Lake Breeze Zephyr Brut 2009

While I’m pleased that people occasionally read my posts, it’s probably obvious I write for my own sake.  I initially started writing to aid my studies as my WSET Diploma Unit 3 Exam approached, and then continued to document what I was drinking just to keep track and to keep up with my studies after I had passed the exam.  Writing here has the additional benefit of giving me an outlet when it comes to expounding on things that I find interesting.  Very few people with whom I spend time in person want to hear me go on about how much I’ve enjoyed tasting rare French hybrids and German crossing that I picked up in Canada.  And while I do have some more obscure varieties in the queue, today I’ll have a look at something a bit more conventional, the Lake Breeze Zephyr Brut 2009.

Since I live in Australia, I must first make clear that this is the Lake Breeze of British Columbia, Canada and the lake in question is the Okanagan Lake.  This should not be confused with another fine winery, Lake Breeze of Langhorne Creek, South Australia where the lake in question is Lake Alexandrina.  I doubt the two are related, and I hope I don’t ruffle any feathers if they were unaware of each other up until this point.  Tabuaeran is an island in the Pacific about equidistant from both wineries and might make a nice halfway point to meet up and discuss the situation.

I try to structure my posts with information about the grape, region and producer, and to wrap it up with a tasting note.  This week all the wines are from the Okanagan Valley, which by now is already quite familiar territory so instead the focus has been on the new (to me) grape varieties.  However, today’s wine is a Pinot Noir, and not only have we seen many such wines, we’ve even seen two varietal sparkling Pinot Noirs, one of which was from Ross Gower in Elgin, South Africa.  As it turns out, sparkling Pinot Noir is not the only connection between Lake Breeze and South Africa.

Lake Breeze was founded in the mid-1990s with its first vintage in 1995.  Their vineyards date to 1985, which makes them quite old by local standards.  The original owners termed it a “wine farm”, harkening back to the 25 years they spent in South Africa.  The winemaker, Garron Elmes, is originally from Cape Town and studied oneology and viticulture at Elsenburg College in Stellenbosch.  To top off the link to South Africa, Lake Breeze was the first vineyard in Canada to cultivate Pinotage, using clippings they imported from U.C. Davis.  It’s possible I’m the only person on the planet who thinks that’s incredibly cool, but as I said earlier, if I write it here instead of blathering about it to people in person, I can still have friends.

In addition to this sparkling Pinot Noir and a Pinotage, Lake Breeze produces a fairly broad range of wines.  Their whites include varietal Ehrenfelser, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Riesling, Semillon, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc, in addition to a white blend, and they produce a rosé from co-fermented Pinot Noir and Viognier.  Their range of reds includes two Pinot Noirs, two Bordeaux style blends, and a Merlot.  They only produce this single sparkling wine, using the tradition method of second fermentation in the bottle.

Since the two sparkling Pinot Noirs we’ve seen previously were both rosé, a quick word on winemaking might not go amiss.  Most grapes, regardless of their skin colour, contain pale flesh and relatively clear juice.  There is a class of grapes known as teinturiers, which have red flesh and therefore red (or at least pink) juice, and we’ve covered one in the form of the Georgian grape Saperavi.  However, Pinot Noir is not a teinturier and it produces clear juice, as evidenced by not only this wine but also by the many white sparkling wines of Champagne that contain Pinot Noir, and even the still Chardonnay Pinot Noir blend from Haute Cabrière we saw back in April.  If you want Pinot Noir, or any other non-teinturier red grape to contribute colour to a wine, the juice must have contact with the coloured grape skins after they’ve been crushed.  That typically happens during fermentation, through in some cases before and/or after, prior to pressing, as well.  For rosé wines there are a number of methods, from very brief skin contact before pressing, extraction of some of the juice from after it’s been in skin contact (leaving the rest of the juice to make red wine), and even in some cases blending red and white grapes or wine.

But as to this wine, in the glass it is clear and bright, with a pale lemon green colour.  It has fine beading with long lasting lace around the rim.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium intensity and notes of biscuit, blossom, and strawberries.  On the palate it’s dry with medium plus acidity, medium minus alcohol, medium body, medium plus flavour intensity, and medium length.  There are notes of sour cherry, strawberry, and grapefruit – all fruit without the developing characters of the nose.

I rate this wine as a solid good.  It’s certainly fresh, with some vibrancy.  It came across as a bit fruity on the palate, certainly more so than I expected from the nose, but the tart acidity keeps it lively.  It didn’t have the complexity or development that would have pushed it into the very good category, but it doesn’t disappoint.

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.

Saint-Hilaire Blanquette de Limoux Brut 2010

Depending on where you live, some of the WSET Diploma can feel theoretical only.  When I studied for the sparkling wine section, much of the focus was on Champagne, Cava, Crémant, Sekt, Italian styles and New World sparklers, all of which we were able to taste as part of our class, and which were also readily available for further study.  However, we were also expected to cover some lesser known wines, and today I have an example of one which I’m tasting for the first time, the Saint-Hilaire Blanquette de Limoux Brut 2005.

The sparkling wine exam was actually one of the easiest, in that the amount of material covered was fairly small.  You could almost be guaranteed that there would be  Champagne related question, and then it could be anything for the other two questions, but there were only so many topics.  My exam consisted of the fairly straightforward topics Négociant-manipulant, Cava DO, and Crémant.  The result was correspondingly high pass rate of 77%.  Had the Crémant question been swapped with a question on the sparkling wines of Limoux, I think the result might have been a bit different, because while I could have covered the basics, I had pages of detail on Crémant through not just France but Luxembourg as well.

Limoux is an appellation in the south of France in the hills leading up to the Spanish border.  It is among the coolest regions within Languedoc, with both altitude and distance from the sea setting it apart.  The climate is Mediterranean, though the influence of the Atlantic is felt more, further distinguishing it as cooler and wetter than its neighbouring regions.  The soils are rocky, with clay, sandstone and limestone making up distinct subzones.

While there is some production of still, red wine, the area is best known for sparkling, white wine.  It is claimed by locals to be the birthplace of sparkling wine, with records dating back to 1531, well before bubbles were mastered in Champagne.  The technique originally used is now known as Méthode Ancestrale, which involves bottling wine which has not finished fermenting.  The fermentation continues in bottle, resulting in a somewhat sweet, often cloudy wine with a relatively low level of alcohol and carbonation.  Blanquette de Limoux Méthode Ancestrale is a wine of the region made in that manner, exclusively from the Mauzac grape.  Blanquette in Occitan means white, though it often is used to refer to Mauzac in this context.

In addition, sparkling wine is made in the traditional method, with a second fermentation being instigated in bottle followed by disgorgement as opposed to the initial fermentation continuing and no disgorgement.  This takes the form of sparkling wine made under the labels Blanquette de Limoux (Méthode Traditionnelle) and Crémant de Limoux.  While both are produced in the same manner as Champagne, the difference between the two is that Blanquette de Limoux must be made up of at least 90% Mauzac, with Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc completing the blend, while Crémant de Limoux must be a majority of Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc, a minority of Mauzac, with a small portion of Pinot Noir permitted but not required.

Mauzac (Blanc), or sometimes Blanquette, is a white skinned grape largely found in the vicinity of Limoux or Gaillac 100km to the north.  While there are Mauzac Rosé and Mauzac Noir varieties as well, they are particularly rare and Mauzac without a colour almost always refers to the Blanc variety.  The grape buds and ripens late, which seems an odd choice for Limoux given its relatively cool and wet climate.  It has highly variable yields, which in part explains its decreasing popularity with growers.   It it typically picked early to retain acidity needed in sparkling wine, but often at the cost of the characteristic apple peel flavour that comes with further ripening.  In addition to Limoux and Gaillac, it’s apparently one of the permitted (but almost never used) white grapes of Bordeaux.  Wikipedia references a Decanter article that claims there are seven permitted white grapes, but other sources list eight, but all include Mauzac – news to me.

[A tweet from the good people at Rives Blanques after this was initially published informed me that Mauzac is also used in still white wine in AOC Limoux, where is it picked by hand, fermented and aged in bottle - something I overlooked in researching this post.  They of course would know, as they produce wines across AOC Limoux, AOC Blanquette de Limoux, and AOC Crémant de Limoux, as well as a few others.]

Like the Lambrusco of last week, information on this producer is somewhat thin on the ground, but I did manage to find a few titbits.  The name on the label, Saint-Hilaire, is the monastery where monks are said to have invented Vin Blanquette and Méthode Rurale in 1531.  The wine itself was produced at/by La Cave des Vignerons du Sieur d’Arques, a winemaking cooperative and the largest winery in Limoux.  This wine is not listed on their direct order website, and given that the front and back labels are in English (and that there’s a back label at all), I’m guessing this is produced exclusively for export.  At some point, after more research, it would be worth writing a post exclusively about cooperatives because they can be a huge part of trade depending on the area, but it’s rare that I (knowingly) encounter cooperative wines.

As to this wine in the glass, it is clear and bright with pale lemon green colour, multiple steady streams of bubbles, and a ring of bubbles where the glass meets the top of the pour.   On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium minus intensity.  I get the classic baking powder note of carbon dioxide which often makes it difficult for me to smell anything else, but also some green apple and pear, and a hint of biscuit/dough.  On the palate it’s dry with medium plus acidity, medium body, medium minus alcohol, medium minus intensity, and a medium minus length.  It has notes of sour apple, herbs, and some hay or grass – not freshly cut New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but more dried and almost bitter.

I’ll give this a good, because there are no faults, even if it is lacking in a few key areas.  Since it’s my first Blanquette de Limoux I don’t have a reference point, but what I’ve read about Mauzac is spot on in terms of tasting so it gets full marks for typicity.  As with all first tries, it does make me wish I had another or a few so as to get a better sense of the style and quality, but most of all it makes me wish I had access to a varietal Mauzac to get me another step closer to a century of varietal wines.

Luigi Cavalli Lambrusco Dell’Emilia

One of the many nice things about studying wine is that there are a good number of very knowledgeable and interesting people who are writing about it.  I’ve made no secret of how important Jancis Robinson was in my Diploma studies, and I mentioned Victoria Moore back in December with regards to writing good tasting notes.  Another writer I especially respect and enjoy reading is Eric Asimov, which is how I ended up with this bottle of Luigi Cavalli Lambrusco Dell’Emilia.

Back in 2006 he wrote a column about Lambrusco, singing its praises and lamenting how its image had been all but ruined by the likes of Riunite in the 1970s.  I hadn’t even started to study wine, but I remember the column because it allowed me to tuck away the fact that sparkling red wine was produced in Italy and I made use of it several times in the face of people who insisted that it was an Australian innovation.  It was purely academic, however, as I did not have an opportunity to actually try one.

Since then, despite numerous wine courses, Lambrusco has remained nearly mythical.  I did encounter it once in a large bottle shop, but the packaging was so dubious and the price so inexpensive that I thought I should wait for a better example before having my first sip.  Further years have passed since, and a few weeks ago Asimov published another column in which he again championed the wine.  (He also has a book due out in October, How to Love Wine.)  As I am currently on a string of wines which will not make my (temporarily) non-drinking wife jealous, I decided now was the time to actually see what Asimov was writing about and so I sought out a huge wine retailer and finally bought a bottle.

For those not familiar with Lambrusco, it is an Italian red grape found largely in the north of the country.  When I say grape, I really mean grape family, and it’s commonly said that there are 60 subvarieties or clones of the grape.  More recently though, advocates of the grape have put forward that there in fact 13 (possibly as many as 17) different varieties of Lambrusco, with the vast majority of wines being made from a subset of only six, Lambrusco Salamino, Lambrusco Marani, Lambrusco Grasparossa, Lambrusco di Sorbara, Lambrusco Maestri, and Lambrusco Montericco.  The grape is especially productive in the vineyard, and is typically used to make sparkling red wines that vary from dry to fairly sweet.  It’s used in wines across eight DOCs (and four sub DOCs) around Modena, Reggio  Emilia, Parma and Lombardia, and is also made into Indicatione Geografica Tipica level wine in Reggio Emilia and Lombardia.

Unfortunately, most Lambrusco is tank fermented and very cheaply mass produced.  As a wine it is best known for having flooded the USA market in the 1970s in the form of a frothy red wave of sweet Riunite.  After years of popularity, the wine’s reputation is now largely bound up with that industrial style and not looked upon kindly by most people who are serious about wine.  Asimov though is on a mission to revive the wine by highlighting quality producers, and has had some success in New York and Los Angeles.  Good examples, often with the secondary fermentation in bottle, are being imported by specialist merchants and promoted in Italian restaurants, particularly those featuring flavours of Emilia-Romagna.

Sadly, his influence has not yet reached Adelaide (as far as I know).  My quest for a bottle last week was rewarded with a choice of three options, and my selection was the most expensive at just under $8.  I’m guessing from its appearance that neither the label nor the contents have changed since the 1970s.  Speaking of the label, it’s worth spelling out the information on it.  This is a Lambrusco Dell’Emilia Indicatione Geografica Tipica, which tells us the grape (family) and that it’s from Emilia-Romagna but a step down from DOC quality.  Vino Amabile Frizzante lets us know that this is a sweet, bubbly wine.  There is no indicated vintage.  The label also says “di San Ruffino” ® which I cannot claim to fully understand, other than that there are areas within Emilia-Romagna by that name which the producer, Luigi Cavalli, has apparently trademarked.  I do not believe that it has anything at all to do with Ruffino, a highly regarded producer in Tuscany.

A quick word about Emilia-Romagna – it is a huge region in the north of Italy that spans 240km east to west.  Within it are at least 22 DOCs and 2 DOCGs, though they account for only 15% of wine produced.  The Lambrusco family of grapes, if taken as a whole, makes up roughly 40% of production, with Sangiovese being the second most popular grape at 23%. The area is geologically diverse, from hills and peaks in the west down to coastal plains in the east.  The climate likewise is much cooler in the mountainous zones than on the milder plains as they stretch toward the Adriatic.  I’ve also read that the region has officially dropped the hyphen between Emilia and Romagna but can’t find a corroborating source, so I’m sticking with it for now.

I’ve also been unable to find very much information regarding this producer, not even a website nor a physical address, so if anyone has more information please drop me a note or leave a comment.  Fine print on the top label suggests that the company has been passed from father to son since 1901.  Beyond that though, all I’ve been able to determine is that it’s made for Cantarella Bros., a company based out of Sydney (though with offices throughout Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore) that imports a range of products, largely food, from Europe.  It’s best known brand in Australia is Vittoria Coffee.

Diving into the wine itself, in the glass, it is clear and bright, with a deep purple colour, quick legs, and some bubbles around the rim but no overt carbonation.  You can only tell there is any fizzing whatsoever by putting your ear to the glass, at which point you’ll hear the odd bubble breaking the surface.  On the nose it’s clean and developing, with medium minus intensity, and notes of cough syrup, some bitter herbs, and a splash of Campari.  On the palate it’s off-dry and you can tell that there is some prickliness of carbonation, but no real fizz.  It has medium minus acidity, medium plus flavour intensity, medium body, low alcohol, low soft tannins, and a medium minus length.  There are notes of cola, red cherries, bitter herbs, some bitter orange, and cough syrup.  It has a very sour finish that made me shudder a bit on my first sip.

I really don’t know what to make of this.  I’ll go with acceptable in terms of quality, and I cringe to think what I would have made of either of the two lower priced bottles next to it on the shelf when I bought it.  It has an interesting flavour profile, with some amount of complexity, but not one that I associate with wine.  Beyond that though, I hesitate to judge a wine style that is so completely new to me.  I don’t expect I’ll be rushing out to buy another bottle of Lambrusco until I can find one from a producer that Asimov specifically recommends.  Sadly this wine is more of the tradition that has caused many to dismiss Lambrusco rather than of a quality that might have them reconsider.

Pin in the map is approximate only to Reggio Emilia where the producer is based, and I’m calling this a varietal “Lambrusco” as I don’t have any better granularity of which specifically.

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.

Kilikanoon Brut Vouvray 2009

The past few weeks have been pretty heavy on Australian wine, but I’m moving back to France with this post, covering the classic Loire appellation of Vouvray.  The thing is, it’s been invaded by Australians.  I put before you the Kilikanoon Brut Vouvray 2009.

This is yet another wine I picked up at the Adelaide Cellar Door Festival, and I must admit that when I saw it a stand selling Vouvray, I initially assumed that it must be someone playing a bit fast and loose with protected geographical names, as was once very common in Australia.  However, there are a good number of Australian producers who go overseas to make wine and then bring it back under their Australian label, with the Primo Estate of McLaren Vale’s Primo & Co line of Italian-made wines and Burgundian wines made by Marchand & Burch of Western Australia springing to mind.  And as it turns out, Kilikanoon of the Clare Valley do the same thing.

Vouvray is a region and a wine, the region being in the Loire to the east of Tours on the north side of the river, and the wine being made from Chenin Blanc.  The two are closely tied, more so even than say Burgundy where to know the grape you need ask red or white (and even then if you’re picky there are grapes other than Pinot Noir and Charodnnay).  While you can grow Arbois within AOC Vouvary, and there are other things grown outside the strict appellation system, if someone offers you a glass of Vouvray, you can expect it to be Chenin Blanc.  However, that’s as far as it goes.  Within the region, Chenin Blanc is used to make a wide range of styles, dry to sweet, still and sparkling, high quality and other.  But first, the particulars of the region.

Vouvray is within the broader Touraine region, which has a range of climatic influences, with Vouvray at the meeting point of cool continental and Atlantic-influenced maritime.  The soils are largely clay and gravel on the surface, though not far below is tuffeau, a soft rock which contains miles of tunnels used by winemakers for their cellars.  Tuffeau ranges from blanc which is calcareous with good drainage to jaune which is more sandy.

Vouvray is one of the regions in the world where the vintage determines the wine style.  In austere vintages, the grapes can go into sparkling wine, or dry styles.  With more ripeness, demi-sec, or off dry styles prevail.  With the appropriate conditions into the autumn, very high quality sweet wine cane be made, with multiple passes of hand picking.

And while Chenin Blanc may have found a second home in South Africa, and has been known to spend time in California and Australia, it is most often associated with the Loire, and Vouvray in particular.  Locally, it’s sometimes known as Pineau de la Loire.  It buds early and ripens late, which can make for some difficult vintages in the Loire.  It’s also rates very highly on the acid scale, even in warmer climates.  While these qualities make for some level of challenge in Vourvay, which they meet with a variety of winemaking styles for each vintage, in the New World Chenin Blanc has at times been something of a sure bet, capable of retaining high levels of acidity even when over cropped, and always ripening.  That said, there are some excellent New World Chenin Blancs, such as Ken Forrester’s The FMC from Stellenbosch and Coriole’s Optimist from McLaren Vale, both of which have similar ageing potential to high quality Vouvray.

Speaking of New World producers, Kilikanoon is certainly worth a mention, not least of all because this is their wine.  It’s a young company, founded by winemaker Kevin Mitchell in 1997, named for the property on which the brand was founded in the Clare Valley.  Over the past 15 years, the company has grown through buying up estate-owned vineyards and establishing a portfolio of over a dozen properties throughout South Australia.  Wines include Riesling, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache out of Clare Valley, Shiraz, Grenache, Chardonnay and Semillon out of the Barossa Valley, Shiraz and Riesling out of Eden Valley, and Shiraz, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc out of McLaren Vale.

Not content with making wine in Australia, Kilikanoon has this partnership with Maison Greffe of Cave des Producteurs in Vouvray, as well as Cave de Tain in the northern Rhône where they have been producing Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage since 2007.

This wine gave a big splash of bubbles when poured, but settled down to a fine bead that lasted through the entire glass.  It’s pale lemon in colour with some green highlights.  The nose is fairly robust, with green apple and lemon, as well as some pear.  The palate is dry, with nice mousse and zesty acidity.  The tastes match the aromas, with more green apple, lemon and pear.  Slightly short length with a pastry finish – not light patisserie, but more like pie crust, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

I enjoyed this wine, though while they fruit is certainly apparent, particularly the green apple, it is certainly not sweet – almost austere, except for the pastry finish.  I think it has more to give with some time in cellar, and so I look forward to giving an older incarnation a try.  Length and complexity weren’t as generous as I might like, but it certainly made up for it by being crisp and clean.

While I will generally put a company headquarters on the map even if I know the vineyard is miles away or even on the other side of the country, I’m making an exception with this wine and putting the pin in the town of Vouvray instead of at the Kilikanoon home base in the Clare Valley.  I can live with a pin being in the wrong part of the country from where the wine actually originates, but I can’t live with it being in the wrong country.

Jim Barry The Nancy 2006

We had a party a few weeks back and ended up with a bunch of bottles brought by friends, including a decent Riesling and a very nice Fiano.  We also ended up with a few bottles of sparkling wine.  Sparkling wine around our house is a bit tricky, in that we only tend to open it on special occasions.  So right now we have three bottles of bubbles waiting for such an occasion, but rather than just letting them accumulate we decided that opening a bottle of sparkling wine can be it’s own occasion, which brings us to Jim Barry The Nancy 2006.

First off, I have to say that this is not a wine I would have been likely to buy on my own.  The combination of the colour, the clear bottle, the crown cap, and the absence of any information about the wine on the labels is typically aimed at a different target market.  That said, not only was there nothing wrong with this wine, but in fact it was quite nice.  Unfortunately, I don’t know that I’m going to have as much to say about the region, grapes and company as I would ordinarily prefer, but I still think this is worth describing.

Jim Barry Wines is a family run business, one of the foremost wine companies in the Clare Valley, where the eponymous founder has a historic role in the modernization of the region.  Like so many prominent figures in Australian wine, he studied at Roseworthy, and was the 17th qualified winemaker to graduate, and the first to work in the Clare Valley in 1946.  He worked in Clare, first with the Clarevale Co-operative (where he met Nancy, who went on to become his wife shortly thereafter and whose name graces this bottle), and then with Taylors, while also building up a set of his own vineyard holdings which now exceed 200 hectares.  He passed away in 2004 but the business is carried on through his family, in particularly Peter James Barry and Nancy.  With holdings throughout Clare, they have produce at least 15 different wines, primarily based on Riesling, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz, with some Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Malbec, and this Pinot Noir thrown into the mix.  Their flagship wine is “The Armagh”, a Shiraz that is among the most sought after in Australia according to Langton’s who put it in their “Outstanding” category.

I’ve talked a bit about the Clare Valley, and rather than further discuss soils and climate, here’s a fun fact.  The Clare Valley was settled largely by the Irish, and there is an area named Armagh, after Armagh of County Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland.  (Clare itself is another county in the Republic of Ireland.)  The Jim Barry flagship is named in honor of the Irish settlers of 1849.  This is in marked contrast to the Barossa Valley, geographically close, but with prominent German roots.  It might have been easier to keep straight if they had swapped, and the Germany has settled the area in which great Riesling is grown, but nevermind.  If you’re in South Australia and want to know which area, find a church.  If it’s Catholic, you’re in the Clare Valley.  If it’s Lutheran, you’re in the Barossa Valley.  If it’s been converted into a nightclub, you’re in Adelaide.

As far as grapes go, this is a straight Pinot Noir sparkling rosé.  At some point, I’ll talk about the different ways to make rosé, probably the next time I cover a pink sparkler because they have their own special rules, but this is not a wine about which we need to think too technically.

This wine is all about the drinking.  I know that sounds a bit naff, but this was made by Peter James Barry for his mother Nancy, not as a stunning technical achievement, but as something he thought she would enjoy drinking with her friends as they played their weekly card games.  The notes are not about how the wine was made, but about Nancy herself.

In the glass, it is just as you see it through the bottle – pretty.  I put it somewhere between pink and salmon, while the official tasting notes call it salmon pink.  Fair enough.  It has big, fast moving bubbles.  On the nose it’s quite delicate – patisserie, a little biscuit (but not big, serious Champagne biscuit), and some strawberries.  On the palate, it is more lemon and green apple, with the strawberries playing a much smaller role.  There’s a hint of sweetness – not a sweet style, but just a hint.  The acidity is good – mild for a sparkler, but more than you would typically get from a non-sparkling rosé.  Crisp is how I could describe it.

This is not the most serious sparkling wine you’re likely to encounter this year, but that’s obvious even before the crown cap is off.  But I think this wine is a success in that it hits the mark brilliantly in terms of being a light, refreshing sparkling wine that’s very easy to drink.  It’s completely unpretentious.  The bubbles suggest that it was not made in a strict traditional method, as does the price, but I wouldn’t hold that against it.  While I enjoy drinking serious, indeed sometimes challenging sparkling wines, this one was very good at the less serious end of the spectrum.  And if my mother were after a glass of bubbles, I think she’d enjoy this much more than a wine I’d normally buy.

Ulacia Getariako Txakolina 2010

The other day I was saying something silly about how interesting varieties of grape don’t jump out as me as much anymore because at this point I’ve tried all the most commonly encountered wines?  That just makes it all the more special when something unusual does come my way, even if it does mean I’m writing about my fourth Spanish white while Germany is still neglected.

Today I am writing about the Ulacia Getariako Txakolina Blanco 2010.  It’s a wine from the Getaria in the Basque Country of northern Spain, just west of San Sebastian, and it is charming.  (I’ll be using the Basque terms/spelling as much as possible, unless otherwise indicated.)  Wine here has a recorded history going back 1000 years, though the area under vines is less than a tenth of the 1,000 HA that it was pre-phylloxera.  Getaria is a fishing village on the Bay of Biscay, with Getariako Txakolina being the DO for the vine growing area around it.  The region as a whole is maritime with a considerable Atlantic influence, though the vines are planted in the hills surrounding it, often on the southeast facing, often steep, unterraced slopes for maximum sunshine and some protection from sea breezes.  The winters are mild and summers cool, with 1,500 – 1,600 mm of rain per year, the highest of any Spanish wine region.  The soils are largely clay, covered with sand.

Txakolina is a style of wine, spelled Chacolí in Castilian, traditional to the Basque region.  It’s typically white, low in alcohol, and somewhat sparkling, very much akin to Portugal’s Vinho Verde.  In addition to being made in Getariako, there are several other DOs in the vicinity that have their own take on it, sometimes with different permitted contributing grapes.  It’s typically fermented slowly under refrigeration, and bottled with some effervescence.

Getariako Txakolina label on neck

For all Txakolina, the primary grapes used are Hondarribi Zuri (white) and Hondarribi Beltza (red), which are, as you might expect, two versions of the same  grape.  For Getariako Txakolina the required blend is 95% Zuri and 5% Beltza, though in Arabako Txakolina Gross Manseng, Petit Manseng, and Petit Corbu are permitted in small amounts, while in Bizkaiko Txakolina, a portion of Folle Blanche may be used.  Rosé and red wines are also made in these regions, though in much smaller quantities and largely for local consumption.  Hondarribi Zuri and Hondarribi Beltza are largely found only in this region and I have not been able to find any record of it being cultivated outside of Spain.  Also, it’s a tough grape to spell – it’s apparently Hondarribi, Hondarrabi or Ondarrabi depending on where you are even within Basque Country.  Vines are typically trellised, to make the most of the breezes in the often damp conditions, and to shelter the grapes from hail.

This wine is made by a family run winery, Nicolas Ulacia e Hijos, which produces roughly 6,000 cases per year, largely for local consumption.  The two grape varieties are vinified separately under refrigeration, blended and then bottled quickly enough that residual CO₂ is retained in the bottle, which is sealed with a cork.  I’m coming up a bit short on detail for this producer as I cannot find a website for them – I’ll update this post if/when I do.

In the glass, it was difficult to determine colour as I was in a dimly lit restaurant when I had this, but I would put it at pale lemon with a bit of green.  The nose was floral, smelling of blossom, with some grapey notes.  It was youthful, but not particularly intense.  The palate was of lime, and very zesty as a result of both good acidity and the bubbles which were more prominent that what I’ve read online would have led me to expect.  The body was light, and there was almost a hint of sweetness, but I don’t think it was down to residual sugar – more likely just the freshness.

This is a very good wine for what it is – young and meant to be drunk you, refreshing, and inexpensive despite having come to the far side of the world from a small producer.  I’ve seen the term “fun” used to describe Txakolina wines and I think this wine absolutely hits the mark.  It’s also worth noting this was a 2010 and most sources recommend drinking the wine within a year, so it was almost certainly better still this time last year.  In any case, I’m very glad to have been able to try it, and look forward to perhaps spending a summer drinking my way around Spain.

Ross Gower Pinot Noir Brut 2007

At the tasting the other night, we tried 19 wines in total, all sparkling, and generally all very good to excellent.  With 19 wines though, I hope I can be forgiven for not writing up a detailed note about each region, the grapes used, the producer and the wine itself.  I love drinking and writing, but I have my limits.  So instead, I’m going to go into a bit more detail on one of the wines.

I think Ross Gower Pinot Noir Brut 2007 is worthy of a bit more attention.  It gets to my love of the novel and obscure, which is also why I brought it to the tasting.  The Champagnes are popular and well distributed enough that they’re likely available anywhere in the world, and I just recently wrote about an Australian sparkler, so that leaves me to choose between the English sparkling wines from Nytimber or this Cap Classique.  I hope to write about Nytimber at some point, as English sparklers are an interesting and relatively new phenomenon, but Cap Classique is at least as rare in these parts, and since I was the one who brought it to the tasting, having carried it here from South Africa, I can’t let this opportunity go to waste.

So, this is a wine of South Africa.  The very first post of this blog was about a South African wine, and while I’ve only been to South Africa a couple of times, I’m very fond of it as a country and as a country of origin for some very interesting wines.  Unfortunately, while they’re very easy to find in places where locals consume more wine than they produce, such as London, South African wines aren’t as common around here, and in fact there are precious few that make it to our fair shores.  South Africa is generally considered a New World wine region, but it’s a bit more complicated than that in that wine has been produced there since the 17th century, with a dessert wine from near Cape Town,  Vin de Constance, internationally regarded as a particularly fine wine at that time.

The complete history of wine in South Africa is beyond the scope of this simple blog, but suffice it to say that in recent history the wine was not internationally widely available nor well regarded during the Apartheid era.  However, over the last twenty years things have been changing rapidly for the better.  International markets opened, investments were made in viticultural and oenological technology, and flying winemakers brought international expertise into the local industry.  South Africa has much in common with Chile and Argentina, in that land and labour costs are relatively low, certainly compared with Europe.  French barrels and European presses cost the same pretty much everywhere, so South Africa enjoys the competitive advantage found in much of the New World.  However, generally speaking they don’t have the history/prestige that can command the high prices of their Old World rivals, so their wines, particularly their quality wines, can often be very good value.

Elgin is a region within South Africa I have not visited, but looking at the map I’m fairly certain I drove through parts of it while travelling between Franschhoek where I was staying and Hermanus where I visited a few Walker Bay wineries.  I’ve seen it described as the coolest wine region of South Africa, and for those people who haven’t been there and who think of South Africa as a warm country, I have one word:  penguins.  OK, so not in Elgin, but not far.  Elgin is more properly known as Elgin Valley, and it’s a plateau bordered by mountains, about 10km from the ocean.  It has an altitude of 300 metres, with cold, wet winters, and cool sea breezes in the summer.  Shale is the soil type most often referenced with regard to the region.

Pinot Noir is the sole grape in this wine, and it has a long history in sparkling wine.  As one of the three cornerstone grapes of Champagne (along with a few other minor grapes often overlooked), it does well in cool climates, and like most red grapes has pale flesh and clear juice (unlike the Saperavi I recently tried).  I’ve written about Pinot Noir enough that there isn’t a whole lot more I can say, other than that there are a few excellent Pinot Noirs from South Africa, with two neighbours just outside of Elgin toward Hermanus, Hamilton Russell and Bouchard Finlayson, producing two of the best.

A quick note about the winemaking – this is a Méthode Cap Classique.  If something is Champagne, it means it is from Champagne and conforms to a certain set of requirements in terms of which grapes are used, how they are grown, harvested, what yields are permitted, how the grapes are pressed, fermented, aged, bottled, what have you.  It’s much more than just a region – it’s a whole set of rules, but with the name Champagne comes a great brand and expectations of a certain quality level from the product.  The winemaking method used is termed méthode traditionnelle, and while no one outside of Champagne can call their wine Champagne, they are free to use that term if they conform to the required techniques.

South Africa went one step better, in my humble opinion, in that they came up with their own term to describe sparkling wine from South Africa which conforms to the méthode traditionnelle, and have branded it Méthode Cap Classique.  Many other countries fumble with saying sparkling wine and then having to also specify which country, but Cap Classique speaks to both country and method.

Ross Gower, the producer, passed away in 2010 between when this wine was made and when it was enjoyed, but the business is still in the family and his two sons are carrying on in his place.  He was educated in winemaking in South Africa, but worked in the wine trade in Germany and New Zealand.  He returned to South Africa and was recruited to recreate the Vin de Constance I mentioned at the top, which had disappeared as a product.  He set up his own company in 2003 and Ross Gower the company has a range of seven wines, with this sparkler, two reds, a rosé and three whites.

As to this wine, I must apologize for the photo.  This wine has a beautiful color, but I didn’t get around to the photographs until after it had been poured to everyone at the tasting.  It’s a very pale rosé, but not pink.  It’s in the salmon to onion skin range, which the winery describes as “eye of the partridge”.  I have not been eye to eye with a partridge, but it’s quite lovely.

On the nose were classic yeasty and biscuity notes, but underpinned with some citrus and a hint of strawberry.  I have to admit though that I tend to pick up red fruit characters from rosé and from Pinot Noir based wines even when they’re not there.  On the palate the citrus character came to the fore, with zingy acidity.  While this is a sparkling wine with no dosage, the fruit was still strong enough to balance out the acidity without requiring sweetening.  A very nice wine, and I wish I had another few bottles.