Austrian olfactory overload - and a damn good $15 red

Wine dinners challenge the guest in two ways. The need to remain reasonably sober is obvious; hence the small pours and the spit buckets meant to facilitate the evaluation of a dozen or more wines. But even for those disciplined enough to avoid overindulgence, sensory overload is almost inevitable, not just for the palate, but for the nose. Several hours of swirling and sniffing in search of subtle aromas is in its way as mentally taxing as taking a law school exam.

That's especially true when the smells are unfamiliar, as they were last week at a dinner where the wines of Austria were poured. (See http://brooklynguyloveswine.blogspot.com/ for a description.) Austria is most famous in this country for its whites, particularly Gruner Veltliner, the grape most widely grown in the country, and Riesling. The shorthand description of an everyday Gruner is tropical fruit with some white pepper, but that seemed a woefully inadequate description of a higher order of the species from Rudi Pichler in a magnum that the Austrian Wine Marketing Board sent over for the event along with several others. It had pineapple and white pepper, but there was an almost floral smell I couldn't place, which would be a theme of the evening for me - sort of like the many law school exam questions I couldn't figure out how to unlock. I could only describe many of the wines as herbal in the way a liquor might refract and concentrate the smell of a particular herb, but i couldn't place the herb. My vocabulary of smells was impoverished.

The aphasia reached its apex with a 2007 Blaufrankisch from Paul Achs. The nose was entrancing, and the wine tasted like a very good burgundy, but after three hours of sniffing, that was the best I could manage. A few days later, I wandered into Astor Wines and asked their Austrian expert about Achs. The wine I had isn't imported into the U.S., but I picked up a 2009 Achs zweigelt as well as one from Rosi Schuster, a producer in Burgenland, the easternmost part of Austria. For $15, it was a really good wine, well-balanced, nice, controlled fruit, and just enough tannin to keep you honest. It had the liveliness and lightness of a good Beaujolais but enough complexity to hold my attention. It's a wine that will bring me back to the Austrian red section.     

The mysteries of vintage

Wine geeks with money obsess about vintage. The wines that echo through the decades have a year appended to them, like the 1947 Cheval Blanc and the 1961 Latour that were famous enough to win a shout-out in the movie Ratatouille. Sometimes the year itself takes top billing, as with the 1982s from Bordeaux. These are legendary wines with prices to match. As someone who frequents far more modest precincts of the wine universe, MFWC has often wondered why vintage matters. Intellectually, I understand that weather varies from year to year, especially in Europe, and that differences in temperature and rainfall can have dramatic effects on the wine. The '47 Cheval Blanc is itself the product of an intensely hot summer in Bordeaux. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2008/02/the_greatest_wine_on_the_planet.html But how does this manifest itself in everyday wines?

I got my first inkling a few months ago at Gramercy Tavern when I split a bottle of Michel Gahier's 2009 La Vigne de Louis, a wine made from the Trousseau grape. Trousseau is grown only in the Jura, in northeastern France, and it generally produces a light wine. This one had a fuller nose and was much more robust than I had expected - more alcohol, bigger flavors, and much less obvious acidity. The same thing happened when I drank the Gahier Grand Vergers that I picked up at Union Square Wines during one of their sales. It turns out that 2009 was a hot year throughout Europe. The hotter the climate, the more sugar the grapes produce, and the more alcohol the wine made from them has. The French have a term for this, coups de soleil, or sunburn, to which Pinot Noir is especially susceptible because it ripens earlier than other grapes. Cabernet Sauvignon is more impervious to heat, which makes it a better grape for California. (The you, Oxford Wine Dictionary.)  

If sunburn tastes like the 2009 Volnay Premier Cru "Carelle Sous la Chapelle" from Domaine Rossignal-Fevrier, I can live without it. Wines from Volnay, in Burgundy, are famous for their delicacy, the OWD tells us, but this one had all the subtlety of a 240-pound fullback rumbling for three yards and a first down before meeting a linebacker head-on. The wine's heat - its alcohol - was too much for me when I tasted it last week at a gathering of lawyers in New York. In fairness, the person next to be very much enjoyed it, but she and her husband prefer bigger wines.

But vintage shouldn't lead to overly sweeping judgments, as the other wine served at the dinner showed. Aloxe-Corton is about seven miles northeast of Volnay, with the small town of Beaune right in the middle. (Puligny-Montrachet, whence the bargain-bin 2009 Olivier Leflaive I had this winter, is five miles south of Volnay; Arbois in the Jura is 60 miles east as the crow flies.) The '09 Dubreil Fontaine Premier Cru from Corton-Charlemagne near Aloxe-Corton was delicious. Served a little too cold at the cocktail hour that preceded the dinner, its acidity was forward, but once it warmed up, its nose was entrancing, beautiful, delicate, soft. I didn't take notes, since I was ostensibly at the dinner in a professional capacity, but the wine seemed better integrated and more polished than the Puligny-Montrachet. Delicacy prevents me from discussing the crass question of value in this case, but it's safe to say that I won't write off the 2009 whites from Burgundy.        
 

Breaking out of the rut

Wine drinkers, wine buyers, we all get into ruts. Johnny Bayside (AKA Bronx - he just moved) wants the Merlot from Argentina. Samba wants cheap and cheerful. I liked the Niepoort Douro Twisted and think it's a good off-beat choice for those in search of a robust red. The boss wants a red from the Loire. This is the flip side of knowing what you want - your taste narrows, and you become like Madame Chard du Chene, someone who needs serious intervention to avoid drinking the same thing for the rest of your life.

One of my friends, the hedge funder who hasn't lost his frugal streak, came up with a clever way to solve this problem. Rather than ask for German riesling with a touch of residual sugar, he asked me to get him wines that "tasted like honey dripped on slate." He did end up with two German rieslings, but he also got two Loire whites, a muscadet from Clos de Briods and Chidaine's entry level sauvignon blanc; a blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon from Bordeaux; and a pinot gris from Alsace, a grape once known as the Tokay d'Alsace until the Hungarians complained to the European Union, which required the Alsatians to change the name. (Tokai is the grape from which a famous sweet wine is made and is even mentioned in the Hungarian national anthem: "O God, let nectar’s silver rain ripen grapes of Tokay soon.") The hedge funder liked the Rieslings and thought the white Bordeaux was OK; the other three remain unconsumed.

Another approach is to go to tastings and buy what you like. A few weeks ago, I very much enjoyed a Grignolino from Tavijn, a producer in the Asti Province of Piedmont. The wine was light with a pleasant nose, nice acidity and an earthiness reminiscent of Cabernet franc, which made me recommend it the boss, who perked up his ears at the Oxford Wine Dictionary's comparison of Grignolino to Dolcetto. Italian immigrants to California brought Grignolino with them, and the famous California producer Heitz makes a wine from the varietal that's currently on the list at Annisa in the West Village and can be had for $20 a bottle at Astor St. Wines. Heitz also makes a Grignolino rose. Having associates Heitz with expensive cabs, I was pleased to learn that they offer lighter, cheaper wines from a grape that they proudly note on their website is often called "the little strawberry" in Italy and recalls an era of California winemaking that's almost lost today. How's that for breaking out of a rut?           

Revisiting a Chablisien riot

Difficult as perceptions of smell and taste are to describe, memories of them are even more fleeting. Perhaps the most famous literary recounting of such a memory, of course, is Proust's madeleine. As an adult, the narrator of Swann's Way tastes one of the little cakes dipped in tea, a morsel that immediately conjures a vivid, precise memory of the room in Marcel's aunt once gave him such treats. But beyond remarking that the tea was lime-blossom, the narrator makes no attempt to describe the taste itself. "Clearly, the truth I am seeking is not in the drink but in me," the narrator writes before searching his mind for "the image, the visual memory which is attached to this taste," which itself remains a mystery. Sweet? Delicate? Exactly like the madeleine at some Paris bakery? We never find out. If Proust won't take up this challenge, what chance do the rest of us have with it?

I can scarcely remember the precise flavors of even the wines I like most.Two years ago at a packed tasting of wines from Chablis at Crush Wines, I sampled the 2008 Rosette from Olivier and Alive de Moor. I remember the wine was delicious in a riotous way, the flavors popping on the tongue, and that it seemed ready to drink then. I remember making a very big check mark next to the listing for the wine on the sheet listing the tasting lineup, which still litters my apartment. I probably gurgled with pleasure, though I can't swear to it. I also remember that the wine was $35 a bottle, and that frugality won the day over luxuriance.

I later split some oysters and a bottle of De Moor's aligote, a dry, crisp, acidic white, with friends on a few occasions at Bar Henry on Houston Street. The De Moor was good but not dreamy, though it wasn't made or priced to be. (Speaking of oysters and downtown wine bars, the owner at Ten Bells recommended a glass of the Lunotte menu pineau with his $1.25 before 7:00 P.M. specials. By the same producer as the Rossignoux I discussed a few weeks ago, the menu pineau was a lot more balanced.)

Union Square Wines had a few de Moors on offer at the store's sale last month, and I picked up a bottle of the '09 Rosette to serve with the poulet chez Madame Chard du Chene (OK, chicken at Mom's house). The wine was good, with honey, citrus, maybe a hint of almond and acidity that could have used some more integration into the wine that a few years in the bottle will perhaps provide, but it wasn't riotous. Perhaps I need to hunt down a bottle of the '08 Rosette to see if the riotousness remains - but then, of course, two years will have passed with their mellowing effect, and I would have to remember how the few mouthfuls tasted in 2008 to discern any mellowing. As Proust probably realized, it'd be easier to make the whole thing up.       
    

 

Footnote to Lunotte: A chemistry lesson

The previous blog post on a natural wine from the Loire brought us into the realm of natural winemaking, the subject of numerous books and a robust and occasionally acrimonious debate within the wine world. The term itself is contradictory. Winemaking is no more a "natural" process than curing meat or pickling vegetables or preserving fruit by making jam and is indeed complicated enough that there are entire college programs devoted to its study. Many natural winemakers are graduates of such programs, the preeminent American example of which is the University of California at Davis.

MFWC did not go to Davis and had trouble understanding high school chemistry, so the following explanation, cobbled together from the Oxford Wine Dictionary, will not be a review of the chemical transformations involved in fermentation. Instead, it will emphasize the numerous choices that confront winemakers as they take the grapes from their vineyards and turn them into wine.

The basic concept is simple. Sugar is converted into alcohol (ethanol) and carbon dioxide through the oxygen-free metabolism of yeast. The sugar, of course, comes from the grapes that are crushed into must, which differs from juice because it includes stem fragments, skin, seeds, and pulp. The vintner has to decide what grapes to plant and when to pick them, since the later they're picked, the more sugar they'll have. He also has to decide whether to include the stems, which make for a more tannic wine, and, in the case of white wines and roses, how long to expose the skins to the juice. He also must choose the container in which the fermentation will take place: stainless steel, concrete, or wood. Old oak or new oak? French oak or American oak? What size is this container going to be? All of these issues are the subject of considerable thought and discussion even when their effect on the final product is unclear and may not be understood scientifically.

Yeast turns out to be even more complicated. There are numerous yeast species, and their classification remains a scientific puzzle. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the species most frequently used for making wine and beer and leavening bread, and there are several hundred strains of it. Making matters even more complex, there are wild yeasts to which grapes are naturally exposed as they grow as well as over 100 different kinds of cultured yeasts that are added to the grape juice. Cultured yeasts are favored for their predictability and essential for producing a wine with more than about 5% alcohol, since most natural yeasts die above that level. Natural winemakers like to let the natural yeasts work early in the fermentation process, though it's again scientifically unclear whether that has any effect on the end product.

So we have grapes and yeast. In addition to carbon dioxide, the fermentation process also generates heat that can kill the yeast and thus halt the fermentation. This is where the vintner's decision about the size of container becomes important. The larger the container, the greater the need for refrigeration. (To reference the preceding post, remember that the Lunotte is fermented in a relatively small container.) The fermentation of red grapes takes four to seven days, while that of white grapes can take weeks, which adds to the challenge of making white wine, since the process must be watched and managed for much longer.

Fermentation is a complex process, and sulfur - really sulfur dioxide - helps winemakers control it by killing bacteria and wild yeast and fostering a rapid, clean fermentation in part by preventing oxidation. Literally 99%+ of all winemakers use sulfur in this way. But sulfur has a very unpleasant taste, and so lower levels of sulfur are desirable in any event. Sulfur dioxide may also combine with other compounds in the wine, whereby it loses its noxious smell but also its beneficial effects. Here I can only quote the Oxford Dictionary: "Good winemaking practice aims to maximize the free to bound ratio of sulfur dioxide; this permits winemakers to add less total sulfur dioxide to achieve the same level of protection for the wine." Hence the natural winemakers' focus on "sans soufre," which is not a virtue in itself but a reflection of careful winemaking.      

The scientific here thicket becomes dense very quickly, but the central point should be clear. The wine you drink, whether it's Chateau Lafite or Yellow Tail, is the product of numerous choices by the winemaker as well as a series of chemical processes that may not be well-understood even though they're the product of intense study and dialogue. Moreover, the means by which winemakers try to spur those processes change over time, just as tastes in wine change. A wine like Lunotte is fascinating because its maker is trying to make some of his decisions clear, which helps explain not only why his wine tastes the way it does, but why other wines may taste the way they do.  
     

   

When the natural seems strange

The 2010 Lunotte Rossignoux is one odd bottle of wine, starting with its color, a fairly deep, almost cloudy yellow, which is not what you'd expect for a sauvignon blanc from Touraine in the Loire. There's a very light effervescence initially and a nose that's hard to place, but the tiny bubbles disappear and the smell settles into a pleasant grapefruit aroma typical of sauvignon blanc within 15 minutes. On the palate, this is the love child of muscadet and chenin blanc. On first swill it has the same bracing acidity as the former which is followed by a a subtly rich honey taste and some of the viscosity of chenin blanc. I even picked up a little juniper berry on the back end. Tasty, especially with cheese, but weird. Even weirder, a MFWC member whose tastes I thought skewed to the traditional Californian loved it.     

We had stumbled into the world of natural winemaking, that widely hyped phenomenon that turns out to be fiendishly difficult to pin down beyond the incantation of a few stock terms such as small producer, hand-harvesting, low sulfur, old barrels that together are the antithesis of the California chardonnay that your mother (OK, my mother) spent years guzzling. Definitional difficulties aside, Christophe Foucher, who produces the Lunotte, is clearly talented, and by these two descriptions a typical natural winemaker: http://www.wineterroirs.com/2008/08/la_lunotte.html and http://lesvinscoeurs.blogspot.com/2011/04/domaine-de-la-lunotteles-vins-de.html.

Foucher has 5.5 hectacres on seven plots near Tours. He treats his vines with as little insecticide and herbicide as possible and lets grass grow on every other row of his vineyard. Foucher uses older, smaller oak barrels, and local yeasts (yeast is critical for fermentation). He stints on sulfur but allows his wines to undergo malolactic fermentation, a practice far more common in reds than whites and one that accounts for the light fizziness in the Lunotte.    

There's a lot of chemistry in the previous paragraph, and MFWC is not qualified to explain it, though he will try in the next blog post. But this is chemistry in the service of commerce, and the essential commercial point is easy to understand. To be salable, wine like any product has to be consistent and stable, especially if the wine is a mass market brand. Yellow Tail should taste the same from bottle to bottle and year to year, and it should be stable enough chemically to endure a wide range of conditions. Making such a product is a challenge, because wine is not inherently stable or consistent, but it's one that natural winemakers tend to reject because they don't want their wines to taste like everyone else's. They see winemaking as an expression of personality and geographic identity. If Yellow Tail is McDonald's or Pringles or Olive garden (or, to be fair, Chipotle or at the high end BLT Steak), then Lunotte/Foucher is the local chef who wants to use fresh ingredients and show off his creative flair.

Foucher does this affordably and well. Wine geeks can ask how he does it, while those not burdened by such pretension can simply enjoy the results.      

Sticking up for white bordeaux

At a dinner last year, several friends were discussing a colleague's recent birthday celebration. No one questioned the honoree's right to choose the wine, but his choice left the group puzzled. "White bordeaux?" one wondered. "Who drinks white bordeaux? What's even in white bordeaux?" I could so little more than name the grapes: sauvignon blanc and semillon.

That skepticism and ignorance are not isolated phenomena. A generation ago, whites accounted for about a quarter of the wine produced in the region in southwestern France, a proportion that has fallen to about 10%. Sauternes, made primarily from semillion, retains its iconic status as one of the world's great sweet wines, but the dry whites of Bordeaux have fallen into disregard, and producers in the region have shifted production to grapes from which red is made: cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot, malbec, and carmenere. That leaves less room for sauvignon blanc and semillion, which until the 1970s was the widely planted grape in Bordeaux.  

I came by a few bottles of white bordeaux in the fall when a salesman at Frankly Wines in Tribeca recommended a 1999 L'Espirit de Chevalier from Pessac-Leognan because of my affinity for the whites of Lopez de Heredia. Just south of the city of Bordeaux, Pessac-Leognan is a sub-region of Graves, which gets its name from the gravel that underlies its soil. The L'Espirit is the second wine of Domaine de Chevalier, one of the best producers of white in the appellationaccording to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Wine along with Chateau Haut-Brion, whose reds are among the most expensive wines in the world. Domaine de Chevalier wines can go for over $100 a bottle retail depending on the vintage, but the '99 L'Espirit de Chevalier can be had at few stores in New Jersey for $20 bottle, pricing that suggests its unpopularity.

It's a steal at that price and was well worth the $30 I paid for it at Frankly Wines. The semillon give the wine a nuttiness that's rich but balanced by the acid from the sauvignon blanc that's about 70% of the blend. The flavor profile is broadly similar to Heredia's wines. L'Espirit lacks their complexity, but it held up very well on its own over the course of a few hours with some cheese. The salesman recommended pairing it with scallops, perhaps sauteed in some brown butter that would match the nuttiness of the wine. Munching on some hazelnuts while drinking the L'Espirit wouldn't be a bad idea, either.