Another great wine from Italy's northern mountains

I'm partial to mountain wines.  There, I said it.  Tonight we pulled a wine produced from Fumin from the Valle d'Aoste.  It was again delightful, working very well with a pasta with cherry tomatoes, a fresh market Aleppo pepper, tons of garlic and plenty of olive oil.  This was again a fresh, acidic wine with ample minerality and great fruit. No one felt the need to put this in copious amounts of wood barrels, so it spoke about the grape and soils and the climate.  A wine with a lot of floral notes of lavender and violet, red and blue fruit, black pepper, a bit of allspice and other warm spices on the nose, and a similar palate.  There are hints of smoke, too - but none of the spice or smoke came from barrel.  There is so much great complexity gong on here - yet it doesn't demand you pay it immense attention - it's very quaffable to boot. This would do poorly in the average wine tasting - because it is subtle - but the complexity should not be overlooked.  Oh, and did I mention it's made by a cooperative - the Onze Communes?  So, it's also a relative value - ~$20.  What a fun wine.

Taste of summer, oh my...

 In recent days, I picked up a fresh duck at our Farmers Market - not frozen, just recently "taken for ice cream", as our wonderful poultry farmer calls it.  Now, a whole duck has so many options... but as it's been in the 90s here in Michigan, a roasted duck does not seem brilliant (and getting the legs done while keeping the breast tender - just not easy to do). So, what to do?  Break it down of course.  Fun with a sharp knife and a lovely duck.  So, I took off the breasts, cut off the legs, and kept the carcass and wings for stock.  Seared up the breasts, finished in the oven to a nice medium rare.  Saved the nearly cup of duck fat kicked off - because to do otherwise is simply a crime against humanity.  Roasted potatoes sometime soon? Seasonings, you ask?  Only salt and pepper, because this is GOOD, free range, fresh duck.  But, it's summer in Michigan - and our yard has a plethora of "volunteer" black raspberries planted by the birds.  They are at peak ripeness right now - so in some came, with a minced Serrano pepper and some minced green onion in a Vacqueyras wine reduction as a sauce with breasts.  Vegetables were simple - sautéed yellow oyster mushrooms with mixed green and yellow beans and a bit of onion - all with a basic mixed nut "pesto" made in the blender.  All of this paired nicely with an aged 2010 Chave St. Joseph Offerus - their negotiant juice that is affordable to us mere mortals.  Other than the wine and nuts and olive oil in the pesto - not one ingredient came from over an hour from home, and I have the privilege of knowing every farmer who produced these ingredients.  I am thankful for their hard work each and every day, and for the relationships built over years of marketing. They work far harder than they get credit for, and do not get the income they deserve.

Next up...  braising those duck legs.  I think a red currant sauce along with braising liquid will accompany.  Perhaps fava beans, some other local 'shrooms, in a red Camargue rice pilaf with it.  Stay tuned.

Another exceptional Italian

 Today took us to a red from the very northern reaches of Italy - the Alto Adige.  This is the 2017 Putzenhof Bozner Leiten - made from mostly schiava, with about 15% of pinot Nero and lagrein mixed in.  It's about $17-18, and it is better than most wines 3X the price.  I have a bias toward mountain wines - a remarkable mix of intense mineral and sometimes fairly ripe fruit mixed with bracing acidity.  This has all that - on steroids.   It uniquely traverses the happy, cheerful side with a really serious depth and complexity. Nose a great mix of strawberry, sour cherry, hints of cranberry and raspberry.  Quite mineral heavy, and tons of floral notes - rose, lavender, violets.  Palate has ample acidity lifting the fruit, which is underpinned by solid minerality. Finish very long indeed.  This is the kind of wine I really enjoy drinking. Plenty complex, plenty serious, yet it's not heavy and plodding.  It is exceptional at the table with steak (our dinner), but would be good with most beef or pork or duck or even chicken.  The acidity refreshes after the fat and proteins of the steak, the fruit complementing the deep umami of the steak and mushrooms and favas, playing off the slightly bittersweet asparagus.  

Pink can be serious

 Pink, or rose, wines can get a bad rap as a poolside quaffers worth very little attention or effort.  yet the best manage to cross those boundaries very well - still fun, but serious and worthy of contemplation.  Tonight's wine was one such example.  Castellaro's 2018 Rosa Caolina is dominated by the Corinto Nero grape, grown on volcanic soils on the tiny island of Lipari, which is between Sicily and the Italian mainland.  The wine has a slightly frizzante style - akin to Txakoli wines. It has a fascinating nose of wild berries and brambles, green apple, seawater and hot rocks, and a certain warm spice note of cinnamon or nutmeg.  The palate is similar, with intense acidity keeping it very fresh, even though it's nearly 3 (old by many people's standards for rose).  Good at the table, good as an aperitif, and it really straddles the fun and serious divide exceptionally well.  

Chablis Enlightenment

I love Chablis wines in general.  But, in recent years, more are showing excessive ripeness and tropical fruit flavors - not what I'm particularly after in this wine from the northern part of Bourgogne.  At its best, it's a high acid, mineral infused chardonnay with lemon or apple tones and showing hints of oyster shell, chalk, and iodine.  The (ridiculously oversimplified) "rule of thumb" is to drink petit Chablis and village level Chablis in the first 2-4 years after release, premier cru from 4-8 years, Grand Crus from 7-10 or so years.  Tonight, we drank a wine that was released by the winery in the last year - a Premier Cru from the vintage of 2005.  Most of my friends in the wine world would have guessed it was approaching oxidative state - indeed, a 2009 premier cru at a recent Chablis tasting was showing that character already.  

Well, that assumption for this wine would be a sad, sad mistake.  A 2005 wine from Daniel-Etienne Defaix, produced from a small premier cru vineyard known as Les Lys. The wine was the most concentrated, yet fresh and engaging, Chablis I have ever drunk.  This is a stunning wine in every way. A bright golden hue emanates from the glass. The nose is chalky, with iodine, apple hints, and an incredible intensity. The palate has a good balance of acid and mineral extract and depth and a finish that never ends. Apple for sure, and ample chalk and barest hints of iodine again - almost like intense oyster brine with apples. This wine is still young.  Oh my.  I had 2 in the cellar, and after this, I've just put in for four more.  Probably should get a case. It's that good. It's very old school, seems to have no real oak (at least not new oak), an intense minerality, no insipid sweet tropical notes, and almost certainly did not go fully malolactic if at all.  I am in awe.

I also should mention its food pairing - a Guinea Hen braised, then roasted, with root vegetables. That was a spectacularly successful dish. Salt and pepper and thyme on the surface of the bird. Shallot and garlic in the cavity. Large pieces of carrot, turnip, celery, potato, and shallot in the pot, along with some white wine, some verjus, and some very concentrated chicken stock. The flavor ended up somewhere between a very rich, great free range chicken and the slightly gamier notes of pheasant. This was not a wimpy poultry dish, and, in spite of Chablis traditionally pairing with lighter seafood, the wine held up gorgeously to the food - the acidity cut through the rich broth, while the minerality complemented the earthy meat and vegetables. Every so often a meal just comes together so very well - this was one of those times.

A great Rhone estate

Those of you who have followed me for a while know of my love/hate relationship with the Rhone valley. My first real excitement for French wine grew from exposure to good southern Rhone - notably, a 2004 Vieux Telegraphe. But so many of the Rhone wines of the last 15 years have been over extracted, heavy, high in alcohol, overwhelmed by overripe, even stewed fruit. And a number of producers thought new oak would make them even "better".  So...  

Tonight we opened a simple 12 year old Cotes du Rhone from Domaine Sainte Anne - their 2007 - and were amazed at the age-worthy purity of this wine. To provide context, the current release (2016) is selling for $13 right now - in other words, a daily drinker from which you should not expect too much - and certainly not over a decade of aging. This was a very warm, even hot, vintage - the 2007s were hailed as good, but big and ripe.  This wine showed incredible freshness, particularly given age and vintage. It was still full of dark fruit - black raspberry, cherry, and plum - and extensive garrigue - that herbal mix of wild herbs. The finish was quite lengthy, and while ripe and a bit high in alcohol, it retained an unexpected balance. 

I have tasted a number of wines from these folks - and they inevitably have a great quality to them. There is definitely a house style that emphasizes freshness and darker fruits, while still respecting both the terroir and vintage.  They remain among the best priced Rhones, and will continue to attract my attention at tastings and for the cellar.

NOTE: I have not been provided with any of the wines discussed here by the producer, a distributor, or anyone else with financial interest. So you get my honest, unvarnished opinion.

White Bordeaux

Dry white Bordeaux is one of the most overlooked wines. And, frankly, the winemakers in the region probably have themselves to blame.  Much is produced as $10 daily drinking wine in the Entre Deux Mers, and at it's best, it's a nice wine of moderate acid that pairs fine with a wide range of Tuesday nigh fare. Within Graves, the big names make some impressive wine - but often throw it in a lot of new oak and make big, unbalanced wines. And for many producers, it's secondary to their red wines. And, a number of producers in the Sauternes region (arguably the world's best/most complex "sweet wines" come from here) do a dry white wine. Again, these are usually not their primary focus, but where part of their fruit (often the younger vines, subpar fruit) end up.

Well, tonight proved my doubts about the region very wrong.  We opened a 2013 Clos des Lunes Lune d'Argent. At six years of age, it's still quite young and primary. Made of 70% semillon and 30% sauvignon blanc, the winemakers found an exquisite balance between the mineral weight of the semillon and the bright, acidic fruit of the sauvignon. They used some oak, but it was seamlessly integrated. The fruit was extensive, as was the seawater/mineral nature. The mouthfeel of waxy semillon was clear, and it seems it went at least partially malolactic, but that only resulted in a creamier mouthfeel and increased complexity without imbuing it with the buttery and yogurt notes that mar many a wine. Priced in the high $20's, this is not a cheap wine - but nor is it in the three figures like many of its higher-browed cousins.  Get as much as you can - and enjoy it with a range of food, including chicken, seafood, pork, and cheeses.