Berries of the Field

Some winemakers and wine drinkers believe that the only wines capable of fully showing their terroir are those made from a single grape varietal from a grand cru vineyard. But consider for a moment the beautiful wines made from humble field blends. These wines, and their mélange of grape varieties grown all together in a winemaker’s back plot or in vineyards within Viennese city limits or in a historic California vineyard or on some of the best vineyard lands in Alsace, turn out to be a far cry from humble. In this post, I’ll look at three examples.

What is a field blend, you ask? It’s a wine made from two or more, and sometimes many more, grape varieties that are interplanted on the same parcel of land and then harvested and vinified together. By contrast, most blended wines are made by growing, harvesting, and vinifying the grape varieties separately, then blending them.

What were the original reasons for planting different grape varieties together? Necessity, perhaps? Maybe winemakers simply did not have sufficient equipment to ferment different varieties separately. Another reason could have been to protect against risk in the event of a poor harvest or unfavorable weather and ensure, as much as possible, quality and quantity from year to year.

In a field blend, one grape variety’s ripe lusciousness balances another’s racy acidic character; another variety adds tannic backbone, and another adds color, such that the resulting wines are not too high in alcohol or too lean on fruit. Because all the grapes are picked at the same time, they are at different levels of maturity, ripeness, and acidity. Some are overripe, some are underripe, but the mixing of all the grapes results in complex blends that are greater than the sum of their separate parts—a whole orchestra, if you will. “The results are more in Nature’s hands,” says Austrian winemaker Fritz Wieninger.

The Compagni Portis Vineyard

The Compagni-Portis Vineyard

One such site where this synergy occurs is the historic Compagni-Portis Vineyard at the western base of Mount Veeder in California’s Sonoma Valley. Part of the original Buena Vista estate of Agoston Haraszthy, an early developer of California’s wine industry, the six-acre field now known as the Compagni-Portis Vineyard (after owners Natalie Compagni and Stephen Portis) was planted in 1954 with a diverse mix of white grapes: Riesling, Burger, Trousseau Gris, Gewürtztraminer, Green Hungarian, and Sylvaner among them. The soil is rich in white volcanic ash, and yields are most often less than one ton per acre.

The vineyard is one of sixty-eight vineyards registered by the Historic Vineyard Society of California and is one of the few mixed-white vineyards remaining. Its vines are dry farmed and organically farmed by Phil Coturri, one of Sonoma Valley’s leading organic viticulturalists and a member of the Coturri winemaking family.

At least six vintners have used grapes from the vineyard: Bedrock Wine Co., Arnot-Roberts, Ravenswood, Carlisle, Bucklin, and Gundlach Bundschu.

Boyhood pals Duncan Arnot Meyers and Nathan Lee Roberts, two of my favorite of the low-alcohol, low-interventionist “New California” winemakers, produce their Arnot-Roberts Old Vine White Field Blend from grapes from this site. Grapes are pressed whole cluster, then fermented with native yeast in stainless steel, and aged in neutral French oak barrels for twelve months. I first tasted this sublime wine in 2011 and love its intense aromatics of orange blossom, ripe pear, and lanolin, its bright acidity, and crisp finish. Absolutely delicious! 

Update, April 2014: Observant fans of this beautiful white field blend wine will have noticed that the label on the 2012 bottling does not include the words Compagni-Portis Vineyard, as labels from previous vintages did. Nathan Roberts recently told me the reason for this. He and Duncan Meyers learned last year that the vineyard is divided into three separate parcels that are owned by different families. They had not realized this before, because the Compagni-Portis family was the most active in the vineyard and interactive with Phil Coturri. Because of this divided ownership of the parcels, Arnot-Roberts has stopped using, as of the 2012 bottling, the Compagni-Portis name on the label of the field blend white wine.

The information about this vineyard in the records of the Historic Vineyard Society of California does not yet appear to be updated.

An Urban Field Blend

Vineyards within the city limits of Vienna? Yes! Believe it or not, Vienna has more than 1,700 acres planted to vines. And one of the traditional Viennese wines is Wiener Gemischter Satz (mixed set)—a field blend of white grapes. In 2013, a new Austrian DAC (designation of origin similar to the French AOC) was added: Wiener Gemischter Satz, and the specific geographic region associated with this DAC is the city of Vienna.

By law, a Viennese Gemischter Satz must comprise white grapes only and must include a minimum of three different grape varieties and not more than twenty. The predominant variety must not constitute more than 50 percent of the vineyard. All grapes must be planted, harvested, and vinified together. Typical grapes in a Viennese field blend include Grüner Veltliner, Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay, Gewürtztraminer, and Grauburgunder, among others. Some field blends comprise as many as fifteen different grape varieties.

Fritz Wieninger is an Austrian biodynamic winemaker who has been a stalwart in reviving the traditional Viennese practice of making white wines from field blends. “Especially close to my heart is the Wiener Gemischter Satz,” he says. “This is a Viennese classic that had been nearly forgotten.”

The grapes in this field blend grow in soils of shell limestone and weathered limestone with a high clay content.

I tasted Fritz’s 2012 Wiener Gemischter Satz at a recent seminar with Fritz and his Kamptal winemaking colleague and friend Fred Loimer at Rom Toulon’s 24 Hubert Wines in Tribeca, 24hubert.com. The complex blend of eleven different white grape varieties was fragrant and floral, with vibrant acidity and fruit, pronounced minerality from the limestone soils, low alcohol (12.5 percent), and was delightful in every way. “All of Vienna in one wine,” as Fritz says.

2012 Wieninger Wiener Gemischter Satz

Fritz Wieninger’s Wiener Gemischter Satz

“Mixed Blacks”

Not all field blends are made from white grape varieties. Some older Zinfandel vineyards in California are referred to as “mixed blacks” because the Zinfandel grapes were coplanted around 1900–1905 with several other varieties, including Petite Syrah, Grenache, Carignan, and Mourvèdre. Ridge Vineyards’ Lytton Springs Vineyard is one example of a “mixed blacks” field of heritage varieties.

And Now to France . . . 

Other field blends, like Jean-François Ganevat’s J’en Veux (I want some), combine red and white grapes to make a red wine.

Ganevat’s grapes, a mix of seventeen non-AOC approved varieties indigenous to the Jura region of eastern France, include Petit Béclan, Enfariné, Gueuche, Coreau, Gouais, Argant, Portugais Bleu, and Seyve-Villard. These are some of the “lost” grapes of the Jura, now almost forgotten, that used to be the staple varieties. They are coplanted on a small bit of land behind Ganevat’s house. The vines, on their own rootstock, were planted in 1900. Ganevat’s domaine was certified biodynamic in 2006. His soils are a mix of schist, clay, and marl.

Each year, Ganevat destems the grapes for one of his wines entirely by hand. In 2009, this wine was the J’en Veux. Using scissors, he and his workers cut each berry from the cluster and leave only a trace of the stem still attached to the grape, resulting in intact grapes and no bleeding juice from tugging the grape from its stem. The grapes are then dropped individually into the barrel for a whole-berry fermentation. All grape varieties are cofermented. In 2009 about one hundred cases of J’en Veux were made.

The 2010 J’en Veux that I tasted was complex and pure, with aromas of fresh red fruit, earth, and minerals. Light body, low alcohol, and no added suphur. Bliss in a glass!

Ganevat changes the J'en Veux label design often. This one is an older version. Bottles with the latest version of the "shocking" label are not allowed into the U.S.

Ganevat changes the J’en Veux label design often. This one is an older version. Bottles with the latest version of the “shocking” label are not allowed into the United States. But if you do a Web search, you’ll find it!

Tempest in a Wine Glass

To those who fiercely believe that only a single grape varietal can best express terroir, Alsatian winemaker Jean-Michel Deiss takes the opposite stance. He coplanted his best vineyard sites with white field blends to highlight the site over any particular grape. He calls the resulting wines his vins de terroir. I have yet to taste any of these wines but am certainly eager to.

Personally, I believe that any field-blended wine can express its terroir just as ably as any single-varietal wine.

I am absolutely smitten with field blends and would love to hear about your favorites.

Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland

Like Sitting Inside a Jewel Box: The Astoundingly Pure Wines of Alphonse Mellot

Alphonse Mellot, whose family has been making wine in the Loire since 1513.

Alphonse Mellot, whose family has been making wine in the Loire since 1513

My notion of what Sauvignon Blanc is was blown off its rocker by a tasting at Rom Toulon’s 24 Hubert Wines in Tribeca of four exquisite wines from Alphonse Mellot of Sancerre, in the Loire. Was it just me, or did you too dismiss wines made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape (one of the seven noble grape varieties notwithstanding) as smelling and tasting like “cat piss” or, in my experience, canned peas?

Last night, Alphonse Mellot, the nineteenth member of his historic winemaking family to bear that name, showed me the essence of Sauvignon Blanc in my glass.

The medieval hilltop town of Sancerre lies about 125 miles south of Paris.

The medieval hilltop town of Sancerre lies about 125 miles south of Paris.

The town of Sancerre traces its origins to Julius Caesar and Charlemagne. The Mellot family’s roots in Sancerre wine date to 1513, when they were vine growers and wine producers of excellent reputation. Ancestor César Mellot was the wine advisor to Louis XIV in 1698. By 1881 the family was shipping its wines throughout France and the world. Ever since then, the eldest son has continued to bear the name Alphonse.

All farming and grape growing at the Mellot vineyard, La Moussière, is organic and certified biodynamic (since 1999), with only copper and sulfur being used on the vines—copper to combat peronospera (downy mildew) and sulfur to guard against oidium (powdery mildew). Alphonse Mellot is one of only five biodynamic producers in Sancerre. In a region where some 98 percent of fruit is machine harvested, Mellot meticulously picks his grapes by hand into small 25-kilogram (about 55 pounds) cases.

The large percentage of old low-yielding vines, with some parcels planted in 1931, 1948, and 1951, grow in soils of limestone, flint (silex), clay, and chalk, which lend tremendous complexity to the wines.

Each one of the three whites we tasted—2012 Pouilly-Fumé, 2012 La Moussière Sancerre, and 2011 Satellite Sancerre (from vines planted in 1951)—was such a precise and refined expression of lemon, lime, and grapefruit, and of its minerals, acidity, and soil. I was stunned. Complexity, structure, substance, balance, and pure deliciousness. These wines have so much energy; you can almost feel the vibrations zinging off your glass, as if it were a tuning fork.

The last wine, 2011 La Moussière Sancerre Rouge, was made from Pinot Noir and had all the beautiful, mind-altering aromas and tastes of that grape’s red and black fruit and earth. Move over, Burgundy!

2011 La Moussière Sancerre Rouge

2011 La Moussière Sancerre Rouge

The fastidious attention to detail that Alphonse Mellot displays in making his wines is so evident in their expression. The impression his wines leave you with is indelible. 

Thanks to Rom Toulon for hosting another exceptional seminar at 24 Hubert Wines. These outstanding events with the winemakers provide a terrific learning experience in an intimate setting and allow for thoughtful interaction with the wine in one’s glass.

 Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland

Madeira: A Unique Wine Born of Heat and Time

M+chs

Madeira and cheese tasting at SD26 in Manhattan

Imagine drinking a fortified wine whose origins centuries ago on lengthy sea voyages through tropical temperatures and high humidity resulted in a nectar with intense and complex aromas of burned sugar, toasted nuts, and dried fruits. And then imagine pairing that uniquely conceived wine with an array of artisanally crafted Portuguese and British cheeses.

I had the pleasure of doing this recently at the Madeira Wine & Artisanal Cheese Pairing presented at SD26 by the Madeira Institute and the Dunn/Robbins Group, with expert instruction from Candela Prol, certified wine educator with a specialty in Iberian wines, and Max McCalman, maître fromager and award-winning author of Mastering Cheese, from the Artisanal Premium Cheese Center. Candela conducted the wine tasting, and Max the cheese, and then together they guided us in the art of pairing Madeira and cheese.

Candela began with a history of the origins of Madeira . . .

A Wine with the Name of an Island; an Island with the Name of a Wine

Just a short 1.5-hour flight from Lisbon, the subtropical, mountainous island of Madeira lies in the Atlantic Ocean some 325 miles from the coast of North Africa. The island’s distinctive and beautifully aromatic wine, also called Madeira, began to be exported only 25 years after Portuguese explorers discovered the island in 1419. Over the ensuing centuries, Madeira wines traveled by sea through the West and East Indies to reach Europe and the Americas, where they became particular favorites of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. In 1773 Franklin wrote that rather than “an ordinary death,” he would prefer “being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira.” The signers of the Declaration of Independence toasted the 1776 occasion with a glass of Madeira. 

A Fortunate Outcome

To prevent the wine from spoiling during its long sea voyages along the trade routes, a small amount of distilled alcohol was added to it, which acted as a natural preservative and stabilizer. Barrels of this fortified wine traveled as ballast in the holds of ships through the Tropics, where temperatures and humidity levels were very high.

When a ship returned to Madeira with a cargo of unsold wine still on board, an unexpected discovery was made. Tasting the wine revealed that the long sea journey, intense temperatures, and slow oxidation that occurred through the pores and staves of the barrels had transformed the wine, essentially cooking it, caramelizing the sugars, and imparting complex and concentrated aromas and flavors of burned caramel, toffee, roasted nuts, and dried fruits.  

Customers preferred the taste of this vinha da roda or “round-trip wine,” but because it was expensive and impractical to age wine by sending it on round-trip voyages to India, Brazil, or North America, two alternative techniques were developed In the eighteenth century, canteiro and estufagem, to emulate the effects of the sea voyages on the wine. 

Modern-Day Aging

The best-quality Madeiras are aged in American or French oak barrels placed high on wooden support beams (canteiros) in the hot, open-windowed lofts of wine merchants’ lodges for a minimum of two years. In this way, the wine’s temperature rises naturally over time, and the slow, deliberate oxidation makes the wine more concentrated and complex. Many Madeiras age in canteiros for five, ten, fifteen, or more years. 

Less expensive wines are mechanically heated to temperatures of between 113°F and 122°F through an estufagem process. An estufa (hot house, stove) can be either a large concrete or stainless steel tank with a heating coil or a heated room into which casks of wine are placed. Wines age in this estufagem process for a minimum of three months. 

Grape Varieties and Viticulture

Four noble grape varieties, all white, are used to make the best Madeiras: Sercial, Verdelho, Bual, and Malvasia (also known as Malmsey). Sercial and Verdelho are dry; Bual and Malvasia are sweet. A fifth white variety, Terrantez, is now nearly extinct.

The nonnoble red grape variety Tinta Negra Mole is a workhorse grape used in less expensive wines.

Besides the grapes used, the level of sweetness in the wine depends on the point at which the winemaker stops fermentation by adding neutral grape spirit. 

The percentage of alcohol by volume ranges from 17 to 22 percent.

All of the noble grape varieties are naturally high in acidity, which balances the residual sugar in the wines. If the grape name is on the label, then the wine must be made from a minimum of 85 percent of that grape variety. Wines are labeled based on the amount of time they were aged, and wines made with any of the noble grape varieties must be aged for a minimum of five years. 

On the island’s steep, terraced slopes, vineyards are planted in the acidic soil with the vines’ canopies raised off the ground on trellises to combat fungal diseases and rot from high humidity. Channeled troughs called lavadas carry rainwater from the high ground for irrigation throughout the rest of the island. Grape harvesting is done by hand. 

An Enduring Wine

The highest-quality Madeiras have no upper limit on aging. Because the wine is heated at such high temperatures, it has been almost pasteurized and is practically indestructible. Deliberate exposure to oxygen also contributes to its stability. An opened bottle will not deteriorate and will last indefinitely. Just be sure to store the bottle upright, because otherwise the high acidity in the wine will erode the cork.

Serving and Pairing Madeira

Serve the sweeter Madeiras at about 62°F. The drier wines are best served at 55-58°F to suppress their high acidity.

Madeira’s high acidity makes it a terrific pairing partner with food, particularly fish and shellfish, as well as cheeses and chocolate.

The Wines, from Driest to Sweetest

Henriques & Henriques Sercial, 10 Year Old. Off-dry style from grapes grown on the highest, cooler part of the island on north-facing slopes. Beautiful amber color. Orange peel, figs, dried fruit, and burned sugar on the nose. Attacks with a bit of sweetness, finishes dry with a burned orange note. Sercial is similar to wines made from Savagnin, in that both are oxidized. Perfect as an aperitif and also a great match with seafood.

Vinhos Barbeito Verdelho, Historic Series “Savannah” Special Reserve. Medium-dry style. Aged in French oak. The color bears the antique green-gold rim typical of Madeira. Verdelho is lower in acidity than Sercial, with stone fruit aromas. Grapes are grown on the lower slopes, at medium altitudes.

Blandy’s Bual, 5 Year Old. With a color similar to Verdelho, and sultanas, dates, and tropical fruits on the nose. Medium sweet with a dry finish. Aged in American oak. Grapes grown on the southern part of the island.

Pereira D’Oliveiras Terrantez 1988. From a family-owned lodge established in 1850; one of the most traditional producers. Terrantez is the rarest of the grape varieties, and the 1988 is the current release. With a maritime flavor and a searing acidity that really carries the finish through. Terrific paired with salted nuts or salty, fatty cheeses.

Justino’s Malvasia, 10 Year Old. The sweetest style. Sultanas, white raisins, and toasted nuts on the nose. Grapes grown at the island’s lower altitudes. Fortified for five to six days before going into the canteiro. Pair with dark chocolate or any savory food with tropical fruits, such as grilled pineapple.

Next, Max McCalman presented the lineup of seven Portuguese and British cheeses that he chose to accompany the Madeiras. Max included British cheeses because Madeira was at one time a British Crown Colony.   

The Cheeses, from Mildest to Strongest

Cheeses arranged from mildest to strongest, starting at the 6 o’clock position on the plate and moving clockwise

Devon Oke. A pressed cow’s milk cheese from southern England with a firm texture and a mild, milky flavor.

Amarelo da Beira Baixa. This especially nutritious peasant cheese is made in eastern Portugal from a blend of unpasteurized goat and sheep milk. The texture is firm but moist, the flavor is robust and a bit salty, and the finish is long.

Berkswell. Made in western England from unpasteurized sheep’s milk, this pressed farmstead cheese is savory with a firm texture and a slightly sweet finish. It is similar to Pecorino and Manchego.

Serpa. Crafted from raw sheep’s milk and vegetable rennet extracted from plants of the thistle family, this cheese from southeast Portugal has a texture that ranges from soft to firm, depending on the season and the age of the cheese.

Kirkham’s Lancashire. This quintessential British traditional cow’s milk cheese with the melts-in-your-mouth “butter crumble” texture is made in northwest England from unpasteurized cow’s milk.

Keen’s Cheddar. With a hard granular texture, a bit of tang, and a warm, meaty finish, this venerable cheese is made from raw milk in England’s Somerset region. When a Brit thinks of cheddar, Keen’s is the one that comes to mind.

Shropshire Blue. Virtually identical to England’s most famous cheese, Stilton, with a moist fudgy texture and flavor. 

When pairing cheese with Madeira, Max advised us to think about contrasting salty with sweet and balancing acidities and textures. In his opinion, it’s better to go for contrast in your pairings.

We tried all the cheeses with all the wines and discussed our favorite pairings. Some audience favorites were

  • Sercial with Berkswell
  • Serpa with Malvasia
  • Shropshire Blue with Malvasia

Try these Madeiras and cheeses and let me know what your favorite pairings are!

Max and C

Max McCalman and Candela Prol

Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland