Domaine La Ferme Saint-Martin Les Terres Jaunes 2010

Last week was meant to be an attempt to clear out some of the backlog of Australian wines in my queue, and was at least partially successful, with four interesting wines from two large and two very small producers.  This week I will focus on the French wines that I’ve tasted recently but which haven’t made it onto the site.  Today, it’s the Domaine La Ferme Saint-Martin Les Terres Jaunes 2010.

This is a wine of Beaume de Venise in the southern Rhône.  It is a warm Mediterranean region, somewhat to the east of the valley through which the river flows, and protected from the mistral.  The area has three main soil types across the different areas being cultivated.  South of the town is a flat with alluvial gravel and silt over sand and cobalt.  Just north of the town on south facing slopes vines are planted on an area of broken rock over sand, and further north on the far side of the peaks is decomposed gravel with concentrations of dolomite over sandstone and marl.

I first became familiar with the region a few years back by way of the style of wine for which the area is historically famous, Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, and for which it was given AOC status in 1945 (though backdated to 1943).  It’s a white Muscat based vin doux naturel, a sweet style of wine where the fermentation is stopped by the addition of spirit before all the sugar is converted to alcohol.

However, this wine is neither white, sweet, nor fortified.  In addition to the Muscat VND, the regions is also known for production of dry, red table wine, and was granted AOC status in 2005.  The red wines of Beaumes de Venise are blended from at least 50% Grenache and  25% Syrah and up to 20% being other authorized grapes such as Mourvèdre including at most 5% white grapes.   White and rosé wines are also produced though only as Côtes du Rhône Villages AOC.

Domaine La Ferme Saint-Martin is a fairly small producer based in the north of the Beaumes de Venise appellation.  They are certified as organic, and in addition to this wine, they produce red and rosé wines of the Côtes du Ventoux appellation and red and white Côtes du Rhône.  In addition to Syrah and Grenache, they have plantings of Cinsault and Carignan they use in their Côtes du Ventoux and red Côtes du Rhône wines as well as Roussanne and Clairette which go into their white Côtes du Rhône.

This wine, which translates to Yellow Lands, is a blend of 75% Grenache and 25% Syrah.  After fermentation, it is matured in vats and bottled with some sulphur but without filtration.

In the glass, it is clear and bright, with a dark purple colour and some legs.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium plus intensity and notes of blackberry, coffee, cherry, and plums.  It’s richly fruity but with some secondary characters.  On the palate it’s dry, with medium plus body, medium plus intensity, medium plus grippy tannins, medium plus alcohol, medium acidity and medium length.  There are notes of chocolate, hazelnut, liquorice, blackberry and cherry.

This is a good wine.  It has an interesting complexity of flavours, which work well together.  It’s strong in most respects, only falling slightly out of balance with less acidity and length than I might have wanted.  However, it does have the potential to get more interesting with cellaring.

Pin in the map is approximate.

Thomas Hardy & Sons Eileen Hardy McLaren Vale Cabernet Sauvignon 1972

There was a tasting scheduled for Saturday and I had been looking forward to it all week.  Alas, it was cancelled at the last minute, leaving me with some unscheduled time that afternoon.  The tasting would have been some high end red wines of Australia, so rather than moping I decided to open up a special bottle of my own and conduct a very small tasting of the Thomas Hardy & Sons Eileen Hardy McLaren Vale Cabernet Sauvignon 1972.

I’ve covered both McLaren Vale and Cabernet Sauvignon several times, so today I’m just going to write about Hardy’s and about older bottles in general.  Thomas Hardy & Sons was established in 1853 by Thomas Hardy himself, having arrived from England three years prior.  The family business grew over the generations that followed, and through mergers over the last two decades with BRL and then Constellation, the Hardy Wine Company became the world’s largest international wine business.  More recently though, the group’s name was changed to Constellation Wines Australia, and then again to Accolade Wines with a change of controlling interest.  The Hardys brand though has remained well respected throughout the recent ups and downs, and remains one of the strongest in Australia.

Eileen Hardy OBE is generally referred to as the matriarch of the Hardy family, and a new wine was named after her on her 80th birthday, January 15th, 1973.   The honour was bestowed on the best red wine the company produced, and that year it was the Special Bin 80, McLaren Vale Shiraz 1970.  Two years later in 1975, the Eileen Hardy label graced this wine, a 1972 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Tintara vineyards in McLaren Vale.  The tradition continued over the years that followed, though at some point it was decided that the variety would always be Shiraz instead of possibly fluctuating with each vintage.  With Eileen Hardy firmly established as a flagship brand, a Chardonnay was added to the line up in 1986 and more recently Pinot Noir made its first appearance under the label with the 2008 vintage.

I consider old wine a special treat.  As I’ve only been serious about wine for a few years, most of the bottles in my cellar are relatively recent vintages and I expect many will improve with time.  However, now and again I manage to pick up a back vintage, such as this one I purchased at auction a few years ago.

There are a few things worth keeping in mind when dealing with an older bottle.  If you have the time, it pays to stand the bottle upright and leave undisturbed for up to a day.  If under cork, wine is typically stored on its side to keep the cork from drying out, and so sediment collects on the side of the bottle.  Therefore it’s best to stand it up for a day to allow the sediment to settle at the bottom instead of in your glass.

If your bottle is under cork, here’s where it gets interesting.  After removing the foil, make sure you have a good look at the cork for signs of leakage, and give the cork and mouth of the bottle a good wipe so you can have some sense as to the condition of the cork.  If a cork is at all wet on the exterior of the bottle or especially old, I usually use an Ah-so opener.  It relies on two prongs on opposite sides of the cork instead of a screw that goes through the centre, and can be extremely useful for fragile corks.  Finally, I almost always decant red wines.  For younger wines, the exposure to air can help them to open up.  With older wines it’s more a matter of racking off the clear wine from any sediment that has accrued in the bottle.

With this bottle I managed to get the cork out in one piece, but it was very soft and wet throughout.  I decanted the wine and ended up with roughly 1cm of wine left in the bottle, but the wine in the decanter was fairly clear.  I poured myself a glass, and the cork, though wet, seemed to have done its job.

In the glass this wine was clear and bright with a medium garnet colour but an opaque core.  When swirled there were some slow legs.  On the nose it was clean and fully developed with medium minus intensity and notes of dried red currants, sweet spice, leather, potpuorri and cocoa powder.  On the palate it was dry, with medium minus intensity, medium minus alcohol, medium minus very fine tannins, medium acidity, and medium length.  There were notes of dried red currants and cranberries, black liquorice, tobacco leaf and milk chocolate.

This wine was a real treat.  I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate to put an evaluation of quality on a wine that’s 40 years old, but I will give it a very good to outstanding.  It very clearly was a fantastic wine and I’m drinking it past its prime.  That said, while the intensity and tannins have faded, the acidity still has a bit of zip, and while the fruit has all progressed to being dried, it’s certainly still there.  The developed characters give it plenty of complexity, and there is no doubt as to its typicity as a Cabernet Sauvignon.

It’s unusual to come across a bottle of Australian wine from the 1970s, and rarer still for it to be neither fortified nor sweet.  Even though I sourced this from a reliable auctioneer, I didn’t fancy my chances of finding anything drinkable inside, but I’m so pleased I did.  It’s reminded me that while there were not only quality dry table wines being produced in Australia in the 1970s, there were some quite capable of ageing gracefully for decades.

Parish Hill Frizzante Lambrusco 2009

I wrote about a Lambrusco back in August and had very little interest in more of the same.  By “more of the same” I mean I didn’t want another  cheap bottle of mass produced red fizz, particularly when I keep hearing that there is good Lambrusco being made.  I will do a wine tour of Italy at some point, but in the mean time I was able to find an interesting bottle just by heading up to the Adelaide Hills with this Parish Hill Frizzante Lambrusco 2009.

[Apologies for the especially bad photo - the label is essentially red paint on a dark green bottle which looks fine in person but which does not photograph brilliantly.]

First off, as with a number of proper grape and location names, “Lambrusco” has been abused within Australia and generically applied to cheap, low alcohol, somewhat sweet red wine.  However, that is not the case with this bottle.  Not only is it made from grapes of the Lambrusco family, it’s specifically made from Lambrusco Maestri, which is worth a word or two.

Lambrusco, as I mentioned in August, is a collection of Italian grapes which are classed together as a family and not just different clones of the same variety.  Wine Grapes lists twelve distinct varieties, though it’s not clear if there are others yet to be identified.  The word “Lambrusco” apparently means “wild grape” in Italian, and it is believed that all grapes with that name in Italy were domesticated locally from wild grapes.

Lambrusco Maestri is thought to originate around, and take it’s name from, Villa Maestri in Parma, where it is used in both still and frizzante Colli di Parma DOC wines.  However, it is more widely planted in Emilia-Romagna where it is used in the production of a variety of wines at DOC and IGT levels.  In the New World, in addition to a very small number of plantings in Australia, it is grown in Argentina in Mendoza and San Juan.  While neither as popular as Lambrusco Salamino nor as well regarded as Lambrusco di Sorbara, it performs well in the vineyard as far as both growth and yields.  Wines of Lambrusco Maestri are often considered rustic but can have distinct strawberry notes.

Parish Hill Wines was founded in 1998 by Andrew Cottell and Joy Carlisle in the Adelaide Hills, and is somewhat unique in its dedication to Italian varieties.  Production is tiny, with a maximum crush of 15 tonnes and an annual production of roughly 700 cases.  All wines are made on site by Cottell from estate grown fruit.

In the glass this wine is clear, bright, and frothy when poured, with a slight rim of bubbles after.  It has a deep purple colour and quick stained legs.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium plus intensity and notes of blackberries, sour cherries, cough syrup, and a little liquorice.  On the palate it is dry with medium acidity, medium body, medium minus fine tannins, medium plus intensity, medium alcohol, and a medium plus length.  There is some slight spritz and notes of sour cherry, liquorice, and some earthiness.  It’s certainly not sweet, nor even overly fruity.

This is a very good wine.  It’s possible I’m being too generous as a result of such a poor first experience with Lambrusco, but objectively this wine has some richness, notes of complexity, and some flavours i can’t quite pin down.  It’s an interesting style, and it gives me hope that I might someday be able to taste a Lambrusco from an Italian producer of similar, high quality.

Penfolds RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz 2005

As someone who both studies and enjoys wines, it’s sometimes annoying to be asked if I have a favourite.  The notion that I would pick a single wine and hold it up over all others is a bit silly, as there are so many great wines out there and picking the right one is so often down to the situation.  A perfect wine for a warm summer’s day on the veranda would not be right for a cold night by the fire.  However, if pressed, I will sometimes confess that I actually do have a favourite, and today I will tell you about it with this Penfolds RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz 2005.

When I arrived in Australia, I was just starting to appreciate wine and Penfolds is one of the biggest names in the business.  While they produce a huge range of wines, many at very low price points, they’re best known for their flagship Grange, widely regarded as the most famous Australian wine.  Over my first few years here, I attended a number of Penfolds tastings as well as some elegant dinners at their Magill Estate restaurant, and eventually decided that if I was going to have a favourite wine, I could do much worse than RWT.  I had tasted the wine on a number of occasions and enjoyed it greatly, so at some point I thought that if I could have just one wine, that would be it.

Given my wine journey over the last few years, it’s turned into something of an contrary choice.  I work vintage with a tiny producer, making Pinot Noir in a cool climate.  I love obscure grapes and lesser known regions.  Penfolds RWT on the other hand, is a wine from a huge producer, made from an extremely popular grape in a prominent, warm region.  However, I’m still happy to call it my favourite because I always enjoy drinking it.

Barossa and Shiraz are well known to this blog, so I’ll move directly to talking about Penfolds.  It was founded in 1844 by an English doctor, Christopher Rawson Penfold, and the wines first produced at Magill were prescribed as tonic.  The business grew quickly, producing both table and fortified wines, and over the century that followed grew to include vineyards throughout South Australia and New South Wales.  The company pioneered fine wine in Australia through the efforts of Max Schubert, with Grange starting as an experiment in 1951, and continued by developing a distinctive house style of red wines through the 1960s.

In 1986 John Duval became the chief winemaker.  Loyal readers will recognize that name not just from his white Rhône blend Plexus but also the Syrah he makes with Viña Ventisquero.  In 1995 he embarked on a project to produce a high quality Shiraz that would be distinct from both Grange and another Penfolds premium wine, St. Henri.  Both of those are multiregional, in that they are made of grapes that can be sourced from across Australia, and each will often have a small component of Cabernet Sauvignon depending on the vintage.  For RWT (from red winemaking trials) Duval stuck exclusively with Barossa Shiraz, and while Grange is distinctively in new American hogsheads and St. Henri sees only old French oak vats, RWT is aged in half new French hogsheads.

Peter Gago took over as chief winemaker in 2002, continuing to this day, and I can’t resist telling a short story.  My wife had met him in London at an international tasting and she was impressed that he turned up in advance and personally opened and tested every bottle of his wine  - far from the norm.  Fast forward to 2007 and my wife and I had reservations for a very small, local wine dinner in Adelaide that he was to be presenting.  It was also the night of a lunar eclipse, and we walked by the restaurant 30 minutes before the dinner, on our way to an open area from which to watch the moon disappear.  As we passed, there he was opening and tasting each of the wines, and it was my turn to be impressed.

In the glass, this wine is clear and bright, with a deep brick red colour and very slow, thick legs lining the glass when swirled.  On the nose it’s clean and developing with medium plus intensity and notes of red cherries, boysenberries, cinnamon, and a little bit of leather. If you’ve ever smelled Red Vines, you’ll get that, too.  On the palate it’s clean, with high intensity, medium plus acidity, medium plus mouth coating fine tannins, medium plus body, medium plus alcohol, and long length.  It’s concentrated but not jammy.  There are notes of red cherries, blackberries, black pepper, pomegranate, blood/red meat/iron, liquorice, and a black pudding finish.

This is an outstanding wine.  It’s deeply concentrated, very rich and long lasting.  A joy, but then again, it is my favourite, so I would say that.  More objectively, it is well balanced, particularly for such a big wine.  The range of flavours, both fruit and developed, is impressive and I expect it will gain further complexity with another ten years in cellar.  The typicity is very strong, as is the expression of both the Barossa and Penfolds’ house style. I’m glad I have another half dozen in the cellar, and look forward to tasting through all the vintages at some point.

Olssens Bass Hill Vineyard Carmenère 2006

I had a run through my backlog of bottles, that is things I’ve drunk but haven’t written up, and I have quite a few wines from Australia, France and Canada to sort.  So in an effort to clear the queue, this week will be exclusively wines of Australia, and next week I’ll tackle the French.  I’ll start with this Olssens Bass Hill Vineyard Carmenère 2006.

I wrote a bit about Carmenère with the Viña Casa Silva Microterroir back in July, but now that I have my copy of Wine Grapes I think it’s worthwhile to dig out a new fact for each variety even if I’ve covered the grape before.  The book makes excellent use of pedigree charts for grapes, and the Cabernet Sauvignon chart is a case in point.  For Carmenère it shows that one parent is Cabernet Franc, and the other is Gros Cabernet, a grape which is no longer cultivated.  What makes that interesting is that Cabernet Franc is a grandparent of Gros Cabernet, meaning that Carmenère has Cabernet Franc as a parent and as a great-grandparent.  Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot also have Cabernet Franc as a parent, which goes some way to explaining how the varieties can be confused with one another.

This is a wine of the Clare Valley, which I described when I wrote up the a Pikes Riesling back in February.  While I certainly like the wines of Clare, it’s that bit further out from Adelaide such that I don’t get to visit very often and as a result I expect I’m missing out on some interesting wines.  There are plantings of Barbera and Zibibbo which would advance my quest for a century of varietal wines, to say nothing of the Assyrtiko vines that Jim Barry put in a couple of years ago.

Olssens of Watervale has some interesting plantings, though some of them are more to do with trying something old than trying something new.  Founded by Kevin and Helen Olssen in 1986, it is one of very few wineries to produce a red Bordeaux style blend out of the six originally permitted grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carmenère.  Other wines produced include Riesling, Semillon, and Shiraz, as well as red blends.  This bottling of the 2006 vintage is quite possibly the first commercial release of a varietal Australian Carmenère, though there are now at least a half dozen producers with plantings.  Unfortunately it’s not clear if there will be another Carmenère from Olssens or indeed any other wines.  At present, the Watervale property is listed for sale, and while I’m tempted, I don’t think I’m quite ready to make the move.

In the glass, this wine is dark ruby, with the most narrow of rims and quick dark legs.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium intensity and notes of blueberries, chocolate, cherries, and a slight hint of raisins.  On the palate it’s dry, with medium plus acidity, medium grippy tannins, medium body, medium alcohol, medium plus intensity, and notes very similar to the noses – blueberries, chocolate, and cherries, with some coffee and a touch of prunes.  It has a mocha finish and a medium plus length.

This is a solid good, in fact almost a very good.  It lets me down slightly in terms of complexity, in that the nose tells you the whole story, and I would have expected the development over six years to have given more than just a bit of chocolate and coffee.  But that said, there’s nothing out of place, and it has good varietal typicity as far as the cherries and chocolate go.  I attribute the blueberries to the cooler climate of Clare.

Boekenhoutskloof Syrah 2004

As anyone who has read more than one of my posts will know, I don’t have a copy editor.  I do my best, but it seems every time I go back and read an old post I find a letter or word out of place.  Alas, with over 150 wines reviewed, I’m unlikely to ever find all the typos.  So it may seem like I’m just asking for trouble reviewing this wine, but it is such a favourite of mine that I’m willing to risk spelling the producer’s name five different ways through the course of this post in order to bring you the Boekenhoutskloof Syrah 2004.

With a name like that, Boekenhoutskloof can only be from South Africa (or the Netherlands, I suppose).  The label gives some hint as to the origin – the seven chairs represent traditional styles of 18th and 19th century furniture making, and in South Africa these chairs would ideally have been fashioned from native Cape Beech, also known as Boekenhout.  A kloof is a ravine, and the full name dates to the founding of the original farm in 1776 near Franschhoek.  It took its most recent form in 1993 when the property was purchased by a group of partners and vines replanted.  The first vintage was produced in 1997.

When my wife and I visited South Africa in 2007, we managed to swing by the Boekenhoutskloof cellar door but unfortunately they were sold out entirely of their eponymous line of wines.  It turns out their winemaker, Marc Kent who joined as a partner in 1994, had just won Diners Club Winemaker of the Year.  (He is a finalist for the 2012 award as well, to be announced on November 3rd.)  We were able to enjoy a bottle subsequently at a restaurant, though we were assured it was the last one to be found.  Fortunately though, it turns out to be one of the few fine wines of South Africa imported into Australia, and since news of the award didn’t make the front page in Adelaide, I was able to pick up this bottle and the rest that our local wine merchant had on hand.

Boekenhoutskloof is the name of the company as a whole, as well as their flagship line of wines, which includes Semillon, Cabernet Sauvignon and this Syrah.  It’s produced in very limited quantities – less than 1000 cases of each of the reds and much less of the Semillon.  Their second brand consists of a single wine, the Chocolate Block, which is a Rhône style blend of Syrah, Grenache, Cinsault and Viognier, with some Cabernet Sauvignon thrown in as well.  Their Porcupine Ridge and Wolftrap ranges are everyday drinking wines, and constitute the bulk of production.

Before I get to the wine itself, a quick word about the production.  While some brands are somewhat coy regarding what happens in their winery, Boekenhoutskloof actually lists some of the specific equipment they use, from mechanized berry selection tables, to the specific destemmer, press, pump, and even the trendy egg-shaped fermenter from Nomblot, all of which appeal to me for having worked a few vintages.  Winemakers like their toys as much as anyone, and it’s nice that Boekenhoutskloof is willing to share those details.

Likewise, this Syrah has had a number of winemaking techniques applied across the different parcels sourced from a single vineyard that made up the final wine, including some whole bunches, carbonic maceration, and some stalks.  Fermentation was with natural yeast in a combination of open top oak and concrete vessels, and after some maceration the wine was put into used French oak for over two years.  Fining was done twice with egg whites, but it was bottled without filtration.

In the glass this wine is clear and bright, with a dark garnet colour and quick thin legs.  On the nose it’s clean and developed, with medium intensity and notes of sweet spice, red fruit, raspberries, pumpkin, and red cherries.  On the palate it’s dry, with medium plus acidity, medium plus integrated tannins, medium plus alcohol, medium body, medium plus intensity, and medium plus length.  There are notes of green peppercorns, sweet spice, brambles, blackberries, and liquorice.

This is a very good wine.  It’s clearly a Syrah on the nose, but it took a while to show that typicity on the palate.  It’s nicely balanced, and really driving – the combination of length and intensity makes the wine stand out.  I especially liked the contrast of the relatively sweet nose with the more savoury notes on the palate.  I don’t know exactly how many bottles of Boekenhoutskloof I have in the cellar, but I look forward to drinking the rest over several years.

Tinhorn Creek Oldfield Series South Okanagan Valley Syrah 2007

While I did bring home a set of interesting new (to me) varietals from my trip to Vancouver, I don’t want to leave people with the impression they only grow cold climate German grapes in British Columbia.  There are certainly plantings of Ehrenfelser and Kerner, but not at the expense of better known international varieties, including some that are often associated with much warmer climates.  Today we have one such example, the Tinhorn Creek Oldfield Series South Okanagan Valley Syrah 2007.

This is another wine I enjoyed back in September, and it gives me an opportunity to talk about cool climate Syrah / Shiraz, which is fairly trendy at the moment.  I generally think of Syrah as a warm climate grape, though part of that is a South Australian bias.  Within France, it typically doesn’t ripen reliably further north than the Northern Rhône, where slopes with ideal aspects and natural sun traps are where the variety does best.  Here in Australia, the best known Shiraz is from the Barossa Valley, where the warmth and sunshine can provide an abundance of fruit and alcohol.

However, Syrah is a versatile and climate sensitive grape.  It’s not always easy (for me at least) to point out the climatic difference in the grape between Northern and Southern Rhône Syrahs because in the south they’re often part of the blend.  However, in Australia there is Shiraz grown in the relatively cool Adelaide Hills, such as from Hahndorf Hill Winery, which can be markedly different from a warmer Barossa example, such as Charles Melton.  Cool climate Shiraz tends to be less fruit driven, with more peppery notes instead of sweet spice, blue fruit instead of red, and often some violet or floral notes.

Before I get into this Syrah, first a few words about the producer, Tinhorn Creek.  Established in 1993, the company is a collaboration of friends who went into business together.  Sandra Oldfield, originally from the USA and a graduate of the UC Davis Enology Department, is at the helm as winemaker and president/CEO.   Based in the Golden Mile in South Okanagan, but with an additional vineyard on the eastern side of the valley on Black Sage Bench, they’re probably best known for the flagship Merlot.  However, they have a wine range of plantings, including Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot, and this Syrah in red, as well as Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Semillon and Kerner in white.  They produce varietals and blends in red and white, a Cabernet Franc rosé, and ice wine or late harvest Kerner depending on the vintage conditions.

Even though the southern Okanagan Valley is certainly warmer than the northern end, and there’s no shortage of lakes and rivers to help mitigate the weather, it’s still considered a fairly cool climate.  I couldn’t find a fact sheet for this vintage, but if it is similar to the 2009 vintage then grapes for this wine were taken from both the Golden Mile and Black Sage Bench sides of the valley from fairly young vines and saw just over a year and a half in French oak.  2007 in Okanagan had a cold start and with light rain in the spring but heavy rain over June.  July was hot but also wet.  August and early September were drier if cooler, though rain returned at harvest.

In the glass, this wine is clear and bright, with a medium plus ruby colour and  lots of quick thick legs.  On the nose it’s clean and developing with medium intensity and notes of raspberries, sweet spice, pomegranate,and a fair whack of oak.  On the palate it’s dry, with medium plus fine tannins, medium acidity, medium plus alcohol, medium intensity, medium body, and medium length. There are notes of green stalks, black pepper, raspberries, and pencil shavings.

I rate this wine as good but there was something about the green notes on the palate that I didn’t find overly attractive (but which I don’t mind in Cabernet Franc).  I don’t know if I’m getting that due to the vines being young, fruit that wasn’t fully ripe (unlikely at 14.6% ABV), or if it’s just down to my personal palate.  It’s certainly from a cool climate but without the blueberries that usually tip me off.  However, there was no shortage of peppery character and there was a good diversity of fruit and savoury notes.  The wine as a whole had a nice balance and I hope to try another vintage to compare and contrast.

Domaine Léon Barral Faugères 2009

While I don’t mention them by name, I’m very grateful for a small handful of restaurants and wine bars in my area that have interesting wine lists, in particular by the glass.  You can generally tell when I write about their wines because the bottle photographs are different, typically featuring a glass as well.  Today is one such wine, the Domaine Léon Barral Faugères 2009.

A stereotypical by the glass wine list around here will have a local sparkler and a Champagne, an aromatic white, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Chardonnay, a Pinot Noir, a middle weight red, and a Shiraz.  Except for the Champagne, and possibly a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc, everything will be Australian, largely from South Australia.  While I’m all for supporting local producers, it can be quite predictable, and if you eat out regularly, somewhat boring.

Fortunately, there are a few places I frequent which offer a wider range of wines by the glass, with roughly a third from South Australia and the rest being divided between Europe and other parts of Australia, with the occasional New World wines as well.  Often I find myself with a glass in front of me and I have no idea what it is or where it’s from.

That was the case with this wine, and only subsequent reading allowed me to locate the region and identify the blend.  This wine is from Faugères, an appellation located in Languedoc in the south of France.  It emerged as a wine producing region in the 19th century, and was promoted from VDQS to AOC in 1982 for red and rosé wines and in 2005 for whites.  The soil is primarily schist and the climate is Mediterranean with hot, dry summers and fairly cold wet winters.  The grapes for red and rosé wines are traditionally Carignan and Cinsault, though Grenache, Mourvèdre and Syrah are not just permitted but being promoted as replacement varieties.  White wine may be made of Rousanne, Grenache Blanc, Marsanne and Vermentino, though red wines dominate with 80% of production.

While it’s true I knew nothing about this wine when it was placed in front of me, Faugères is in fact listed as a regional entry for WSET Diploma students, so I should have known everything in the last paragraph and more.  In terms of the producer, its name would likewise have been familiar had I been a better student, because in the Faugères entry in the Oxford Companion to Wine, it is mentioned as being a top quality producer.

Domaine Leon Barral was founded in 1993 by Didier Barrel and is named after his grandfather.  He’s a champion for the biodynamic movement, and so his team working the vineyard consists of himself, horses, cows and pigs.  His youngest vineyard is Mourvèdre and Syrah with vines that are 15 to 30 years old, though his older vineyard are dominated by Carignan vines that are up to 90 years old.  He produces three AOC red blends and a white vin de pays of Terrets Blanc and Gris, Viognier and Roussanne.

Grapes are hand picked, and then fermented in concrete without the addition of sulphur or introduced yeasts.  This wine was aged a further two years in tanks without oak influence, and bottled without racking, fining or filtration.  (The other two reds do see time in barrel.)  Based on 50% Carignan, Grenache and Cinsault make up the remainder of the blend.  As this blog is no stranger to those grapes, it’s on to the tasting.

In the glass this wine is clear and bright with a dark ruby colour and quick abundant legs.  On the nose it’s clean, and developing with medium plus intensity and notes of violets, sweet spice, simple red fruit, and lavender.  On the palate it’s dry, with medium plus intensity, medium plus alcohol, medium plus fine tannins, medium acidity, medium body, and medium length.  There are notes of chocolate, simple red fruit, violets, plums, and red cherries, with some hazelnut and coffee on the finish.

This is a very good wine.  The palate has a very complex and pleasing collection of flavours.  The red fruit is not especially distinct, but all the other flavours are very evocative.  It’s nicely balanced, and even the 14% alcohol is noticeable but not hot.  A pleasant surprise and a reminder to me that I still have plenty of studying to do to be worthy of the Diploma.

Johann Wolf Pinot Noir 2008

One of the goals for my Vancouver trip was to enjoy some wines not so readily available in Australia.  I’ve written about a number of wines already in that regard from both Canada and the USA, but I couldn’t help but pick up this bottle from Germany as well because not a great deal of German wine makes its way to Australia, and those that do are almost entirely Riesling.  So today it’s a wine straight out of Pfalz, the Johann Wolf Pinot Noir 2008.

This is my third German wine in this blog, with the first having been the Wittmann Silvaner and the second the Forstmeister Geltz-Zilliken Riesling.  Germany was a curious area to study at the Diploma level because for me it was heavy on theory and light on the practical.  At one point I was expected to be able to list the differences in wine quality levels and identify regions and villages, but sadly I haven’t retained a great deal of that information, largely because in Australia I have so few opportunities to make use of it.  Even here in South Australia, which has a very large German community, Barossa especially, producers may have Germanic names like Kellermeister or LiebichWein but their wines are Australian through and through.  So when I had the chance to grab a bottle of German Pinot Noir, I didn’t hesitate.

Pinot Noir is known as Spätburgunder in Germany, with the name meaning late ripening Burgundian.  It is the most widely planted red grape in the country, making Germany the third largest producer of Pinot Noir, though it still accounts for a smaller percentage of production than both Riesling and Müller-Thurgau.  Red wine production as a whole in Germany is rising, though exports continue to be dominated by the white wines for which the country is better known.

This wine is from Pfalz, in the south of Germany, hemmed in between the Haardt Mountains to the west and the Rhine River to the the east.  Perhaps a more familiar way for some to locate it would be to start in Alsace and follow the natural curve of the region northward and when you cross the border into Germany you are in Pfalz.  The climate is continental, and being situated in a rain shadow, it is one of the driest and sunniest German wine region.  Soil types vary along the lines of Alsace, with granite and basalt influences from the mountains, sandstone and limestone underlying the flats, and alluvial gravel washed throughout.

The J.L. Wolf wine estate was founded in 1756 in Wachenheim.  An assessment of slopes of the region was done in 1828 for tax purposes.  In the style of Burgundian classification, the Wolf estate had a number of grand cru and premier cru vineyards.  It reached something of a pinnacle mid-19th century with the construction of and estate house and villa, featured on the label.  However, in the second half of the 20th century it fell into decline.

In 1996 the estate was taken over by Ernst Loosen (of Dr. Loosen, arguably the best known quality wine brand of Germany) who wanted to produce drier, fuller bodied Pfalz Rieslings to complement the lighter wines he was already producing in the Mosel.  In addition, the Dr. Loosen collection of wines was expanded to include the Pinots Blanc, Gris and Noir of the estate, as well as Gewürztraminer and Silvaner.  The current production range includes entry level Villa Wolf varietals (including a Pinot Noir rosé) and Rieslings from village, classified vineyard and first-grown vineyard levels of quality.

[While I'm fairly certain this bottle falls into the entry level varietal collection, it is branded Johann Wolf whereas every other wine referenced on the company website is branded J.L. Wolf.]

In the glass this wine is clear and bright, with a medium minus ruby colour and quick legs. On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium intensity and notes of raspberry, some sour cherry, and herbs.  On the palate it’s dry, with medium plus alcohol, medium minus body, medium plus flavour intensity, medium minus tannins, medium plus acidity, and medium plus length.  There are notes of raspberry, pencil lead, sour cherry, and just a bit of cranberry.

This is a good wine.  It’s fruity for a Pinot Noir in a very New World style.  The fruit though is fresh – not candied.  The alcohol sticks out a bit even though the bottle only indicates 12.5% ABV.  It’s not overly complex but it is certainly not simple.  I would think this wine would be unlikely to make it to Australia, in that the style is too similar to locally produced wines and with taxation it would be priced above its direct competition.  Still, I am very glad I was able to try it because it was certainly enjoyable and not something I see very often.

Old Mill Estate Touriga Nacional 2007

I’m inching my way toward a century of varietal wines, and this puts me at 70/100.  I’ve actually hit 90 different grapes in total, but there are some grapes, Pinot Meunier for instance, which are only rarely found outside of a blend.  (Great Western apparently does a good one.) Today’s wine is another example of a variety that’s very easy to find in a blend, but much less common on its own, the Old Mill Estate Touriga Nacional 2007.

Like most people, I first encountered Touriga Nacional when learning about fortified wines.  It’s a black grape, thought to be native to the Dão region of Portugal, and widely considered the best of the five main grapes allowed in Port.  While it is typically the first grape mentioned with regard to Port production, what’s slightly less well known is that within the Douro Valley it represents a tiny fraction of plantings, possibly as low as 2%.  Many vineyards are field blends with different varieties intermingled, so it’s often difficult to know exactly.

It is highly regarded for the rich colour and intense concentration it brings to blends as well as structure through its high levels of tannins.  However, despite being a vigorous vine, it is traditionally prone to low yields due to poor fruit set, which may be why it is not the most popular variety in the vineyard.  Clonal selection improvements had mitigated the low yields to some extent, and the grape has been making inroads into other wine regions within Portugal as well as Australia.  While best known as a component of fortified wine, there is a growing trend for it to be made into table wine.

This is the second post in this blog concerning a wine from Langhorne Creek, the first having been the Rusticana Zinfandel back in April, which has some detail on the region.

Old Mill Estate, as shown by the sheaf on the label, actually does have its origins in grain production.  The property was initially a mill, making chaff out of lucerne.  (That’s alfalfa to Americans – I had to look it up.)  In 1992 the second highest recorded flood in the area destroyed the entire crop, prompting the owners, Peter and Vicki Widdop, to diversify by planting vines the following year.  They initially started just as grape growers, but produced their own vintage in 2004.  In 2006 they brought in John Glaetzer, something of an Australian legend, as a consultant winemaker.

I’m not sure if they still grow lucerne, but their grape plantings consist of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Touriga Nacional.  Their wines include still, red varietals of each and a couple of blends, as well as a rosé and a sparkling wine both made from Touriga Nacional.

This wine is clear and bright in the glass, with a deep purple colour and quick stained legs.  On the nose it’s clean, intense, and developing, with notes of raisins, plums, and sweet spice.  It’s a very rich nose with ripe fruit.  On the palate it’s dry, though heavily fruit sweet, with a medium plus body, medium plus intensity, medium alcohol, medium minus fine tannins, medium acidity, and medium plus length. There are notes of plum, sweet spice, black cherries, blackberries, and raisins.

This is a good wine – intensely fragrant, with great concentration and fruit flavours, though the acidity struggles to maintain balance.  It’s very full and rich, almost too much so.  I was told a story by a colleague about how he was so impressed when he first tasted Touriga Nacional as a table wine that he asked the winemaker why it wasn’t more popular.  The reply was along the lines of “try to drink a bottle”.  I feel similarly with this wine – it does have a fantastic impact but it’s somewhat overwhelming after a glass or two.  Still, I’d rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed.