Posts Tagged ‘Under 13 percent’
Bret Brothers happen
Besides making wine from their organically farmed La Soufrandière vineyards, the brothers Bret run a négociant business that sees them buying grapes, which they harvest themselves, and making wines sold under the Bret Brothers label.
Mâcon-Chardonnay 2011, Bret Brothers ($27.20, 11900098)
The Chardonnay in the name refers not to the grape but to the village after which the variety was named (AOC regulationas also allow red and rosé Mâcon-Chardonnay to be made from Gamay and Pinot Noir). This, however, is 100% Chardonnay from 30-year-old vines rooted in limey clay soil. Manually harvested, whole-bunch pressed, fermented with indigenous yeasts. Fermentation and maturation last 11 months and take place in stainless steel tanks (90%) and 228-litre oak barrels (10%). 12.5% ABV.
Exactly what you expect from a Mâcon. Soft nose of yellow fruit with hints of flowers, dried hay, spice and chalk. Round and mouthfilling, not bone dry. The clean fruit is pooled on a chalky substrate. Decent finish. A little more acidity would brighten the picture and cut the fat. (Buy again? Maybe.)
Pouilly-Fuissé 2011, Terres de Fuissé, Bret Brothers ($39.25, 10788882)
100% Chardonnay. A blend of grapes from two plots, one 70 years old (limey soil) and the other 40 (shallow, pebbly soil). Manually havested, whole-bunch pressed, fermented with indigenous yeasts. Fermentation and maturation last 11 months and take place in 228-litre oak barrels. 12.5% ABV.
Less outgoing nose. The fruit, which is whiter, is on equal footing with ashy oak and minerals and if there’s a hint of anything it’s acacia blossom. In the mouth, the wine is more intense in every way: tighter, tauter, tenser and all the better for it. While far from integrated, the oak doesn’t mask. The fruit is as present as the Mâcon’s but leaner, drier, more faceted. The minerals are more crystalline while the acidity borders on racy. Your interest is sustained through the long finish. Ideally this should be cellared for a year or two. (Buy again? Yes, despite a price that seems about $5 too high.)
When my samples were poured, the bottles had been open the better part of a day. The pourer, who’d tasted them on opening but not after, said the Mâcon-Chardonnay had struck him as a good buy while he wasn’t convinced the Pouilly-Fuissé was worth the extra outlay – the exact opposite of my conclusion. Make of that what you will.
MWG May 16th tasting (1/5): ABCs
ABCs = A British Columbia sparkler.
Brut, Méthode traditionnelle, Okanagan Valley, Blue Mountain ($28.30, 11881907)
Pinot Noir (57%), Chardonnay (37%) and Pinot Gris (6%). Manually harvested and sorted. Each variety is whole-cluster pressed and fermented separately. The wines are then blended, re-inoculated with yeast for secondary fermentation and aged on the lees for 24 months before disgorging, followed by another six to nine months after disgorging. Retails for $23.90 at the winery. 12.5% ABV.
Leesy lemon and apple. Thick foam and tons of tiny bubbles. The pure, clean fruit shows some residual sugar on the attack and turns sourish, dry and a little toasty by the finish. Sugar levels aside, a soft, glyceriny undercurrent runs throughout – like mild honey I thought at first before settling on almond syrup. Also, the wine starts out like a sparkler but, the bubbles notwithstanding, ends up tasting like a still wine. Odd but not unpleasantly so. The initial sweetness makes it better as an aperitif than a food wine methinks, though the weight and texture might argue otherwise. (Buy again? Could be pushed to by national pride and the wine’s curiosity value, but better crémants and cavas can be had for several dollars less.)
oenopole’s Greek spring workshop (2/6)
The second dish was albacore sashimi.
Vin de pays de Markopoulo 2012, Savatiano, Domaine Papagiannakos ($15.90, 11097451)
100% Savatiano. Manually harvested. Fermented with selected yeasts in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks. Matured on the lees for three months. Filtered before bottling. 12.5% ABV.
Candied sour lemon, overtones of tropical fruit (mango, banana, papaya), dried hay in the background. Fruity, almost sweet, on entry, though make no mistake: this is a dry wine. The clean flavours evoke lemon and quartz. The extract balances the solid acidity. A faint bitterness lingers after the fruit fades. Not profound but delivering real bang for the buck. (Buy again? Yes.)
> The wine was synergistic with the cilantro and cucumber garnish. It amped up the fishiness of the albacore (not unpleasantly so) while the fish brought out its fruit. oenopole also suggests squid stuffed with spinach and feta and/or shrimp sautéed with garlic and parsley and served with lemon wedges. It’s all good.
oenopole’s Greek spring workshop (1/6)
A group of wine and food geeks, several of them writers or bloggers, were recently invited to oenopole world headquarters for a second wine and food workshop, titled printemps grec. The wines this time around were entirely Greek but the food most definitely wasn’t, the idea being to see how Greek wines work with non-Greek dishes. Guest chef Noam Arieh Gedalof, formerly of The French Laundry and Kaizen, turned out a succession of beautiful small plates, a feat made all the more impressive by the HQ’s complete lack of a kitchen.
While waiting for the tasting proper to being, we were offered glasses of a sparkler.
Amalia Brut, Méthode traditionnelle, Domaine Tselepos ($23.00, 11901103)
Formerly available only on a private-import basis, this 100% Moschofilero traditional method sparkler will go on sale at the SAQ on September 26 and not a moment too soon. 12% ABV.
Light straw-yellow with fine persistent bubbles. Fleet yet present on the palate, pure and quite dry. The fruit tends to lemon and is accompanied by a crystalline minerality and a telltale hint of Moschofilero’s floral aromatics. The acidity and effervescence keep things lively. The clean finish brings a faint saline note. Can hold its own against any cava or crémant at the price point. (Buy again? Can’t wait.)
The first dish was a lightly dressed salad of mixed greens, planed root vegetables and herbs.
Mantinia 2012, Moschofilero, Domaine Tselepos ($17.85, 11097485)
100% Moschofilero. The grapes are macerated eight hours at 10ºC, then pneumatically pressed. Fermentation with selected yeasts and in stainless steel vats is at 12ºC and lasts 20 days with regular stirring. 12% ABV.
Lightly fragrant nose – grapey and floral (honeysuckle?) with white mineral notes – evocative of Muscat and Gewurztramner. Dry and bright in the mouth with an appealing tautness. The fruit is citrusy (lemon, white grapefruit) and, again, the finish is clean and faintly salt-crystally. Straightforward and fresh, this makes an excellent aperitif but also has enough heft to go with food. (Buy again? Yes.)
> The wine’s acidity handled the vinaigrette with aplomb. The root vegetables brought out the wine’s minerality, the bitter radicchio its sweetness and fruit. The fresh mint leaf achieved a surprising synergy. Theo Diamantis mentioned that the first local non-Greek restaurant to put the wine on its list was Toqué!, where chef Normand Laprise paired it with wild asparagus, a combination I intend to put to the test now that local asparagus season is upon us.
And speaking of printemps grec wine and food pairings, oenopole and SAT Foodlab are joining forces this evening for a Nuit greque au Labo culinaire with four visiting winemakers. If last year’s event is anything to go by, it should be epic.
A BV with pretensions
This is a Beaujolais-Villages but one in which the actual village name, in this case Leynes (northernmost Beaujolais, southernmost Burgundy and also the operations base of Jean Rijckaert), replaces the “Villages” (along the same lines as what’s allowed for certain Côtes-du-Rhône villages like Cairanne and Séguret). The Bien-Venu is a vestige of the first vintages, the producer’s way of getting around the AOC authorities who declassified the wine and forced it to be labeled as a vin de table, not a Beaujolais.
Beaujolais-Leynes 2011, Bien-Venu In X-Tremis, La Soufrandière / Bret Bros. ($29.75, 11904611)
100% organically farmed Gamay from 65-year-old vines. Manually harvested. The whole, uncrushed clusters are macerated two to three weeks, with light pump-overs and occasional punch-downs. Matured 18 months in Burgundy barrels. 12.5% ABV.
The staff at my neighbourhood SAQ store opened a bottle of this when it arrived back in February and found it off-puttingly bad, so bad that they decided to give it a second chance after the shipment had had a couple of months to recover from suspected travel shock. A good call, as it’s now a textbook Bojo, albeit one in a rich style. The texture is dense enough to have you thinking velour instead of silk. There’s lots of red fruit, some vine sap and minerals and an unsweet floral note (iris?). The acidity is cranberry juice bright, the tannins are light and the fruit lasts right through the finish. While cru-like in terms of body, it falls short of that level in the depth department. In fact, it seems kind of one-note, unexciting and, above all, poor value when set aside true crus like Lapierre’s Morgon ($28 though NLA) or Brun’s Moulin-à-Vent ($24) let alone some of the private import Bojos. Maybe it needs more time, but I wouldn’t bet on it. (Buy again? Unlikely.)
So-so Syrah
IGP Pays d’Hérault 2011, Syrah, Domaine de Petit Roubié ($15.70, 11703502)
100% organically farmed Syrah. Destemmed. Temperature-controlled fermentation with selected yeasts. Macerated 30 days. Screwcapped. 12.5% ABV.
The red fruit, turned earth, bacon and animale you expect from warm-climate Syrah are there, along with a little barnyard and, surprisingly for a 12.5% wine, alcohol. Medium-bodied. The ripe fruit is joined by spice on the attack and darker, slatey flavours on the mid-palate. Said fruit and its sweetness soon fade leaving an astringency and bitterness that border on the unpleasant. Food – in my case a lamb leg steak – brought out the wine’s best side. And it was a little less uncharming the next day. Yet the half bottle’s worth of wine that was combined with chopped shallots, boiled down to a few spoonfuls and mounted with butter to make a sauce for crisp-skinned salmon gave the sauce such an astringently desiccating bite that I had to add sugar – a first. The bottom line: appealing on paper (varietally correct, organic, civilized alcohol level, under $16) but with a very low pleasure quotient. Dommage. (Buy again? Probably not.)
Pink wave
Four rosés that have hit the SAQ’s shelves just in time for our spate of summery weather. All but the Bonny Doon are from the May 2nd Cellier New Arrivals release.
Patrimonio 2011, Osé, Domaine d’E Croce, Yves Leccia ($22.95, 11900821)
100% Nielluccio. A saignée method rosé. The juice is “bled” from the red wine vat after 12 hours’ maceration, cold-settled for 24 hours, then fined. Alcoholic fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks at 18ºC and lasts 15 to 20 days. The wine is not allowed to undergo malolactic fermentation. Matured six months in stainless steel tanks. Lightly filtered before bottling. 13.5% ABV.
Bold medium pink. Wafting nose of red berries, nectarine, minerals and above all maquis. Silky bordering on dense. Bright but not sweet fruit, some mineral depth and a lingering savoury finish with a saline note. My pour came from a bottle that had been open about 24 hours, yet the wine was still fresh and vibrant (it reportedly had a carbon dioxide tingle on opening but not when I got around to tasting it). To my palate, the winner of the four. Though it screams vin de terrasse, it also has the wherewithal to accompany tapas and grilled chicken. (Buy again? Yes.)
Vin Gris de Cigare 2012, Central Coast, Bonny Doon Vineyard ($22.75, 10262979)
Grenache (62%), Mourvèdre (17%), Roussanne (9%), Grenache Blanc (6%) and Cinsault (6%). 12.5% ABV according to the winemaker, 13.5% according to SAQ.com. Screwcapped.
A true gris: as pale grey/tan as it is pink. On both the nose and the palate, lots of minerals and garrigue but not much fruit. As close to bone dry as a rosé gets. Good weight and length. Truer to its Rhône/Provence model than some earlier vintages. If nit-picking, you could say it’s a little short on charm. Still, it’s likely the best pink wine in the SAQ’s regular catalogue. (Buy again? Maybe.)
Vin Gris d’Amador 2011, Sierra Foothills, Terre Rouge ($22.95, 11629710)
Mourvèdre (61%), Grenache (35%) and Syrah (4%). The name notwithstanding, this is a saignée method rosé made from juice “bled” from the red wine vats early in the maceration stage. Vinification is in used French oak barrels. 13.5% ABV.
Dark salmon pink. The most fragrant of the four: red berries, spice, dried herbs. Winey and mouth-filling but avoiding heaviness due to the acidity and held-in-check fruit. Long, savoury, even a little heady. This was the favourite of the wine advisor pouring the sample, who also speculated that, were it served in an opaque glass, most tasters would guess it was a red wine. More a food wine than a sipper. I’d pair it with something like grilled pork chops. (Buy again? Maybe.)
Marsannay rosé 2011, Domaine Bruno Clair ($23.30, 10916485)
100% Pinot Noir. One-third of the grapes are pressed on arrival at the winery; the remainder are whole cluster-macerated for up to 72 hours before being pressed. The musts are then blended and transferred to stainless steel tanks for 20 to 30 days’ fermentation at 18 to 20ºC. Matured 12 months in stainless steel tanks. 12.5% ABV.
While earlier vintages of this have often been exquisite, the 2011 is anything but. It’s like the life has been sucked out of it. The fruit – strawberry, I’d guess – is dessicated and oxidized. With nothing to counterbalance it, the acid makes the wine taste sharp. And then there’s the faint acrid note on the finish. Could be an off bottle but, if so, it’s reportedly not the only one. (Buy again? Nope.)
New arrivals from Glou (1/5)
The good guys at Glou recently held a trade tasting of some of their new arrivals.
Champagne, Brut Nature, Christophe Mignon ($55.00, Glou, 6 bottles/case)
The century-old estate has 6.5 hectares of vines (90% Pinot Meunier, 5% Pinot Noir and 5% Chardonnay) in some 30 parcels located between Le Breuil and Festigny. Viticulture is “alternative,” by which is meant semi-organic and biodynamic but with recourse to synthetic products in extreme circumstances. This blanc de noirs is 100% Pinot Meunier from 35-year-old vines. Vinified on a parcel-by-parcel basis: fermented in stainless steel and enameled steel tanks and matured on the lees for five months. Blended, bottled and aged for around 24 months before disgorging on a date determined by the lunar calendar. No dosage (also made in Extra Brut and Brut versions with 3 and 6 g cane sugar per litre respectively). Minimal sulphur dioxide. Unfiltered. 12.5% ABV.
Abundant foamy mousse. Nose dominated by leesy lemon and white fruit. Light and fruity in the mouth with a soft, super-fine effervescence and crystalline minerality. Dry, acid bright, long. A pure and refreshing winner. (Buy again? Done!)
Puligny-Montrachet 2011, Julien Altaber / Sextant (c. $65.00, Glou, NLA)
Based in Saint-Aubin, Altaber, who works for Dominique Derain, has run a négociant business on the side since 2007. He makes red and white Burgundies with grapes purchased from growers he trusts. The wines are fermented with indigenous yeasts and no chemical additives other than sulphur dioxide, which, if used at all, is done so only during racking, never at bottling. This grapes for this 100% Chardonnay come from 40-year-old vines located on a slope above the 1er crus. Only one cask was made, which is why Glou received only 60 or so bottles. 13% ABV.
Classic if closed nose: faint lemon, chalk and quartz, hints of oats and oxidized butter. Medium-bodied and dry, with clean, clear fruit, tons of minerals, tense acidity and a long buttery finish. So coherent, so beautifully balanced. An elegant wine that, while tight and taut at this stage, is full of potential. (Buy again? Def.)
MWG April 18th tasting (6/9): Dínamo gallega
Ribeira Sacra 2008, Lalama, Dominio do Bibei ($27.20, 11661390)
Mencia (90%), Garnacha (7%) and Mouratón (3%) from 15- to 100-year-old vines grown in slate, clay and granite soils. Manually harvested. Segregated by variety. The grapes are chilled, sorted and destemmed. Fermented in foudres except for 15%, which is fermented in large open barrels. Given two to three weeks maceration, then pressed. Matured 20 months on the lees in a mix of foudres and barrels, a small portion of which are new. 12.5% ABV.
Outgoing nose evocative of black raspberry, black cherry, slate and some sweet spice. Medium-bodied yet mouth-filling. The intense juicy fruit is amped up by zingy acidity and tethered by dark minerals and deep tannins, creating the kind of tension that’s usually associated with whites. Long earthy finish. A dynamo of a wine that’s only beginning to show its mettle and so benefits from carafing. People who claim that Galicia is Spain’s most exciting wine region are probably thinking of bottles like this. (Buy again? Absolutely.)
MWG April 18th tasting (5/9): Cheverny rouge
Cheverny 2011, Le Pressoir, Michel Gendrier ($19.85, 11154021)
A blend of biodynamically farmed Pinot Noir (80%) and Gamay (20%). The grapes are transferred to the vats without pumping. Alcoholic fermentation – with native yeasts – takes place at temperatures up to 30ºC and lasts about a week. The wine is then gently pressed, racked, allowed to undergo malolactic fermentation, oxygenated and racked again in December with bottling taking place in April or May. The only non-grape product added is small amounts of sulphur dioxide. 12.5% ABV.
Perfumy nose. Flavours tending to red cherry, earth, minerals and a touch of stemmy greenness. Barely medium-bodied. The fruit is clean and tart, the tannins slender, the finish tangy. Pleasant enough but a little short on depth and breadth, especially compared with the memorable 2006. (Buy again? Maybe.)
Cheverny 2010, Domaine Maison Père & Fils ($17.50, 11463801)
Pinot Noir (60%), Gamay (30%) and Malbec/Côt (10%). The grapes are sorted and destemmed. Fermented with native yeasts at 25-28ºC. Matured in tanks for 10 months. 12% ABV.
Odd but not unappealing nose of black currant, guava, baking spice and a little blood. Smooth and light, with silky tannins. The fruit tastes riper and sweeter than the Pressoir’s. Simple and well made but not a wine for thinking about. (Buy again? Maybe.)
Brett happens 