A Virtual Tasting With Clark Smith of WineSmith Wines

“My wines are highly manipulated. All wines are highly manipulated. Those are not grapes in the glass.”

With these attention-grabbing opening remarks, Clark Smith began a recent virtual tasting of six of his wines for attendees of the 2020 (Virtual) Wine Media Conference.

Smith has been called a maverick vintner, a wine industry provocateur, a blowhard, a technocrat, Dr. Frankenwine, and the anti-Christ of wine. Since 1976, when he made his first wine in his Oakland, California, basement, Smith has made wine from 58 vintages: 44 in the Northern Hemisphere and 14 in the Southern Hemisphere. The guiding principles of his wines are balance, palate energy, low alcohol, structural integrity, and longevity. Smith’s wines are rarely over 14% alcohol. Of the six wines we tasted, the highest alcohol percentage was in the Cabernet Franc, at 13.5%. Generally, he does not filter his red wines.

9D9625FD-69AE-4536-9646-367289946C73

Clark Smith

So how, exactly, does Smith manipulate his wines? The technologies he uses, some of which he invented and patented, are detailed in his book Postmodern Winemaking: Rethinking the Modern Science of an Ancient Craft (University of California Press, 2013), which was Wine & Spirits magazine’s 2013 Book of the Year. Two of his tools are:

  • Micro-oxygenation (MOx). Patrick Ducournau, a French winemaker from Madiran (home of the exceedingly tannic grape varietal Tannat) invented this technology in 1991. Smith worked with Ducournau and his colleague Thierry Lemaire in the 1990s. MOx involves adding intentional minute amounts of oxygen into fermenting wine to enhance and stabilize color, refine and soften harsh tannins, and improve mouthfeel, flavor depth and integration, and longevity. MOx also corrects for too much pyrazines (bell pepper), too much Brettanomyces, and too much oak, which Smith considers the three sins in winemaking. Because the oxygen is diffused so slowly, the wine can absorb it without oxidizing.
  • Dealcoholization. New World grapes at ripeness (ie, when the winemaker decides that the grapes [and seeds and tannins] are ready to be picked) can often be high in sugar, leading to wines that are high in alcohol. Smith invented and patented a process using reverse osmosis (RO) that allows him to get any alcohol percentage he wants—what he calls the sweet spot—without harming the wine. Interestingly, Smith said that none of the wines we tasted underwent this RO process. Also covered under this patent is the ability to remove volatile acidity. More than half of California’s wine undergoes dealcoholization, according to Eric Asimov.

In the 1990s, Smith founded a company called Vinovation to commercialize the use of reverse osmosis, MOx, ultrafiltration, processes using high-quality oak chips, and other new tools. Vinovation offered its services to winemakers, and “Vinovation and its global partners quickly became the largest wine consulting company in the world, and we did service for thousands and thousands of wineries all over the world,” Smith said.

Smith has received a lot of flak over the years for his innovations and tools, which some feel do evil to the wine by taking the terroir out of it and erasing all traces of the character of the vintage and the grapes. Unlike many in the wine world, he does not take a dim view of the word manipulation; he does not consider it an act of artful deceit. According to Smith, no one objects to technologies and tools of modern winemaking such as stainless steel, electricity, and refrigeration because we have those things in our kitchens and we’re comfortable with them. In cooking, to which Smith likens winemaking, no one objects when top chefs openly use tools and technologies such as sous vide, liquid nitrogen for freezing, puff technology, and machines to conch chocolate.

Smith feels that using the winemaking technologies at his disposal actually helps him do a better job of allowing his wines to express their terroir. He starts with grapes grown in living soil—“the enhanced mineral uptake gives the wine a healthier immune system.” He then uses MOx and dealcoholization judiciously (sometimes he doesn’t use dealcoholization at all) to achieve the refined structure he seeks. “I work with the tannin until it integrates the aromas which the natural microbes impart into a single ‘voice,’ so they will occur as soulful rather than spoiled.” For him, that aspiration and way of working is very different from a winemaker who uses Mega Purple, stave wood, and excess MOx to speed up the aging process in order to bring the wine to market faster.

“The foundation of my brand is total honesty and transparency,” Smith says. “I’m never going to do anything with my wines that I’m not proud to brag about.”

So Let’s Taste Some of Smith’s Wines . . .

50F2EB18-AA2C-4031-AE94-FA947DD3C6B9

2017 Brut Zero Sparkling Grenache Blanc de Noirs. Santa Cruz Mountains. Disgorged after 13 months on the yeast; no dosage. Alc. 12.5%. This méthode champenoise sparkling wine has aromas of strawberries and melon and is very clean and fresh tasting, with minerality in the finish from the limestone soils. To my palate (and esophagus), it is a brut zero that’s rich and round with no need for additional sugar to tamp down excess acidity.

2015 Saint Laurent. Ricci Vineyard, Carneros. Alc. 11.8%. This aromatic dark-skinned grape grows in very tight clusters and needs the dry air and UV of high altitudes to suppress mold. Widely planted in the Czech Republic and Austria, it claims Pinot Noir as one of its parents. The wine is bright, very soft, and delicious; it has an herbal character with nice acidity and rounded tannins. Smith highly recommends pairing this wine with seafood, sushi, and paella. Give it a bit of a chill. This is the only wine in the six we tasted on which a technology called flash détente was used to denature rot and enzymes and pull off pyrazines.

2018 Norton. Heringer Estate Vineyards, Clarksburg, Yolo County. Alc. 12.9%. 100% Norton. Only 58 cases produced. Clarksburg, on the Sacramento River in California’s Central Valley, has long, warm summers that are perfect for fully ripening Norton grapes. Smith thinks that Heringer is the only Norton vineyard in the state. This juicy, deeply flavorful wine is an intense purple color (complemented by a mauve foil on the bottle), dense and soft and tasting of blueberry pie.

2015 Cabernet Franc. Lake County. Alc. 13.5%. Smith has been making Cabernet Franc in about ten locations all around the state since 1993. This wine is 78% Cabernet Franc and was cofermented with 22% Merlot for roundness. MOx was used right after fermentation. The wine spent 66 months in neutral French oak to reduce the reductive character. I detected cinnamon and tobacco on the nose but no bell pepper; the tannins are soft. The rocky volcanic soils of Diamond Ridge, where the grapes grow, transmit a mineral energy.

2014 Meritage. Ishi Pishi Vineyard, Humboldt County. Alc. 12.8%. This wine is a field blend of organically grown grapes from northern Humboldt County: 61% Merlot, 19% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Petit Verdot, 5% Malbec, and 3% Cabernet Franc. Vinified without added sulfites. The wine spent 57 months in 20-year-old neutral French oak, yet it is still fresh and purple, dense and rich. You can drink this wine now (consider decanting it and letting it sit; it needs air, as it’s still quite reductive); it will also benefit from a decade of further aging.

In an email exchange about this wine after the tasting, and in an attempt to understand more about how MOx works, I asked Smith whether using more MOx during vinification would have resolved the reduction in the Meritage. He replied, “It is true that I could have ‘quenched’ the wine with a longer regimen of oxygen and sawed many years off its development potential in service to current drinkability, but there are plenty of wines out there that do just that, and I’m exploring what I feel are more noble options.”

2017/2018 Petit Manseng. Novavine Nursery Vineyard, Yolo County. Alc. 12.9%. 100% Petit Manseng. 375 mL bottle. This is a delicate, aromatically delicious, and very refreshing dessert wine. Because it retains its acidity, it is not in the least syrupy or cloying. It would pair well with lighter desserts such as Napoleon, cannoli, and strawberry shortcake. Smith’s tasting sheet includes the information that aromatic Acacia wood chips were added to the fermentation to impart a honeysuckle element to the nose and some tannin structure. In a sort-of solera system, two-thirds of a given year’s wine is bottled and the rest returned to barrel for increased complexity of aging until it is blended into the wine of the following year.

Where Can I Buy the Wines?

WineSmith wines can be purchased direct on the website. Smith is selling the six wines we tasted in a Postmodern Select Six Sampler at a 36% discount. To order, go to WhoIsClarkSmith.com and click on Shop. Mixed cases qualify for discounts too, and Smith offers free cellaring.

What New Projects Is Smith Working On?

  • A Clarksburg Tannat that could be ready as soon as Spring 2021
  • A Lake County Tempranillo that will be in the Slow Wine Guide in 2021, along with the sparkling Grenache and the Meritage that we tasted
  • A Zinfandel made in a Super Tuscan style
  • A Lake County Malbec
  • An Alexander Valley Petit Verdot that Smith expects will be in barrel for four to five years

Truth in Advertising

Other wine writers have pointed out that the technologies Smith uses can be viewed simply as more automated and high-tech versions of long-used techniques to “improve” or “correct” wine such as racking and chaptalization. To my mind, those practices, whether the high-tech or low-tech versions, are infinitely more benign than spraying the grapes with synthetic herbicides and pesticides, using colorants and other chemical additives in the winery, and using commercial yeast strains during vinification to create artificial aromatics and flavors.

Smith is forthcoming about how he makes his wines. In our culture we have the notion, encouraged by corporate marketing departments, perhaps, that wine is or should be an artisanal product, free of manipulation by technology. But that kind of marketing leads to deception, probably making winemakers feel they can’t be transparent about their methods. How many winemakers’ websites have you looked at that emphasize their low-interventionist approach, their desire to express the vineyard site’s soil and climate in their wines, their belief that wine is made in the vineyard? How many of those winemakers use MOx and dealcoholization in the winery? Can a winemaker express a sense of place and vintage and use the industrial tools thoughtfully to that end? Smith would say yes.

If these practices are as widespread in the global wine industry as Smith says, then unless we drink so-called natural wines (but even then . . . one can argue that hand-crafted wines, too, are manipulated in that every decision a winemaker makes can be viewed as a manipulation), we are drinking manipulated wines. It is still not mandatory for winemakers to list the ingredients in their wines on the label, much less to describe how the wine was made.

I don’t necessarily object to drinking a wine that has been minimally “adjusted” or “intervened with” in some way, but to wine marketers and winemakers I say: Just be honest with me about what’s in my glass!

Copyright © 2020 by Carol Hartland

Masterclass: Wines of Santa Barbara County

Look at a map of California’s coastline and you’ll notice that its north-south direction switches to an east-west orientation at Santa Barbara. Thanks to this marked topographic shift (the longest such east-west orientation from the Aleutian Islands to Tierra Del Fuego), mountain ranges traverse east-west and valleys open directly to the Pacific Ocean, receiving the full force of its maritime wind and fog. The result is one of the coolest and driest winegrowing regions in California, with one of the longest growing seasons. No fall rains mean no mildew, making possible long hang times. All these factors suit the region perfectly to growing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. 

As I learned at a recent Guild of Sommeliers masterclass focusing on 15 wines from top producers in Santa Barbara County taught by master sommeliers Matt Stamp and Brian McClintic (of Santa Barbara’s Les Marchands wine bar), of the 20,000 acres in Santa Barbara County devoted to growing wine grapes, some 4,800 are planted to Pinot Noir, 6,800 to Chardonnay, and 1,400 to Syrah. The county’s many different microclimates enable the growing of several different grape varietals, but Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Syrah represent the county’s focus. 

The five federally recognized AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) within Santa Barbara County are Santa Maria Valley, Santa Ynez Valley, Sta. Rita Hills, Ballard Canyon, and Happy Canyon of Santa Barbara. (There’s a petition pending for a sixth AVA, Los Alamos Valley.) These are young wine regions: Santa Maria Valley, the northernmost appellation in Santa Barbara County and, since the 1980s, home to Au Bon Climat and Qupé, was granted AVA status just 34 years ago in 1981. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the two varietals grown in its foggy, windswept, and cool climate. Santa Ynez Valley, a climatically diverse and extensive east-west AVA established in 1983, has very cool coastal temperatures that warm as one moves inland. Pinot Noir does well in the cool western part of the valley, while Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot thrive in the warmer east. Located farthest west within the Santa Ynez Valley AVA is the AVA of Sta. Rita Hills (granted AVA status in 2001). Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grow exceptionally well in its extremely cool, ocean-influenced climate. Ballard Canyon is the youngest AVA, having received its AVA status in October 2013. Syrah and other Rhône varietals such as Grenache and Viognier grow well in its moderate-to-warm climate. The easternmost AVA, established in 2009, is Happy Canyon. Situated above the fog line and with less coastal influence, the climate is too warm for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but Bordeaux varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Sauvignon Blanc grow very well here.

The Wines

We tasted through two white flights and two red. Though our focus was Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Syrah, we tasted a few other varieties as well, beginning with the first flight. I’ve included very brief tasting impressions of the wines.

SBCW2

Flight One:

Tatomer “Kick-On Ranch” Riesling 2012 (Santa Barbara County)

Lieu-Dit Sauvignon Blanc 2013 (Santa Ynez Valley AVA)

Grassini Sauvignon Blanc 2013 (Happy Canyon AVA)

Tatomer’s flagship 100% Riesling was classically dry, with very little botrytis influence but with a bitterness that Matt said was a result of skin contact. Of the two Sauvignon Blancs, Lieu-Dit’s had pronounced fruity aromatics of passionfruit, grapefruit, and currant, while Grassini’s aromatics were of sweeter citrus fruits; peachy, creamy.

Flight Two:

Liquid Farm “Golden Slope” Chardonnay 2012 (Sta.  Rita Hills AVA)

Sandhi Chardonnay 2012 (Sta. Rita Hills AVA)

Chanin “Los Alamos Vineyard” Chardonnay 2013 (Santa Barbara County)

Tyler “Bien Nacido” Chardonnay 2013 (Santa Maria Valley AVA)

Of these four wines, the Sandhi had the most new oak (20%), but it was unnoticeable! Grapes were whole-bunch pressed, giving a much cleaner, less phenolic juice. This is a beautiful wine! Liquid Farm’s “Golden Slope” went through 100% malolactic fermentation and was round, creamy, and leesy. The Chanin was extremely aromatic and floral; broad, big. In contrast, the Tyler was leaner in style, showing a strong sulfite character.

SBCW1
Flight Three:

Martian Ranch Gamay 2013 (Santa Barbara County)

Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir “La Bauge Au Dessus” 2012 (Santa Ynez Valley AVA)

Whitcraft Pinot Noir “Pence Ranch—Mt. Eden Clone” 2013 (Santa Ynez Valley AVA)

Brewer-Clifton Pinot Noir “Machado” 2012 (Sta. Rita Hills AVA)

Martian Ranch’s Gamay was fresh and clean, with good acidity and “lots of carbonic pop!” in Matt’s opinion. The Whitcraft and Brewer-Clifton Pinot Noirs were both pressed 100% whole cluster and both had no new oak. Whitcraft’s ABV was a low 12.2; good acidity; tart and lean. Brian told us that Greg Brewer wanted his Machado Pinot Noir to taste “like a red bouncing ball” and, in fact, the wine had a lift and a bounce; fruit forward (riper than Whitcraft); terrific balance of ripeness and restraint. Au Bon Climat’s Pinot was aged in 50% new French oak (yet the wine was balanced); zesty, forward red fruit; spicy; unfiltered.

Flight Four:

Ojai Syrah “Solomon Hills” 2011 (Santa Maria Valley AVA)

Stolpman Syrah 2012 (Ballard Canyon AVA)

Qupé Syrah “Bien Nacido” 1999 (Santa Maria Valley AVA)

Clendenen Family Nebbiolo Riserva 2004 (Santa Maria Valley AVA)

Three delicious Syrahs! The Qupé is from the oldest planting in Santa Maria (“X” block in the Bien Nacido vineyard), planted in 1981; the vines look like trees. The Ojai was densely concentrated, zesty, spicy, fresh, and invigorating, while the Stolpman was a bit riper and rich and belied its 14.1 ABV. The Clendenen Family Nebbiolo Riserva represents the experimentation going on right now in Santa Barbara County winemaking. At 10 years old, and having spent 5 years in barrel, this wine is still young! Floral (roses), tar, earthinesss, and nice acidity. In Matt’s opinion, this wine is like Barolo Riserva and belongs in the conversation of Piedmont Nebbiolo. I agree!

The Guild of Sommeliers

GS_logoAn international membership organization of sommeliers, wine industry professionals, and wine enthusiasts, the Guild of Sommeliers provides members with rich opportunities for learning and networking. Members receive access to in-depth masterclasses (this is instruction at a very high level) such as the one I’ve written about here, taught by master sommeliers in cities around the country, articles, podcasts, discussion forums, online study guides, maps of the world’s wine regions, and job postings. Please support this wonderful organization by becoming a member! Visit guildsomm.com for more information.

World of Pinot Noir

image001Pinot Noir lovers, take note! Four of the producers whose wines we tasted in this masterclass—Sandhi, Tyler Winery, Au Bon Climat, and Brewer-Clifton—are participating in World of Pinot Noir, a two-day celebration of our beloved grape, and will be pouring their wines on March 7 at the Saturday Pinot Noir by the Sea Tasting at Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara. As of this posting, some tickets remain for this event, which showcases more than 120 producers. In addition, World of Pinot Noir features a Friday Pinot Noir by the Sea Tasting, at which approximately 100 winemakers (a different roster from the Saturday event) will pour their wines. Food pairing seminars pair Pinot Noir with chanterelles from the Santa Rita Hills and local uni from the Pacific Ocean. Five-course gourmet dinners highlight local cuisine and the wines of attending winemakers. On Saturday night Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat—Pinot Noir and Santa Maria Valley pioneer—will be honored at a special Rockstars of Pinot Noir dinner. Visit wopn.com for details and tickets.

Copyright © 2015 by Carol Hartland

Joe Spellman on JUSTIN Vineyard and Winery and Landmark Vineyards

I have previously posted about the excellent seminars at Rom Toulon’s 24 Hubert Wines in Tribeca (see my posts about Alphonse Mellot and Fritz Wieninger’s Wiener Gemischter Satz). This past week I attended another top-notch seminar at the Manhattan store, presented by master sommelier Joe Spellman, winery sommelier for JUSTIN Vineyard and Winery in Paso Robles, on California’s Central Coast. 

Joe Spellman

Master Sommelier Joe Spellman

Tracing the history of JUSTIN Vineyard, Joe explained to us that Justin Baldwin purchased 160 acres of the limestone-rich soils of the Santa Lucia Mountains of Paso Robles in 1981 with the dream of making Left Bank Bordeaux-style blends from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc on California’s Central Coast. With its elevation of 1,200-1,500 feet, Pacific Ocean breezes, and wide day-night temperature swings, Paso’s microclimate allows the grapes to develop flavor, structure, and balance. Justin Baldwin realized his dream in 1987 with the first release of Isosceles, now his flagship wine, named for the three varietals that make up the blend: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc.

We tasted three wines from JUSTIN Vineyard and Winery, each one of them beautifully balanced:

2013 Central Coast Sauvignon Blanc, $14. 100% Sauvignon Blanc. Whole-cluster pressed and fermented in stainless steel tanks; no malolactic fermentation. Alc. 14.5%. Citrus, apple, and pear, with a crisp, refreshing minerality and a long finish. Lean, clean, citrusy and meant to be enjoyed young.

2012 Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon, $25. Juicy, ripe red and black fruit, hand picked and hand sorted, aged in small American oak barrels (30% new) for 16 months, and displaying the very low and soft tannins typical of Paso Robles. A blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc, along with some Syrah and Petite Syrah, although the exact blend is not divulged. Alc. 14.5%.

2011 Paso Robles Isosceles, $88. A spicy, aromatic, full-bodied wine modeled on the Left Bank wines of Château Margaux. 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc. Aged in 100% new French oak barrels for 21 months. Unfiltered; racked twice per year. Alc. 14.5%.

Joe also brought two wines for us to taste from JUSTIN’s sister vineyard, Landmark Vineyards, located at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain in Sonoma Valley in northern California.

Landmark has a very interesting history. It was founded in 1974 by a group that included Damaris Deere Ford, great-great-granddaughter of John Deere, who invented the steel plow. The first vintage of Landmark’s flagship wine, Overlook Chardonnay, was produced in 1991. In 1993, Landmark hired world-renowned enologist Helen Turley, now owner of the 9-acre boutique winery Marcassin Vineyard, who helped craft Landmark’s signature style: grapes harvested by hand and pressed whole cluster, fermented by naturally occurring wild yeasts, and aged in French oak barrels. The philosophy of Landmark’s current winemaker, Greg Stach, is “the best grapes make the best wines. The less the wine is manipulated, the more flavors and aromas remain for the consumer to enjoy.” 

The two wines we tasted were:

2012 Landmark Vineyards Overlook Chardonnay, $25. 100% Chardonnay, with the grapes sourced from 22 vineyards in the following counties: 83% Sonoma, 11% Monterey, and 6% Santa Barbara. Grapes are whole-cluster pressed and native-yeast fermented in 100% French oak barrels for 10 months. Lees are stirred throughout the wine in the barrels twice per month, to create roundness, richness, and texture. Alc. 14.3%.

2012 Landmark Vineyards Overlook Pinot Noir, $25. 100% Pinot Noir, with the grapes sourced from cool-climate vineyards in the following counties: 53% San Luis Obispo, 40% Sonoma, and 7% Monterey. Grapes are harvested and sorted by hand, fermented in small single-vineyard lots, and aged for 10 months in 100% French oak barrels. Winemaker Greg Stach and his team taste and select from the individual barrels and create the final blend. Alc. 14.5%. Stach’s goal for this wine was to craft a fruit-forward, accessible, and reasonably priced wine with good acidity.

24 Hubert Wines has several other appealing seminars coming up. Check out their schedule here.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland

Bosoms, Bubbles, and Bollinger: What Shape Is Your Champagne Glass?

34, a swanky restaurant in the heart of London’s Mayfair district, commissioned British sculptor Jane McAdam Freud (daughter of the celebrated late painter Lucien Freud) to design a Champagne coupe molded from the left breast of supermodel Kate Moss, to celebrate her 40th birthday and her 25 years in the fashion industry. A spokesman for 34 described the glass as “an intricate abstract design reminiscent of Art Deco symmetry which, when held at an angle, shows a beautiful curvy shape.” The coupe has a long, slender stem and “her ‘Kate’ signature accompanied by a small heart at the base.” (The Independent, August 25, 2014)

Photo: British Vogue

Photo: British Vogue

On October 8, 2014, Kate Moss will host the launch of the coupe at 34. Filling the glasses will be Dom Pérignon’s P2-1998 (a rebranding of the latest release of the 1998 vintage from the Oenothèque series). The coupe and a bottle of 1995 Oenothèque will cost £2,123 (US$3,515).

Photo: Wine Spectator

Photo: Wine Spectator

This is not the first time that a Champagne coupe has been modeled from a supermodel’s breast. In 2007, Dom Pérignon commissioned German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld to create an advertising campaign for the release of its 1993 vintage Oenothèque. Lagerfeld’s muse, Claudia Schiffer, also happened to be a top model for Dom Pérignon at the time. Lagerfeld honored her and her bosom with a design that has a white breast-shaped bowl with a pink nipple sitting atop three white porcelain miniature replicas of Dom Pérignon bottles on a silver tray bearing Lagerfeld’s and Schiffer’s signatures. This assemblage, accompanied by a bottle of Oenothèque, could be purchased in December 2008 for $3,150.

Why did McAdam Freud and Lagerfeld cast their interpretation of the Champagne coupe from a beautiful woman’s left breast? And why did Lagerfeld make his coupe and miniature Dom Pérignon bottles of milky white porcelain? Here are some possible explanations:

Milk Bowl (Breast Bowl), from the Service for the Dairy, together with tripod base for Queen Marie Antoinette. 1788. Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory. Painted by Fumez, after design by Jean-Jacques Lagrené and Louis-Simon Boizot. Photo: M. Beck-Coppola (Musée National de la Céramique, Sèvres).

Milk Bowl (Breast Bowl) with tripod base, from the Service for the Dairy for Queen Marie Antoinette. 1788. Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory. Painted by Fumez, after a design by Jean-Jacques Lagrené and Louis-Simon Boizot. Photo: M. Beck-Coppola (Musée National de la Céramique, Sèvres, France).

This Sèvres porcelain milk bowl, complete with a nipple, is one from a set of four made in 1788 by artisans from the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory as part of a 65-piece dining set that Louis XVI commissioned for his queen, Marie Antoinette, to use at the royal dairy at the Château de Rambouillet. The tripod base on which the bowl sits features the head and hooves of a goat, the Queen’s favorite animal.

The bowl is modeled after a Greek drinking cup produced by Athenian potters, a mastos (meaning breast, udder), made from terracotta in the shape of a female breast, with nipple.

Attic black-figure mastos cup attributed to Psiax, ca. 520-510 BCE

Attic black-figure mastos cup attributed to Psiax, ca. 520-510 BCE. Photo: Getty Museum

In the early 19th century, Josephine Bonaparte commissioned Sèvres to make an updated version of the breast bowls for her, using the original molds. Hers were of white porcelain and 24-carat gold and were also used in the Rambouillet dairy.

Musée National de la Céramique, Sèvres, France

Photo: Musée National de la Céramique, Sèvres, France

The gift of the Sèvres milk bowl from her husband may have inspired Marie Antoinette with an idea for a reciprocal gift to him: round Champagne glasses made from casts of her breasts (or her left breast in particular, depending on who tells the story)—the first Champagne coupe, so the tale goes—so that Louis XVI and their courtiers could drink to her health from them.

Kate Moss heard this story about “the Marie Antoinette coupe” too. She said, “I was excited to participate in this project. What an honour to be alongside Marie Antoinette—she was a very intriguing and mischievous character.”

Artwork by Lisa Falzon

Artwork by Lisa Falzon

But legend also has it that the saucer-like Champagne coupe was cast from the breasts of—take your pick!—Madame du Pompadour, Madame du Barry, Empress Josephine, Diane de Poitiers, Helen of Troy, and 1930s American model and photographer Lee Miller. Why? Because their men—respectively, Louis XV (twice), Napoleon, Henry II, Paris, and surrealist artist Man Ray—greatly admired their lover’s breasts and fantasized about drinking Champagne from them. In the case of Diane de Poitiers, one version of the story says that her husband, Henry II, cast the mold solely from his wife’s left breast.

Are these tales all born of men’s fantasies, the coincidental shape of a glass, an homage to a beautiful woman’s chest, and celebrity sex symbols, perhaps? In fact, the coupe was designed and made in England around 1663, which predates du Pompadour, du Barry, Josephine, Marie Antoinette, and Lee Miller and postdates de Poitiers and, if she existed at all, Helen of Troy. 

Marketing and celebratory hoopla aside, why all this fuss (and expense) over a glass whose shape is spectacularly ill-suited to drinking sparkling wine, especially a sparkling wine as miraculous as Champagne?

Photo: The Vintage Type

Photo: The Vintage Type

The large surface area of the wide, shallow coupe dissipates Champagne’s bubbles, warms the wine, and quickly renders it flat. As Benoît Gouez, chief winemaker for Moët & Chandon since 2005, says about drinking Champagne from a coupe, “You won’t have enough focus. The effervescence will go everywhere, the flavors will go everywhere, and you’re going to lose a lot of it.” (Ironically, the Dom Pérignon being served in those modern-day reinterpretations of the “Marie Antoinette coupe” is a Moët brand.)

But when the coupe was invented in the 17th century, sparkling wines were not nearly as effervescent as they are today. Sparkling wine was bottled before the initial fermentation had finished because bottles had not yet been invented that could withstand the internal pressure created by a secondary fermentation. Exploding bottles and popping corks led to the wine being called “the devil’s wine.” For those more sedate sparkling wines of the late 17th century, the design of the coupe was probably very appropriate.

The coupe was popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, thanks in part to the Stork Club, black-and-white films of the 1930s and 1940s such as Casablanca, Shall We Dance, and The Thin Man, and the penchant at wedding receptions for stacking layers of coupes into a “tower,” with Champagne poured continuously into the top glass and flowing down to fill the others below.

Personally, though I acknowledge that it’s far from the ideal glass from which to drink Champagne, I love the look and shape of the coupe. Yes, some are very plain, sturdy, and workmanlike, but those with a beautifully faceted stem, a diamond-shaped capital atop the stem, a graceful bowl, and a thin lip are exquisite to me, aesthetically. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for the 1940s glamour that I associate with them. My parents’ vintage Champagne coupes have a hollow stem, all the way to the base—a design feature that visually highlights the upward-spiraling bubbles in a most delightful way (even while the drinker’s fingers around the stem warm the wine prematurely, alas). Coupes are great for cocktails, and, when beautiful, are both fun and sophisticated to drink from!

FluteThe stemmed tall, narrow, very unbreastlike flute (so named because of its resemblance to the musical instrument) replaced the coupe as the preferred Champagne glass in the 1960s (although Audrey Hepburn was drinking from a flute as early as 1954 in Sabrina). Designed to remedy all the problems of drinking Champagne from a wide, shallow coupe, the purpose of the tall, slender flute was to preserve carbonation (and, as a side benefit, to allow more glasses to fit on a tray). There’s a much higher concentration of carbon dioxide Shoulder Flutein a tall, narrow flute than in a broad saucer. The bottom of the flute’s bowl can either taper into the stem or sit perpendicular atop it. Holding the glass by the stem prevents warming the wine, and the narrow opening at the top of the glass exposes less surface to air, retaining the effervescence and reducing spillage.

The better flutes have a rough spot deliberately etched inside the bottom center of the bowl that acts as a nucleation point for the bubbles to gather and then stream continuously upward to the top. In this way, the effervescence remains in the wine longer, which is probably why the flute is the best glass to display a sparkling wine’s bubbles. The flute will keep the wine bubbly longer than any other shape of glass. Supposedly, the narrow diameter of the top of the flute concentrates the wine’s aromatics, opposite to the way that the coupe’s wide bowl dissipates them, but I’ve never been able to discern much, if any, of a Champagne’s aromatics in a flute. Inside such a narrow diameter, the wine has no room to breathe, open, or develop. The diameter of some flutes is so ridiculously narrow that it’s impossible to drink from them without one’s nose getting in the way. Others are so tall that they become top heavy. Decorative arts and furniture appraiser Soodie Beasley said that “flutes, the extra tall ones anyway, remind me of big hair and the 1980s and ’90s.”

Trumpet fluteThe trumpet flute, with its wider mouth tapering outward from a slender stem, is a variation on the straight up-and-down flute. Because its wider opening at the top of the glass diffuses aromas rather than focusing them toward the nose, I can’t see that this design is an improvement over the standard flute, except that its wider mouth allows sipping without bumping one’s nose against the rim.

An improvement over the flute’s constricted aromatics, the tulip glass features a bowl that curves outward slightly above the midpoint, enabling some space for swirling, then curves back in at the top, directing the aromatics toward the nose.

Tulip2

Tulip

Starting around 2010, sommeliers and heads of Champagne houses such as Krug began advocating drinking Champagne, which is a white wine, out of a white wine glass, in order to taste the wine’s fullness in a way that’s impossible in a flute. The wine glass’s bowl is wide enough (and wider than the tulip glass) for the wine to breathe, open, and develop, and release its aromas and flavors. The inward-sloping sides at the top of the glass deliver the aromas into the nose and the flavors onto the palate in a much richer way than a flute can. Because of this, the wine’s finish is longer as well.

This past week a friend and I shared a bottle of Agrapart Les 7 Crus Brut Blanc de Blancs NV at the newly opened Chelsea Market (Manhattan) location of Laura Maniec’s Corkbuzz wine bar. (The “7” in the wine’s name refers not to the seven permitted grape varieties in the Champagne AOC but to the seven villages from which the grapes come: Avize, Cramant, Oger, Oiry, Avenay Val d’Or, Bergères-les-Vertus, and Mardeuil.) When the sommelier asked if we wanted the wine poured into flutes or white wine glasses, we replied, “Both, please.” We wanted to conduct our own taste test of the two glasses. As we expected, the white wine glass was far superior to the flute. We could not really smell anything in the wine in the narrow flute because its slender shape prevented the wine from coming into contact with oxygen; consequently, the aromas could not open or develop. In contrast, the white wine glass gave the wine room to open, breathe, and release its concentration of aromas. And the wider opening at the top of the glass gave each of us the room to swirl the wine and tilt the glass toward our face without spilling the contents; we had room to really put our nose into the glass and smell the aromas. Because more than 70 percent of what you taste with your mouth comes from your olfactory sense, being able to smell the wine is very important to your overall enjoyment and appreciation of Champagne!

If you’re in the fortunate position of being able to drink older, more complex, vintage Champagnes, then you owe it to yourself and to the wine to pour that precious liquid into a white wine glass in order to savor its elegance, depth, and aromas. Remember, that wine has spent anywhere from six to twenty years or more inside a bottle. How else will it open and reveal its concentration of complex aromas of yeastiness, toastiness, and brioche unless it’s allowed to come into contact with oxygen? And served at the right temperature, by the way (50°F/10°C)! Serve your Champagne too cold, and you will suppress its aromatics.

Dom Pérignon      P2-1998

Kate Moss’s festivities aside, Richard Geoffroy, cellar master at Dom Pérignon, must have to turn a blind eye to the colossal lost opportunity represented by pouring P2-1998 into a coupe, even one modeled on Kate Moss’s left breast. P2-1998 spent 12 years aging and maturing on its lees (the spent cells of the yeast that gave their bodies to the wine) and an additional two years resting postdisgorgement (after the yeast plug is removed) in the Dom Pérignon cellars. Earlier this year, Geoffroy described P2-1998 like this: “The 1998 is about energy: the wine is already 16 years to the vintage. You could well expect the maturity of the wine to be based on weight and power—paradoxically, it is not. It is full, packed with energy—so lifted, so Dom Pérignon, so penetrating; energetic and dancing, nothing weighty, nothing tired or oxidative.” I hope the guests at 34 at the christening of Kate Moss’s coupe in October will appreciate these characteristics of the remarkable wine they are privileged to drink, coupe or no. 

Benoît Gouez observed that “if you pour one bottle [of Champagne] into ten different glasses, you will have ten different wines. The glassware does affect a lot the tasting experience.”

But if your budget, as does mine, prevents you from regularly spending a minimum of $45 for a bottle of more complex Champagne, then it’s perfectly fine to drink your more simple sparkling wine from something other than a white wine glass! Personally, I’m on the lookout for a hybrid glass—something between a narrow flute and a small white wine glass. A Riesling glass, perhaps, or else a voluptuous tulip glass, both of which are wider than a flute. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way! My most important considerations, as I evaluate glasses, are: How does the glass feel in my hand? Is it beautiful to look at? Do I enjoy holding it and drinking from it? I want my chosen glass to feel special—and playing into that equation of elegance are overall aesthetics: the lightness and thinness of the glass and the lip, and the glass’s height. And most important: Does its shape allow the wine’s aromas and flavors to develop?

While I’m looking for my ideal glass, I’d like everyone to take a minute to remember Lily Bollinger, who ran the Bollinger Champagne house from 1941 to 1971, and what she said about drinking her Champagne. I wonder what shape of glass she used?

I drink my Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad.

Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone.

When I have company, I consider it obligatory.

I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am.

Otherwise I never touch it—unless I’m thirsty.

Madame Lily Bollinger

Madame Lily Bollinger

Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland

Flatiron Wines & Spirits: Wines of Terroir and Tradition in the Heart of Manhattan

The folks at JancisRobinson.com are running a writing contest in support of independent wine retailers worldwide. They asked readers to submit an account of their favorite indie wine shop. The winning writer and winning retailer will be announced in September. Until then, Jancis and her colleagues are publishing one entry a day from those they consider the best. I was thrilled to see my submission published today (August 19, 2014) on JancisRobinson.com! Here it is.

Flatiron LogoOn the stretch of Broadway that extends from the Union Square Greenmarket to Madison Square Park, and within view of the much-photographed Flatiron Building, you’ll find a gem of a wine store: Flatiron Wines & Spirits. The first time I set foot into this shop, shortly after its opening in May 2012, and explored its selection of more than 2,000 (and growing) wines, I, like many others, wanted to buy every bottle in the store. This shop stocks my kind of wine: wines of depth and nuance that express a sense of the place they come from, made with minimal manipulation. The selection emphasizes organic, natural, biodynamic, and sustainable wines, though wines that don’t fit neatly into these categories are stocked as well. As Beau Rapier and Dan Weber, the shop’s founding managers, said, “We’re grower-driven and not dogmatic.”

Photo by Andrew Chen

Photo by Andrew Chen

Flatiron’s well-curated selection of wines and more than 200 artisanal spirits is displayed on custom wooden racks in an attractive open space with exposed brick walls, high ceilings, and large windows. Highlighted wine regions include Burgundy, Beaujolais, the Loire Valley, the Rhône Valley, Champagne, Piedmont, Tuscany, the Mosel, and California.

Wines from other regions and countries are available as well: Rioja, Bordeaux, Alsace, the Jura, the Wachau, Greece, Lebanon, Slovenia, and distinctive cool-climate wines from the Southern Hemisphere, including a few wines from Uruguay. Flatiron also stocks what just may be the largest selection in New York City of natural wines from Sicily. The store promotes newly emerging wine regions, such as Ribeira Sacra in Spain, and carries a wide selection of wines produced locally in New York State. You can also find kosher and sparkling wines, dessert wines, and sake.

Prices are competitive and fair. The bulk of Flatiron’s selection is at the $15 and above price point, but the store also features three tables of $15 and under wines from around the world—red, white, and rosé—that deliver value and quality.

Subscribers to the weekly e-mail newsletter are the first to learn about new wines coming into the shop and so get first crack at prearrival offers on the wines (many of which are highly allocated), and at special-discount pricing.

Flatiron holds free weekly tastings, Friday through Sunday (though a bottle of something delicious is usually open every day from 5 pm). Bubbles are spotlighted on Fridays, the wines of a particular producer or region on Saturdays, and spirits on Sundays, and all are offered at a discount during the tastings.

Customers can subscribe to eight e-newsletters on single topics: Burgundy, Champagne, Riesling, Italy, U.S., rare wines, “geek” wines, and spirits. Each newsletter features an informative article written by a staff member about the wines offered at discounted prices for subscribers.

Flatiron’s staff is its heart and soul. Each individual (special shout-out to Sarah, Susannah, Rosemary, and Andrew!) is knowledgeable, passionate, experienced, and articulate about wine and can suggest a bottle to suit what you’re looking for or guide you to something new to try, regardless of your level of knowledge about wine. Martin Texier, son of winemaker Eric Texier, interned at the store for a few months this past year. Staff members contribute to the newsletters and the interesting and educational blog posts on the shop’s website. And they are friendly and welcoming! On my second-ever visit, Sarah and Andrew greeted me by name. Living as I do among more than 1.6 million people on the island of Manhattan, I was bowled over to receive that level of attentive customer service at a shop I had visited only once before.

The store’s creators envisioned a space where they and their customers could explore and learn about wine in a fun, friendly, communal setting. Hosting free tastings with visiting winemakers is one way they realize this goal. Taking place in the back room around a big wooden farm table set with slate boards bearing cheeses, charcuterie, and baguettes, these tastings let customers mingle informally with the winemakers and one another while tasting and eating. One of my favorite of these stand-up tastings was billed as a New Wave California Wine Party and welcomed Nathan Roberts from Arnot-Roberts, Sam Bilbro from Idlewild, Ryan Glaab from Ryme Cellars, and Pax Mahle from Wind Gap.

Photo by Susan Berkowitz

Photo by Susan Berkowitz

The big communal table sees more formal and focused sit-down tasting seminars as well, also free, with winemakers who’ve included Patrick Piuze from Chablis, Benjamin Leroux of Comte Armand (Burgundy), Jean-Herve Chiquet from Champagne Jacquesson, and Alex Bautista from Cellar Credo de Recaredo. Imagine my surprise when, at Peter Veyder-Malberg’s seminar on the terroir of the Wachau, I found myself sitting across the table from Yo-Yo Ma!

Through their generosity of spirit at these free tasting parties and educational sit-down seminars, our Flatiron hosts foster a welcoming atmosphere of camaraderie and goodwill that inspires their customers’ goodwill in return. This was demonstrated one night at Flatiron’s publication party for Ray Walker and his book, The Road to Burgundy. Flatiron did not have any of Ray’s wines for attendees to taste, but a customer, who has been a supporter of Ray’s endeavors since his first vintage in 2009, brought one of her own (very expensive) bottles of Ray’s Pinot Noir for all of us to try.

Flatiron also hosts intimate wine dinners with winemakers at local restaurants where the chefs create menus that perfectly complement the wines. Producers who’ve been featured at these special occasions include Johannes Selbach, Steve Edmunds, Pierre Larmandier, Domaine Huet, Chateau Simone, and Montenidoli.

The shop offers free neighborhood delivery, New York City delivery, and shipping to elsewhere in the U.S. Customers can also shop on the store’s comprehensive website.

Flatiron Wines & Spirits has been featured in the New York Times, Food & Wine, Financial Times, The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, and on Dr. Vino.com.

Flatiron’s founders wanted to create the wine store where they would want to shop. They’ve certainly succeeded in creating the wine store where I want to shop. See for yourself: after you experience their impressive selection, excellent customer service, and educational tasting events, Flatiron Wines & Spirits will be the place where you want to shop too.

Flatiron Wines & Spirits | 929 Broadway | New York  NY  10010 | 212.477.1315

http://www.Flatiron-Wines.com | info@Flatiron-Wines.com

Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland

Martin Texier: On Making Wine Without Added Sulfur

Thanks to Brooklyn Wine Exchange for this great image!

Thanks to Brooklyn Wine Exchange for this great image!

For those of us who prefer to drink nonmanipulated wines made with organic grapes and minimal intervention and that express their varietal and place of origin—so-called natural wines—the addition of sulfur dioxide (SO2) to our wines is a controversial topic. We prefer wines that taste as fresh and pure as possible, with beautiful aromatics, and made by conscientious and attentive winemakers. Most of us do not want wines flawed by the yeast Brettanomyces (Brett, for short), which imparts smells of barnyard, “sweaty saddle,” or gamey animal aromas. Nor do we want our wine to smell like nail polish or a mouse cage—a fault of volatile acidity (VA). The conventional remedy for these faults in wine is to add sulfur during grape harvesting and winemaking and at bottling (to protect the wines for transportation). 

Sulfur has a bad rep in the natural wine world. A naturally occurring compound, sulfur is an antioxidant, a preservative, and an antibacterial agent. Because sulfites absorb oxygen, they inhibit aerobic bacterial growth that can cause flaws and faults in wine. But some people claim that sulfites give them headaches (though I’ve also heard that it’s the histamines, not sulfites, that can cause headaches) or an allergy-like reaction. Others say they can detect an excess of sulfur in wine by a characteristic “burned” smell, like burned matches.

Last week I attended a very interesting talk at Brooklyn Wine Exchange presented by Martin Texier on the subject of making wine without added sulfur. This welcoming and neighborly wine shop offers tastings and weekly free classes in its spacious learning center. We tasted three of Martin’s 2012 wines, all made without added sulfur, not even at bottling.

Martin Texier

Martin Texier

Martin is the son of Eric Texier, who makes renowned natural wines from the Rhône Valley, in southeastern France. Eric has always worked organically. His grapes come from about 95 percent old vines, and in his quest to make pure, clear, precise wines that express where they come from, he strives to intervene as little as possible. Eric is a careful winemaker who aspires to use no chemicals. However, he is not dogmatic about using sulfur. If the wine needs a little help to be safe in the bottle, Eric will add some sulfur. 

Eric Texier is a cool guy-1

Eric Texier (Photo by Jarred Gild; Louis/Dressner Selections website)

Martin told us that winemakers have been using sulfur for at least two centuries. In the vineyard, they spray sulfur on the grape leaves as a fungicide against oidium (powdery mildew). Inside the winery, they clean barrels with sulfur to kill Brettanomyces yeast, and during winemaking sulfur can be used at several times when the grapes and/or liquid are most vulnerable to being damaged by exposure to air:

– Immediately after the grapes are picked and placed in the open vat

– Before transferring the stable wine from the fermentation tank to the barrel

– During racking—the process of transferring the wine from one barrel (off its lees, or dead yeast cells) into a new, clean barrel

– Just before bottling, as a conservative agent

Could Winemakers Use Less Sulfur? Was It Possible to Make Wines in a More Natural Way, Without Chemicals?

In 1967, a microbiologist named Jules Chauvet, who was living in the Beaujolais and making wine with his friends, asked himself these questions and decided to find out. Now known as the father of the natural wine movement, Chauvet realized that the prevailing practice of adding sulfur to the just-harvested grapes in the vat was killing a lot of the indigenous yeast—naturally present on the grape skins—that eat the sugars in the grape juice and start the fermentation. Some vignerons used so much sulfur that they had to add cultivated, commercial yeast to the grapes to get the fermentation started.

Chauvet understood that killing the indigenous yeast of the region meant that the winemakers were removing terroir characteristics from their wine. Martin defines terroir as “history, the soil and climate, the grape varietals, and the tradition of the region, which is very closely linked to the soil. People  grow the particular grape varietals and use the winemaking techniques that fit the soil and climate of the specific place. In this way, their wines are a nice expression of the fruit and the soil.” The indigenous yeast present on the grapes of any region are part of that terroir equation too.

Chauvet realized that although not using sulfur would preserve the indigenous yeast and allow the wines to express their terroir, other problems would result—namely, Brett, VA, and oxidation. Chauvet never said, however, that winemakers should use zero sulfur. He was not dogmatic in that way. In fact, he believed that using sulfur before bottling was a good thing.

In the years since 1967, vignerons who share a philosophy of wanting to make wines that express their terroir and use few to no chemicals have been experimenting and perfecting various techniques and methods, one of which is to use the enzyme lysozyme. Lysozyme, which is found in large amounts in egg white, kills bacteria, particularly the bacteria that are responsible for malolactic fermentation, or “malo.” Just after alcoholic fermentation stops, a second fermentation—malolactic fermentation—starts. This process transforms malic acid, which is green and racy, into lactic acid, which is more round and soft and imparts a butteriness to wine. In itself, malo is not a bad thing. However, if the bacteria don’t have enough malic acid to attack, and if there is still some residual sugar left in the wine, then the bacteria will attack the sugar. This process creates VA, which is the main problem for winemakers who don’t use sulfur.

If not using sulfur or lysozyme, there are other things that winemakers can do to avoid VA and other wine faults:

Cool down the fermentation tanks: The bacteria that attack malic acid can only do so at a certain temperature, around 30°C (86°F). In cooler tanks, the yeast that start alcoholic fermentation will still do their work (though more slowly), but malolactic fermentation will not start. A lot of cellars are built underground for this reason, to ensure that the temperature is not too high during fermentation.

Harvest some of the grapes a little bit earlier, when they’re still green and contain a lot of malic acid. If the fermenting juice lacks enough malic acid for the bacteria to attack, thus leaving the wine vulnerable to VA, then winemakers, including Martin’s father, Eric, will add these unripe green grapes, rich in malic acid, to the juice.

Use carbonic maceration: This fermentation technique was originally used only by winemakers in the Beaujolais. Small quantities of whole clusters of uncrushed grapes are placed inside a sealed tank, into which carbon dioxide is pumped, creating an anaerobic environment (that is, without oxygen). The carbon dioxide stimulates fermentation at an intracellular level, inside the grapes. Rather than being pressed, as in a traditional fermentation, the grapes burst as the sugar and malic acid are converted into alcohol. Wines made in this way tend to be light, fresh, low in alcohol, and very aromatic and fruity.

Carbonic maceration makes the wine a little more reductive than a regular fermentation, which means that the wine could smell very slightly of sulfur compounds. But as Martin explains, “That, for the winemaker, is a safety because you have a higher risk of the wine getting oxidized when not using sulfur [sulfur is an antioxidant]. By using carbonic maceration, you’re adding a little reduction to prevent oxidation.”

Harvest the grapes by hand. Machine harvesting can crush the grapes, and fermentation can start prematurely by the yeast present on the grape skins. Machine harvesting can also enable the juice to come into contact with air, causing problems with oxidation. These are two reasons why industrial winemakers add sulfur to just-harvested grapes. “The juice is in contact with the air, it’s starting to ferment, and you can have problems with cleanliness,” Martin said. With hand harvesting, the grapes are more likely to stay intact, and fermentation will not start early.

“These ways to save your wines are very artisanal,” Martin said. “I know very few people who do this. Ninety-five percent or more of wine is made using sulfur in the ways that I outlined. Wine is the only product in Europe that doesn’t need to specify its list of ingredients on the back label. The only things that are mandatory to include are sulfites and anything that comes from animal products, such as lysozyme.”

Martin said that some wines made without added sulfur are appearing in European supermarkets, but they can be full of chemicals.

“Just because a wine has no sulfur added doesn’t mean it’s good or ‘natural,’” he said. “Don’t assume that ‘natural wine’ has no added sulfur, and don’t assume that wine made without added sulfur is better. Making wine without adding sulfur is not easy. It’s a big risk that you take. It can lead to a lot of faults and problems. Most natural winemakers do use sulfur, but in 99 percent of cases, they use it only before bottling.”

Martin himself does not avoid wines made with added sulfur, but only when it’s used at bottling. Not before.

The reason many natural winemakers use sulfur at bottling is to protect the wine against temperature fluctuations during transportation, handling, and storage. Wine, being a living product, is sensitive to rough handling and high temperatures, and naturally made wines with little or no added sulfur are especially so. They must be transported and stored at a cool temperature, preferably 55°F (13°C).

How do you know what the winemaker’s vineyard and cellar practices are? You must ask. Ask the winemaker, ask the importer, ask at the wine shop. But even then, you may not be given correct or truthful information. Read the back label on the bottle, which in the case of artisanally made wines, often includes a statement from the winemaker about his or her vineyard and cellar practices.

Accepting What the Vintage Brings You

If you’re a vigneron aspiring to make clean wines that express their terroir, then the vintage will tell you whether you need to add sulfur, according to Martin. 2011 and 2012 were good vintages, giving nice fruit and high acidity. In fact, 2012 was a dream year for every winemaker: “2012 was such a perfect year that we didn’t have much to do. Everything was perfect: We put the grapes in the vat, fermentation happened, we took the juice out of the vat and put it into a tank, and at no moment was the temperature too high, or Brett too high, or fermentation happening too fast. We didn’t have to filter. There was no problem.”

But not every vintage is like 2012. In other years, rain, hail, or humidity can cause high levels of oidium or rot in the vineyard. Or temperatures can get too high. The grapes are already in bad condition. “Using sulfur in the vineyard won’t help you then,” Martin said. Inside the winery, malolactic fermentation can start early, before alcoholic fermentation is finished, leading to VA. In a bad year, Martin prefers to drink wine made by a winemaker who is honest in saying that he or she used sulfur at times other than just before bottling to make sure the wine is clean: “In the end, maybe the wine has lost some terroir, but it is clean and there’s a nice perfume. I prefer that to a wine from that same hard year that wasn’t controlled at all, and all you smell is Brett or VA. Both Brett and VA are very common in natural wines that aren’t made properly, and both destroy terroir.”

Martin observed that, fortunately for winemakers in the Rhône, the region’s strong mistral wind dries the vineyards, giving healthy grapes without much effort on the farmers’ part. He said that in the Loire, which is colder and lacks a mistral of its own, it’s much harder to keep grapes healthy without using chemicals in the vineyards. “It’s easier being a winemaker in the Rhône Valley than in the Loire Valley,” he said.

Sulfur Is Everywhere

There is actually no such thing as sulfur-free wine. Sulfur is always naturally present in wine and is a byproduct of fermentation. European regulations authorize winemakers to add up to 160 milligrams per liter of sulfur for reds and 200 milligrams per liter for whites. For makers of Rieslings and Alsatian wines, which have a lot of residual sugar and thus a high risk of refermenting if the yeast are not killed, the allowable limit of sulfur is up to 400 milligrams per liter. In contrast, natural winemakers like Martin’s father, Eric, and winemakers in the Beaujolais use between 5 and 20 milligrams per liter.

Martin added no sulfur at all, not even at bottling, to his three 2012 wines that we tasted at Brooklyn Wine Exchange. Some might read that statement and conclude that he is a hard-core natural winemaker. But he says that is not the case: “I am not a defender of crazy wines just for the sake of being sulfur free.” He cautioned us not to associate wines made with no added sulfur as being either necessarily a good thing “or always kind of funky. A lot of Grand Cru wines are made without added sulfur. It’s a matter of being careful and believing that it’s not OK to have faults in your ‘natural’ wine.”

Martin is striving to make wine without any added sulfur, not even at bottling. He started experimenting with making wine in 2009, but “the wines were so bad that I couldn’t drink them.” He learned from his mistakes and continued to improve through the 2010 and 2011 vintages.

What Does Wine Made Without Added Sulfur Taste Like?

Martin suggests that the best way to experience what sulfur does to a wine is to try a wine that has had two bottlings, one sulfured and the other not, such as Marcel Lapierre’s Morgon. Both versions of this wine are unfiltered. On Domaine Lapierre’s website the bottling with no added sulfur is described like this: “No filtration or added sulphur in order to guarantee a ‘pure grape’ wine. This very fine wine must be conserved at less than 14°C [57°F].” The sulfured wine is described like this: “A small amount of added sulphur in order to stabilise the wine microbiologically. This wine is designed for those of you without a cellar.”

Of these two Morgon bottlings, Martin says, “You can taste the difference, the no-sulfur one having more fruit and seems more lively right now. I had the same experience with a rosé I made back home with my brother: one bottling with sulfur and the other not, and the same result. After two years, the no-sulfur one is still better.” Martin acknowledged, however, that with more years of bottle age, or with transportation abroad, that could change.

We tasted Martin’s three wines from the 2012 vintage, all made with his father’s grapes from the Rhône and all aged in stainless steel (to prevent contact with oxygen and preserve the fresh, fruity characteristics):

3 bottles

Left to right: Anahi, Eluney, and Yelen

Anahi: 100 percent Marsanne, alc. 12.5 percent. Marsanne is a grape from the northern Rhône and is almost always used in small amounts and paired with its sister grape, Roussanne. For me, it was a rare treat to try a wine made from 100 percent Marsanne. The grape has a more apply character than Roussanne and is a bit softer, with lower acidity.

Eluney: 50 percent Grenache and 50 percent Cinsault, alc. 12.5 percent, made using carbonic maceration. Grenache and Cinsault are very common varietals in the southern Rhône. Both are fruity and have a bit of spice; Cinsault has higher acidity than Grenache.

Yelen: 100 percent Syrah (a richer grape than either Grenache or Cinsault), alc. 13 percent, made using carbonic maceration, which is not traditional in the northern Rhône.

All three wines were beautifully clean and pure, and tasted very fresh, with good acidity (“but not crazy acidity,” as Martin commented), low alcohol, and low tannins. Both reds, despite going through carbonic maceration and being aged in stainless steel, showed no signs of reduction. All three wines had no added sulfur, not even at bottling. All were completely naturally made and very delicious.

But Martin stressed that these wines are not in the style of his father’s wines. “These are the simpler version, and these are carbonic maceration, which my father doesn’t do. The wines are fresh in taste, easy to drink, but not complex like my father’s wines.”

The good acidity in the wines may have been due to his father’s practice of always harvesting a little early—“a matter of only one or two days, but it’s very important. My father likes to have more acidity in his wines because he thinks acidity is a better indicator of terroir than ripeness or alcohol. In only two days, you have a big difference.”

When asked how long his wines would age, Martin explained that it’s the alcohol, acidity, and tannins that help wines to age, and because his wines are low in those components, and also because no sulfur was added at bottling, they will not age much beyond five years.

What’s in a Name?

The label design on Martin’s wines raised many questions for me. First, the meaning of the wine’s name, L’indigène Sulfureux. He explained that the name came about during a family brainstorming dinner. Eric and his wife, Laurence, and their three children (Martin, his brother, and sister) had been discussing French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s classic 1955 memoir, Tristes Tropiques, which is partly an account of the time he spent with some of the indigenous tribes of Brazil’s Amazon Basin. The family had already decided on the wine’s name, L’indigène Sulfureux. L’indigène refers to the indigenous people in Lévi-Strauss’s book and also to the indigenous yeast naturally present on the grapes used in Martin’s wines, which start the fermentation. As for Sulfureux, Martin explained: “It’s a pun. In French, sulfureux means ‘has a lot of character,’ strongly opinionated, and sulfurous like the Devil. There’s no sulfur in the wines, so obviously, they are not that sulfurous. This wine is a little bit like this—a rebellious wine, a wine with a lot of character, yet no sulfur.”

I asked Martin whether the wine’s name could also refer to “native sulfur”—that is, the sulfur naturally produced during the fermentation of grapes. He replied that although the family was aware of that meaning, in French the name L’indigène Sulfureux could be understood only as a noun (l’indigène) and an adjective (Sulfureux).

The drawing on the label: This was done by a friend of his mother’s. The original drawing depicted a nude woman, but the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) would not approve that version, so the “official” label was redrawn with the woman covered up. But once the wines reach the US, they will bear the “unofficial” label, with the nude woman.

The TTB-Approved Label

The TTB-Approved Label

The Unofficial Label

The Unofficial Label

The names of the individual bottlings (Anahi, Eluney, Yelen): During their discussion of Tristes Tropiques, the Texier family was trying to invent names that sounded like names of indigenous tribal people from Brazil. The names are made up, but they were inspired by names found in Lévi-Strauss’s book.

Sui Generis: This is the company name as given on the label. The Latin translation is, loosely, giving birth to itself, something so unique that it does not fit into the broader context and cannot be compared with anything else. The reference here is to the native yeast and the wine generating itself.

What’s Next for Martin?

For the past year, Martin has been living in Brooklyn and working two jobs: for the New York–based importer and distributor David Bowler Wine, which specializes in naturally made, small-batch “wines that reflect something about where they are made and who made them” and also at the excellent Manhattan wine shop Flatiron Wines & Spirits, whose mission is to provide artisanally made wines that convey a sense of place and tradition.

Martin is soon to return to France and in the fall will enter enology school in Beaune, located in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. He will also continue his own personal study of permaculture, the philosophy developed by Masanobu Fukuoka of Japan and Bill Mollison from Australia, which Martin believes is one of the next big things in viticulture. Permaculture’s goal is to increase yields in agriculture without using any kind of forced activity: no monoculture, no plowing, no chemicals or insecticides. Weeds and invasive plants and  insects are kept in check by planting clover or other complementary plants between rows and vines, a practice that also gives nitrogen to the soil, revitalizing it and encouraging microorganisms. Martin said that a handful of soil from this kind of “living” vineyard smells rich and good, whereas soil from a vineyard that has had chemicals applied is extremely dry and smells like dust.

To me, the tenets of permaculture seem very closely related to those of biodynamics, in that the farm or vineyard is regarded as one integrated, living, breathing organism (plants, animals, insects, trees) working with nature in perfect equilibrium. Where the two methods differ, however, is in biodynamics’ emphasis on the lunar calendar to guide the timing of farming activities, as well as the use of copper and sulfur to combat downy mildew and powdery mildew, respectively, and the use of animal dung as compost.

Martin realizes that he is only at the beginning of his winemaking journey and says that “as I continue making wine, I’m not necessarily going to be a no-sulfur person.” When he starts making “more serious” wine, he will probably stop using carbonic maceration or do less of it. He agrees that carbonic maceration masks terroir because it puts the fruit forward and leaves less space for minerality or herbaceousness—two qualities that one especially looks for in northern Rhône Syrah. “If I plant vineyards, it’s going to be Syrah,” he said. “Something that’s more traditional of northern Rhône, a more serious project.”

We are grateful to have had Martin’s spirited, thoughtful, and articulate presence in New York this past year, and we wish him well on his next adventures. We also look forward to tasting how his winemaking evolves as a result of his studies and deeper involvement with permaculture.

Merci beaucoup, Martin, et bon voyage!

Martin 2Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland

Should You Open That Bottle of Wine Today?

It depends. If you believe in the principles of biodynamic agriculture, which acknowledge lunar and astrological influences on soil and plants, then you would first check your biodynamic calendar to find out whether today is a fruit day or a flower day. Wine tastes best on fruit and flower days and not at its best on leaf and root days.

What in the world am I talking about? And what do lunar cycles and star constellations have to do with it? Here is a simple, admittedly too simple, explanation of how this works:

The movement of the moon influences more than just the tides. It affects all living, growing things on Earth. And because wine inside a bottle is a living, breathing organism, the moon’s rhythms influence it too.

Every two or three days, the moon passes through a different one of the twelve star constellations of the zodiac, from Aries to Pisces. From astrology we know that each constellation is associated with an element: earth, air, water, fire. In biodynamic agriculture, the twelve constellations and their elements correspond to four types of days:

Earth element: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn: Root day

Air element: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius: Flower day

Water element: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces: Leaf day

Fire element: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius: Fruit day

Biodynamic farmers recognize that each element affects a different part of a plant: roots grow deeply into earth, flowers need air to disperse their scent, leaves store water, and fruit must have warmth (fire) to ripen.

The moon’s passage through a constellation on a specific day and at a specific time on that day determines whether the day is a root, flower, leaf, or fruit day.

And the type of day determines whether the day is a favorable or unfavorable one for planting and harvesting specific crops and even for drinking wine (grapes, after all, being a crop).

When the crop is the root of the plant, such as carrots or beets, then it is best planted and harvested on root days. Fruit crops are best planted and harvested on fruit days, and so on.

How Do I Know Whether It’s a Fruit, Flower, Leaf, or Root Day?

To learn what type of day it is, you can consult the monthly biodynamic calendars in a handy little book called When Wine Tastes Best: A Biodynamic Calendar for Wine Drinkers by Maria and Matthias Thun and published annually by Floris Books in the United Kingdom.

photo

Maria Thun

Maria Thun

Maria Thun (1922-2012) grew up on a farm in central Germany and spent a lifetime observing radishes. In her early twenties, she began studying Rudolf Steiner’s principles of biodynamic agriculture, which he formulated in the 1920s. To discover whether sowing, plant growth, and harvesting really were influenced by the moon’s passage through the star constellations, Maria Thun experimented with planting radishes. She noted that even with identical soil conditions and seeds, the shape, size, and yield of the radishes varied daily depending on the moon’s position in the specific constellation in which they had been planted. Thun continued experimenting with many other types of plants and concluded that the moon’s movement through the zodiac had the same effect on those crops as it had on the radishes. Based on her observations, she then divided the passage of the moon through the zodiac into four types of days: leaf, root, fruit, and flower, each indicating which type of plant is best sown on that day.

This photo clearly shows that the radishes (a root vegetable) harvested on a root day appear to be the most robust. (Illustration from Wine Folly and Backyard Biodynamics.)

This image clearly shows that the radishes (a root vegetable) planted and harvested on a root day appear to be the healthiest and most robust. (Illustration from Wine Folly and Backyard Biodynamics.)

From her extensive experiments and observations of the effects that planting and harvesting in conjunction with cosmic rhythms have on the quality of fruit and vegetable crops, flowers, and even on animals, weather, and bees, Maria Thun developed a planting calendar. The Maria Thun Biodynamic Calendar has been published annually for fifty-two years and translated into twenty-seven languages. Since her death, both the calendar and When Wine Tastes Best continue to be published by her son, Matthias.

51uH9Mu+fNL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_

How Do I Use the Monthly Calendars in When Wine Tastes Best?

It’s very easy! Here’s a picture of the April 2014 calendar:

IMG_0994

 Find today’s date in the left-hand column. (The next column tells you which constellation the moon is passing through that day.) Then slide your finger across the line and look at the colored bars for that date. The bars cover the 24-hour period from midnight to midnight, and the hours are listed along the top of the chart. The four types of days are indicated with colored bars: fruit days (red bar), flower (yellow bar), leaf (blue bar), and root (purple bar).

Again, the best days for drinking wine according to this system are fruit and flower days. I’ve read that aromatic grape varieties such as Torrontes and Viognier are best drunk on flower days.

A dotted line indicates that the time period is not good for biodynamic planting, harvesting, or wine drinking. Reasons for this can be because of an eclipse or the influence of other planetary interactions.

When you look at the calendars, you will notice that fruit and flower days don’t last for precisely one day. This is because the moon moves in and out of the different constellations at different times, so a fruit day might start at 2 AM on a Tuesday and finish at 10 PM on a Thursday.

The times in the calendar are GMT/British Summer Time. You’ll need to add or subtract hours from the charts according to your own time zone.

There is also a When Wine Tastes Best app for the iPad and iPhone, which you can try for free. You can search by month, week, or day, and the app automatically adjusts for your time zone.

IMG_0992

Whether you find these ideas intriguing or completely wacky, at least give them a try! After all, wouldn’t you want that expensive bottle of wine to taste its best at your next dinner party?

Copyright © 2014 by Carol Hartland

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