Haute Cabrière Chardonnay Pinot Noir 2009

I’ve visited South Africa twice so far, and while the two trips had very little in common, they were both awesome in their own way.  The more recent was for the World Cup in 2010 and I was based around Johannesburg.  While I did carry home a mixed case and a half of some excellent wines (including the Ross Gower Pinor Noir Brut 2007, as well as this one), I didn’t visit any wineries.  However, on the first trip, my honeymoon in fact, my wife and I had the pleasure of a tour of the producer of this Haute Cabrière Chardonnay Pinot Noir 2009.

I’ve been wanting to write about Haute Cabrière for a while, and have mentioned the producer a few times, either by name as with the Louis Bouillot Crémant de Bourgogne Perle d’Ivoire post, or just by reference as with my Christmas Recap, because it was there that I saw a sabrage demonstration and have been fascinated by the practice ever since.

Haute Cabrière is a producer of still, sparkling, and fortified wines, as well as a potstill brandy.  Established in Franschhoek in 1694 by a Pierre Jourdan, a French Huguenot farmer, it was completely replanted in 1982 in the style of Champagne with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines.  The company is led by Archim von Arnim, who is something of a character.  I remember him very clearly from the tour, when a foreign tourist asked if he could call his sparkling wine Champagne.  He replied “No, but the Champenois can’t call their wine Pierre Jourdan”, implying that he got the better end of the deal.  He personally gave the sabrage demonstration at the end of the tour, which involved picking three volunteers to join him on stage who were, coincidentally, the three prettiest women on the tour.  (Yes, my bride was one of them.)  His personality is as the forefront of the brand, with his name on the front label of the bottle and his poetry on the back.  Since I’ve been there however, Takuan von Arnim seems to be stepping up to his role as heir, if the tasting videos are anything to go by.  I’ve enjoyed their sparkling wines, but today I’m writing about another wine style that they produces that is very interesting.

Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, classic grapes of both Burgundy and Champagne, enjoy cool climates and even in the New World are often found planted in close proximity.  However, while it’s not unknown for red and white grapes to be combined in the same wine, particularly in the Rhône, and Chardonnay and Pinot Noir combine to form some of the best sparkling wine of Champagne, they are rarely found together in still wine.  This wine is one of those rarities.

The first reaction among winemakers when I poured it for some last year was “oh, a sparkling base.”  Yes and no.  Yes, in a still, white wine, these two grapes are most typically a blend destined to go through another fermentation.  However, in more important ways this is very much not a sparkling base.  Grapes for sparkling wine are typically picked earlier than grapes for still wine.  That way they will have higher acidity and lower sugar levels, resulting in that particular crispness required of sparkling wines, and can allow for an increase in alcohol and/or sweetness through dossage or a softening through malolactic fermentation and/or extended ageing on lees, depending on the house style.  The resulting sparkling base is often thin and overly tart by the standards of still wine.  That is absolutely not the case for this wine.

But before I talk about this wine in more detail, a word or two about Franschhoek, which I will try desperately not to misspell throughout the course of this post.  It’s one of the oldest towns in South Africa, established in 1688, which makes Pierre Jourdan one of its early settlers.  Its name means French Corner in some flavour of Dutch, and it was essentially an enclave for Huguenots who fled France after their right to practice their religion was revoked in 1685.

I tend to clump Franschhoek together with Paarl and Stellenbosch, as they form a small triangle of wine production, but the official structuring of overlapping wine Geographical Units, Regions, Districts and Wards in South Africa is more than a little complicated.  Franschhoek is officially in the Paarl region, but a popular choice of indicators on the label if nothing more specific is used is Coastal Region, which includes the above, as well as Constantia, Durbanville, Cape Point, Swartland, and Tulbagh.  The climate is Mediterranean, though the intense sunshine is a big factor.  Fortunately, so is proximity to False Bay to the south, and a wind known as the Cape Doctor which clears the air, reducing disease pressure and humidity.  The soil types vary greatly, though decomposed granite is often found on the hillsides with alluvial and sandy plains below.  Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are not the most commonly found varieties in Franschhoek, but the area is home to some soaring hills, and the Haute Cabrière vines are planted at either end of the valley to take advantage of the cooler temperatures afforded by the altitude.

This wine is clear, bright, and a pale lemon/gold colour.  When the glass is swirled, it shows a quick thin film on the inside of the glass that doesn’t turn to legs before it settles back into the wine.  The nose is clean, with medium plus intensity, and a developing character, with notes of butter, lemon, sunflowers, and some oak.  On the palate, this wine is dry, with medium plus acidity, medium plus body, and showing some signs of oak and/or development.  It has medium alcohol levels with medium plus flavour intensity, and flavours of lemon curd, toast, honeycomb.  With 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir, I want to say I can taste the Pinot Noir, and so there’s a bit of sour cherry on the finish, but I can’t say if it’s in the glass or in my head.  Also, the notes suggest there may be some residual sugar, though I think with the acidity it came through for me more as palate weight than sweetness.

This is wine of very good quality, though not expensive (roughly $10).  Unfortunately for me, they only ship within South Africa, so I consider it nearly priceless as I have to factor the price of an airline ticket into the cost.  As I mentioned earlier, this is absolutely not a base wine.  It is more full bodied and rounded, with more alcohol and less acid.  As a 2009, it has flavour development that sparkling wine will only get after many more years on lees.  It’s a shame that this wine is nigh impossible to obtain in Australia, as it’s both enjoyable and very affordable.  However, I look forward to having another bottle the next time I’m in a country in which it’s available.

However, there is one issue with this wine which I hope will be addressed soon – do you serve it in a Pinot Noir glass, or a Chardonnay glass?  I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until Riedel comes out with a special glass just for this blend.

Louis Bouillot Crémant de Bourgogne Perle d’Ivoire

This post is from Easter Lunch, which was as good enough a reason as any to pop open some bubbles, and that’s just what we did with the Louis Bouillot Crémant de Bourgogne Perle d’Ivoire.  The focus of this post is Crémant, partly because I’ve written a fair bit already about Burgundy and its grapes, but mostly because it is really worth understanding.

Crémant is a catch-all term for sparkling wines made in the traditional style, so if you see something that’s labelled Crémant, you can be sure of a few things right off the bat.  First off, within France and Luxembourg it’s a controlled term, such that it is associated with an appellation.  Along with those appellations are specific rules and restrictions regarding a wide range of facets of production (which is pretty much true of every appellation).  These will determine the permitted grapes, yields in terms of HL/HA, and the way in which the wine is actually made.

[A side note - there is a sparkler from Yellowglen called Vintage Crémant.  I'm fairly certain it's just a cheeky appropriation of not only the term "Crémant" but also the term "Vintage" as there's no indication of year of production when I try to order a case.  I can't comment on the wine itself but as I rule, I hate it when producers, usually in the New World, take terms which have strict, often legally defined, meanings from the Old World and throw them around willy-nilly.]

Areas in which Crémant is produced are spread throughout France (while Luxembourg has a single Crémant de Luxembourg covering the entire country) and mirror many of the larger appellations, including Alsace, Bourdeaux, Burgundy, Die, Jura, Limoux, and the Loire Valley.  The one thing they share in common is the way in which they’re made.  The extraction rates will vary by appellation, but there is a limit to how much juice may be used per quantity of grape, though it’s usually expressed in the reverse as the minimum quantity of grapes is required per quantity of wine.  Almost always the base wine will be a blend of different vintages, though there are examples of vintage Crémant, including some from the featured producer.  The second fermentation will take place not just in bottle, but in the bottle in which it will be sold.

If you’re still scratching your head as to why this is at all interesting, for me there are two main reasons.  First, each region has its own specification as to allowed grapes.  If you’re drinking Champagne, you’re likely having a wine that is a combination of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, though there are a handful of other grapes permitted even if they constitute much less than 1% of the area under vines.  However, if you’re sipping Crémant d’Alsace, you could instead be tasting Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Auxerrois, and Riesling in addition to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  For Crémant de Loire, Grolleau and/or Chenin Blanc could be the local grapes (or possibly Cabernet Franc).  Crémant de Die is mainly the Clairette, while Crémant de Jura could have Poulsard as well as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Crémant de Bourgogne is a bit of a curiosity.  Like other regions, you get a mix of the grapes permitted in their still wines, so in this case Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but some components of Gamay and Aligoté are also permitted.  (I don’t know if the Burgundian Sauvignon Blanc grown in St-Bris is permitted.)  What makes it a curiosity is that when many people think of Burgundy, the image is of tiny production, walled vineyard where ownership of the vines many change row to row, and very specific geographical indicators for tiny little appellations.  Crémant production in Burgundy is the complete opposite, with big companies, huge volumes, and grapes sourced from throughout the region.

However, this leads into the second thing that is of interest with Crémant, and that is the value proposition.  It is not, generally speaking, an expensive wine, though it is often very well made, and it’s always made in the traditional method.  So in addition to ticking a box for an interesting collection of grapes, it’s very often a good value.  I don’t typically talk too much about price with regard to the wines I cover, but a Crémant de Bourgogne will cost you a good deal less than a comparable sparkling wine from Champagne.  Before I have the black helicopters of the CIBC swooping down on me, they’re not the same.  There are stylistic differences and obviously, within Burgundy the premium grapes go into still wine, whereas within Champagne the best grapes are for sparkling wine.  For me, Crémant is what I want to be buying when I have a party for more than dozen people.  For smaller gatherings, I can afford to spend more, but when I want to put something sparkling that I know I’ll enjoy into the hands of a lot of people, Crémant can be perfect.

Louis Bouillot is a large producer and part of the Boisset La Famille des Grands Vins.  Founded in 1877 by Jean Bouillot in Nuits-Saint-George, it’s grown into one of the largest producers of sparkling wine in Burgundy.  I couldn’t find their exact address but I remember driving past a huge facility of theirs next to the motorway when I was staying near Nuits-Saint-George last year – check out the view.  They do a range of entry level Crémants, including blanc-de-blanc, blanc-de-noir, rosé, and a mix of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Aligoté and Gamay.  They also produce some vintage Grands Terroirs which are expressive of particular geography, another rarity for Crémants.  The Perle d’Ivoire is either 100% Chardonnay or there is 5% Aligoté as well – the Boisset Family Estates product page says the former at the top of the page and the latter down about halfway.

This wine was pale lemon green in the glass with a veritable bubble storm.  The bead persisted until the last glass was finished, a few hours later.  It had a fresh lemon nose, some floral notes, and was developing, but it had a medium minus intensity.  The aromas were very light, but what was there was certainly fragrant, a bit like a wildflower you really have to get your nose into.  Delicate would probably be the right term.  On the palate, there was very crisp acidity and a medium body with medium plus flavour intensity and medium minus alcohol.  There were notes of sweet lemon, bitter lime, a little oak (not sure if any is used), some minerality, and grapefruit.  It had a medium length and a clean finish.

There were no faults – nothing out of place.  Not the most intense, full bodied, or flavourful sparkling wine I’ve had, but perfectly formed for what it is, and a very good value.

Sabre à Champagne Laguiole

Finally, it’s a good candidate for sabrage, and knowing I had a spare bottle in case of catastrophe, I had a go.  Step 1:  get an appropriate blade.  This is a Sabre à Champagne Laguiole that my wife bought for me a year or two back, and which for me qualifies in the Best Gift Ever category.  However, any heavy blade will do, and I actually had very good results once with the back of a cleaver.

Cleanly (sort of) shorn neck

I don’t really have an action shot, but I’ll upload a video at some point.  But the goal is to hit the ring on the neck at the point where the seam running up the bottle hits it.  If you look closely, it’s generally pretty easy to spot, though not as easy to hit.  If you’re successful, you’ll get a cleanly decapitated bottle.  Unfortunately, getting the amount of force to use just right is all down to experience.  You want it to be a crisp blow with just enough force to nip the ring, but not so much that you’ll cause a mess.  No description I can write will actually be helpful – you just have to give it a go, and then another, and another, until you have a decent success rate.  Even then, not something to do with a really expensive bottle unless you like to live dangerously.

Cork with neck of bottle intact

If you’re really lucky, you’ll get one of these – a cork with the end of the neck of the bottle still surrounding it in a relatively clean ring.  It’s tricky, not only because you can’t shatter it with the blow, but also it has to survive landing wherever it goes.  We have one from the first time we saw sabrage demonstrated, mounted on a little bit of plexiglass with a ribbon, from Pierre Jordan at Haute Cabrière.

Be safe – always chop the top of bottles away from people you like.  A serious note on safety, you actually need not worry about glass shards in your wine, as the pressure (and sometimes wine) that is released when the top is removed pushes them away from the bottle, particularly if the bottle is held at an angle.

Result!

And as with just about everything related to wine, really at the end of the day it’s about drinking, and so if you managed not to shatter the bottle, your wine will taste even better for the risk you took and the skill you demonstrated.  Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Krug 1998 (and caviar)

I’m not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I passed my exam.  Really.  I think I may need to start each post with that reminder for the next year or two, because it’s going to take that long to sink in.  And as with a few other excellent episodes in my life, I celebrated with a very nice bottle.  In this case, Krug 1998.

There are a few points in my life I can tell you exactly what I was drinking.  I remember my first taste of Port Ellen, my favourite single malt whisky, back in 1996.  I proposed over a bottle of Sassicaia, and then celebrated my engagement the following night with a bottle of Cristal and an Esk Valley The Terraces.  For studies though, it’s been Krug, with a bottle when I was accepted into graduate school, another when I had completed my Masters, and now one to go with the WSET Diploma.

This is actually something of a difficult post because Krug is so iconic.  However, lest I be accused of posting exclusively to draw attention to the fact that I’m drinking Krug, I suppose I should stick to the format.  First off, the basics.  Krug is Champagne, and indeed it’s been said that Krug is the finest of all Champagnes.  Unpacking that a bit, it’s a sparkling wine made in the Champagne region of France, under a certain set of rules regarding grape varieties, vine density, yields, winemaking, maturation, and release.

Actually, I can’t be asked to talk about the region, the grapes, and the winemaking because if you don’t already know all about that, I’m not going to be able to convey what a special bottle this is.  Instead I’ll talk a little about Krug, the 1998 vintage in Champagne, and what was inside this bottle.

Krug is of course a Champagne house, based in Reims, established in 1843, and now part of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH).  It’s a négociant-manipulateur (NM) meaning that like most larger houses, they make their wine from grapes not exclusively from their own vineyards.  They produce two non-vintage wines, vintage bottlings in particularly good years, and two single vineyard vintage wines.  Their house style is based on fermentation in barrel, extended time on lees, but no malolactic fermentation, so there’s oak, nuttiness, but more zing in the acid than cream.

The 1998 vintage in Champagne is at present well respected, though apparently had something of a slow start with limited expectations that have been exceeded with the passage of time.  Krug beautifully supplies notes with their vintage Champagne that detail the vintage, and they describe 1998 as uncertain in August with alternating heat and rain, but perfect by harvest and yielding “particularly fine quality wines”.  The notes on Berry Bros. & Rudd suggest not everyone was so certain at the time but that the consensus now is that it is a vintage from which the wines continue to improve.  Speaking of which, I just had a quick look at the BBR listing of maturity of the eleven 1998 Champagnes that they stock and only one is listed as “For laying down” – Krug.  So yes, of the many 1998 Champagnes available, I picked the one that might have been better with a few more years.  To be honest though, they’re almost certainly right – while I’m a Diploma graduate, they in fact seem to employ the majority of MWs, including Simon Field as a Champagne buyer.

I will put in a small word about the grapes themselves so I don’t completely lose my form.  As everyone knows, the main grapes of Champagne are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, and as far fewer people know there are actually a good handful of others permitted such as Petit Meslier, Arbanne, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc.  Of the three main grapes though, Pinot Meunier is the least noble (whatever that means) and is generally less prominent in the literature of Champagne to the point of many houses making no mention of it as a component of their wines.  I can’t find any sources to back this up, but I was told that for the longest time many houses denied that they were using any Pinot Meunier at all until someone with Krug spoke up and said that Pinot Meunier was an important component of their blend and that they absolutely relied on it, at which point others were less hesitant to admit that they likewise were making great use of it.

In the glass this wine was clear and bright with a pale gold colour.  The bubbles were amazing – not the restrained fine bead that is typical but more a tornado in the glass.  Small bubbles but with an intense energy, particularly immediately after being poured.  The nose was of slightly burnt toast, of sesame seeds that are just about to go from being slightly off white to black.  (I have a hard time toasting sesame seeds – really, the do seem to instantly transition.)  There was something else on the nose – almost maple syrup.  The nose as a whole had a medium plus intensity, and was very developed.  The palate was dry, with high acidity.  The body was a medium, which in the context of sparkling wines is fairly heavy.  The alcohol was medium minus and came in at ABV 12% on the label.  I picked up lemon, lime and bitters on the palate with a bit of sea shell.  It was very fresh and crisp.

This was a beautiful wine, and the perfect way to celebrate graduating with the Diploma.

Domaine André et Mireille Tissot Arbois Sélection 2008

While I didn’t buy any wines at the Natural Theory Selection tasting on the actual day (I will likely pick up some of the Lucy Margaux Pinot Noir in a few days), I did buy a few odds and ends.  I mentioned to my wine merchant my misgivings about Natural Wine in general as being perhaps not exactly to my tastes.  He looked at the wine I had brought to the counter to purchase and asked “but you’re going to drink these?”

The wine for today is the Domaine André et Mireille Tissot Arbois Sélection 2008, a vin juane, or yellow wine, from Jura, France.  This is a region and a type of wine that was strangely not covered in the WSET Diploma course, so I’m looking things up as I go along.  First, Jura itself.  It’s a section of France in the east of the country, roughly in the middle as far as north/south goes.  It’s essentially the wine region between Burgundy and Switzerland, so continental on the cold end of the spectrum.  It also has altitude as it is nestled against the Alps.

Jura makes a few different types of wine, but the style for which it is best known is this one, the vin jaune.  It’s similar style to Sherry in a number of ways. The grapes used vary, but Savagnin is typical, though Chardonnay is used as well, and grapes tend to be picked late.  Also, vin jaune is not fortified.  However, it is like Sherry in that the wine is oxydatively handled, meaning barrels are not filled to the bung, though the growth of a yeast on the surface is encouraged which does provide some protection.  The flavours and aromas that develop tend toward nutty, and the colour can go to a deep golden yellow.  It’s meant to age particularly well, so this 2008 is undoubtedly being consumed too soon.

Domaine André et Mireille Tissot produces a range of whites, mostly from Arbois, though one or two from Côtes du Jura as well, and they use Savagnin, Traminer and Chardonnay, as varietals and in blends.  I had not heard of them before buying this bottle, but they’re proponents of Biodynamic Viticulture, about which, like Natural Wine, I have some serious reservations.  A post for another time.

So this wine in particular is a 70% Chardonnay / 30% Savagnin blend, with 9 months of oak with topping up, and then 15 months without.  It does have a golden yellow colour that in other wines would suggest much more ageing than the label of this one suggests.  The nose is nutty, very like a Fino Sherry, though with some spice and a bit of honey.  On the palate, the promised nuttiness is there, but also some apple and pear.  It almost reminds me of a cider, a dry one that is, and it’s very distinctive.  A wine of an unfamiliar style, but to my nose and palate a well made one.

One note  that I must make, but which feels like a weird thing to express, is that this wine is hard to drink, or rather it’s hard to drink more than a glass.  Coming from me, that is a weird thing to say, as I not only love drinking just about everything there is to drink, I also tend to prefer to drink more rather than less.  This bottle lasted two days, with two people having a try on both nights.  People use the expression “easy drinking” for all manner of wines, but this I would have to put in the “challenging drinking” category.

Please don’t get me wrong – this is a very good wine, and I have enjoyed drinking it, but it does not lend itself to quaffing.  It demands your full attention and must be taken seriously. It induces something of a pucker on the finish, which while not actively discouraging you to take another sip, requires one to be a bit more measures in the time between sips than a more welcoming wine might.