcisa 2006 Verdejo, Fermentado en Barrica by Javier Sanz. This oaked Verdejo has started to take on an oxidative style over the last year with a full, oily mouthfeel and a strong burnt orange & tangerine component on the nose and taste. Some may consider it too unusual but I was intrigued by the complexity which I am more used to in a rich sherry or dessert wine rather than a dry white, so much so that I went out and purchased two more bottles from the local retailer, Spanish Spirit. At the other end of the pleasure spectrum was the Yealand’s Estate 2008 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. This wine prompted my article on Yealand’s green credentials last year on Reign of Terroir but unfortunately when it came to drinking it was so over the top with Sauvignon pungency that we couldn’t finish the bottle. I have no doubt that lovers of the full-frontal style of New Zealand Sauvignon would enjoy this wine, but I am not one of them – a supercharged Marlborough offering where more was definitely less!

I’ve already mentioned most of my purchases for the month (unusual Germans and Spanish Verdejos) so that only leaves the Felsner Gedersdorfer Moosburgerin 2008 Grüner Veltliner I picked up from Waitrose worthy of a comment. I feel I have neglected Austria in the last couple of years, especially as I have good memories of Grüner Veltliner, so I’m making an effort to buy more and the Felsner from Niederosterreich joins Willi Bründlmayer’s 2008 Kamptal bottling for The Wine Society which I purchased in January in the cellar. Who knows, I may even open one of them this year and let you know if my memories are accurate!

Looking forward to March and the onset of spring, I’m hoping I won’t be starting the next Corner post with more tales of woe from around the world. Until then, Slainte!

Greybeard

Examples of Private Label Art, Terceira Island, Azores

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:52:42 +0000

The volcanic islands of Graciosa, Pico, and Terceira, specifically the parish of Biscoitos, are the demarcated wine regions of the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago just over 900 miles from the mainland. Legally recognized in 1994, each area has, nevertheless, been producing wine for hundreds of years. The vines are grown in the near complete absence of soil and sheltered from the wind and salt water by walls of broken basalt painstakingly built over the centuries. The ’soils’, slowly in the process of creation (globally, depending upon a series of site-specific geo-physical processes, the generation of an inch of soil requires many thousands of years), may be broadly divided into two types: shattered, heavily fissured basalt and a slightly looser, sandy version, its additional material largely water runoff and wind transported. This is most strikingly revealed on Pico where the vineyards come within yards of the open Atlantic. Coaxing vines into healthy production in either matrix is nothing short of miraculous.

I will have much to say on another occasion about all of the above. For now I want only to touch on the narrow dimension of Biscoitos’ private bottle label art, this after a few preliminaries.

The agricultural center of Terceira, this small town is home to S.D.A.T., the Adega do Servico de Desenvolvimento Agrario de Terceira (the cellar of Agrarian Development Service), the wine-making cooperative where, upon deplaning at Lajes Airport, we were taken by winery representative, António Espínola.
Producing over 40,000 liters of wine per annum off of 60 hectares, the local economy of Biscoitos, the wine sector, took a severe hit in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 9/11. All the islands did. With new international airline regulations banning all liquid containers with volumes in excess of 4 oz. from being carried onto airplanes, the many thousands of tourists visiting Terceira each year went from purchasing multiple bottles of wine to buying just one now secured in checked baggage. Wine sales plummeted 50% throughout the archipelago and the sector has still not recovered. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the wines’ price points, as our soulless business language puts it. Indeed, given the extraordinary labor required to work with all the elements of the archipelago’s harsh terroir, it is stunning to see any Azores wine sold locally for as little as €10. With sinew and muscle, the farmer’s near indestructible will to go on restores to respectability the idea of hand-crafted, a notion rather limply exploited in American wine marketing, for example. Further, the oft-repeated promotional concept of how inexpensive are Portugal’s wines in general, fails miserably to grasp that it is rather a question of a sustainable price. No better example of this critical distinction may be found than on the Azores.

It has become more urgent than ever, especially in light of reduced tourist numbers in these sour economic times, to find a way to lessen the great downward pricing pressure and get the many fascinating wines of the Azores into the international market at a fair, sustainable price.

Like all the demarcated regions of the Azores, grape growing on Biscoitos is suffering from a generational shift. No longer willing to struggle for a living in the same way as their parents and grandparents have, the young are increasingly drawn to cities. To be sure, it is a pattern repeated in all agricultural sectors throughout the world. But in the Azores it is painfully evident, the abandoned vineyards immediately visible as overrun thatches of tangled flora. The disruption of traditional family practice is a very real threat to the long-term survival of this viticulture unique in all the world.

While at the cooperative, we were given precious insight into Biscoitos’ recent vinous history. Located within an older portion of the adega, António showed us what qualifies as their ‘wine library, a wall of honeycombed masonry (situated at the right in the photo). From the rough, abrasive chambers, an echo of the vineyards’ basaltic walls just outside, he pulled bottle after intriguing bottle of private wines, some made before the existence of the cooperative. As a tribute to the farmers and vintners of these mysterious verdelhos, the dominant white grape throughout the Azores, I will close this post with their simple, mute images.

(File size varies.)

Admin

Herding Cats, Day 2 in the Languedoc

Donna — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:10:12 +0000

Donna writes:

I don’t do well my first days arriving in Europe, preferring to take some down time to regulate my sleep pattern, be a vegetable and do local stuff with locals preferably in local bars, down local old side streets and alleys.

But Sud de France had a full day of vinous activities scheduled and I am always supportive of all the opportunities they plan out for us. After all I am their guest and to do otherwise would be rude. And I’m probably going to say it about 20 times throughout my Vinisud reporting, but this organization is so top notch, so well organized. Doing these events is like herding cats with keeping so many importers knee deep in wine producers and French hospitality.

So, Saturday morning after a fitful nights rest, I stumbled into the Mercure Centre breakfast room and slugged down two espressos and sauntered downstairs to see the group. And what a group we had. Previous times the most I’ve ever traveled with is about 20 people. We were now about 100, two full coaches worth from all over the world. This year I was with Japan, China, Germany, Canada, Russia, Mexico, UK, and representing the states was California, Washington State, Washington DC, Virginia, Hawaii, Arizona and Texas plus probably someone else I left out.

I found out later the US contingent, normally together was split this time as there were other things going around France with wine in different regions and I think scheduling and timing made it impossible to have us all together. I prefer I’m with all USA importers because we form working relationships with each other and our portfolios, but I was pretty jazzed to be around so many different nationalities and for the opportunity to see how the rest of the world selects and imports wine.

So we piled into the busses, lots of languages buzzing in the air and set off for Cite de la Vigne et du vin Gruissan which the direct translation is “City of the Vine and of the wine of Gruissan”. This is the INRA or French Agronomical Research Institute based in Gruissan, France and a living museum for wine.

Gruissan the town is a very old coastal resort. Reminds me a little of Catalina Island, well except it’s a really old settlement and has an 800 year old watch tower to protect nearby Narbonne and it’s down from the AOC of La Clape and it’s all so very lovely and French.

It’s a really neat place. Sort of a natural history museum but for all things vinous and they have test rows of all sorts of grapes grown in the region plus examples of all the different types of trellising used in the region and inside lots of interactive displays where you can see/feel/touch/smell the good and the bad of wine making. I have only seen it in winter and to see this museum/research facility while the vines are in leaf would be amazing.

This was my second trip there and can’t say when I snagged where we were going I was all that thrilled as it was not in the good side of my memory bank. Nearly a year ago on January 24, 2009 I was on another trip to Languedoc and was caught up in a terrible winter storm at Gruissan. We endured 100 mph winds, were moving trees out of the road to get our van through, once we got to Narbonne we had to run through the streets to the CIVL with trees crashing and wind slinging huge clay roof tiles at our heads. I had tucked into a bar I saw was open (I thought most sensible at the time) and the locals are telling me, while I’m looking at the poor TV satellite of a serious storm with a good sized eye in the middle all the while 100 year old trees across the square were being ripped up and completely totaling cars to the thickness of baguette, that it’s just the winter storms. Which of course I reply, I don’t know where you come from but where I come from, if its got 100 mile an hour sustained winds, and it’s got an eye, it’s a hurricane.

Needless to say I didn’t see much of it and didn’t realize its significance the first time I visited. Anyway, so, we arrive at the Cite and Sud de France gave us a presentation about what to expect the next few days at Vinisud. Plus a brief talk about the new VDP rules now to be IGP and at the mercy of Brussels? In my first entry about this trip, I said I would attend some seminars and unfortunately they were entirely in French and while I can understand a bit, it was over my head.

We had some fine talks from the Sud de France group. It was a bit chaotic during the presentation because some were presenting in French or English and it all had to be translated in various languages by interpreters following our group. Looking back at the videos it was quite funny at the verbal chaos. The highlight of the presentation was the very charming Matthew Stubbs, MW who was the wine buyer for Safeway and is now a proponent of the region and now is running a wine school in the Languedoc. He didn’t go specifically into the terroirs of the region, but highlighted the 10 reasons why Languedoc-Roussillon is the place to be for wine in this day and age for France. I have this presentation on video and once we are up and running with video, I’ll do a highlight of Matthew.

We then retired to lunch, with such a large group, I decided to wander outside first, something I was physically unable to do my first visit and look at what the Cite was all about. I have to say I really was impressed. It’s not a huge place, but they have rows after rows of test grapes. Unfortunately it’s February and the pruning has just begun, so I am staring at gnarled sticks in the dirt, but the whole site is so interesting.

At lunch I met the lovely Henri Cases, a vigneron and president of the Carcassonne wine growers association. I forget the proper name. He was taking the group next to Carcassonne to visit the medieval walled city. This place is so famous. It’s been a settlement in one form or another for the past 5000 years and features proximately with the holy grail stories and saga. It was famously forced to surrender by Simon de Montfort in the 1200’s. Upon our arrival to Carcassonne a rainbow fell onto the lower town and it was a perfect afternoon strolling around the battlements. Though I’ve been there a few times, I get away from the center with all the tourists and shops and meander around imagining all sorts of fairy tale princess and handsome knight scenarios in my tired head.

Then Henri gave us all in the group a lovely bottle of wine which was so appreciated and off we set by coach to Boutenac. On the way we encountered terrible accident where a car was turned upside down. Luckily the driver was okay and after a very well managed rescue by the local authorities we were only delayed 45 minutes.

We arrived at Le Chateau home of Syndicat de Cru Corbieres-Boutenac and before us were multiple tables of producers to show us their products. Still a bit stunned by the accident I sat around and people watched for a while. Tasting in big crowded groups is difficult for me. Besides the wine being good, it’s very important for me to develop a relationship with a producer and when it’s very crowded it’s next to impossible to get a feel for someone. Not that I pick bad wines, but if I had to choose between a good wine to sell where the producer is a jerk and a wine that wasn’t so good, but the producer was wonderful and fun, I have to go for the latter every time. The relationship is what gets you through the hard times and creates stories to tell in the good times.

Anyhow, Corbieres Boutenac is an AOC from the Corbieres region specific to the town of Boutenac. Small low lying appellation of about 1400 Ha (about 2800 acres). It’s got rolling rocky hills with a soil structure mainly of molasse. It has 18 private producers and 4 co-ops. In writing this I realize I need to go into some serious geek stuff for everyone which I’ll do later in this series.

This was a rough tasting for me. This was shocking as there were some pretty heavy hitters in the room. One quite famous wine everyone gushes about wasn’t so good and was very expensive. Would it appeal to the big California lover palate? Yes. Do I think 90% of wine drinkers could finish an entire glass? No. And it definitely was a meal on its own. So heavily extracted it reminded me more of prune juice than wine. It was seriously thick, just not in a good way. Anyway, I’m not here to name names of the bad, I’m here to highlight the good.

I did find one wine in the room I got excited about. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name (dork), and why it’s not written down I don’t know. Exhaustion is the only excuse I can think of. I’m making inquiries and I’ll let you know if I find it. It needs to be imported, and drunk, a lot. I think the retail price would have been about $21 which I think is an insane bargain. I’ll keep you posted and you guys do your bit by bugging your local merchants and together we’ll land this wine.

I then retired early into the dining area and scanned the room and chose a table at the back with a lone figure sitting at it, ask if the seat is taken next to her and was invited to sit. Engaging a conversation I am sitting with Lauren Buzzeo who covers Languedoc for Wine Enthusiast magazine. I have to say she was the trooper of the day and had flown in that day from the US and it was now 10pm at night and we were just sitting down to start eating. She was a real delight to talk with over a lovely dinner.

During dinner, a magician did slight of hand tricks for each table to keep us entertained and vignerons roamed talking about their products. It went well into the wee hours of the morning. We returned to the hotel around 1:30am and just as I staggered into the coach for the days events that morning, I staggered with half-shut eyes back into my hotel room, where after I got settled in the bed for a few hours sleep, my internal alarm clock woke me up. Ugh.

Donna

Synthetic Nitrogen and Soil Degradation

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:08:57 +0000

Soil science is a very complex, elegant discipline. And having everything to do with the feeding of the world’s hungry populations, it can also be highly contentious. Though not overtly political, rival research programs within soil science nevertheless often butt heads against one another. Witness, for example, the heated debates, still underway, over the consequences of the Green Revolution, a massive post-war transformation of agricultural technological practice that led to very significant, if short-term gains in the ability of developing nations to feed their populations. Though initially successful in Mexico and subsequently exported throughout the world, a look at the remains of that model today reveals a Mexico teetering on the edge of collapse, its agricultural sector further strained under NAFTA’s relentless weight.
Now, of course the reasons for Mexico’s economic and social troubles are as multiple as they are tangled, but it is undeniably true that the soil science, as understood mid-century, played a significant role in the optimism energizing the Green Revolution.

All will agree that the ’success’ of the Green Revolution relied a host of social and scientific technologies formerly limited to industrialized nations: the zealous use of broad spectrum pesticides, often without significant independent scientific review; the insistence on monoculture at the expense of indigenous polyculture, and biodiversity generally; a structural necessity of greater petrochemical inputs; irrigation projects resulting in both reallocation and massive new drafts on local water reserves; displacement of underperforming farming populations in favor of mechanization; the planting of hybrids at the expense of traditional varieties, hybrids the farmer needed to purchase each year. These were but a few of the technological requirements imposed upon developing nations in the post war era. The upshot is that food production, its promise, would eventually become an instrument of foreign policy. I will pass over in silence the profound environmental consequences.

More narrowly, on the matter of new hybrids, they were selected because of their higher yields. Higher yields require greater amounts of Nitrogen (N). In this way did heavy applications of synthetic N become the order of the day. I will limit the balance of my post to this topic alone.

Formerly farmers were limited in how much they could grow by the need to replace the N their crops removed from the soil. Even the gardener knows how important it is to grow cover crop, to hustle up manure from a local ranch, at the very least to turn the soil so as to incorporate seasonal plant waste. The basic tenant of organic farming is ‘feed the soil’. It is no different for the large scale operation, at least it wasn’t until the rise of the synthetic fertilizer industry many years ago. With the mass production of synthetic N it became possible to use this to supplement the seasonal reduction of N reserves, but now in a more limited combination with plant waste, green and other manures. Further, it has long been believed that with these appropriate Carbon, Potassium, Phosphorus etc. additions along with judicious applications of synthetic N, soil health, including ‘relevant’ microbial populations, could be maintained for the long haul. As Ron Jackson puts it in his industry standard text book, Wine Science,

“Until the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers, vineyard nitrogen supply was dependent primarily on the activity of free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil, nitrogen fixed by endosymbiotic bacteria in the nodules of legumes, and the addition of manure. Unlike other soil nutrients, nitrogen is not a component of the mineral makeup of the soil. Its availability, unlike that of potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium, is particularly dependent on the effect of seasonal factors, such as soil moisture, aeration, and temperature, and on how these factors affect the activity of soil microorganisms and cover crops. [....] The lower cost of urea and ammonia salts, combined with ammonia’s ready sorption to soil particles, generally makes it the preferred form of nitrogen fertilizer.”

And this approach is consistent with the broad research program of established soil science since the post-war era. But there is another parallel research program of similar historical pedigree. Often called organic, though well developed before its eviscerating codification in our era, it is properly explained, with an updated lexicon, by Peter Schmidt of the Delinat Institute.

“Just one cubic meter of good soil is home to nearly 60,000 species of microorganisms. They are all interconnected in the so called soil-food-web. All have different functions and maintain through their functional biodiversity the stability of the soil-plant-system. Each plant is symbiotically integrated in this very complex system. The plant offers to the microorganisms carbohydrates through their roots exudates and gets phosphates, nitrate, oligo-elements and water in exchange. The whole process is in an ingenious balance between give and take, fixating and releasing. If we intervene into this process with mineral fertilizers, the whole system gets out of balance as we favour some few species over others. It’s in fact a negative selection. As the plant gets easy fast food through the fertilizers it has no need to maintain the symbiosis with the microorganisms and it stops nourishing those microbes that usually fix nitrogen, carbon, phosphates and all the other aliments for the soil-food-web.

“And there is another point. Mineral fertilizers are salty which means that the most of the 1 billion microorganisms that one can find in 1 gram of good upper-soil dry up and die. Those that survive feed on the nitrate and ammonium of the fertilizers and on the carbon of the soil organic matter. The function of soil-food-web is surely as complex as the function of the brain, but it does not need magic to explain why nitrogen-fertilizers provoke the diminishing of soil carbon and the increase of greenhouse gases.

“To increase the functional biodiversity of agricultural systems is the most efficient and cheapest method for sustainable agriculture and resistance to climate change.”

It is by design that I select these two comments centering, as they do, on the question of synthetic N. There are other pressing distinctions between organic and industrial farming, and Mr. Jackson cannot fairly be said to be squarely in the latter camp. The point is that the organic community, broadly understood, has been historically critical of synthetic N; the industrial community broadly supportive. And for the past three score years this is where things have stood. Until now. Very important new research has recently appeared, research from within the university establishment itself. In a paper, titled Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizers Deplete Soil Nitrogen: A Global Dilemma For Sustainable Cereal Production [click on right sidebar link for free download] by R.L. Mulvaney, S.A. Khan, and T.R. Ellsworth of the University of Illinois, the evidence from a decades-long project shows, according to the fine gloss of the paper by Tom Phillpott writing for Grist:

“[T]he net effect of synthetic nitrogen use is to reduce soil’s organic matter content. Why? Because, they posit, nitrogen fertilizer stimulates soil microbes, which feast on organic matter. Over time, the impact of this enhanced microbial appetite outweighs the benefits of more crop residues.

“And their analysis gets more alarming. Synthetic nitrogen use, they argue, creates a kind of treadmill effect. As organic matter dissipates, soil’s ability to store organic nitrogen declines. A large amount of nitrogen then leaches away, fouling ground water in the form of nitrates, and entering the atmosphere as nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas with some 300 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide. In turn, with its ability to store organic nitrogen compromised, only one thing can help heavily fertilized farmland keep cranking out monster yields: more additions of synthetic N.

“The loss of organic matter has other ill effects, the researchers say. Injured soil becomes prone to compaction, which makes it vulnerable to runoff and erosion and limits the growth of stabilizing plant roots. Worse yet, soil has a harder time holding water, making it ever more reliant on irrigation. As water becomes scarcer, this consequence of widespread synthetic N use will become more and more challenging.”

I contacted the lead author, Prof. R.L Mulvaney, with supplemental questions specifically related to viticultural practice.

Admin Does the long-term degradation of soils with the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer also lead to other mineral deficiencies? I’m thinking of phosphorous, potassium, calcium, boron and manganese in particular.

Richard Mulvaney Yes, organic matter depletion will adversely affect numerous soil functions that impact nutrient availability. The most obvious effect is on the supply of mineralizable N, P, and S from organic sources, but most of the other nutrients are also affected. Because of its high cation-exchange capacity, organic matter plays an important role in holding Ca, Mg, and K in exchangeable forms that are protected against leaching, and has a similar effect in stabilizing the supply of micronutrients. There are important effects on the soil’s physical properties, such as water-holding capacity, aeration and drainage, structural stability, and resistance to erosion and compaction. Soils with ample organic matter provide a good rooting medium that promotes plant uptake of immobile nutrients such as P and K, and of course also water. Not surprisingly, the world’s most productive soils in such areas as the U.S. Corn Belt and the Ukraine are known for having a high organic matter content.

Would the accelerated loss of organic material associated with synthetic nitrogen play any role in increasing levels of salt in soils? I’m thinking of the Salinas Valley in California. Another question following upon the first: Would changing the soil profile exacerbate problems associated with salt water intrusion? And would additions of organic matter help slow the destructive effects of salt on crops?

RM By impeding drainage, a loss of organic matter would exacerbate salt accumulation through evapotranspiration. Depending on irrigation water quality, the salt buildup could reduce productivity and restrict cropping plans.

Do irrigation methods make a difference? Perhaps an obvious question, but I’m thinking of a perennial crop, such as wine grapes. Does drip irrigation, often the synthetic nitrogen delivery tech of choice for large and small scale grape growers, ultimately have a deleterious effect? With drip irrigation the vine root system is encouraged to remain near the soil surface. So I’m wondering for established vines, whether synthetic nitrogen fertilizer applications would, over the life of the vine, result in the selective degradation of it’s immediate soil, the few square feet the vine inhabits.

RM Drip irrigation is the most efficient option for supplying water, and would also increase nutrient uptake efficiency with lower fertilizer rates in close proximity to the rooting zone. Under these conditions, C depletion should be minimized by synthetic N fertilization. Without long-term data on drip irrigation, any further comment would be speculative.

What are your recommendations for the rehabilitation of degraded soils? I realize it varies from crop to crop. Corn is a heavy nitrogen feeder; wine grapes. less so. But given the recognition by a grower of a degraded farm soil, what steps might be taken to begin to re-establish soil health?

RM The Morrow Plots and other long-term experiments have shown that mixed legume rotations and the use of manure are conducive to soil C sequestration, as opposed to synthetic N fertilization for continuous grain production. The damage in the latter case will escalate if residues are harvested for ethanol production.

What is you opinion of biochar as a method of carbon sequestration in agricultural soils?

RM Biochar can be a valuable amendment for soils that are very low in organic matter, and has been particularly useful in managing tropical soils subject to deforestation and shifting agriculture. Soil C will be sequestered, and plant growth will benefit from deeper root penetration with improved soil structure, higher water-holding capacity, etc.

Thank you, Professor Mulvaney.

RM Thanks for your interest in our work on this topic. I hope these comments will be helpful.

—–

Apologies to the reader for the breezy, rapid presentation of such a complex issue. I will post additional remarks on this important topic in the coming weeks.

Admin

Tasting Dão Wines at Paço dos Cunhas de Santar

Admin, Ken Payton — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:56:05 +0000

It rarely happens in life that one enjoys a perfect day, a day of balance, when both the intellect and body are equally engaged, happiness and sadness, noise and silence in equilibrium; when one is free to reflect on past and present; a day one briefly glimpses what it might mean to be immortal; when one’s body is lightly transported between ancient and thoroughly modern frames of mind, all bracketed by a sun that rises and sets over a green world. Such was my first day in the Dåo, a wine region in the north-central of Portugal.

From a stay at the Pousada in Ourém, we three lucid dreamers, the brilliant Virgilio Loureiro, cinematographer Nuno Sá Pessoa Sequeira and yours truly, set out to visit the varied typologies of rock presses in Parada de Gonta, Prazias, Paraduço and Vale do Salqueiro (among others), some used until the 1950s. I shall save those extraordinary visions, there is no other word, for another post.

On this occasion I mean to parse the day into discreet, manageable episodes. The first shall be the lunch and wine tasting enjoyed at the solid tourist destination, Paço dos Cunhas de Santar, just outside of Viseu. From Casa de Santar’s Alminhas (little souls) vineyard, the site of the Vale do Salgueiro rock press, a portion of which had been broken to provide a foundation stone for a recent outbuilding, we drove to the estate, our group including our guide, Alberto Sampaio, winemakers Carlos Silva and Mario Rui Ferreira (a very interesting and energetic individual), among others.

Leaving recent political history aside, the provided literature describes Paço dos Cunhas de Santar like this:

Paço de Santar was built by order of D. Pedro da Cunha in 1609. A large ancient farmhouse has stood on this site for hundreds of years. It’s sole purpose was to produce olive oil, fruits and wine for the grand and prestigious Oporto markets. Today, Paço de Santar has 32 hectares of traditional Dão varieties and 5 z (sic) of olive trees.

It was opened to wine tourism in 2008. And its restaurant, open everyday, provided us a spectacular meal. Indeed, our elegant host, son of the Comte de Santar, winemaker Pedro Vasconcelos e Sousa, sat us down to the following menu.

To Start

Bread Toast of Mushrooms, Emulsion of Tomatoes and Cardamon

Main Course

Codfish in Maize Bread, Potatoes and “Migas da Beira”

Second Course

Roasted Goat, Rice of Mushrooms and Spinaches

Dessert

Cheese Serra da Estrela, “Requeijão” and Sweet Pumpkin

—–

During this beautiful repast we tasted and discussed many of the wines of the Dão. Below is the list, largely in the order sipped, and my brief thoughts, if warranted, about each.

2008 Cabriz Bruto, Quinta de Cabriz, a blend of Malvasia Fino and Cercial. Refreshing and light. My understanding is that this sparkler makes up 10% of their sales.
2008 Comdessa, Casa de Santar, 14% alc. This white wine had a full mouthfeel, a little heat, lightly acidic; its all new French oak was reserved. Almost a Viognier character.
2008 Paço dos Cunhas de Santar ‘Nature’. A ‘biologique’ wine -moving toward Biodynamic certification- it had soft, rounded tannins. Vanished in the back palate; a light oak influence.

2007 UDACA (União das Adegas Cooperativa da Região Demarcada do Dão) Touriga Nacional, 13% alc. Twelve months aging in mixed oak barrels. Light, fragrant bouquet, simple body, sweet, smoky, but short finish.
2007 Vinha Paz Reserva (Antonio Canto Moniz), Touriga Nacional; American and French oak. Sweet, full body, masive mid-palate, round tannins, very long finish- oak present.
2007 Quinta da Falorca, T-nac, Touriga Nacional, 14% alc. Gorgeous nose, full body, beautifully structured; no oak. Brilliant expression of Touriga. A truly world-class effort. (As a side note, after I had made my feelings about the wine known, I was approached by folks associated with the parent quinta. They explained that a certain Mark Squires, Robert Parker’s hit man inexplicably assigned to Portugal, gave T-nac an ‘89′. As silly as that is in itself, Mr. Squires also recommended that they grub up all their Touriga Nacional and replant with Cabernet Sauvignon. Truly terrible advice, a disservice to the grape and to the Dão patrimony.)

2003 Quinta das Roques. 13.5%. Touriga Nacional. Just a baby. Needs time. Very well structured.
2004 Quinta de Cabriz (Dão Sul), Escolha. 14% alc.
2004 Quinta da Falorca, Garrefeira, Old Vines 14.5% alc, Touriga Nacional, Alfrocheiro Preto and Tinta Roriz. Full mouthfeel, very firm tannins, rich mid-palate. Oak present, a little unbalanced, hot on the finish. Thoughtful wine.

Also served was the 2003 Quinta das Roques Reserve Blend. From the Pessegueiro (peach) vineyard. 13.5% alc. A seamless wine. From mid-palate to finish, a beautiful elaboration. Quite elegant.
2004 Conde, Casa de Santar 14% alc. Very elegant, balanced. Holds the alcohol well, rounded tannins. Good quality, if not particularly memorable.
1994 UDACA 12.5% alc. Touriga Nacional and other, unspecified grape varieties. Extremely satisfying. Very deep, rich and mysterious. I will be fortunate to taste this wine again someday.

I should also mention a 2009 Quinta da Falorca, Rosé of Touriga Nacional (not pictured). 13.5% alc. A little candified, but with good acid. I am especially fond of Tavel rosés. I have had quite a few. So, my palate would need to taste many more Portuguese examples of rosé before I could even hazard an opinion as to the quality. I will say that I did not find Quinta da Falorca’s effort compelling, mindful of the caveat above.
Lastly, we tried to enjoy a magnum of 1970 Dão Garrafeira out of Viseu. Produced by the Federacão dos Viticultores por Dão with the greatest hopes, sadly the wine was quite medicinal. Its day has passed.

We finished the lunch in very good spirits. Thanking our gracious host, we departed light-headed, with much work still remaining this day, about which more later. Resting with the setting sun, we would find our way to the restored 17th century Pousada Santa Marinha in Guimarães.

Update It has come to my attention that a couple of the wines mentioned above also made the reputable Sarah Ahmed’s list of Top 50 Wines of Portugal.

Admin

J’Arrive Vinisud!

Donna — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:27:26 +0000

The irrepressible Donna writes:

J’Arrive Vinisud!

Everyone who knows me, knows I love wines from the South of France. They are near and dear to me and I’m a firm believer it is the future of France as we see all the named and historically famous wines become prohibitedly expensive and disappear out of the hands of the regular wine drinker into the very wealthy and increasingly the Asian market.

Here you find amazing value to price ratios unlike most wine regions in the world, save for Spain, which is slowly creeping up and less the value it once was. Unfortunately as successful as the region is, there still is a wave of vine pull schemes which tug at my heart every time I see another report.

The Trade Office of France and Sud de France have very generously brought me to the Languedoc to experience Vinisud, the largest wine trade fair for wines from the Mediterranean. I have to give props to Marie-Helene Courade of the Houston France Consulate who never forgets how I love going on these trips, making fantastic connections and putting up with my indecision when making flight reservations. Also thanks to Sarah Nguyen the Director of the Wine and Spirits for the French embassy trade office in NYC,

The Sud de France organization gave us all a wonderful welcome gift with our itineraries plus small gifts and samples of regional foods. One really neat gift and excellent for quick reference in a fun way is a sampling of wine tubes. Each tube contains a sample of the different styles of wines from the region. The AOC’s are for each style are printed on the back of the tubes along with the authorized grapes of the regions. As a wine educator, I kinda feel like Martha Stewart when I say “It’s a good thing”.

There’s a very busy schedule at these events. Frequently there’s a different hotel every night in a different city, dinner until 1 am, back up at 6 am, on a bus by 8am, repacking every morning, bodies fatigued, palates broken down, livers distended no matter how much wine you spat out but the opportunity to be in an organized visit schedule to meet producers and potentially bring their products to the United States, is gold. This trip I am thankful to be stationed in one hotel and I was able to completely unpack my garment bag and take account of all the things I need which I forgot to pack, but I did remember my Dansko clogs and will decline competing with all the very fashionable French women so I can cover as much of Vinisud as possible instead of moaning about hurting toes.

In addition to all the wines from the South of France at Vinisud I understand there are some wines from Corsica (very excited), Italy and Greece to also be included. I also saw they have a blind tasting room which I’ll be sure to visit and find out what that is about to see how badly I can humiliate myself. For those of you wondering why I’m disparaging my decent palate, I’ll fill you in about two weeks what that’s about.

There is going to be about 12 Halls in total and I received the book on only Hall 1 which is about 350 wines. And looking at the map of the event, Hall 1 is one of the smallest. So potentially, looking at about 5,000 wines? It can’t be that many, although I was looking at the pictures from last years regular Languedoc trade tasting and yes it could be.

Here’s the video from the 2008 Vinisud to see how large this trade fair is.

There is so much to pack into 3 days. They are also doing 3 full days of conference programs. I have signed up for 3, including the International Federation of Wine Journalists and Writer’s roundtable and a course on the new quality labels which I just don’t understand why it’s been changed. I’ll let you know if I’m still cranky about the change after learning about it more from those who really know. I know I want to go to Ryan O’Connell’s presentation about using the internet as a marketing tool on the last conference on the last day. He gave me a shout out on Twitter and I want to see what this young gun and his family are doing to make their wines successful. First look at his website impressed me.

The schedule for February 20th tells me we’re going to Cite de la Vigne et du Vin Gruissan which is on the coast near La Clape and then Carcassonne in the afternoon and for the evening visiting Corbieres de Bourtenac.

Schedule for February 21st has me going to Montagnac then visiting area wineries and then dinner at the Restaurant Le Sequoia with wines from Perpignan hopefully including the famous vin doux naturels from the region. I understand 3 groups of importers are going to enjoying this even on 3 separate evenings and I’m thrilled to be included.

Then finally 3 days of the main event which I have no idea how I’m going to get it all in, plus hopefully do some interviews’ in the time allowed and then home. I still wonder if I turned my hair curler off before I left.

Donna

Dark and Delicious, Petite Sirah Among Friends

Admin, Ken Payton — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:34:55 +0000

Friday night’s Dark and Delicious, the annual celebration of Petite Sirah and food, brought a friend and me over seventy miles to attend. Through slow south bay traffic, we finally crossed the Bay Bridge and picked our way through the bleak, melancholic expanses of the Alameda Naval Station to the Rock Wall Wine Company, our destination. Darkness had fallen by the time we arrived, and we couldn’t help wondering after the choice of venue; that was until, turning a final corner, we gasped at an unobstructed view of San Francisco skyline just sparkling to life this temperate evening.

Perhaps 6:15 p.m., the building was already packed. Arousing, rich aromas and a slightly harsh white light spilled over a long line of souls waiting to enter. And excellent live music could be heard. I mean, very good music, a superb band, the name of which I will post shortly. Of the crowd, I could see the dress code was casual, but some were decked out in their finest, including my companion. Dior mingled with Levis. Thankfully, very few wore perfumes or colognes. (Nothing kills the ability to taste wine more efficiently than perfumes.)
All ages were present. I was pleased to see a great many young people in the mix, twenty-somethings mingling with mature professional men and women. I would estimate the average age of the crowd to have been around 40.

The room was divided into three sections, long rows lined with winery and restaurant offerings. These rows were capped by yet another row of servers at one end, and tables covered with Silent Auction opportunities at the other. Although each row was crowded with guests, they were well behaved and polite, quite unlike the slow motion brawl of a ZAP event, for example. Indeed, folks at Dark and Delicious had ample chance to chat with winemakers and chefs; and more so as the evening rolled on, when the live music ended and the Bee Gees, Michael Jackson and the Commodores hummed over the speakers. Then the rows furthered thinned, many folks preferring to dance. This was my opening to more leisurely taste the Petite Sirahs I had come for.

I tasted extensively, sampling (and spitting) nearly every wine. But I do not think it fair to write notes in such an environment. There is simply no way one can credibly claim to have properly thought a wine. For wine is not about tasting alone. Petite Sirah demands careful attention, so varied is its terroir expressions. It is simply too easy to get lost in its mystery, to ‘rate’ in a purely reactionary manner what one does not immediately understand. I have held my head in shame at many of my blogging colleagues who write in this manner. In fact, one of the most fascinating aspects of Petite Sirah is how dramatically it changes in the glass, how it responds to humidity, the ambient temperature, the salt air, and most importantly, food. In addition, the finished grape’s great aging potential, routinely under-estimated in the traditional literature (witness Jancis Robinson’s faint praise), makes patience a necessity whenever a new bottle is opened. The finest examples are rather thrilling contests between the all-too-human, childish demand for immediate gratification and the immense rewards granted adult patience. Who has not been disappointed when finishing a bottle only to find the final pour to be far more sublime than the first? Like a selfish lover, no one leaves the experience any happier.
Of course, the wine of any variety may be so designed as to be ready by the time it arrives from the market to the table. And a heavy dose of new oak on garish display Friday night may fool some drinkers, but not me. The Petites I like best are mysterious, mercurial yet balanced . Now, because of both the cautionary remarks above and out of an abundance of respect for winemakers, their labor, heartache and unique agricultural challenges, I shall mention only two wineries of very special merit, in my opinion.

First up is the Aver Family’s ‘06 Blessings. This wine made from 100% estate grown fruit, wowed me months ago and it continues to soar. Mr. Aver, learning of the Dark and Delicious event late last year, was wise enough to set aside the few bottles he brought last night. His ‘07 was not ready so he made the painful decision to bring the last of his very first Petite Sirah effort. It is especially pleasing to know the grapes are grown in the Santa Clara Valley. The august California winemaking history of the area is perhaps taking a huge step forward with this wine, retaking its place as an important growing region. Petite Sirah growers take note! And drinkers, get your name on their list. As a small producer, they will sell out easily each year, as the ‘06 Blessings already had months ago. Great juice.

Next is a producer I know absolutely nothing about, a new discovery: Marr Cellars Winery. I tasted were the ‘05 Cal. PS Alger Vineyards, Tehama County(!), the curious ‘06 Cuvée Patrick PS, also from Tehama County, and the ‘05 Shannon Ranch, Lake County PS. I met the winemaker, Bob Marr, and shall interview him later this month. The prices are very competitive for such quality, between $18 and $20. Very well-balanced and focussed, the fruit quite pure. The higher acidity and the restraint of oak flavors won me over.

Finally, it was a great a pleasure to meet for only the second the man whose historical family-owned Concannon Vineyard is the first to have released single bottlings of Petite Sirah way back in 1964, an eternity by California standards. Founded in 1883, Concannon has long carried the torch for this lovely grape. Tireless in his promotion of the grape, this picture of Jim Concannon, too, captures the spirit of Petite Sirah itself, at once youthful, spirited and wise. It was an honor to have again shaken the gentleman’s hand. Good work, sir!

Hats off for Jo Diaz!

Admin

Should Wineries Promote Green Practices?

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:18:08 +0000

A report just published by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication titled Americans’ Actions to Conserve Energy, Reduce Waste, and Limit Global Warming demonstrates the willingness of Americans to engage in a broad range of conservation practices even if they do not always follow through. Despite the recent body blows climate change science has suffered, it is clear from the report that the depth of America’s commitment to ‘green’ themes has only increased with time.

Conducted between the months of December, ‘09 and January of this year, 1001 Americans surveyed, 18 and over, readily agreed with the proposition that recycling at home, bicycling to work, using public transport, reducing energy use at home, among a few of the survey’s questions, were important personal pursuits and social values generally. However, the report also highlights the contrast between the motivation to act ‘green’ with the actual performance of the same. Now, what might prove of interest to the wine industry is that despite or perhaps because of shortcomings of the practical application of ‘green’ behavior of the surveyed, a large percentage indicated their willingness to reward companies perceived to engage in environmentally beneficial activities and to punish those companies perceived to be engaged in destructive behaviors.

From the report:

Consumer Behavior

Q201. Over the past 12 months, how many times have you rewarded companies that are taking steps to reduce global warming by buying their products?

2010 2008
Many times (6+) 4 5
Several times (4-5) 7 11
A few times (2-3) 17 22
Once 5 4
Never 68 58

Q202. Over the past 12 months, how many times have you punished companies that are opposing steps to reduce global warming by NOT buying their products?

2010 2008
Many times (6+) 5 7
Several times (4-5) 7 8
A few times (2-3) 13 14
Once 3 3
Never 72 69

Q203. Over the next 12 months, would you like to punish companies that are opposing steps to reduce global warming by NOT buying their products…

2010 2008
More frequently than you are now? 32 40
About the same as you are now? 58 53
Less frequently than you are now? 10 7

Q204. Over the next 12 months do you intend to buy the products of companies that are taking steps to reduce global warming…

2010 2008
More frequently than you are now? 34 40
About the same as you are now? 58 56
Less frequently than you are now? 8 4

Clearly, benefits may flow to a winery able to raise its ‘green’ profile. I have written about The Gort Cloud in precisely this connection. And Social Media, Facebook, for example, offers the winery an easy way to reach potential customers and other influencers. However, if we examine the otherwise excellent list of 50 Facebook update ideas for wineries from a recent post on the wine industry blog Fermentation, we find no mention is made of ‘green’ practices of any sort (as of this writing). I believe this to be an unreasonable oversight. I would strongly encourage wineries to add such a category to their Facebook update cycle as well as to their blogs, and any other public interface for that matter. It can do no harm, and may successfully tap into the incompletely realized personal ‘green’ ambitions of the American public.

2/18 Update. Please see the just released Drinks Business Green Awards for 2010.

Admin

Work In Progress

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:55:05 +0000

It has been a very busy time for the Reign of Terroir. Your intrepid admin has just returned from a very successful adventure in Portugal. And like the deep well on Pico Island pictured, I have much to offer. Primed with a 1001 tales of that extraordinary wine-producing country, from the Alentejo to the Azores, I shall soon begin the very pleasant work of recounting as many as I am able.
Not meaning to shirk my domestic responsibilities, I also have planned a series of stories about wine events in both California and Washington State. And I will post a number of interesting pieces from the environmental and technological fronts.

Below, in no particular order, is a partial list of work to come.

— Portugal

I shall return to the subject of Colares with insight into the life’s work of Paulo da Silva of the Adega Beira-mar and a look into the Adega Viuva Gomes, an impressive stop along the Bucelas, Carcavelos and Colares winer route.

Off to the Alentejo, I will take readers to the Sõa Cucufate ruins, one of the largest Roman villae in Iberia. It is but a short drive to Vila Alva and Vila de Frades, both centers of clay jar wine production, a technology of great antiquity. Also recounted will be a visit to adegas in Amareleja, also clay jar wine producers.

Next up will be a look at the ‘urban vineyards’ of Fazendas de Almeirim while on the way to Ourém and a tour of the Espite Valley with the gifted Andre Gomes Pereira, president of Vitiourém, an organization deeply dedicated to the preservation of the local wine culture.

Then it will be the startling rock presses of the Dão region which will be described. Used until the 1950s, I will attempt an explanation of their practical application. So too will I relate a brilliant wine tasting at Paço dos Cunhas de Santar where more than a dozen wines were offered over the course of a leisurely lunch of traditional foods beautifully prepared.

Have you been to the Etrurian-style vineyards of the Vinho Verde, Bastos and Amarante regions? I will try to explain why you simply must make it a travel destination. The region’s brilliant mastery of vertical space and its associated biodiversity, with vines over 12 feet high, deserves to be much more widely known.

How can so tormented a landscape, so harsh an environment, for people and vines, give rise to one of the most amazing wine cultures in all the world? The Azores is an archipelago of extreme contrasts, as are its vineyards, at once seemingly impossible yet very productive. How to get such profoundly unique wines into the markets of Europe and America? I will show, among other places, the Biscoitos Cooperative on Terceira Island, and on Pico Island I will explore the thriving Cooperativa Vitivinicola and other cultural treasures situated beneath the active Pico volcano.

—California and Washington

This Friday I will be attending a PS I Love You event, their celebrated Dark and Delicious.

And generously sent to me from L’Ecole No. 41 out of the Walla Walla Valley, Washington, there will appear my take on some of their wines.

These are but a few of the pieces begging to be written. Many more will follow in the fullness of time.

To work!

Admin

Greybeard’s Corner, January 2010

Greybeard — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:14:52 +0000

Ice and snow were to the fore in January and there wasn’t much warmth in the news either, with one event on January 12th overshadowing pretty much everything else last month. Since that tragic day there have been some heart-warming displays of generosity and the wine world has not been absent, with Decanter reporting on several initiatives including the online Wine for Haiti auction at Palate Press. One hopes that the generosity of the donors and bidders will be translated into efficient relief for those suffering unimaginable hardship.

Although the recession finally came to an end in the UK its effects were still being seen as the First Quench saga continued with news that the failed business owed drinks giant Diageo nearly £2m – although that paled into comparison to the nearly £14m owed to the UK Government in unpaid taxes. Slightly more hopeful was news that many of the 88 franchises are bidding to buy the stores they were running.

On the other side of the world Australia’s biggest grape buyer, Constellation, confirmed it was not renewing contracts of 300 South Australian growers in the next few years as part of downsizing efforts to combat the recession, while wine and health hit the headlines again when the World Cancer Research Fund called for drinking less alcohol to cut cancer risk – the research prompting calls for lower alcohol wines. Jeremy Laurance took a factual stance with some depressing statistics in The Independent, while Jonathan Ray was more realistic in The Telegraph.
Finally, poetic justice made an appearance as a French Sauvignon Blanc from Loire producer LaCheteau was banned in Australia for sounding to much like a New Zealand wine with its screwcap “Kiwi Cuvée”.

I managed two tastings in January, with the first at my monthly NEWTS meeting where Portugal was the focus with Paul Raven and Alan Holmes of PortoVino contrasting some of their new Reserva wines with the same estate’s standard offerings. We were told that Reserva in Portugal is not based on aging, as in Spain, but on quality (and often alcohol level) determined by committee judgement.
The Reservas did not fare well to begin with, with the citrus fresh Prova Regia preferred to its oaked Quinta da Romeira stable-mate, the Morgado de Santa Catherina Reserva – both made with the Arinto grape. 2 sets of reds followed from Alentejo and Estremadura, all acceptable drinkers (with the Reserva a little better overall) but nothing inspiring enough to detail until we moved to the Douro and a well made 2006 red blend from Quinta da Fronteira which everyone seemed to enjoy. When the 2007 Reserva was poured it was also popular, with extra complexity and a longer, fruity finish – however at £25 for the Reserva the £8.50 Tinto suddenly looked like the bargain of the night!

The final red was something of a luxury, as it is not available for retail in the UK and was given to PortoVino by the producer for special tastings only. This was the 2004 Icon d’Azamor, an Alicante Bouschet, Syrah, Touriga Franca blend from the Alentejo. I’ve enjoyed the standard Azamor wines before but this had one of the best noses I can recall with a mix of aromas, including sweet tobacco. It was very smooth to drink (all the more surprising as it was aged for 16 months in new French and American oak) although there were comments about not enough complexity and being a little one dimensional, and as the retail price in Portugal is about 50 Euros it was hard to recommend for value but I found it a gentle wine which caressed the palate, no faults and 4 stars (the nose was 5 stars!).
We finished the evening with a delicious 10 year old Tawny Port from Quinta da Romaniera which had a warming raisined richness to it that reminded me more of a 15-20 year old tawny – very good indeed.

The second tasting was a week later, and was hosted by The Wine Society in Newcastle. The theme of the night was “If you like that, try this…”; 10 bottles from a mainstream region or variety and then 10 of something unusual as a contrast and an attempt to move people outside their comfort zone. Given that I am a seasoned wine adventurer then some of the choices seemed a bit conservative, but I relished the chance to try some of the pairings starting with the Boizel Brut Champagne alongside the English Nyetimber 2003 Brut Classic. This was my first taste of Nyetimber, an English producer frequently in the news for its award winning wines, and it was a positive one; a full and creamy nose was very floral with none of the yeast, biscuit or bread aspects typical of Champagne – it was dry in the mouth with an elderflower and citrus zest and long finish, much more refreshing and interesting than the pleasant but quick finishing Boizet.

Other stars of the night were the subtly perfumed and bone dry Hatzidakis 2008 Santorini, showing lemon with a long finish, and Château de Beauregard 2007 Macon-Vergisson which had a strong honey nose continuing into the taste, good body and complexity. Stand-out reds were Hahn Estates 2006 Monterey Merlot – relatively subtle for a Californian with a deep fruity nose, creamy with some vanilla, balanced tannins and rich complexity – and the Warwick 2007 The First Lady from South Africa – a weird nose of Hungarian Pickled Vegetables was a minor detraction to an otherwise a delicious wine. As to the unusual, then the 2005 Tandem Syrah from Alain Graillot’s Moroccan winery showed well with nice balance (maybe a touch acidic) but was let down a touch by a rubbery nose.

Normally I’d not detail the wines that didn’t show well, but there were a couple I felt should have been so much better, such as the Crozes-Hermitage 2007 la Matiniere by Ferraton – much too lean and acidic – and I was also disappointed by the only red Burgundy on offer, the Societies St Aubin Rouge (Domain Henri Prudhon 2007), which was very light and over acidic.
All in all I felt it was a successful evening and, although it did get a bit crowded around some of the tables, was well hosted by the Wine Society’s John Granger and the two Sarah’s.

The Wine Society was also heavily involved in my January purchases as I took advantage of the £20 joining discount and placed my first ever order with them. Like a child in a candy store I’d read my way through their wine list (twice) before deciding on a mixed case of 9 wines befitting my eclectic tastes – so 9 countries and 9 separate blends came together; Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Lebanon, Portugal, France, England, Germany & Austria. I am most looking forward to the Catena 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, the L’Avenir 2005 Pinotage and the Henriques and Henriques 15 year old Bual Madeira – although the Hochar Pere et Fils 2002 is a safe bet as I’ve had it twice before and any Grüner Veltliner by Willi Bründlmayer should be good!
Other purchases during the month included two bottles of English white (including the excellent Chapel Down 2006 Bacchus Reserve) and Tim Adams 2008 Clare Valley Riesling to replace his deliciously rich 2005 which I finally opened after 3 years mellowing at home – a petrol-heavy, crisp and precise wine.

I’m not sure whether it was the aftermath of the New Year season but January had me opening some wonderful bottles along with that Riesling; the jam & chocolate Eos 2004 Petit Sirah, the sweet and salty Arnaud de Villeneuve 1982 Rivesaltes Ambre Hors d’Age (a delight with Marzipan), the fine-tannin Port-wannabe Domaine de La Maurelle 2003 Gigondas and the cream & berry Philipp Kuhn 2003 Kirschgarten Spätburgunder from Pfalz (my first “quality” German red).

The month drew to a close with Burn’s night on the 25th of January where some of South West Scotland’s finest Haggis was washed down with a very palatable New Zealand red, the Seven Canoes 2007 Syrah Viognier from Hawkes Bay, which was a pretty good match for the peppery offal and oat mixture.
I’ve neglected direct mention of the weather as most of you will have seen in the news how the UK was covered in a thick layer of snow for the beginning of the month. Apart from providing an easy method of chilling sparkling wine, the novelty value of the Arctic conditions wore off quickly once the holidays were over and the daily commute to work began anew. It seems that although January is over the winter continues with forecasts of more snow throughout February on both sides of the Atlantic, so stock up on warming reds and have a glass on me!

Greybeard

A Look Inside The Colares Cooperative

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:36:32 +0000

Presented here is a detailed look into a historic winery, the Adega Regional de Colares outside of Lisbon, Portugal. It is also the conclusion of my thorough interview with Colares enologist, Francisco Figueiredo. He was very generous with his time, spending more than two hours indulging my curiosity. I would encourage readers to, well, read the first two installments: The Vineyards of Colares, A National Patrimony At Risk and From The Vineyards To The Adega Regional de Colares. It is a strange twist of fate that well after thinking I should not soon pass this way again, in two days I shall in fact be returning to Portugal for more wine work. More details to come.

Admin You were bottling the other day? This is your machine?

Francisco Figueiredo Yes. It is a little messy in here because we just got forty pallets of bottles. We were bottling some of the red 2004 Colares. And this is our bottling machine.

I’ve seen these guys before. Is this Italian?

FF Yes. Many are. So are the crushers and de-stemmers. The press is French. We have, more or less, modern machines. We still have some work to do. We have some walls to paint. We laid down a new floor about two years ago. We have to go slow with the investments. We will repair the roof and the walls soon, I hope.

These are the old lagares where the grapes used to be crushed and pressed. And part of the reds were fermented here. We don’t use the lagares anymore.

Does anyone still use lagares?

FF Yes. In the Douro Valley there are places where they still use them. And some of our own growers, they also do their own wine at home, they use them… Here are the old cement vats, fermenters also. We don’t use them anymore, either. And here is an old centrifugal crusher. And our new one. We use a pneumatic press for our wines. We also have two hydraulic vertical presses over there which we can use if we have a problem with the pneumatic press. And we have a machine to fill the ‘bag-in-box’. We use that type of package for our table wines. They are the boxes with the small tap. We use vacuum filling. The wine stays good for quite some time. And that is now our substitute for the glass jug. We are getting good sales from using the bag-in-box system.

So we ferment in temperature controlled stainless steel. Some of the red, because we don’t have enough room in the stainless steel, we still use those big wood vats over there. We call them ânforas; we still use them for some of the table wine. Of course, we have no temperature control with them. An interesting fact about those is that, as you know, for our steel vats we have to use the pump to circulate the juice, from the bottom to the top, to pump over to get the color out. But in the wooden ânfora, the process is done naturally because the carbonic gas pressure that builds inside is enough to push the wine to the top; and it fills that cup on the top so that the pomace always stays beneath the wine. We can do this without the use of pumps or electricity, just the carbonic gas pressure which build up naturally during fermentation. I have not seen these anywhere else in the world. The system is the same for the cement vats called ânfora Argelina, but I have never seen wooden ones.

Where did these come from?

FF They were built here. The wood is Portuguese Chestnut. Each takes ten tons of grapes. And later we then bring over the pneumatic pump and open a small door to take the pomace to the press. This has a tube inside. The cup on top has a hole, in the center, so the wine goes up, fills the cup, and the wine then drains back on top of the pomace.

It’s like a giant coffee percolator!

FF (laughs) Yes. Almost exactly like a coffee percolator. This is the same system as the traditional cement that appeared in the ’60s.

May I climb up?

FF Yes. As long as you are not afraid of heights!

We climb up a narrow ladder.

FF You can see the tube. This is really spectacular to see during fermentation because the cup is filled with wine and it bubbles! It is a pretty sight.

The doors are very small. How do you clean out the interior?

FF We go inside. Someone has to go inside to remove all of the pomace. We put a ventilator up here and let the vat breathe for some time because of the danger of suffocation. In fact, four people have died in Portugal during this harvest time because of carbonic gas. They die without knowing it. We are very careful about that. For cleaning we have a special device that sprays hot water. But it is very difficult to be 100% sure that it is perfectly clean. It is wood, after all.

But we don’t have a problem with Brettanomyces because our wine has a low pH. And we don’t have a lot of sugar in the wine. We produce dry wines, around 12% alcohol. All the sugar is consumed by the yeast. So it is not easy for Brett. The main problem for us is not having temperature control here; not the wood but the temperature control. The wine can heat up quite a bit, around 40 degrees celsius.

Really?

FF Yes. That is high enough for the wine to lose a lot of the aroma. The tube, by the way, is connected to the crusher so that the grapes come through here. We use two or three of these vats or ânfora, each year.

Whose initials are these, JVN? The maker?

FF That means Junta Nacional do Vinhos, the National Wine Institute [founded in 1937]. Since the fifties, until 1994, this cooperative was a kind of hybrid organism; it was half cooperative, half was intervention by the state, the agricultural minister. Because of that all of the wine had to be made here in order to use the Colares DOC. That is no longer the case.

And what are these tools?

FF We don’t use them any longer, but they are for pushing down the cap. They were used if we didn’t put in a full 10 tons of grapes inside the ânfora. With less grapes inside, the carbonic gas would not be enough to push the wine out of the top. These forks would be used to push the pomace, the cap, down to mix with the wine. We now use a pump for that if it becomes a problem.

These are beautiful. I trust they will eventually end up in a museum.

FF Yes, yes. Some of them already are. And they are not permitted for use these days. They are made of wood and iron. What was done at the time was to paint, to use special paints to protect the iron parts in the tools and machines. Now it is all stainless steel. But every year all of the old tools had to be painted with the special paint that protected the iron from contact with the wine.

We climb down the stairs.

So, to be clear, someone has to climb into the anfora from the top…

FF Yes, yes. You go up to the cup and climb in from there using a ladder. The center tube is pulled out and someone goes down.

Do you ever have any cork issues?

FF No. We use only corks. I have never received cork taint complaint. Never. I will always choose cork.

I agree with you completely.

FF Would you like to taste some of the wines?

Of course! You know, I have a odd thing to ask. Being from America, we like to collect hats or shirts of the places we’ve visited. I’m looking for something with the name ‘Colares’ on it. Do you know where I can find such a thing? A rather silly idea!

FF No. But it is not a silly idea. It is an idea I have given to the directors. Why not a polo shirt or something? Even for the workers!

Not to mention Gonçalo, the winegrower we spoke with earlier. He wasn’t even wearing a hat!

Francisco laughs while getting two tasting glasses.

It must be very satisfying work for you. You’re doing so many things at the same time; preserving a way of life, preserving a wine culture, preserving memory…

FF Yes. It is all very important. I am also afraid that things might not go well in the future. The vines are in danger. That’s the only thing that I regret.

He uses a thief to draw a barrel sample. This is the white Malvasia, sandy soil, 2008. We will bottle it probably in a couple of weeks. [Late November.] Malvasia has a very citric, very minerally, acidic taste, and an almost salty taste, I notice. It also has an oxidative character; I think of hay or honey.

Very oceanic… very bright and fresh. How is the water quality here?

FF We analyze it inside our HACCP plant: ‘Hazard Analyses and Critical Control Points’. (laughs) There is some paperwork that we have to do. We have to analyze the water. It is good.

That’s one helluva name. So when you’re doing bottling session how many people would normally be here?

FF Working? Around four. We do it with a small crew to get into the rhythm. We can do about 1000 to 1200 bottles an hour. That is a good speed for a machine like ours. One guy puts the bottle on the carousal, another one taking it off and putting in the cork, another one carrying the bottles, another stacking the bottles. It would be quicker if we had one of those pallet movers, but we don’t have one yet.

Do you use wild yeasts?

FF No. We inoculate. The reason is that I had some experiences making the wine with natural yeasts, the wild yeasts, but I had some problems with starting the fermentation. It is too risky for me to risk that when I do 7000 liters of Ramisco or 2500 liters of Malvasia. But I did make an experiment. It is a question of trying to select a natural yeast from the area; that would be a project that I would like to do.

So you have experimented…

FF Yes, with several yeasts. For the whites we use a Portuguese yeast; it was selected in the Vinho Verde region, in the north of Portugal.

How was it done historically?

FF Naturally. But the big difference is that it would have been in an open lagar. That makes a lot of difference from using the closed stainless steel vats. I have made wine at my parents home using, not a granite lagar, but a small plastic lagar, more or less; and I had no problem starting the fermentation. Sometimes we have a problem with it stopping!

It can stop at 12% ?

FF Yes, before the sugar is depleted. That is a risk for the wine. But the main problem is fermentation within a closed tank. That’s when it becomes difficult. We would probably have no problem if I did the Ramisco in the lagar.
Francisco draws a second wine.

Have there ever been experiments done with fortified wines in Colares?

FF No. Just for the workers. I have done one this year. (laughs) We call it jeropiga or Abafado. I have taken the juice out of the tank before fermentation started and added our wine distillate. I made five liters last year. We give a small bottle for each of the workers. It is for drinking now. We have a tradition of drinking it during Saint Martin’s Day, the 11th of November. That day it is traditional to release the young wine for the first time; and you also drink abafado. An abafado is when the fermentation has started a little bit, like a Port, it is the same. Port is a special type of abafado. We add the spirits before the fermentation has started. One is usually a little bit sweeter than the other.

He pours the second wine.
FF This is the Ramisco. This has been in the big wood vats for around two years. Then it was put into these oak barrels. This is not young oak. It is three year-old oak. Our Ramisco wine doesn’t go well with new oak. It is too strong for our wine. So we use a two to three year-old barrel. What we are doing now is three years in the big exotic barrels in the other room [another part of the adega] and one year in the small oak barrels. We now see that this is the best for the wine.

How warm does it get in the other room?

FF This room is much hotter than the other. Even during the summertime the other room only gets to 16, maybe 20 degrees celsius. Here, no.
We drink the Ramisco. This Ramisco is regional because it has not yet been certified. It becomes DOC only after certification. Before that it is regional. Six months before bottling we have to send the wine to a certification board and they will certify the wine as DOC.

What does certification involve? And who is on the panel?

FF It involves a chemical analysis and a tasting. The panel is made up of one representative of the city, there are the persons who represent the associations and cooperatives of the Estremadura region, and then there are representatives of the producers. The panel or board has about 15 people.

What wine do you use for topping off?

FF We use the same wine held in a different vat. We can mix a maximum of 10% of different years of Ramisco. If we have the need we can do that, to play with the volumes. When you use new oak, and I’ve this experience in other places, you often have to use 15%. The Australians usually don’t top. They put the barrel on its side and leave it there for a only a few months. They probably do that in California as well.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think of wine ratings, and wine descriptions, the tasting notes?

FF They are very exaggerated. Wine is simpler than that. I think that is the beauty of wine. Sometimes a wine smell like something, but the critics exaggerate. Sometimes the wine smells like something tangible, but….

We exit the adega and make our way to his car where I retrieve my personal effects.

What do you have here in the back of your car?

FF My mother-in-law sent this to my mother. It is a basket of walnuts and some chestnuts, and a bottle of jeropiga! (laughs) It is my mother-in-law’s present to my mother.

Thank you very much, Francisco. This has been an eye-opening visit.

FF It was a pleasure, Ken. Let me give you some wine before you go.

Does the adega keep a wine library?

FF Yes. Since 1931, the first harvest in the year of the foundation of the cooperative; the first wine we made.

Back to 1931? My goodness. So what is next for you, your next series of tasks?

FF We will bottle a few things. We always have a busy commercial time at Christmas. After that, in January, we usually transfer the young wines to the wood vats, take the lees out. Then we continue to bottle if we have the need. And I start in the springtime I get out of the cellar to give technical support to the vineyards. And then the cycle begins again!

Admin

Morgan’s Halfway House For Wannabe Winemakers, pt. 2

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:14:17 +0000

The title for this second and concluding part of my interview with Morgan Clendenen, owner and winemaker for Cold Heaven Cellars, comes during her detailed discussion of the very real practicalities of farming grapes. Make no mistake. It is fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. Not that there is much anyone can do about it. She holds farmers in the highest regard. They are different. They know what is within their abilities. Indeed, having learned her lessons well, Morgan approaches winemaking with a kind of dispassionate Eastern quietism, an attitude she will patiently encourage, well, wannabe winemakers to adopt. It is all about a clear understanding of what is within one’s power, one’s control, and what powers properly belong to the world. Small miracles and potential disaster struggle for ascendance in the brain.

This attitude is equally important to cultivate in the winery. After making wine for more than a decade, three truths have emerged for Morgan Clendenen: Do not hesitate to do what you must to save a vintage; there is always more to learn; and winemaking is not for whiners.

Part 1.

Admin Could you say a little more about your earlier Pinot effort?

Morgan Clendenen I haven’t made one since 2002. In 2003 I was getting all of my Pinot from Au Bon Climat and we lost our entire crop that year. That’s when I started making Syrah. The 2008 and 2009 are the first Pinots since then. I love Syrah when it is from a great vineyard. So many people do Syrah, and Syrah usually is not something I reach for. My 2005, I’m absolutely in love with this wine, but it has a Pinot Noiresque quality to it. That’s probably why I love it so much!

Yes. Syrah has fallen on hard times here in California. I like Northern Rhone expressions in any case…

MC Syrah is a real tough road here. The only thing I’ll say is that my Syrahs tend to stand out, away from the group, not being so ubiquitous, because we do two years barrel, two years bottle before release. I come from…, I was raised raised in the house of Au Bon Climat cuvée; the acidity and restraint are definitely a number of the building blocks of my wine education for winemaking.

Yes. Would you say a bit about ‘green’ practices on the property itself? The vineyards? Do you have certain standards, certain requirements?

MC Not directly, because I don’t own the vineyards. Sanford and Benedict was for a period of time organically farmed. I have issues with some of the organic farming. I find that there is a lot more ‘product’ on the grapes themselves than some of the people who farm non-organically. I see more product! And I just can’t help but wonder how much of that is getting into the wine, and how that makes it ultimately ‘better’.

What do you mean by ‘product’?

MC Well, there are a lot of organic compounds that they use in spraying vineyards. I don’t know. I’m not vineyard manager or viticulturist. I make wine. So I really can’t tell you those kinds of things. I know that Le Bon Climat is farmed organically, and I will tell you that they are the ugliest damn grapes I get. (laughs) They are! We have a motto in the winery: “Ugly grapes make great wine.” (laughs)

And I had some ugly Pinot Noir this year and I had some beautiful Pinot Noir, and I have to tell you, the beautiful Pinot Noir tastes beautiful! The ugly is o.k. (laughs) Now I’m struggling to decide what I want to do, whether I want to blend it all together or keep it separate.

With organic preparations you are often required to use them more frequently. Their effectiveness is limited if contrasted with more industrial strength pesticides. They break down more readily, and so on. What kinds of pest pressures do you have there?

MC We have mealybug, I know that. White fly is a huge problem out at Sanford and Benedict over the years. The white fly basically shuts down photosynthesis, that it causes your grapes not to be physiologically ripe in the end. That’s a bad thing. Mealybug is really horrible because it kills the plant. We’ve really been watching the mealybug problem. We have a big mealybug problem at Le Bon Climat. And I think part of the reason we have a really big problem is because we are organic. What’s being applied over there is not proving effective enough to take care of the problem.

That said, I want to be greener. Hey, I moved my winery into Buellton and moved my house to within a mile of my winery. Before I was driving 45 minutes to get to my winery every day. That doesn’t feel green! Especially when you’re driving a big truck. In those terms, there is always something we’re trying to figure out; how to be a greener business, how to leave a smaller carbon foot print. And I have toyed around with biodynamics. It’s something I’ve read about, studied some… I’ve even gone as far as to procure the horn! (laughs) But I have never buried it in the ground.

Where do you keep the horn?

MC I have the horn at the winery, actually. It’s a buffalo horn; it’s not a cow horn.

Well, buffalo horns won’t work, of course.

MC I don’t know. The place where I was doing it, at the ranch, (actually it’s my ex-husband’s ranch, but we’re pretty friendly on that; basically, I let you keep your stuff. We’re cool.) So over at the ranch, because I was growing organic vegetables over there, I was extremely interested in biodynamics. Yves, my French partner, just laughs his ass off at biodynamicism. He says it’s a fashion, and then takes me to look at vineyards that he knows are biodynamic. And they are pretty sad looking. But I can’t say that they make terrible wine. You know? Biodynamics has some interesting things about it. It is rather archaic in some of its principles.

I remember meeting Telmo Rodriguez, a Spanish producer; and he said his vineyard was biodynamic. It was a time when I really didn’t know much about it. I asked him about it. He wouldn’t tell me! Finally I asked, ‘if you’re not willing to share with people what specifically you are doing in the vineyard, then don’t talk about it being biodynamic’. It is a vineyard he owns, after all. I think what’s going on is that Spain is a Catholic country. Biodynamicism is a little bit of witchcraft mixed in with some homeopathy and astrology. In that way it makes it interesting to me. But, I’ve never had the chance to actually see it in action. So… I’m almost dead certain that Beckmen Vineyards is all biodynamic.

I think that anything that puts you in your vineyard more frequently, that makes you more connected with it, is better for your vineyard. Period.

I think that is exactly right. But now, with respect to the mealybug problem at Le Bon Climat, it might be interesting to think about one of the major selling points of the biodynamic approach is that it restores a certain kind of balance. It would be interesting to see whether you could do like a test block.

MC It’s at a point where nothing, not even biodynamics is going to cure it. (laughs) It’s really bad. I’m sure the rains are not helping. Rain just spreads it around. It’s a constant battle. I have a total respect for farmers. How to deal with that kind of uncertainty in a job… you can’t predict what the weather is going to do. And even when you try to predict it, that doesn’t mean you can always do something about it. I can’t imagine how stressful it must be to be a farmer.

It’s funny. During harvest, when it starts raining, everybody around me gets all nervous an upset; and I say, ‘you know. I’m just not gonna’ because there is nothing I can do about it’. The best thing I can do is that when my fruit comes in see what the deal is and go from there. To winemakers I ask ‘Why cry over spilled milk?’ Now, I don’t hear the same bellyaching from farmers out there working their butts off.

Yes. I had a wonderful conversation with Bryan Babcock last year sometime. He is a hard core farmer, I’d say. And he is very outspoken in this regard, about the exigencies of farming. He’s a tough guy.

MC For Le Bon Climate vineyard, Jim (Clendenen) would be in total agreement with Bryan. And I think it is the same thing with wine. If you get wine that doesn’t have any acidity in it you’d be a fool not to put some acid in it, in my personal opinion. I had a guy at Morgan’s Halfway House for Wannabe Winemakers this summer (laughs) who was making some Syrah. I looked at his numbers. He told me how much acid he was going to put in, and I said, ‘you know, I would put in twice as much.’ He said that he was afraid to do that. I told him not to be afraid of the acid. As perfectionists, we want to produce the best wine that we can. That is very trying. In your mind’s eye you’d really love to have fruit and juice that’s perfect; juice you don’t have to add anything to. Everything is natural, and so on. But that is just not reality. Yes, you can take your natural fruit and just let it go, don’t do anything to it. Or you can hold its hand, make sure it gets to the end point, the right place, and still have it be commercially viable. If you don’t do that you’ll end up with wine that the public may not necessarily want to drink.

So, just as in the vineyard you have to address problems as they come up, sometimes you have to be a lot more pro-active than in your heart you want to be, whether it’s chemical or whatever. And in the cellar it is the same thing. You want perfect fruit, but that does not mean you’re going to get it. You have to work with your boundaries to make the best wine you can.

Last year at Le Bon Climat the grapes were absolutely perfect. The numbers, perfect. I didn’t have to do anything. It was a cakewalk. I loved the wine. But that only happens once every two of three vintages, that you get the perfect balance. So, yes, we’re going out there, we’re testing the sugars and such, but sometimes it’s a box of chocolates; you get what you get. This year was very odd for me, the 2009 vintage. The sugars were not very high. I don’t think I picked any Viognier above 23 Brix. Most of it was 21.5; but it was physiologically ripe. Very, very strange vintage. But they will have low alcohols; they will be fresh. It not going to be green, I can tell you that; which is what 21.5 would suggest.

I thought about additions and that sort of thing, but the fruit tasted good. The juice was yellow, with a green tinge. It was a very unusual year for Viognier. A friend of mine, Karen Steinwachs, who is the winemaker for Buttonwood, I met her for lunch right before Christmas, and she said she brought in, I think it was Sauvignon Blanc at 22 Brix, somewhere in there, and she still got 14.5 alcohol! We can’t figure it out. How does that translate? It doesn’t make any sense. There is something going on, but we can’t figure it out. And she is meticulous. She tested it at her lab and she sent it off for testing. Now, we know within 99.9 % that fruit, the Brix level, was at 22. We’re stumped. Perhaps different yeasts are responsible. There are so many different yeasts now, maybe that’s the reason. Some scientist may tell you that’s just rubbish, but in five years maybe some breakout scientist will say something different. There are certain things that I don’t know to be always constant. So I told her that I’ll tell her what my alcohol is in the end. I’m not predicted to have anything above 13.5% alcohol. It’ll be interesting. If it goes higher then she and I will definitely be contacting Davis! Houston, we have a problem. (laughs)

Is she using wild yeasts?

MC She’s using commercial yeasts. I use commercial yeasts. The Saints and Sinners is a wild yeast, however. I am not a big fan or wild fermentation because most of the time some of the wine gets stuck, it doesn’t finish. If you’ve ever restarted a fermentation I don’t think there’s anything more unnatural that you can do to wine. It made me sick to my stomach and I never want to do it again. When you have to take wine and heat it up, and then add 25 pounds of sugar… that does not feel good. It does not feel natural. It feels intrusive.

Strictly speaking, with the wild yeasts on the grape skins, and even though you may use a commercial yeast, you really don’t know which yeast finished the fermentation. There is no way of knowing. There are thousands of yeasts in there.

Yes. Indeed, a number of commercial yeast companies now include combinations of wild and commercial yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae principally. The idea is that the wild yeasts get a toehold before the commercial populations overwhelm them. Some qualities are imparted before others.

MC That’s what we’ve been doing in my cellar. We’ll monitor the juice, and when it is starting we’ll let it go for a couple of days. And then we inoculate. I do like natural yeasts; I just don’t want to have to deal with restarting the fermentation. You’d then have to use commercial yeasts in any case. I think that is the dirty little secret of natural fermentations. People always talk about using nothing but wild yeasts, well, ya know, bullshit! I don’t believe you! Especially for California with the high sugar levels, if you then go with wild fermentations it is a recipe for a stuck fermentation, in my mind. You don’t really know what goes on behind closed cellar doors! (laughs)

And just because it’s ‘commercial’, that does not make the yeast unnatural. It’s yeast, for god’s sake. It’s not plastic. In the past I played around with making sourdough starters from red grapes. One year I did one from Sanford and Benedict and two other vineyards. And it was interesting! The sourdough starters themselves were so very different in the breads. I had one from Gold Coast vineyard that, I swear to god, tasted like cinnamon in the bread! And that was because of the yeast starter. I took some red grapes; I put some flour in at a certain temperature, and created a starter. Once I had it started it was like having a newborn. You had to feed it… I mean, ok, I can’t deal with this anymore! (laughs) So I really like my yeast that comes in a packet! I am very comfortable with it.
I actually use a Champagne yeast for most of my Viogniers because I like the clean expression; it is a clear expression of the grape without adding this fruit factor or floral factor, all these things that the different yeasts are supposed to do. If it ain’t broke I’m not going to fix it.

Well, wonderful. I have a lot of material to work with here. I want to thank you…. wait, one more question. What do you think of the usefulness of new Social Media for a winery’s promotion? Does it help? Can you see the benefits?

MC You know, I use Facebook for work all the time. I get accosted by my friends all the time. ‘Ah, you’re on Facebook all the time, blah, blah, blah.’ Well, it allows me to get in touch with people in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, France… boom, all from one place. I think if you’re smart and learn how to use it, it offers great benefits. And it’s free. How many things out there are free that you can also benefit from, certainly on a business level? It can be intrusive. At times I wonder what the heck am I doing. I do get stalkers! But for the most part it has really helped my business.

I’ve always been a little behind the scenes, a little bit underground. I am not, as my Facebook persona may suggest, as out front as you might think. I always been more of a ‘behind the scenes’ person.

Thank you very much, Morgan, for the opportunity to speak with you. Oh, one last question, did you really ride an elephant in a vineyard?

MC Yes, I did. That is totally true. A socialite that used to live here in the valley held very elaborate parties. She chose her guests based on their entertainment value and willingness to go along with her party ideas. For her 50th birthday she had an Indian themed party. All the guests, all women, were required to wear a sari. The party was held by their pond located in the middle of their vineyard. I actually ordered a sari from India and learned how to fold the layers of cloth; there were many! Nothing like being swadled in a colorful sheet when it’s 100 degrees out! But the surprise of the party were the three elephants… I must say it was a majestic feeling, lumbering slowly through the vineyard, slightly higher than an elephant’s eye. I will never forget that view, for a time an Indian princess riding in a California vineyard.

Very cool. Take care, Morgan.

MC Bye, Ken.

Admin

Morgan Clendenen of Cold Heaven Cellars, part 1

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:29:27 +0000

Morgan Clendenen of Cold Heaven Cellars has been quietly perfecting her take on Viognier since 1996. She writes:
“My mission and goal as a winemaker is to illuminate and define Viognier, to elevate its profile and explore its potential through keen observation and copious tasting. I seek to sound the depths of this enigmatic grape, to reveal its secrets and shine a bright light on the extraordinary fruit grown in the cool vineyards of the Santa Maria and Santa Ynez Valleys of California ’s Central Coast.

Despite this strong ambition she flies under the radar, working and experimenting diligently according to her own vision. She has little interest in the expansion of Cold Heaven if the proper fruit cannot be found. Though her love of Pinot Noir may eventually require a call to a local contractor. And neither are Cold Heaven’s labels festooned with marketable tropes. They are reserved, dignified. Yet Ms. Clendenen is also a vivacious, quick-witted soul, and seems easily capable of commanding a room. So her wines, her beloved Viogniers, possess these complimentary aspects of her character: finesse, balance and a lively acid.

I spoke with her just last week, Wednesday, one of many days California was being flattened by a runaway train of foul weather. A last note, I have enjoyed only three of her wines. That will certainly change.

Part 2 will post later this week.

Admin What a lot of rain! How are your vines? Any vineyard erosion?

Morgan Clendenen This is the time of year you want rain. It’s good for the vineyards. As long as we don’t have any frost, we should be sitting pretty. The abundance of rain usually means an abundance of grapes. But Mother Nature… she’s a tricky bitch! And erosion is always a problem in California whenever it rains. So if you’ve planted in a dubious place then it may happen. But Le Bon Climat vineyard is constantly dealing with erosion factors. We try in various ways to slow the water down. But it’s an ever changing Earth we live on. Ours is a constant struggle to try to control the environment. It’s kind of funny. Well, maybe not funny: it is what it is.

About water. Do you folks irrigate?

MC Most everything I deal with is irrigated. And I’m very happy because in the past few years we’ve had some tremendous heat waves right before harvest. When you have these heat waves what you get is sugar ripeness but not always physiological ripeness. I saw a little bit of that this year. It was interesting that the sugars were there but the physiological ripeness wasn’t. And then it kind of switches places where the grapes became physiologically ripe but the sugars were not as high because we had a cold snap after a heat wave. Irrigation helps us moderate these swings.

There is only one vineyard that I can think of, I’m sure there’s more around here, and that’s Foxen. They have a specific vineyard that they dry farm. But everything that I deal with is does have irrigation. It’s a drip irrigation system.

On a personal note, just to get this out of the way, why is it that there are no two pictures of you that look alike? It’s the oddest thing. You’re like a changeling!

MC (laughs) I don’t know! The picture on the Home page of the winey site is odd because what you see is a reflection of me off the glass of a painting. You see what I see in the mirror, not what you would see looking normally at me. So I look very different to everybody. But I think I look the most like me in that picture! (laughs) It’s just how it is. When I look at myself it is always a reflection.

So no Grace Jones-like body doubles! Well, one of the reasons I wanted to speak with you was because of a wine of yours I enjoyed many years ago, an early, maybe the first bottling of the Domaine des Deux Mondes, Saints and Sinners. I’ve had Viogniers from all over California since then but I’ve never forgotten that wine. Your winery’s name stuck in the back of my mind. And then to have encountered the winemaker herself on Facebook, well, there you go.

MC Well, thank you. That wine is basically just a recipe I followed from Yves Cuilleron [from Condrieu] to make a wine in his style. It’s a partnership I have with him. He’s very well known for his wines. He makes several single vineyard Condrieus. His sense of doing more than one, playing around, manipulating the grapes to some degree, is always very interesting to me. In fact, his sweet wine has always been a benchmark wine for me. But with that wine, the Domain des Deux Mondes, we decide that we do this fun thing where we would blend finished wine from one of his vineyards with finished juice from one of mine. It was a 50/50 blend. We had so much success from that, and had enjoyed doing it, we decided that we would take some of my grapes and use them for Yves style.

Now, Cold Heaven’s style is nothing like that! Nothing like that. Deux Mondes is not Cold Heaven. It’s not the wine I personally would go for in a line-up. It’s very oaky and it tends to be a little riper than everything else I do. But it shows that, yes, I can make lots of different styles besides what I do. But I choose to go in a different direction with Cold Heaven because I like it the best. And that typically means lower sugars; I like high acidity. I like it to be natural.

I buy very few grapes from warm sites. I’m not interested in warm sites for Viognier, quite honestly. I’ve been working with Sanford and Benedict vineyard and Le Bon Climat vineyard which would always serve up a good helping of acidity; and I would barely, if ever, have to acidulate those wines. The first Deux Mondes was a 2004 vintage.

That may have been the vintage. I’m a little surprised because I am no fan of oak and I like high acid. But palates change. Clearly, I was still evolving! But about Sanford and Benedict. On your website you describe having found there a then “rare clone” of Viognier. Could you tell me something about that clone?

MC What we have over at Sanford and Benedict is not really known to us because whoever planted it seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. They had grafted a bunch of Viognier onto Cabernet rootstock. Then a section of it died and they went in and replanted on some other rootstock, also unknown to us.

And why did the section die? Do you know?

MC We don’t know. I wasn’t around during that period of time. It was in the eighties. So, there was a lot of change-over over at Sanford and Benedict about who was farming. When I came on board there the guy who was farming was never seen. I never saw him! He was like a mythological creature. So when that job was taken from him and the new people took over, I see them all the time. They are very pro-active in that vineyard. Coastal Vineyard Services. It’s questionable, the clone. We just don’t know.

We were approached at one point by the former owner of Sanford and Benedict. He said he wanted to plant more Viognier for me. We wanted to get a specific clone but we couldn’t get it. We ended up getting a Davis clone. What is planted mostly in California is the Davis clone; that’s what’s there. So when we planted Le Bon Climat vineyard as my primary vineyard, we planted that with a Chateau Grillet clone.

Then when I was dealing with Vogelzang, they called me up and said, ‘Look, we planted what we thought was Roussanne but it turns out that it is Viognier’. (We call it the ‘R’ clone. As in ‘Randall’. It was supposedly brought in by Randall Grahm as Roussanne.) When they tasted that wine they swore it tasted like Roussanne. I said ‘You’re out of your mind! I don’t think it tastes anything like Roussanne’. Now, I like Roussanne. I don’t like Marsanne at all. I won’t work with Marsanne. I hate Marsanne. It is my least favorite grape in the entire world! But I love Roussanne. If I could get Roussanne here I would be excited. I would like to work with that grape more. But there’s not a lot of it around here. And quite honestly there’s not a lot of cool climate Viognier vineyards around here. Cold Heaven hasn’t gotten bigger and bigger every year because I don’t want to make wine just for the sake of having my name on a label. I make the wine I want to make, you know? Unfortunately, not every vineyard is up to snuff where that’s concerned.

Let me add that I don’t think the Davis clone planted in a hot sites is good. Our clone I work with is in a warm site, but I like it a lot because it seems to hold its structure better than the Davis clone does. It seems to keep its pH lower, it seems to have a little more acidity. So I particularly like this grape. It doesn’t go as tutti-frutti as I think the Davis clone does in warm sites. I like that clean, more acidic expression of the grape. I just think it’s more food-friendly. The Le Bon Climat is just a great catch-all wine for things you normally have difficulty pairing foods with: Mexican, sushi, Asian, Chinese, spicy, Indian… it is very interesting that acidity really blends so well with spicy foods.

It’s an anomaly in California. What I do is an anomaly compared to 9/10ths of the industry.

The Vogelzang tends to be (we call it) ‘blousy’. It’s bigger, more fruit forward… it’s big on everything! The alcohol is not through the roof. It’s 14%. But it’s well integrated. Then you move into Le Bon Climat. It’s so funny. People come into the winery and love the Vogelzang, but they don’t get the Le Bon Climat! Then you’ll have a sommelier from a restaurant come in and he will go absolutely apeshit for the Le Bon Climat over Vogelzang. That’s the great thing about making more than one expression. But they are not different styles. They are stylistically different in their clonal selection and their vineyard sourcing.

So the winery treats the different grapes in pretty much the same way.

MC We do. We don’t use any new oak. We don’t like any oak flavors in the wine. We have such naturally high acidity in most of the wines that we do barrel fermentation that rounds that out a little bit. Whereas stainless becomes a little too eye-popping, I think. I’ve done some stainless experiments. I did some Viognier in stainless this year. Once it was though primary fermentation, I put it in barrel for malolactic. It’s not that I’m against stainless steel. I use it when I’m kind of curious what kind of product it’s going to give. But my wines do better with some neutral oak. And I use neutral French oak, mostly Francois Freres.

I’ve been using neutral oak since 1996. It’s been our philosophy since the beginning. Then when Domaine des Deux Mondes came around, Yves used considerable new oak. I had to start buying barrels for the first time in 2004. So we use about a third new oak on those wines. And we use Ermitage as our barrel producer specifically for Viognier. I don’t like Francois Freres new barrels for Viognier. It’s not a good fit to me. Neutral barrels are fine. But as far as the oak, for whatever reason the Ermitage just seems to be a lot more seamless in the wine.

Do you specify the tightness of the grain?

MC I don’t. When we first started the project Yves told the guys at Ermitage what was going on, they actually just gave us three barrels in the beginning. Then one year old barrels were shipped from Yves cellar. They were cleaned but one wonders just how clean can you actually get something. Are you still getting some yeast cells in there, whatever? So Ermitage gave us these barrels. There wasn’t deliberation on my part. Since then I’ve stayed with that because it just seems a good fit. So, no, I don’t get into tightness of grain… all of that. But I am starting to more of that because I’m now making Pinot Noir. This year I have a lot of new barrels in the cellar and we’re constantly tasting the wines side by side. I am very, very curious what each barrel is bringing to the plate on the Pinot. I have a 2008 and a 2009 in barrel.

END OF PART 1

Admin

From The Vineyards To The Adega Regional de Colares

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:57:27 +0000

When in Lisbon, Portugal for the European Wine Bloggers Conference, I had the good fortune to be taken on a detailed tour of a few Colares DOC vineyards by Francisco Figueiredo, enologist for the Adega Regional de Colares cooperative. This rewarding encounted I chronicled in The Vineyards of Colares, A National Patrimony At Risk. I must stress that little of what follows here will be fully appreciated without first having read this part. For now comes a part 2, a continuation of our conversation, but with the accent on the field research the cooperative is doing with clones and trellising.

Colares sits is along the Atlantic Coast, in the western Estremadura, a region surrounding Lisbon. A simple and inexpensive train ride north from Lisbon takes the visitor to Sintra. From there a bus on regular rounds, wends its way to Colares proper. As recounted in part 1, its wines are particularly interesting, first because of the grapes permitted by the DOC, Ramisco, Malvasia and Molar (Negre Mole); secondly, because the Ramisco grape has been historically grown in sand, the vines never required grafting during the phylloxera plague of the 19th century. They remain quite rare in all of Europe.

And so I resume the conversation. With the wind howling, I ask…

Admin Is this a fairly steady wind?!

Francisco Figueiredo (laughs) Yes, yes!

When I came into Colares the other day it was completely still. But we are on the other side of the hills….

FF This is the place I was talking about. We are here making the clonal selection. This is planted with several cuttings from the area. We have here the three main varieties we use here: Ramisco, Malvasia, the white, and also we have a traditional red variety which is Molar. It is known by Negra Mole in Madeira where they also use it for their wines. This is trellised to help us study. It helps us watch the canes and more easily see the harvest.

This is a fairly large vineyard. Was this always a vineyard?

FF This was always a vineyard. If you ask me how the wine is we make from this vineyard I will tell you that it is different from the wine made in the other vineyards we’ve seen. The maturation period is quite different here. Here we have early maturation on that type of vineyard, the ones low on the ground, than we have here with the trellis. It can make a big difference in terms of wine quality because of the weather. That can be a big problem, especially the rain. So what we see, mainly in the white varieties, is that we have early maturation on the traditional vineyard instead of the trellised vineyard.

What are the bunches like on the Ramisco?

FF They are very small. Do you know Pinot Noir? They are more or less like that. Small, open clusters, with small grapes, a lot like Pinot Noir. Ramisco has very large seeds in relation to the skin and pulp of the grape. That’s one of the reasons why the Ramisco wine has a lot of tannins. We have to soften them in the wood barrels before we can bottle it and put it on sale. This region does not produce very high alcohol wines because of the climactic conditions. They tend to be 11 to 11.5 percent alcohol; a maximum 12 to 12.5 percent alcohol in the white wine. And it also has some natural acidity; so the wine improves a lot with this four-year aging in the barrel, and after that in the bottle.

Yes. I’ve had maybe eight different vintages from a couple of different producers since I’ve arrived. I’ve been doing lots of research!

FF Do you like the wine or is it a difficult wine?

Yes! I love the wines.

FF I ask because the usual consumer likes high alcohol wines with very sweet flavors. Colares is very different from that! It is a very good wine for food.

So are Colares wines sold principally in Lisbon?

FF Yes. Mainly in Sintra, in Lisbon and the Sintra area. We make a very large amount of the sales directly from the adega regional, from the cellar in Colares itself. Colares is a small production. We make around 5,000 to 7,000, to 10,000 liters a year. So it is a very small production. The clay soil wines have higher yields, a higher production. Those types of wines we tend to distribute more widely. But the Colares wine is mainly sold in the Sintra and in some wine shops in Lisbon. But not in the big supermarkets.

Now, I notice that all the vineyards we’ve seen are on the top of the hills or dunes. Are there some that grow on the slopes? [Back in the car, we drive east to another vineyard.]

FF A little. But the ocean is very near. Maybe 200 meters away. Different from the traditional vineyard, here we are looking at mechanizing harvesting along the rows, between the rows. So here we have a low trellis. This way we can still keep the leaves and the bunches near to the ground. Here it is a divided canopy to allow the wind to pass through so as to give us a little bit more protection against powdery mildew. The higher the vine the more protection is needed. These are very old vines. This vineyard is of the adega’s director. He is also an agronomist.

And you own a vineyard.

FF My parents have planted a vineyard, in 2007. But unfortunately it is not on the sandy soil. My parents’ land is on clay! (laughs) I’ve not put in Ramisco. But I have planted Molar because it is better adapted than Ramisco which does not mature well on the clay. It needs the sand, the hot sand. So I have planted Molar, which is also a variety from here. But it’s not Ramisco. It’s not DOC. It would be nice to have a piece of sandy soil… but nevertheless I have planted a vineyard. It’s my home.

How did you become associated with the Adega Regional de Colares?

FF I have known the director for a while. When I was studying and doing my thesis, he was doing his final thesis, his PhD. And we were using the same vine for collecting data for our own work. I knew him there, and then he invited me to work here on the 1999 harvest. So I came to Colares for a one month job during the harvest, in the adega itself. I came back in 2000 and again in 2001. He then invited me to work in the cooperative. And in 2006-2007 I assumed enology position in the wine production. I was working with the wine but before we had an ‘external’ enologist. From 2007 on I assumed that part of the job.

During the height of the tourist season, how many tourists come here? Are the roads busy?

FF Yes. During summertime it is a busy, busy time. As for the adega and vineyards, there are some companies who organize wine tours and trekking around this area. They also show the vineyards to the visitors. We also organize tastings. The adega gets a lot of tourists. We put on tastings all year round. Between tastings, wedding and dinner parties, we probably have around 12,000 people pass through the cellar. If some groups require a more technical tour then they call me and I will do that.

Do enologists and wine experts from around the world come here as well?

FF Yes, yes. I’ve received guests from Australia, from France… we have received a of of people who work in the field. And some wine blogs have made reference to Colares I can recall.

[We drive along the coast, past very large new homes.]
So these large houses are mostly second homes?

FF Mostly, yes.

Was there a building project that was an especially big battle over a vineyard?

FF No. It’s just chipped away little by little.

What other DOCs in the Estremadura are under threat from development?

FF Carcavelos and Colares are the two. They are also small. They are nearest Lisbon. And Bucelas, which a region demarcated only for white wine. They produce white wine from the Arinto variety. So they are a little bit threatened. But the remaining areas of the Estremadura are not threatened.

But one of the bigger threats must be the importation of foreign varieties, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.

FF That is now happening in the Estremadura. You have a lot of varieties getting in, mainly Syrah with a little bit of Cabernet Sauvignon. And the Portuguese varieties are being used less. People are probably now using only Touriga Nacional, which is good, and Tinta Roriz which is the Spanish Tempranillo. We see a lot of Syrah, a lot of Cabernet, Alicante Bouschet… and so our traditional varieties are being used less with the exception of Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz (which is not Portuguese, but it almost since it has been grown here for many, many years in the Douro and in the Alentejo.) But if a different grape is grown here in Colares, you can call it a regional wine, but the name ‘Colares’ cannot appear on the label.

Founded in 1931, the purpose of the cooperative was to produce all of the Colares wine as a legal protection, a guarantee of quality. And then the cooperative sells the wine to different storage companies, with different aging techniques, for example, their own barreling, their own blending, all under their own label. Back then the Colares cooperative didn’t even bottle their own wine. They sold the wine to different brands. Colares Chitas, for example, was one of them, and still is, one of the two remaining.

Now, however, since 1994, if a person came from outside and wanted to produce Colares, if that person respected the DOC law, they could do it all themselves, even the vinification. So there are now two labels and two producers who do the vinification, including the Adega Regional de Colares.

End of part 2

Read part 1 here.

The next and last installment will be a tour of the adega itself.

Admin