A French sampler

Christophe Lhopitault of Wine and Beyond stopped by the restaurant yesterday with some of his wines. He recently started his own importing business of French wines, and the ones he brought were all pretty good and affordable and some were unusual.

The Fleur de Mer 2007 Rose from the Cotes de Provence was light, fresh and super dry, which is how, Christophe said in his nearly indecipherable French accent, rose should be.

Also cool was the Chateau la Rouviere 2004 Bandol, which was white and made from the rolle grape.

On rolle from the OCW

the white grape variety traditionally most closely associated with bellet, is now increasingly grown in the Languedoc and, especially, Roussillon, where it is frequently blended with southern French varieties such as Viognier, Roussanne, Marsanne, and Grenache Blanc. It is aromatic and usefully crisp for warm wine regions and is accepted by French authorities as identical to the vermentino of Corsica, Sardegna, and the Tuscan coast although some Italian authorities dispute this. Its relationship to the variety called Rollo in Liguria is still unclear.

On Bandol

the most serious wine of Provence, typically a deep-flavoured, lush red blend dominated by the mourvèdre grape. Like Châteauneuf-du-pape, Bandol produces quintessentially Mediterranean red wines which are easy to appreciate in youth despite their longevity.

The appellation is named after the port from which they were once shipped all over the world. Bandol is now a Mediterranean resort town with little to offer the wine tourist, and the vineyards are on south-facing terraces well inland called locally restanques. As in the smaller appellation of Cassis just along the coast, the vines are protected from the cold north winds, but have to fight property developers for their right to continued existence. A total of about 1,400 ha were cultivated in the early 2000s.

This particularly well-favoured southern corner is one of the few parts of France in which mourvèdre, the characteristic grape of Bandol, can be relied upon to ripen. Other dark-berried varieties grown include grenache and cinsaut, much used for the local herby rosés which account for about one bottle of Bandol in three, together with strictly limited additions of Syrah and Carignan. A small quantity of white Bandol is made from Bourboulenc, Clairette, and Ugni Blanc with a maximum of 40 percent Sauvignon Blanc, but little of it escapes the region’s fish restaurants.

Wine-making techniques are traditional but evolving. All reds must have at least 18 months in cask. Mechanical harvesting is banned. Domaine Tempier is one of the few domaines to have a well-established market outside France but the likes of Domaines de la Bégude and de la Tour du Bon, and Chx La Rouvière, Pibarnon, Pradeaux, and Vannières have all made fine wines.

I didn’t find this one especially aromatic, it seemed like a mix of chardonnay and chenin blanc, with caramel apple, green pear and an almost rubbery smell. It has a rich mouthfeel, but stopped a little short. It’s interesting that the wine is already four years old and on the market. Christophe said Bandol is usually held back and right now the current vintage for the reds is 2001.

Later in the evening Larry Perrine of Channing Daughters Winery in Bridgehampton stopped by for a drink and I gave him a taste. He said he’d never had a white Bandol before. Larry teaches the vinification class at the International Wine Center and has been in the wine business for decades, so I was pleased to give him something new.

The winner of the group was a Vouvray.

D’Orfeuilles “Silex” Vouvray 2005

Made from 100 percent chenin blanc in the Vouvray region of the Loire Valley, Larry and I both found citrus in the wine; he tangerine, me Meyer Lemon. So it’s almost sweet and full, but it’s got the signature high acid of chenin and the oily aroma of what wine tasters say is typical of chenin blanc: lanolin or wet wool. This wine will last a long time.

The question of “Silex.” Silex is French for flint, and is a highly valued soil component in the Loire. One famous renegade wine maker, Didier Dagueneau of Pouilly Fume, named one of his sauvignon blancs Silex. Christian went so far as to refer to it as an appellation, but then called it a lieu-dit, named place in French. Wines from silex areas, he said, command higher prices. This would retail for about $27.

Tasted on

Yesterday Ann Fortuno of Lauber Imports came by the restaurant to show me some of her wares. Lauber has an extensive portfolio. Today she brought four. I usually take notes on the back of a menu and then three-hole punch it and put it in my binder.

The wines were Cantina Zaccagnini 2006 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Cerasuolo” rose. It’s too old.

Grgich Hills 2004 Cab. Napa Valley. Good wine, but short on the palate and not worth the money.

IQUE Malbec 2007 by Enrique Foster, Mendoza. Inexpensive, simple rough tannins, I wasn’t wowed, but Dennis liked it.

Stonecap 2005 Monson Family Estates Syrah. Columbia Valley. Smelled like brett; I couldn’t get past it.

Next time, she said she’d bring me something from Tasmania. In the restaurant’s quest to present people with something they’ve never heard of, let along had, Dennis said I get bonus budget for Tasmanian wine. It’s a cool growing area and they’ve had some success with pinot noir.

In the wine business, tasted is actually a verb.

BYOB

Last night three guys, Michael, Billy and Scott, brought these two wines into the restaurant. Dennis has a good corkage policy. The first bottle’s free and the next are $5 per person per bottle. And, of course, the wine cannot be on our wine list. Take a look below and you’ll see there’s no way these were on our list. The restaurant has no storage and we buy a case at a time of a wine and then move on to something new. The guys let me taste the wines. Scott said he had to travel to Australia to get the d’Arenberg, and this bottle was among the few he had left.

d’Arenberg 2001 The Bonsai Vine (70 percent grenache, 25 shiraz and 5 mourvedre) McClaren Vale, Australia

Martinelli 2000 Zinfandel “Giuseppe & Luisa” Russian River Valley, California

Let me tell you about the Martinelli in one word: Yuck. Take a look below.

And this is high up on the front label in a font most can read without glasses. True, it’s cool these days to dismiss high alcohol wine, but this was so hot and so ripe. It tasted like an Amarone. You could taste the raisins. There’s a Madeira on the bar that’s 18.3 percent alcohol, and that’s fortified with pure alcohol. There is a wine merchant in California, Darell Corti, who, last year, refused to sell wines above 14.5 percent alcohol. Parker gave this wine 92 points.

So it’s not my style. But the d’Arenberg is. Made in the style and with the grapes of Chateauneuf-du-pape, the wine is powerful yet still elegant. It was pretty delicious with great silky mouthfeel, as Michael described it. I detected a little bit of brett on the nose, but it added a little barnyard to the wine, which was good. The wine, as goes the extensive story on the back label, is called The Bonsai Vine because the vines are bush vines in a dry-farmed vineyard, pruned so they look like little bonsai trees.

Thanks guys! I wonder what they’ll bring next time.

Live longer; drink red wine

Another misleading health headline in today’s Times that concerns wine. It’s not really the wine itself, but that famous compound resveratrol present in grape skins. One doctor said you’d have to drink 100 bottles of red wine a day to get the benefit. The benefit being that your body switches from reproductive mode to tissue maintenance mode. Starving yourself does the same thing.

But what if it’s true?

What’s open now

Chiorri 2006 Grechetto

I like this wine, and I’ll tell you why. It’s bright, fresh, a little bit of spritz, not too expensive, easy to drink has a likable minerality but a depth on the nose and a richness on the finish that is almost vanilla-like.

But that’s getting too far ahead. First, what Jancis has to say about the grape:

sometimes Greghetto, characterful central Italian white grape variety most closely associated with Umbria. It is an ingredient in Orvieto and in the whites of torgiano and the Colli Martani doc. The grapes‚ thick skins provide good resistance to downy mildew, making it sufficiently sturdy to produce good vin santo. It is typically blended with Trebbiano, verdello, and malvasia. In Antinori’s most admired white wine, Cervaro, it has played a supporting role to chardonnay, and this type of wine is now being copied by other ambitious producers in Umbria. Grechetto di Todi is probably even more widely planted than Grechetto Spoletino. Intrinsically more interesting than either trebbiano or drupeggio, it is expected to have a much larger role in Umbrian white wines, particularly Orvieto, in the future. Occasionally called Greco Spoletino or Greco Bianco di Perugia, it is by no means identical to greco bianco, although it is presumed to share its Greek origins.

Tasting note after the jump

Just bought

I just bought five cases of 2006 Hirsch Gruner Veltliner #1 and one case of S.C. Pannell 2006 Grenache Rosé from my friend Cliff at Michael Skurnik Wines.

The Hirsch is biodynamic and it has a screw cap, which I look for in a wine we’re going to pour by the glass. The poor bartender is so busy that the screw cap is a godsend. I tasted this wine at Skurnik’s East End tasting in April and remember its distinct minerality. The rosé is Cliff’s suggestion.

What’s open now

Curran 2006 Grenache Blanc

Grenache Blanc is unusual for California. Click above link for what Curran has to say about their wine. Here’s what Jancis says about the grape in the Oxford Companion to Wine:

the white-berried form of grenache noir, is discreetly important in France, where it was overtaken by Sauvignon Blanc as fourth most planted white grape variety (after Ugni Blanc, Chardonnay, and Sémillon) as recently as the late 1980s. Although in decline, the variety is grown on a total of more than 6,000 ha of France, half of them in Roussillon, where it produces full-bodied whites that vary from fat and soft to nervy, terroir-driven cellar candidates of the upper Agly valley. It can also be an important ingredient in the paler Rivesaltes.

Grenache Blanc is also often encountered—with the likes of Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier, and Rolle—in the blended white wines of Languedoc-Roussillon, to which it can add supple fruit if not longevity. It need not necessarily be consigned to the blending vat, however. If carefully pruned and vinified, it can produce richly flavoured, full-bodied varietals that share some characteristics with Marsanne and can be worthy of ageing in small oak barrels. It is also an ingredient in white Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Also

Garnacha Blanca is the light-berried grenache blanc of which in 2004 there were about 3,000 ha/7,410 acres in Spain, where it plays a role in north eastern whites such as those of Alella, Priorato, Tarragona, Rioja, and Navarra.

What I have to say about the wine

Article on wine education

The New York Times had an article in Sunday’s metro section about the American Sommelier Society’s 20-week wine education course. Mostly filled with restaurant workers looking for a better job.

Past studies

One year ago I was in the last-minute throes of studying for the unit 3 exam for the diploma. The test included two hours of blind tasting in the morning and three hours of essay questions on the “Light Wines of the World,” the title of unit 3. That’s all the wine in the world that’s not fortified or sparking (I’d already taken those tests).

Needless to say I worked myself into quite a state. A friend was staying at my house and at one time she counted 60 open bottles of wine on my kitchen counter, where I had been standing for hours on end sipping and spitting into the sink. It kinda smelled.

What’s open now

Domaine de la Quilla 2006 muscadet-sevre et maine sur lie

As is all Muscadet, this wine was made from melon de borgogne in the region where the Loire river meets the Atlantic Ocean. Also typical of muscadet, this wine is 12 percent alcohol, fresh, easy to drink and meant to accompany a plate of oysters.

Tasters say you can perceive the mineral influence of the ocean breezes, that the wine is almost salty — the same is also said of albarino, which is grown on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal — and you know what? They’re right. This wine smells herbal on the nose, a step above grassy but with the mineral of water evaporating off the stones in your garden. It’s got med-high acid, stops a little short on the palate but the finish stays around for a while. (This descriptor is decidedly not WSET-approved. How long is ‘awhile’?)

Smell is my strong suit, and sometimes curse, but I always think what kind of wine would I mistake this for if I were tasting it blind. And in the nose it could be a mid-Loire sauvignon blanc, but then the aromatics are not as pronounced, but that can happen when it gets really ripe.

I love low alcohol wines.

Muscadet is becoming popular again, but nature is not cooperating, last month a frost hit the region and destroyed half the crop.