Visiting Le Casot des Mailloles

Having been blown away by the bottle of El Nino I tasted at Hibiscus a couple of months ago I was particularly keen to visit its producers Alain Castex and Ghislaine Magnier of Le Casot des Mailloles when we were down in Collioure last week.

They produce their wine from a tiny chai in the backstreets of Banyuls, just up the road from the natural wine bar El Xadic del Mar and are the real deal. Completely natural. No sulphites.

It made the 2010s we were tasting quite hard to read at this early stage (the current releases tend to be 3-4 years older than this) but there was a live quality about them and an intensity to the underlying fruit that gave you a sense of the experience to come.

The easiest to appreciate was a wonderfully fragrant bottle of El Nino 2010 which had been open 2 days - a blend of Carignan, Grenache Gris and Syrah. We immediately thought of the food we’d like to eat with it - a grilled Gloucester Old Spot pork chop, lamb and beans, veal or Camembert Fermier . . . it's a wine that makes you hungry.

The next three wines were still in tank or cask:

Soula 2010 - 100% Grenache Noir. Still quite funky - almost cheesy - but lovely wild plummy fruit. What Castex described as a microvinification.

Visinum - Syrah, Grenache and Carignan with lipsmacking syrah spiciness. Slightly cidery on the nose but spread out like a peacock’s tail in the glass. Very warming.

Le Poudre d’Escampette - Grenache Noir, Carignan and Mourvèdre (from round Lac Canigou). Very lush and exotic - the Mourvèdre, one of my favourite grapes, dominated.

We also tasted their Blanc du Casot 2009, a rich creamy white with touch of caramelised apple peel, apple pie spices and just a hint of petillance. 60% Grenache Gris, 30% Grenache Blanc and another 10% of assorted varieties like Carignan Blanc, Marsanne and Roussanne, which had been planted the traditional way all together.

Having been refused an AOC twice they now don’t bother and simply label their wines vin de table.


We’d been advised to go up to the vineyards if we got the opportunity and fortunately the rainy weather that day broke long enough to drive up there They’re up on vertiginous schistous slopes above the town which they work themselves with a traditional pick called a Xadic.


Everything has to be worked by hand which means they do most of the work themselves. "A lot of people feel that manual work like that is beneath them but for biodynamics you to have contact with the earth" says Castex. “If you drop a cows horn by helicopter there’s not much point, is there?”. Indeed there isn't.




The wines are distributed in the UK by Dynamic Vines. Readmore »»

El Xadic del Mar: a gem of a natural wine bar

On the face of it the back streets of the small town of Banyuls-sur-Mer seems an unlikely location for a natural wine bar but given that Roussillon has more than its fair share of natural winemakers, one of the most renowned of which, Casot des Mailloles, is just up the road, it’s not so surprising.

El Xadic del Mar was opened a year ago by Emmanuel aka ‘Manu’ Desclaux who used to run Le Verre Volé in Paris and has an exemplary selection of local wines and natural wines from further afield.

We stopped by for lunch before our visit to Casot des Mailloles (of which more later) and had a couple of interesting whites - Domaine Yoyo’s Restaké 2010 and Bruno Duchêne’s Val Pompo, both Grenache Gris . . .


. . . and some inventive plates of tapas including calcots and anchovies (of course, in this part of the world) and marinated mackerel with asparagus.


Desclaux’ view is that the Parisien wine bar scene has lost touch with its roots - that places that started as bars have become fully fledged restaurants. Well this is thoroughly unpretentious and a great place to drink natural wine.

El Xadic del Mar is at 11, av. du Puig-del-Mas, Banyuls Sur Mer (66650)
TÉL : + 33 4 68 88 89 20

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A Word on Vintage (or Why Vintage and Al Roker Are Basically Synonymous)

So maybe you'll think I'm a nut, but I spend a lot of time thinking about Al Roker (for those of you who don't watch TV or aren't in the US, he's a weatherman on a major morning TV show here). Not in some untoward, weird, creepy way, but in terms of the dude's profession. Why? Because I think about, talk about, and write about vintage all the time and in case you didn't know, vintage is just the weather in a particular year.

I'm sure that wine snobs would gasp at the thought that their ultimate, snot-ace-in-the-hole -- trying to trip people up by casually throwing out vintage and discussing what a great year such and such was for Bordeaux or Burgundy -- can be boiled down to a jolly, formerly portly, bespectacled man who talks about clouds, sun, and rain all day long, but tough luck on them. I'm here to tell ya, that's all it is.

After all, wine is agriculture. There are specific things that determine quality -- some mainly fixed, some variable.

On the fixed side, in my mind, first and foremost is terroir. It's that indescribable French word that encompasses everything that's inherent in a vineyard. Soil, location, climate, sun exposure, slope of the land, proximity to water, and that special un-namable thing that makes the vineyard (if you want to know more about terroir, please listen to the Wine For Normal People podcast on it)

Also sort of fixed is the winemaking style. The winemaker can determine what the end product tastes like by choosing certain techniques to make the wine fuller and creamier (like malolactic fermentation and sur lie aging, where the wine sits on the dead yeast cells after fermentation which enriches the flavor), or give it new flavors by aging it in certain types of oak (new oak produces major flavor, older oak less so). The proportion of grapes used in a blend can also make a big difference.

Those factors are what they are. Because of that, I'd argue that the wine could potentially taste the same year after year if not for the x-factor. And that's where big Al comes into play.

Let me explain.

Some of you may live in a place where the weather is fairly consistent. It's a rare year where strange things happen and storms and unlikely weather events get meteorologists geeked up for their crowning moment of glory where they get hours of air time talking about lightening, wind, and rain. For example, I'd argue that much of California has this kind of climate.

Others of you live in places where weather dictates your life. I remember when I lived in Boston, snow and rain (for 9 months of the year) meant that some years we barely went outside for months at a time and in other years we were overjoyed that, even though it was 14 below with the windchill, we could brave the streets without snowshoes. The weather people got plenty of air time and they were minor celebrities (no coincidence that all the major US networks have weather people that originated in New York stations -- they have a ton of experience on-air).

So what does this have to grapes and vintage? EVERYTHING. Because in places that are located in active weather zones, each year is a wild card. You never know if you'll have horrible wind while the grapes are being formed that could rip the clusters off the vine and reduce your harvest, or if you'll have torrential rains that will bruise the grapes as they are ripening, or a massive drought that could mean your grapes get burned by the sun.

On a continent that is very far north and surrounded by seas to the north, south, and west, and mountains that form their own weather systems, you're bound to have tumultuous weather annually. And that means that sometimes you'll hit the jackpot and your crop will be amazing, but sometimes it will just suck and only the best winemakers will be able to make lemonade from those unsightly lemons. If you've ever vacationed here, you know that often whatever you packed is always the wrong thing for precisely these reasons: Welcome to Europe.

Elsewhere in the winemaking world, we have weather but it's just not quite as volatile. We've addressed California, but we can hit a few more now. Argentina's wine regions, located very high in the mountains, are dry and escape much of the rain and bad weather it would experience if closer to the coast. Australia is plagued by drought, so they don't have to worry much about rain (even with the recent rains, the wine regions were less affected). A lot is controlled by man through irrigation systems. New Zealand, although it has some funky weather, has placed its wine regions in areas that are protected from nasty sea storms that strike up and hit coastal regions. Chile and South Africa have a bit more variation but are still pretty consistent with weather....certainly more so than Europe.

But even with more consistency, Al Roker still has a role to play everywhere in the wine world. The fact remains that no 2 years are the same for agriculture, including for grapes. You may love a wine one year, only to find that it is horrible the next. Could be that they changed the blend or degraded the quality (a lot of big wineries do this 2 to 3 years after launch on their lower range products, BTW), but for established brands it's usually all about vintage.

You've got to pay attention to that number on the bottle and do a little poking around (I like Decanter's vintage charts)...especially if that wine is European.

I think I've effectively flogged the poor dead vintage horse, so now I'll move on to reviewing the latest release/newest vintage from a California winery that sent me their product last year as well -- Concannon. Let's see if my theory holds that vintage matters less in California...

I'm going to compare wines I reviewed last year with this year's version (which, in full disclosure, where sent to me by the Winery...but as you'll see that makes no difference in my review). Here's a link to the prior post for more info on these wines and my take on them last year.

Wine 1: Concannon Conservancy Chardonnay
Where It's From: Livermore Valley
The Grapes: 100% Chardonnay
Vintage: 2009
Alcohol: 13.5%
Price: $15.00

Color: A rich straw color...like the shimmer off a gold ring. Let's face it; oak has been here in a big way. Chardonnay doesn't get this dark without lots of time hanging out and ripening on a vine and then aging in some kind of oak to darken it up.

Nose: In contrast to last year, this nose was a lot closer to the taste of the wine. It was a tad peachy but the overall sensation was of limeade or lemonade -- a sweetened version of citrus. There was a touch of mineral/wet rock too and a little whiff of pretty jasmine tea or jasmine flowers. I liked it...but was also curious as to why it didn't smell like oak when clearly, from the color, it had been stored in some sort of oak.

Taste: Ah, and here it is...oak, vanilla, and caramel galore. There was a slight limeade flavor but oak ruled the day, once again. Pretty decent acid made my mouth water, but there really wasn't much to this wine except oak and lime.

Drink or down the sink?: Just like last year, I don't love it, but it's not a down the sink. It's just ok. It's funny because I feel like this is less typical of Livermore Chardonnay, which tends to be oaky and heavy like the 2008 was. 2009 was supposedly a better vintage than '08, which was a small vintage because there was a spring frost and then not a ton of rain (see how important Al Roker is?) so maybe the winemaker decided to rely less on oak (by aging it for a shorter time or using a smaller proportion of new oak, which tends to lend the wine bigger flavor than used oak) and let the fruit do it's thing more. Ironically, even with warmer, more consistent weather in '09, the wine seems less fruity and over-ripe than the '08. All around, I like it better, but if you like a big oaky style, this is more moderate.


Wine 2: Concannon Conservancy Petite Sirah
I talk about Petite Sirah in last year's post, so check it out for details.

Where It's From: Livermore Valley
The Grapes: 100% Petite Sirah
Vintage: 2007
Alcohol: 13.5%
Price: $15.00

Color: True to Petite Sirah, this wine is black as night. It looks viscous and heavy -- like black cherry jello before it sets. It's so dark that if you swirl it around the glass the legs (which are just alcohol dripping down the glass after the water has dripped down -- the former is heavier so it takes a longer time to get back into the glass) are stained purple. I'd expect brawn from this wine.

Smell: This year's version was like black licorice, black cherry, and black plums. It had a menthol or medicinal note too and big arse oak -- like cedar chips in the closet. The alcohol wafted out of the glass too. Compared to my impressions of the '08, this was a lot less interesting to smell. It was simplistic and not very exciting.

Taste: Black cherry juice or jello came to mind immediately, followed by grape flavored bubble gum and that kids medicine, Dimetapp, that they sell here in the US. It was a touch bitter too. I know the alcohol was 13.5% which is moderately high but not over the top, but this wine hurt to drink. I don't know if it was the acid combined with the alcohol, but it burned from the back of my throat down my esophagus (no I don't have weird issues and no this doesn't normally happen with wine for me, so it was unique to this one!). The tannins were soft but the wine just didn't work. Like last year -- it had no gusto.

Drink or down the sink?: Down the sink. I felt like the wine lacked balance between the fruit and the acid and alcohol. It had little personality and the character it did show didn't do it for me. I've had a few Petite Sirahs in my day, and there are better ones than this for the money.

If you compare this vintage with my notes on the last for the Concannon wines, I think there are two conclusions to draw:

• Wines are constantly changing, however depending on the winery and region, they do have a common thread from year to year -- that's due to terroir and to the winemaking style
  
• My conclusion about California's consistency holds true with the Concannon wines. I'll need to do the same thing with Europe on the blog, because, although I've never documented it here, I can tell you it can be a wild ride from year to year on the same brand and region. Bordeaux from 2005 and from 2006 are a far cry from each other when you're talking affordable wine
• Al Roker is our wild card...and we're happy to have him around to keep things interesting in wine!

I'd love to hear from you! Please send questions and post comments! Readmore »»

Wine For Normal People Radio Episode 015 Wine Shopping 101: How to break down a wine store

Big surprise this week...M.C. Ice's dreams of being a real M.C. materialize (he's not an M.C. or a D.J., just a normal dude who is cool but slightly dorky yet patient and kind enough to be married to me!)!

Rick had to take a hiatus this week so M.C. Ice filled in and I decided to take the opportunity to tell him a few things I've been meaning to tell him for a while...about wine shopping, of course (fortunately we have no dirty laundry, so that's as scandalous as it gets around here!).

Here are the show notes:

• Shout-outs - Some great Twitter replies and Facebook posts

Main Topic

• M.C. Ice confronts his fear of the Wall of Wine (WoW) and admits that he shops by label (gasp! The dude clearly hasn't learned much through osmosis!)
  
• This time it's personal: I take the bull by the horns and try to teach M.C. Ice how to break down the store so he starts bringing home some better wines
• We talk about the key questions to ask yourself before you even get in the store. "Why am I here?" is a good place to start. Shopping with a purpose is essential.
  
• We then get into the importance of deciding on the type of wine you want -- from color, to sweetness level, to weight, to style by wine producing country.

Quick addendum to the 'cast...
I realized that we talked about wine weights but then never gave examples. Here are some examples of light/medium/heavy whites and reds for reference...

Whites:
Light: Pinot Grigio, Albariño, Vinho Verde, Muscadet (from the Loire Valley)
Medium: Sauvignon Blanc, unoaked Chardonnay, dry Riesling, Verdejo, Grüner Veltliner
Heavy: Oaky Chardonnay, Viognier, most Chenin Blanc, the wines of Alsace (Pinot Gris, Riesling, Gewurztraminer)

Reds:
Light: some Grenache, Cotes-du-Rhone, some Pinot Noir, some Barbera
Medium: most Bordeaux, most Merlot, some Pinot Noir/red Burgundy, Dolcetto from Italy, Cabernet Franc, Chianti, Rioja
Heavy: California Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Zinfandel, Petit Sirah, Monastrell from Spain, Barolo from Italy

Hope that helps!

• Grape of the Week: Verdejo from Rueda in North Central Spain -- a great alternative white, kind of like Sauvignon Blanc, but with a bite.

• Share your wine shopping experiences on Facebook or comment here

Here's the link: PODCAST

You can also download the podcast from the iTunes store (and if you like it please add a comment or rate it so we can make sure to stay on the radar, which helps other folks find us easily that would be great!), click the link above, or use the player below! Thanks for listening!

Podcast Powered By Podbean

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Rouge Soif, Vin de Pays de Caux

I like the idea of a vin de soif though in truth many more wines ought to be thirstquenching than are currently.

We ordered this at the wine bar and shop at the Taverne du Port in Marseillan which sadly seems to have cut down on the number of natural wines it sells since we were there a month or so ago.

It comes from Domaine Clos Louis in Nizas and is classified as a Vin de Pays de Caux. It's surprisingly bright and fruity for a 2005 vintage - and lively for 100% Carignan which I generally think works better in a blend.

Again, it's not expensive (7€ at the Taverne, 6€ online from a Pezenas wine shop Le Nez dans le Verre) and at only 12.5% not too high in alcohol. The label says it contains sulphur but I wouldn't think much.

Le Nez dans le Verre recommends it with rabbit with prunes which I reckon would be a great pairing although the producer reckons it goes with everything from fish to foie gras (as they do).

Not certified organic or classified as natural but it tastes it. Readmore »»

Ruining a Perfect Track Record: My First Disappointment from Ribera del Duero

Undoubtedly the best wine bargains these days come from places where people speak Spanish (no, I'm not talking about Arizona and Texas). From the amazing whites made from Albariño and Verdejo in Northern Spain to the reds of Malbec in Argentina and Cabernet Sauvignon in Chile that drink like they are $50 bottles, I'm regularly amazed at the bang I get for my little buck from these spots.

With all this goodness for so little, I'm beginning to think I may be a spoiled brat. My expectation is that, if I pay $15.99 for a bottle from a Spanish-speaking country, I am going to get something pretty spectacular.

So when I went to one of my favorite local stores and heard from the head wine guy, who I talk to all the time about vino but have never sat down and tasted with, that there was a wine from the Spanish region of Ribera del Duero that was stunning, I had to try it. What did I have to lose?

I love Ribera del Duero. It's like Rioja on steroids. The wines are usually 100% Tempranillo, but unlike the calmer wines of Rioja, this region's crazy location and climate produce a ballsy, intense wine with no shortage of acid, tannin, or fruit. The wines are intense, but I love them because they are powerful in a very European way -- lots of texture, some earthiness, and layers of "other stuff" besides fruit to analyze. Like many of the wines from Europe, they are shy-er than California wines, but Ribera del Duero is no wimp.

Let's face it, you'd have to be bold and brazen to be a grapevine in Ribera del Duero. It's on a high plateau in Northwest Spain. That means it gets abundant sunshine and nice dry breezes, but also that its flat, rocky terrain gets walloped by weather. Blazing summers are followed by winters where the temperature drops to 0 on a regular basis. After the grapevines have flowered and are getting ready to make some fruit, a spring frost can come in and ruin everything. If that's not bad enough the soil types vary enormously within yards so harvest is totally inconsistent -- rather than picking rows at a time, the viticulturists may have to go back several times before getting all the ripe grapes from a vine. Infuriating for growers.

But still, there's something special here. If there wasn't I don't think people would have been making wine in Ribera del Duero for 2000 years or that the Benedictine Monks from Burgundy would have settled an outpost in the 12th century and gotten serious about wine. Nor do I think that the most expensive and sought after wines in all of Spain -- Vega Sicilia and Dominio de Pingus -- would be made here.

With a history of amazing producers and a growing number of them making incredible wines from Tempranillo, Ribera del Duero is one of Spain's best red wine regions. Its intense flavors and aromas are a great counterpoint to the Tempranillo-based, medium-bodied, spicy, dusty wines that are typical of its famous neighbor to the east, Rioja.

I was excited to find Sincero, an inexpensive wine from RdD that my wine guy was raving about. I popped it open with loads of excitement, looked at it, smelled it and was thrilled...and then...

The Wine: Sincero
Where It's From: Ribera del Duero, Spain
The Grapes: 100% Tempranillo
Vintage: 2007
Price: $15.99

Color: Typical of a wine from Ribera del Duero, this was a black purple. On the swirl it stained my glass, it was so pigmented (thick, skins on ripe grapes will make that happen). The alcohol on this one was high too -- the legs were gloppy and slow to run down the glass.

Smell: This is what I'm talkin' about! Complexity galore. It was full of scents from the "other" category, i.e., my non-fruit list. The first few things I smelled were hay, a stable, leather, and scrubby herbs (called garrigue in French, kind of like rosemary bush and earth together). There was a salted meat quality to the wine too -- almost like prosciutto or salami. It reminded me of being in Spain and enjoying lunch underneath a large hunk of drying, cured, dead animal (appetizing, huh?). There was a bit of the plum and pepper component that you'll find in most wines made from Tempranillo, but this was so much more than that and I was thrilled to drink it!

Taste: "WHY? WHY?" I would over-dramatically cry to the winemaker if I could find him or her. What happened? The wine went from this panoply of awesome to a watery, highly alcoholic plum juice. The mouthwatering acids and mouthdrying tannins overpowered any secondary flavors and scents and the high alcohol just destroyed whatever was there with a hot, burning sensation (I feel like a commercial for anti-itch cream now, BTW). Totally didn't deliver.

Drink or Down the Sink?: Maybe if I held it for another 4 years the wine would taste better, but as it is right now, it's a Down the Sink for me. What a colossal disappointment after the beautiful color and awesome smell. Even a day later when I tried it again, the problems with the wine were still there.

This is a bummer in two ways: now not only did I experience a gross wine...I also lost complete trust in my wine buddy. It's a good lesson for us all -- Just because someone knows a lot about wine doesn't mean they share your taste in it (I'll wholeheartedly admit that you may be thinking the same about me and I'm cool with that as long as you know what you like and you stick with me because you can trust my descriptions enough to know that even if I don't like it, you do!!).

I love your comments! Please post below if you have questions or ideas! Readmore »»

Two new (to me) Faugères

There's a small organic food shop down the road from where we're staying in Agde which has a few wines including thse two from Domaine Valambelle in Laurens.

The red, L'Angolet, is a relatively conventional-tasting red Faugères - a sensuously ripe blend of Syrah (35%), Grenache (30%), Carignan (25%) and Mourvedre (10%).

The white is much more ambitious - quite an earthy blend of roussanne et grenache blanc that is made in the style of an orange wine. It's called Fleur de Campanette and sells as a vin de table.

I'd be inclined to describe it as a natural wine but not the red. It's slightly odd that the domaine, which has been in conversion and will be certified from the 2010 vintage, makes two cuvées in such different styles. Maybe the Faugères is their bread and butter and the white a bit of an experiment. Or perhaps it's a one-off they haven't repeated. It's not currently shown on the site.

Either way at 5€ 70* (£5.02 at the current rate of exchange) I'm not complaining . . .

* though £11.25 I discover in the UK. Readmore »»