Gamay sans Tra La La 2010

We took this wine on a picnic this week. Well, a sort of picnic. We took the day ferry from Poole to Cherbourg (narrowly missing the floods) and decided to forgo the delights of the cafeteria service and take our own sandwiches (parma ham and basil, since you ask).



A bright breezy gamay, served well chilled seemed the perfect accompaniment and so it proved. It was utterly delicious, full of wild berry fruit with a whiff of white pepper and a slightly earthy edge that stopped it being jammy.



It comes from Domaine de la Garrelière a biodynamically run estate in Touraine and is made with natural yeasts, unfined and unfiltered. Sans Tra La La, for those of you who don't speak French, roughly translates as gamay without fuss (or, more accurately, pretension).



Amazingly the remaining half bottle survived a 9 hour car journey and an overnight stay on our route to the Auverge and was still as fresh as a daisy, two days later. A genuine vin de soif.



You can buy it from Caves de Pyrène and Vinceremos for around £10-11 though the latter only seem to have the 2009 vintage currently.



Readmore »»

Muscadet: Refreshing, Delicious, But A Tad Weird...

I was with a client last week, doing a "shopping 101" session. After we were done, I asked my friend who works at the store if he had any "must-trys" in the world of very refreshing whites, something I sorely needed since it's been a million degrees here with about 100% humidity every day (ok, so it's hyperbole, but go with me...it feels like that).

He brought me over to the French section and told me they had some great Muscadet. I always forget about this wine (since many are forgettable) and I was excited to revisit it.

The Muscadet (moose-kah-DAY) area is in the far Western Loire Valley -- right on the Atlantic coast surrounding the city of Nantes. The wine is made from the white, fairly neutral tasting Melon de Bourgogne grape (meaning "Melon of Burgundy," indicating where the grape is from).

Originally planted here by the Dutch in the 1700s after a hard frost killed off the existing vineyards which had mostly red grapes, Melon de Bourgogne was harvested with the goal of distilling it and selling the booze all over Europe. The enterprising Dutch gave the grape its start and eventually production moved from spirits to wine.

Today Muscadet is the most produced wine of the Loire, and in recent times, it has been pretty awful. Producers have made terrible bulk wine and the reputation of the area has suffered. It's a real shame, given that this region has a moderate maritime climate and is full of rivers, varied terrain, and diverse soils -- all great for grape growing.

The biggest sub-appellation/area (there are four) and the one you'll usually see in the US is Muscadet Sevre et Maine, named for the two Loire tributaries (the Sevre and the Maine) running through it. Most of the appellation lies on the slopes of the river with lots of ideal well-drained, sandy and gravelly soils. With all this geography going for it, often this wine can be great and is the most consistent of the four Muscadet sub-regions.


Before we get to the wine at hand, I do want to prove that every grape/region has a "behind the music" (even one that's been slammed for making plonk) so I'm going to tell you three really weird things about this wine that make it interesting:

Weird thing 1: The name. Muscadet is not a grape (the grape is Melon de Bougogne) and it's not, as most French wines are, named for a place (which is technically the Pays Nantais). Muscadet is actually a description of the wine -- "musky tasting" and now indicates the area where the wine is made. I guess I could accept this, but the wine is so NOT musky tasting. At it's base, it's just lemony, salty, and acidic...and very simple. Strange that it has this name.

Weird thing 2: Alcohol content. Muscadet is the only wine in France that has a maximum alcohol content (12%). This ensures it will always be on the lighter side, regardless of how great the weather was that year and how ripe the grapes got. The French government regulates this, so there's no wiggle room.

Weird thing 3: Winemaking is described on the label. Muscadet is one of the only wines where the winemaking process, sur lie, is part of the name of the wine and winemakers have to meet certain criteria to add it. We've already said that Melon de Bourgogne is a total yawn on its own, so to give it some umph, winemakers' main tool is sur lie aging. This is a process where the wine sits on dead yeast cells after fermentation, which break up and create a nutty, creamy flavor. To be able to put it on a bottle of Muscadet, the wine has to sit on the lees for a winter and the wines can't be filtered, the juice is just taken directly from the barrel/resting on the lees to the bottle. Pretty oddball that you'd call out how a wine is made right on the label, but that's Muscadet.

For a wine that's made from a very low brow grape, it's pretty high maintenance. But that's ok. Especially when you find one that's more than insipid white.

I'm happy to report that the wine I had was one of the most impressive Muscadets I've had to date. It's from 8th generation winemakers Pierre and Monique Luneau-Papin, who hand harvest the grapes to ensure flavor is preserved. They use traditional techniques, and age the wine sur lie for 6 months to give it rich flavor. Luneau-Papin is considered one of the best producers of this wine and I agree with that assessment ...here goes:

The Wine: Domaine Pierre de la Grange, Muscadet Sevre et Maine Sur Lie
The Grape: 100% Melon de Bourgogne
Where it's from: The Pays Nantais/Muscadet area in the Western Loire Valley of France
Alcohol: 12%
Vintage: 2009
Price: $12.99

Color: A light straw color with just a little yellow tinge, it was pretty non-descript in color. Typical of Muscadet.

Smell: Wow, this thing smelled like sea water (not fishy, just like being on a boat). It was salty but also had a fresh basil smell. Apples, a little bit of honeysuckle and a TON of that mineral/water running over rocks/waterfall smell made my mouth water. The wine also smelled like laundry hanging out to dry. It was super-fresh. Couldn't wait to try it.

Taste: It totally lived up to the smell. It tasted like all the things it smelled like -- laundry, basil, minerals, and sea air. It also tasted like a buttered croissant (from the sur lie aging) but was a little acidic and lemony, which added a great balance to the creaminess. Delicious and refreshing!

Pairing: Seafood: nothing else to say. I don't eat oysters, but if I did this would be the wine for those. Amazing seafood wine. Bet it would be great with pesto because of the basil note -- a great complementary pairing. It's great alone too -- I did that and it was pretty damn good too.

Drink or down the sink?: Drink. If you like a refreshing, light, minerally wine, this is just perfect for you. A simple, but simply delicious wine! Readmore »»

Riffault's Raudonas

It's always good to have friends over who are into natural wine as you can open bottles that might freak others out. Nevertheless I confess we opened Sébastian Riffault's 2008 Raudonas Sancerre last night with some trepidation. As I've mentioned before before some of his wines teeter on the edge of undrinkability but his reds clearly less so than his whites.

This was just amazing. A sensuous silky-textured pinot noir that you'd be ecstatic to come across in Burgundy. Every mouthful was a thrill. We drank it with a delicate dish of chicken in white wine with summer vegetables - carrots, turnips, broad beans and peas - with a swirl of cream stirred in at the end (into the casserole, not the wine, obviously ... )

Doug Wregg of Les Caves de Pyrène says in one of his newsletters that Raudonas is Lithuanian for ruddy which sounds wildly improbable but who am I to naysay him? Only Doug could dig that kind of stuff out. About 20-22€ in France so about £25 here I'd guess. I'll confirm once I've got Caves to confirm the price.

* Actually it's £22.44 - still not exactly cheap but worth every penny. Readmore »»

Two lovely Loire reds

We all have our own preferences as wine writers and one of mine - particularly at this time of year - is Loire reds. I just love the way that you can drink Cabernet Franc with almost anything from asparagus to (grilled) tuna and salads to roasts. Not to mention charcuterie and goats’ cheese . . .

Here are two I tried on Friday - both from Les Caves de Pyrène. The fascinating thing is that you can tell quite a lot about the style they’re made in from the labels.

Clos Roche Blanche Cuvée Pif 2010, C Roussel, D. Barrouillet, Touraine
12% £9.48
This, as the label, suggests, is the more classic of the two - although fruity it’s very lean, pure, mineral and even slightly stony. It’s a blend of Cab Franc and Cot but tastes slightly Gamayish. Most people, even non-natural wine drinkers, would feel comfortable with this. What does Pif mean? It’s named after the owners’ dog . . .

Anjou Pur Breton 2009, Olivier Cousin, Vin de Table Francais 13% £12.90
Biodynamic (approved by Demeter)
This is much funkier with vivid, ripe brambly, hedgerow fruit. Cousin apparently uses a horse to plough his vineyards, uses only indigenous yeasts and no chemical additions or sulphur. (There’s a very nice piece about him on the jenny & Francois blog here.

I found it a shade overripe on its own (my husband disagreed) but it was oddly good with a plate of garlicky seafood pasta. Needs carafing - I liked it much better once it had been decanted.


And here's another of the Clos Roche Blanche pets who followed us, dog-like, through the vineyards on our visit last October! Readmore »»

Goutte d'O

One of the grape varieties that I think responds best to natural winemaking is Chenin Blanc and here is yet another dry Chenin from the Loire (Anjou), described simply as a 'vin artisanal'

It's not as fine as the Chenins I've tasted recently from Frantz Saumon or the late Stephane Cossais but it's an appealing wine with pronounced appley (but not cidery) aromas, and a beguiling touch of quince and honey. Quite similar to the flavours you get from an aged Chablis, in fact. (It doesn't contain any sulphur).

You can read about the winemaker Sylvain Martinez on my colleague Jim Budd's blog here and here. It's stocked in the UK - almost inevitably - by Caves de Pyrène.

I'm still mulling over a way to categorise wines, favouring a simple three tier 'traffic light' division into green, amber and red. Green being virtually indistinguishable from a conventional wine, amber being a little more challenging and red really only for natural wine aficionados. I'd class this as an amber! Readmore »»

Le Domaine du Moulin Pivoine 2008

As opposed to the last wine I reviewed this is the real deal.

A vin de pays from the Loire (du Loir-et-Cher) from Hervé Villemade it's predominantly Cot (aka Malbec) and 10% Gamay. I'd have said there was more Gamay on tasting it - it had some very bright, clear, pure fruit. A little stinky on the nose but that evaporated.

It's imported by the ubiquitous Caves de Pyrène and costs £11.94 which I think is very reasonable for a wine of this quality.

According the epic Caves de Pyrène list, which I shall save you the trouble of sifting through, Domaine du Moulin is an estate of 25 hectares in Cour-Cheverny which was founded by Hervé’s grandfather in 1939. Hervé took over the estate in 1995 and was influenced both by Thierry Puzelat and Marcel Lapierre to go down the organic path. (There are certainly shades of Lapierre in this wine).

It's fermented with wild yeasts and aged in 30hl oak barrels before bottling with only 2mg of sulphur

Pivoine apparently means peony, a reflection of the vivid colour as well as the taste of the wine. Just charming. Readmore »»

The inscrutable L’Insolite

Maybe the cold I had before Christmas has taken the edge off my palate but if I’d tasted Thierry Germain’s L’Insolite 2008 blind I’d have placed it as a Sauvignon rather than a Chenin Blanc. On the other hand I didn’t have any problems getting the typically Gamay flavours of the Lapierre Beaujolais on Christmas Day so maybe it is an oddball.

It’s delicious anyway. Intensely crisp and citrussy (lemon, grapefruit) on first opening the bottle - hence why I thought it was Sauvignon - slightly more peachy once carafed but certainly not in the same flavour register as the Montlouis I’ve been tasting recently. Which is not surprising given it’s a Saumur Blanc. It would be interesting to see what it’s like in a few years’ time.

I actually think I like it more than his much-feted Saumur Champigny which is probably a heretical point of view.

Incidentally check out his website which has an amazing opening operatic sequence. I found in the press clips that someone had paired it (L'insolite) with Epoisses which would also be interesting to try. (We drank it with smoked salmon.)

Anyone else tasted it and have a view? Readmore »»

To absent friends

We'd decided a while ago that our Christmas Day drinking would be two of the most precious bottles in our collection. Not because they were hugely prestigious, old or wildly expensive but because their producers are both sadly dead and we only have a few bottles left of the wines they made.

The first was Stéphane Cossais' Montlouis Le Volagre 2006 which is, without doubt, one of the best dry Chenins I've tasted - intensely mineral but full of apricots and quince and cream. It could easily have been a top white Burgundy.

The other was Marcel Lapierre's 2009 Morgon, a brilliant Beaujolais from an exceptional year, full of gloriously vivid fruit that made us feel happy - and lucky - to be alive. It was a perfect bottle to drink with the Christmas turkey

They would have been wonderful wines to give someone who was sceptical about natural wines, as I confess I was a year ago, and who was inclined to dub them all weird and funky. They both had an incredible purity of fruit - wines that made you feel inspired and privileged to drink them.

We enjoyed them on our own (apart from one of our non-drinking children) which is sometimes a good way to savour a great wine. We never met Stéphane but reminisced about our wonderful afternoon with Marcel.

I hope you had an equally good Christmas. Do share what you had to drink. Readmore »»

Domaine Le Briseau Jasnières, Clos des Longues Vignes 2005

This seductively honeyed Chenin is made by Natalie and Christian Chaussard who grow their grapes organically and biodynamically with no chemical additions and use only a tiny amount of sulphur on bottling. I can’t beat this excellent write-up on the domaine by US importer Louis Dressner.

There was nothing to indicate on the bottle that this was a demi-sec style* so we had to abandon plans last night to drink it with smoked salmon and leave it till the end of the meal where it proved a delicious match with some mild crumbly Gorwydd Caerphilly and apple, pear and ginger jelly.

You can buy it for £20 from Bijou Fine Wines and £22 from Kate Thal of Green & Blue who also recommends it with paté and fruit salad. Expensive but worth it.

Incidentally the honeyed character was even more evident today - more like honeysuckle and almonds which suggests the way it’s going to age. It could easily be a Vouvray though in truth it's much better than many Vouvrays on the market.

I really love what natural winemaking does to Chenin. It seems to eliminate the vegetal cabbagey notes you can find with this grape variety altogether.

* According to Doug Wregg of Les Caves de Pyrène which imports this wine the richness is due to the very warm 2005 vintage. He also tells me that the Chaussards have sadly discontinued the cuvée in favour of a single Jasnières called Kharakter and a Coteaux du Loir Blanc Le Briseau (and three reds). Readmore »»

The Rare Tea Lady gets into natural wine

There's a great new video on the Guardian website today of Henrietta Lovell visiting one of the iconic figures of the natural wine movement Thierry Puzelat. A tad rose-tinted admittedly - no hard questions asked - but beautifully shot. Lovell, whose videos about tea you should also watch, is a TV natural. Someone should - and probably will - give her a series. Readmore »»

Should natural wines be more consistent?

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my colleague Wink Lorch’s comment on my first post about lack of consistency in natural wines. Not least because we took along a bottle to an event last night which wasn’t showing at its best. (We decanted it into a jug and it was fine half an hour later but that wasn't much consolation to the people we'd poured it for. I’ll come back to decanting another time.)

Expecting wines to be consistent is a comparatively new thing of course. Thirty or even twenty years ago we all talked about vintages and expected wines to be different every year. Then wine became more marketing-led and we expected our favourite brand to deliver the same flavours from one year to the next. Of course champagne is made exactly that way, blended to achieve a consistent product.

Natural wines aren’t like that. The natural winemaker doesn’t have the battery of ingredients the commercial winemaker has at their disposal to make up for nature's deficiencies and so the wines can be, yes, quite different, sometimes disappointingly so.

We don’t expect consistency in food though, particularly if we buy organic produce. Yesterday I was at a cheese fair tasting artisanal cheese which tastes different at different times of year. Fruit can be more or less juicy depending on the weather while it’s ripening. Apples may crop more or less heavily from the previous harvest - and be different sizes. Lambs will taste different depending on the time of year they’re born and how old they are when they’re slaughtered.

When I go to the hairdresser I don’t get exactly the same cut every time. If I go to a gig the band they may well play my favourite numbers a different way.

We accept variation in other fields so why not in wine?

* One thing I would admit though. It’s a more hit and miss process ageing natural wines. The wine we drank last night - Hurluberlu St Nicolas de Bourgeuil from Sébastien David would have been better drunk within 3 months of purchase when it would have had more of a chance of retaining its youthful vibrancy. And not bottled in a screwcap bottle which I suspect doesn’t do much for natural wines. Readmore »»

The S is for Supah...the U is for...

If you're old like me you totally will get this reference...if not...

The Wine: Unique
Grape: Sauvignon Blanc
Vintage: 2006
Price: $11.99 in Atlanta

Where It's From: Loire Valley in France (wine snoots -- appellation is Vin de Pays du Jardin)

Normal Description: It was super light in color and it smelled pretty good. Loire wines usually have a lemony-lime quality and this one was on the money. I smelled mustard too (the plant, not the kind you get on your Subway footlong). I'm not gonna lie, my Francophile self was excited to get into this glass...and then...BLAH! Totally non-descript. Just some light floral notes and a boatload of CO2 to give it spritz and cover up the fact that there is no flavor. LAME.

Got snap or is it crap?: Pretty high on the crapometer, to be honest. This wine is FAR from Supersonic and not even touching Unique. I'm kind of bummed that Unique was such a snoozer and had none of that zing I like in my SB. On imports, I sometimes look at the importer to make sure some dude with one tooth didn't decide to import it on his tugboat. This one is Kermit Lynch, who's a pretty reputable importer. But, sorry Kermie -- if I were Miss Piggy you'd be a single dude now. Readmore »»