Archive for January 2012
Tami’s 2010 Grillo
A white grape variety indigenous to Sicily, Grillo is best known as the main component of Marsala. In recent years, it’s been made into table wines, often blends (frequently with Chardonnay). Tami, the négociant firm owned and operated by Arianna Occhipinti and friends, have gone the mono-varietal route and with good reason: their 2010 Grillo is a gem.
IGT Sicilia 2010, Grillo, Tami ($18.50, oenopole)
100% Grillo. Made from purchased organically farmed grapes, fermented with native yeasts, lightly filtered before bottling. Rich gold in the glass. Lemons, chalk and whiffs of hay and flowers on the nose, gaining some dusky spice as it warms and breathes. Quite dry. Round and a little weighty, though far from heavy. Soft-spoken fruit and just enough acidity to keep things fresh. Lingering, bitter-edged, mineral-tinged, come-back-for-another-sip finish. 12.5% ABV.
In Quebec, Tami wines are available on a private import basis and sell out within days of arrival (restaurateurs know a QPR winner when they see one). The shipment this bottle came from is long gone. Until the SAQ gets its head screwed on right and starts listing all three wines, if you want to feel the Tami love, you’ll have to keep checking the oenopole website.
A very dull virtue?
Impressed by the 2002 Équilibre opened to ring in the new year, I picked up a bottle of the same producer’s rosé to share with another champagne aficionado on an evening that began with dinner at KanBai and ended with a screening of the new DVD of Lully’s Atys. The restaurant impressed; the opera blew us away (lovers of the French baroque shouldn’t hesitate); the champagne…
Champagne Brut Rosé, Tolérance, Franck Pascal ($61.50, 11552839)
Medium salmon pink. Only a single stream of bubbles, albeit an active one, in each glass. Briochy and a bit farty on opening, segues to faint red berries and turned earth. Round texture. Soft nectarine with a butterscotchy bitter note emerging on the mid-palate. The fruit fades leaving a long, minerally finish. Improves – becomes more complex and better integrated, gains strawberry and anise flavours – as it warms and breathes. Clean, pure and enjoyable, though a little more depth and dazzle would be welcome.
Based on what I’ve been able to glean from the Web, this is essentially a blanc de noirs made from a 60-40 blend of organically farmed Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir with a dollop of Chardonnay, to which a little more than 5% of still red Coteaux Champenois is added. Fermented with native yeasts, bottled unfiltered and unfined.
Clos d’Albizzi’s 2010 Cassis
Besides being the French word for blackcurrant, Cassis is a fishing port on the Mediterranean coast between Marseille and Bandol and an appellation d’origine contrôlée, three quarters of whose production is white. Most of the wine is consumed locally and little is exported.
Cassis 2010, Clos d’Albizzi ($18.10, 11095797)
Marsanne 30%, Clairette 40%, Ugni Blanc 30%. Vineyard practices include mechanical weed control and avoidance of synthetic insecticides and pesticides. The grapes are manually harvested and fermented with native yeasts. Undergoes malo. 12.5% abv.
Peach giving way to almond, acacia blossom and a hint of anise. Texture bordering on unctuous, kept fresh by the ephemeral fruitiness and brisk acidity. Initial quince and honey segue to minerals and a lingering sour bitterness. Ends on a briny note.
Intriguing and, in its way, delicious but a food wine more than an apertif wine. Worked well enough with a garlic- and anchovy-scented sauté of rapinni and scallops. Would be a natural for Provençal seafood dishes including, of course, bouillabaisse.
Double blind
This evening the friendly wine advisors at my regular SAQ outlet were offering small, double blind tastes of a wine – the leftovers of a bottle they’d opened for a staff tasting earlier in the day – to geeks they thought might be interested. Apparently I fall into that category. With the glass came a series of questions: (1) Is it New World or Old? (2) What country is it from? (3) What grape varieties are involved? (4) How much does a bottle cost?
My tasting note (from memory): Dark, nearly opaque maroon. Nose of red and purple fruit, a little spice and a good dose of oak. Quite rich and round on the palate, though not heavy, with good acidity, ripe tannins, supple fruit and noticeable but not overwhelming oak. A bitter note appears on the longish finish.
I was at the store about ten minutes before closing and had wines to pick up for tomorrow’s tasting, so I didn’t have time for extended reflection. My answers: (1) Because it was fruit- and oak-driven but not gallumphing, either a New World wine made in an Old World style or an Old World wine made in a New World style. (2) Italy, maybe the Veneto, due to the medium weight and that lingering bitterness. (3) No idea. Merlot? Bonarda? (4) Guessing high because of the oak treatment, around $30. (The advisors said several others had guessed Italian and almost everyone had pegged it as costing $25 to $30.)
The wine? Double Barrel 2009, Carone Wines ($55.00, 11506630), a blend of Cabernet Severnyi (92%) and Sangiovese (8%) grown in Quebec’s Lanaudière region. The wine’s name refers to the oak regime: 12 months in new American oak barrels followed by four months in new French oak barrels. Cabernet Severnyi (aka Cabernet Severny) is a Russian-developed red grape variety that, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, “was created by pollination of a hybrid of Galan × Vitis amurensis with a pollen mixture of other hybrid forms involving both the European vine species Vitis vinifera and the famously cold-hardy Mongolian vine species Vitis amurensis.” According to the wine’s data sheet, the grapes are manually harvested as late as possible, sorted and crushed, then cold-soaked for 24 hours. Fermentation is at controlled temperatures and uses Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast “isolated from the Montalcino region of Tuscany, Italy.” The fermented must is given prolonged maceration on the skins.
I’d actually noticed the wine on the shelf a few days earlier when scouring the outlet for wines for the tasting. I’d rolled my eyes at the massive bottle, the corny name (and in English – talk about adding insult to injury), the implied oak regime and the price, and guessed it would be undrinkable. Well, I was wrong. It’s still pretentiously and unecologically packaged, badly named and oakier than I like, but undrinkable it’s not. And if I and others valuated it at about half its MSRP, only the market will say whether it’s overpriced. Certainly it’s rare (only 1,000 bottles made) and unique (Quebec-grown Sangiovese?!). While I’d never buy a bottle for myself, if the theme of tomorrow’s tasting weren’t affordable wines, a bottle would probably have made its way into the lineup.
Ribiera’s 2010 Causse Toujours
IGP Pays de l’Hérault 2010, “Causse Toujours”, Domaine Ribiera ($23.30, 12 bottles/case, La QV)
IGP? Indication géographique protégée, the French version of the Europe-wide term replacing the national vin de pays. As of the 2009 vintage, VDPs are no more. See Jamie Goode’s article for the back story.
This particular IGP is 40% Grenache, 40% Cinsault and 20% Syrah, all from organically farmed, ten-year-old vines. Manually harvested. Fermented with indigenous yeasts. Destemmed, pumped over, racked and returned (délestage). Aged eight months in vats and demi-muids. No sulphur added, so should be stored at 15ºC (60ºF) or under.
Fragrant nose: black plum and grape, sun-baked earth, sweet spice, dried herbs and flowers (peony?). Supple, medium weight, texture verging on velvety. Rich, pure dark fruit with high-toned kirsch and deeper gamey notes. Sinewy tannins. The sweet fruit fades on the finish, leaving inky minerals, bitter herbs and a light, tooth-coating astringency. The high alcohol (14.5% abv) is felt, not tasted. A more conventional wine than, say, Clos Mathélisse’s Exorde (which Pichon also makes) but loveable for its purity, fluid savour and appealing combination of lightness and intensity.
For background on Domaine Ribiera, see the Languedoc Wine blog.
A grower champagne to toast the new year
The holiday selection of “affordable” champagnes at the SAQ took a quantum leap forward this year. (Champagne is arguably the world’s most overpriced wine, and affordable is here defined as bottles under $80.) Along with long-lost friends (Ayala, for example) and unexpected delights (Billecart-Salmon’s Brut Réserve in half bottles) came an impressive list of grower champagnes from producers like Larmandier-Bernier, Égly-Ouriet, E. Barnaut and Pascal Doquet, not to mention Pierre Gimonnet. A wine that appeared to slip under most local reviewers’ radar is made by Franck Pascal, a young vigneron with 4 hectares of vines in the Marne valley. On taking over the vineyard, Pascal converted to organic practices. The estate has been certified biodynamic since 2008.
Champagne 2002, Brut, Cuvée Prestige, “Équilibre”, Franck Pascal ($65.50, 11552871)
33% Pinot Meunier, 34% Pinot Noir, 33% Chardonnay. Fermented with indigenous yeasts, dosed with organic cane sugar (4.5 g/l). Pale gold with a faint green cast, lazy bead and tiny bubbles – very attractive in a flute. Expressive nose of brioche and lees with hints of lemon, minerals, hay and barley sugar. Rich yet lithe in the mouth: the winey roundness is countered by a minerally acidic bite and persistent bitter undertow, lifted by the soft effervescence. Oxidizing pear and sour apple and a suggestion of vanilla give way to a long, creamy/quartzy finish. Elegant enough to serve as an aperitif, vibrant enough to serve with food. A compelling wine that punches above its weight.
Pascal’s Tolérance champagne rosé (a two-vintage blend of Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir with a dollop of Chardonnay) is also available at the SAQ.
Brett happens 