Lopez de Heredia

For the most part Spanish wine disgusts me. It rivals California and Australia in making overripe, modern, high alcohol wines with no sense of history or tradition. It wasn’t always this way. There are many glorious spanish wines, Sherry foremost among them. I also like Txakoli, some Rias Baixas, Godello from Valdeorra. Mostly white wine from the very northern regions. And I like traditional (versus modern) style Rioja with age. The best possible examples are found in the wines of Lopez de Heredia. This family run winery (Maria Jose is the current proprietress) has been making wine for 130 years in the town of Haro. Rioja wine as we know it has a strange and relatively short history. In the mid-19th century, when the phylloxera plague decimated the vineyards of France, winemakers from Bordeaux set up shop just over the Pyrenees in Spain. They brought their techniques, including extended barrel aging, and started a wine tradition which Lopez de Heredia extends today. If there is one thing that makes this winery, or bodega, stand out, it’s the fact that they do extended barrel aging followed by a long period of bottle aging for their reds, whites, and even rosés. The current rosé release is the 1997 vintage (and it is wonderful!). Rioja has about seven grape varieties allowed in the appellation, but the Tempranillo is the main player, followed by Garnacha (Grenache), Mazuelo (Carignan), Graciano. The whites are made with the Viura (also called Macabeo elsewhere in Spain), Malvasia and Garnacho Blanco grapes. Lopez de Heredia has four vineyards: Vina Tondonia (the family jewel), Vina Zaconia (which makes the wine called Vina Gravonia), Vina Bosconia, and Vina Cubillo.  Vina Tondonia makes the most elegant, long-lived wines, and Vina Cubillo makes the simplest, easiest drinking wines. All the wines ferment in large, old oak barrels with natural, native yeasts. Then they age in 225 liter barrels made from American oak (barrels made on their property, in their own cooperage) for 3 to 6 years. After being fined with egg whites, the wines are bottled, unfiltered, by hand directly from the cask. Then the wines undergo extensive bottle aging, especially the Gran Reservas. In Rioja, there are classifications which indicate how much age a wine has: Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva. Lopez de Heredia tends to outdo the minimum aging requirements by a large margin. I believe the most current Gran Reserva release is from 1987, 21 years old! I recently attended a luncheon featuring the wines of Lopez de Heredia. It was held at the Union Square restaurant B44. The highlights for me were the following:

Vina Bosconia 1981 (still tangy after all of these years)

Vina Tondonia Rosado 1997 (it was interesting to note how it deepened in color as it was exposed to air. Notes of cherries and hazelnuts)

 Vina Gravonia Blanco 1996 (spicy apple, fresh, not very oxidized)

 Vina Tondonia 1987 (cedar and cinnamon notes, pretty but still young)

 Vina Tondonia 1964 (earthy, funky, dried cherries and pits, tangy cherry fruit on the palate)

And not pictured, and my favorite of all time: the Vina Tondonia Blanco 1981 (nutty, rich, coffee and hazelnuts).

 

Slovenia and Normandy

Just when you think you’ve got a handle on the “important” growing regions of the world, you get a tip on a winery in Slovenia.  I discovered Movia a couple of years ago in New York.  These wines were fairly readily available on wine lists at some of the more interesting restaurants.  I had a lovely Pinot Nero at ICI.  The store where I worked sold the crazy “Lunar” bottling, along with a more sane (?) Ribolla Gialla and their second label Vila Marija Pinot Grigio.  The Pinot Grigio was simple, refreshing, and vibrant with a certain honeydew quality to it.  The Ribolla Gialla was also nice, very floral and mineral.

The Lunar, also made from the Ribolla Gialla grape, is an extraordinary bottle, made with as little human intervention as possible.  The winemaker, Ales Kristancic, picked the grapes (biodynamically grown) and dropped them into the barrel and then never looked back.  The note I wrote at the time was: “A fascinating wine made by allowing whole bunches of grapes to ferment, age, and stabilize without intervention!  The result is a tasty unfiltered and cloudy wine with light tannins and notes of chamomile and cider.”  The wine region Kristancic is working in is called Brda, which is a continuation of the Friulian wine region called Collio.  This makes sense because his Friulian cohort like Josko Gravner and Stanko Radikon are making similar wines.  I love these crazy, cloudy, cider-like wines! They seem ancient, and for good reason.  The methods are likely more similar to Roman winemaking than the current UC Davis regimen.  Gravner actually uses amphorae and buries them in the ground until they are deemed ready.  All three winemakers are allowing skin contact with the grape must, a practice which has been almost completely abandoned for white wines.  The result is that the wines have a gorgeous orange color, and a tannic bite.

They are reminiscent of Eric Bordelet’s excellent ciders from Normandy, one of which I had on Sunday at Dolores Park in San Francisco.  One of my companions described it perfectly by noting the peaty smell and flavor!  It wasn’t hugely popular with the crowd, and even I have to say it was a bit challenging. It was the Sydre Brut bottling, which I’d never had before.  The Doux and the Argellette are a bit more approachable because they have more residual sugar to balance the considerable acid and tannins (they still don’t drink “sweet”).  The Brut has about 5-10 grams of residual sugar, whereas the Doux has 80 grams. He also makes Perry, or Poiré as they say in France, essentially a pear version of cider. Perry and Cider are made in an identical manner to wine.  The base ingredient is fruit, which already has sugar (unlike barley for beer), and is fermented with natural yeast.  Very elegant.  I’m currently aging Bordelet’s higher end Poiré bottling called Granit because when I met him at a tasting he told me it would age well due to the extremely high acidity and the caliber of the the fruit. The pears come from 300 year old trees.

 

 

New Lai Wah

If you live in Sacramento, I suggest getting in your car (I know, gas is crazy, that’s why you should fill your car up with friends), driving south on Freeport, running in to Taylor’s Market and buying a simple German riesling or two (they only charge a corkage fee of $5/bottle), continuing south until you get to New Lai Wah and ordering the steak in red wine sauce, romaine hearts with shrimp paste and some sort of crab, lobster or duck! This relatively inexpensive feast is a great way to beat the heat! Enjoy!

 

Romorantin, Cinderella of the Loire

The Loire Valley is one of my favorite wine regions due the the incredible amount of diversity found there. You could devote your life to becoming a Loire expert and never quite get there. From the west to the east you have the four general wine regions: Nantais, Anjou-Saumur, Touraine, and Centre.  The Nantais is best known for Muscadet, the salty, fresh, lovely white wine made from the Melon de Bourgogne grape. The region has a couple of other appellations too, specifically Fiefs Vendéens where they make crazy red wine out of gamay, pinot noir, and other grapes.  Anjou- Saumur is really two regions, where they make Anjou rouge and blanc and Saumur rouge and blanc in great quantities. The rouge and blanc are Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc respectively. More well known from Anjou are the Chenin Blanc-based dry and dessert wines from Savennieres, Coteaux du Layon, and Quarts de Chaume.  The Touraine has Bourgeuil and Chinon, appellations which make both simple and complicated wines from Cabernet Franc depending on the soil type of the vineyard. Also there is Vouvray and Montlouis, appellations for dry, sweet and sparkling Chenin Blanc. And finally, the Centre, which boasts the Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé regions, known for what used to be inexpensive Sauvignon Blanc for Paris bistros. Now Sancerre is generally around $25 a bottle,and Pouilly-Fumé not much less so people look to neighboring regions that make similar wines like Menetou-Salon, Quincy, Reuilly and further away, Cheverney. Not to be overlooked is Sancerre and Menetou-Salon rouge, made from Pinot Noir and really versatile on the dinner table.

That is just a general overview of the region…Many details and appellations have been left out, including one of my favorites: Cour-Cheverney. Southeast of Cheverney, the two regions make compeletly different wines. Cour-Cheverney is the only area (that I know of) to utlize the grape Romorantin. I first became acquainted with Cour-Cheverney in my school books, and I imagined that I would never get to taste such an obscure wine! This is a phenomenon that used to vex me quite often, with wines like Cour-Cheverney, Vin Jaune, and Colares, but those wines fell into my lap sooner than I anticipated. Most wines that you read about are imported in to the United States, which is great. Colares might be, but I’ve only seen it in Portugal. At any rate, when I moved to New York, Cour-Cheverney was not only available in several speciality wine shops, but available by the glass at special restaurants (like Trestle on Tenth).

I recently enjoyed a fine example of the wine in Pascal Bellier’s 2004 Cour-Cheverney. Absolutely delicious! Steely, impressive acidity which allowed it to last throughout the week, and tasted like it was full of ground up mineral dust. There was also an apple cider component, and the 4 years of age had added some pleasingly complicated aromas to the mix. 

 

L’ete est une Salade Nicoise et un verre de Rosé

Last night really felt like summer as we demolished our composed salad of bell peppers, tomatoes (though really, even the Early Girls aren’t quite ready unfortunately), eggs, anchovies, sardines, avocado, onions and potatoes (shout out to the Geman Butterballs from Full Belly Farm!) and washed it down with a glass of southern French rosé. The only thing more Provencal than Salade Nicoise is  rosé wine. We had Mas Grand Plagniol’s Costieres des Nimes rosé made from Grenache, Syrah, and Cinsaut. The unusually large proportion of Syrah made it a darker and meatier rosé than most. It had very a slight tannic bite that made me think it would be great with a hamburger. But it was excellent with the salad too. Not only did the experience promote summery feelings, it also reinforced my opinion that regional foods and wines make the best pairings. Plenty of other wines would go with a this salad, specifically light, crisp, white wines; but would they go as well with the dish as a rosé did? I think not. The eggs provide a richness that might make a light white seem feeble, whereas rosé — especially this one– has more body to compete with that richness. If you are ever at a loss for what to drink with what you eat…figure out where the dish comes from and find a wine from or near that region.

 

Austria and Germany 2007

Last week was the annual tasting of Terry Theise’s Austrian and German wines, this time for the 2007 vintage. The event took place at Ame Restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel in downtown San Francisco. I’m excited about this vintage because it was cooler weather than 2006 which provided big voluptuous wines, only some of which retained sufficient acidity.  In 2007, the acid levels are classicly crisp, the wines more lean, and thus more to my taste.  Although Austria and Germany have the potential to be very different climatically, 2007 was a similar vintage for both countries. There were over 250 wines, and 15 winemakers present at Ame.  It is next to impossible to taste 250 wines and give each sufficient attention, not to mention the fact that some tables (Nikolaihof and Donnhoff) are always suffering from a bottleneck, so I tasted selectively. Among those, my favorites of the day were the Schloss Gobelsburg NV Brut Reserve which was elegant, rich and frothy. The Gobelsberg Gruner Veltliner “Lamm” was amazing! Full of mineral and lime and acid! Hiedler’s Gruner Veltliner “Loess” and “November” were both wonderful, but quite different from each other. The Loess is a lively and interesting representation of Gruner, very drinkable at the table with just about anything. The November (meaning the grapes weren’t harvested until November!) was thick, spicy, rich and intense, but completely balanced by a streak of acidity. The Jamek Gruner Ried Achleiten Smaragd was also spicy and rich and excellent. From Germany I liked the A.J. Adam Dhron Riesling Kabinett, brimming with apricot and lime and Mosel-ness and…acid! Reuscher-Haart blew me away, they had four wines — Piesporter Treppchen Riesling, Piesporter Goldtropchen Riesling Kabinett, Piesporter Goldtropchen Riesling Spatlese #15 and #12. I completely adored them all. The Spatlesen drank as though they were dry to me, refreshing, acid, complex. And they (for now) are priced well for the dinner table! Geil was another happy moment for me. everything was very appealingly restrained, giving nothing away to quickly, but making you ponder over the wines. And Leitz, who was able to make elegant, acid wines in 2006 making them one of my favorites, had set of gorgeous wines from 2007 as well. Between tables I wandered over to the buffet where the magic workers of Ame set out delightful little morsels to fill our tummies.

Bert Salomon of Undof-Salomon

 

Maria Angeles Hiedler of Weingut Hiedler

 

Stefan Rumpf of Kruger-Rumpf

 

Jakob Schneider of Weingut Schneider and Victor Diel of Schlossgut Diel

 

Eva Fricke of Leitz

 

Geil

 

A Lambic Primer

A guest post by Marie Davenport (of the forthcoming 3323 Brewery & Distillery in San Francisco, CA).

As a brewer and, um, frequent taster of beer, lambics hold a special place in my cellar. The kumquat-like tartness mixed with the vinegary sourness that hits right in the back of the tongue, slowly coating the mouth before dissipating, the balanced nuance of the wheat and barley, the almost complete lack of discernable hop flavor, the complex and acidic aroma that varies from white wine to hay to sweat, and the delicate combination of “wild” yeasts and bacteria all make me stop what I’m doing and just say “wow.”

Lambic truly embodies its terroir. Taking a sip of Cantillon Kriek Lambic takes me straight to the Senne River Valley, surrounded by cherry orchards, drinking from a jug…   

Like a number of traditional Belgian beers, over the last several decades lambic has been a victim of changing tastes and industrialization. While the traditional version of the style is being revived by a number of brewers scattered across the US and Europe, it will never truly be the same as when it is produced in the Senne Valley. And even there, lambic is changing along with the local geography. 

Lambic is considered to be the “mother of all beers.” Brewing in Brussels began sometime in the 1200s, and the first written documents about lambics date to around 1320, making it the oldest existing beer style in the world. The first lambics, or “yellow beers,” were originally brewed in Lembeek, a village in the Senne Valley where at one point there were 600 inhabitants and 43 breweries. 

By Belgian law, lambic must be made from at least 30% (it is often more like 40%) unmalted wheat with malted barley (the dominant grain in most beers) making up the difference, and at some point in the process the unfermented beer (or wort) must be exposed to airborne yeasts. In this post-Pasteur era, exposing wort to airborne yeasts epitomizes this traditional style. Once all beer was “spontaneously fermented” with airborne yeasts. Now there is only lambic. While all brewing yeasts originated from fruit, the strains (ranging from 80-120) of yeast found in lambic are most likely a result of the breweries’ proximity to the vast cherry orchards that once covered the entire Senne Valley region. These local yeasts and bacteria have been residing in the casks, woodwork, walls, and ceilings of breweries like Cantillon since 1900, so are fully integrated into the infrastructure for now. The brewery cat, an essential part of any good lambic production facility, helps keep the yeasts airborne. Unlike in other beer styles, only aged hops (they’re ready when they start to smell like cheese) are used. The reasons are twofold: 1) the bitterness of fresh hops does not combine well with the natural sourness of a lambic; 2) the antimicrobial powers in fresh hops will kill off too much of the bacteria needed for proper fermentation, but are still potent enough to keep the acetobacter in check, giving a nice balance to a beer that would otherwise turn into malt vinegar.    

If procuring the necessary ingredients doesn’t seem onerous enough, the actual process of making lambic is itself an arduous process. A Dutch law introduced in 1822 (and maintained when Belgium became independent) taxed the size of the mash tun — the vessel where water and grain are mixed to turn the starches into sugars — forcing brewers to save money by creating a very dense and cloudy, or “turbid,” mash. I’ll spare you the details of this type of mashing (if anyone is interested, I will be happy to explain) but will say that extracting starches with this type of mashing is much more labor intensive and time consuming than the English style of using a single infusion. (Think several hours compared to one.) Traditional lambic brewers swear by this turbid mash method and still use it today. After all the sugars are extracted from the grain, the wort is boiled for at least three hours, sometimes all day (a “regular” boil for non-Belgian beers is more like 90 min), and then transferred to a coolship, a shallow vessel in a drafty part of the brewery, where it is allowed to cool overnight and enjoy its first exposure to yeasts and bacteria. When it has cooled sufficiently, the wort is transferred to casks, also home to a variety of yeasts, where it is allowed to age for 6 months to several years. 

Most lambics are blended before drinking, as the aging process greatly affects the taste. A young lambic (6 months — 1 year old), which you will rarely find to drink straight, is considerably sweet and slightly carbonated, and is generally blended into a gueuze (a blend of 1, 2, and 3 year old lambics) or with other older vintages. Older lambics tend to be dry with less carbonation, having cider or wine notes and various levels of sourness. Faro, aged three years, is one of the few lambics available unblended, usually on draft, and is often sweetened with sugar to taste.  

Only a handful of traditional Belgian lambic brewers still exist. The ones with distribution in the US include Cantillon, 3Fonteinen, Girardin, Boon/Oud Beersel, and Timmermans.  Cantillon is of special importance because of the public stance for traditional production methods that brewer Jean-Pierre Van Roy promotes. After he married into the family run brewery in 1978, he set into motion the public argument for traditional lambic brewing by forgoing newer brewing practices, such as trading in wooden vessels for stainless steel and adding syrups or saccharin for sweetening. He also advocates the use of organic and local ingredients when possible. Most of the current large purveyors of sweetened lambic (such as the easy to find Lindemann’s or De Keersmaker lines) still use saccharin and syrups, while Cantillon prefers to use real fruit, letting the yeasts devour the sugars to create a dry beverage.  

Industrialization is not the only change in lambic country. While Cantillon was once able to buy all of the fruit they use in their beers from local farmers, they can now only purchase cherries locally. And the traditional brewing year of October to May now ends in March, at least at Cantillon, where Jean-Pierre cites global warming as the malefactor. 

Traditional lambic is not your run of the mill beer. It embodies time-honored practices and is truly a product of its place. While certain production methods can be replicated, the complex combination of yeasts and bacteria in each bottle cannot. Because of this, no two bottles or vintages are alike. Next time you open a bottle of traditional lambic, take great pleasure in your experience. It will not be repeated. 

 

 

 

 

Chez Panisse is a great place to do business

I recently had a business lunch at the Chez Panisse Café. I was my first time at Chez Panisse, and although it didn’t blow my mind, it was a great place to do business. We opened 3 bottles of wine, beginning with a Ligurian treat — Bisson’s 2006 Colline del Genovesato Pigato. This was the perfect wine for my first course (see below). The Pigato grape is interesting, refreshing, textural and crisp. Next we opened a bottle that the host of the lunch had brought with him, Jean-Marc Morey’s 2002 Beaune Greves Blanc. It was delicious, but even at 6 years old, it still needed time for the interesting secondary aromas to develop. It still tasted about as fresh as the day it was bottled! The final bottle was going to be a ‘96 red burgundy of some kind, but the bottle was corked. So sad! In the end the host picked Jacques Puffeney’s 2004 Poulsard from the menu, and as a truly light-bodied red, it was probably a better match for everyone’s food anyway. Speaking of food, I had a fava bean puree on flatbread with sliced radishes draped across the top. It was very tasty. The second course was penne with asparagus and spring onions and a cream sauce. I would ordinarily never order pasta with cream sauce, but because it was Chez Panisse I was tempted.  It was good, but again…not mind blowing. Solid as a rock though. For dessert we split a couple bowls of Bing cherries from Frog Hollow Farm and pluots from Flavorella. The fruit was excellent. Fruit is always the best dessert (well, tied with cheese, although ideally you have a cheese plate first, then a bowl of fruit). Our east coast host was so alarmed that cherries were already in season, making the joke, “Were these picked this year?”

 

 

Biodynamic steak

My wonderful little brother came down from the mountains the other day bearing gifts. A black eel squash seedling for us to plant in our backyard and a couple of biodynamically-raised rib-eye steaks. Last night we grilled up the steaks (salt, pepper, olive oil) and man, they were good! Incredibly flavorful, the essence of beef. This was my first opportunity to taste biodynamic meat, and so far, so good. It was rich and vibrant. They were from the Decatur farm up in Covelo, Mendicino County. We opened a bottle of Anjou Rouge from Chateau Soucherie (served slightly chilled) and the tannic bite and earthy richness of the Cabernet Franc went very well with these excellent steaks. Swiss chard and brown rice completed the meal. Very satisfying!

 

Beer is a whole ‘nother world

When I began studying wine I had my mind blown by how much there was to learn! I spent four years studying wine (in this particular program — needless to say, it’s a lifelong process) learning the nitty gritty about soil types in Bulgaria and the pruning techniques in Japan, and about a quarter of the way through we spent a week talking about beer. I felt like my mind had to slam on the brakes and take a new direction. There are actually very few similarities between wine-making and beer-making. Not to mention that fact that the world of beer is as large and varied as the world of wine, and how did they think we were supposed to learn it all in a week!?? We weren’t of course, but that brief peek into the realm of mash tuns and worts was very tantalizing for me, and I vowed to spend some time with it later. I haven’t, yet, but I do have a couple of friends who are veritable experts on the subject and a ready source of information and advice (one of them will be writing some guest posts in the near future!). What I have learned about beer since my week of study, I learned while drinking at Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn.

 It was there that I learned about my love of lambic brew from Belgium, especially gueuze. These sour and complicated beers are very reminiscent of wine, and that is no doubt why they are my favorite kinds of beer. I’ve decided that Cantillon is my favorite brewery and Cantillon’s Vigneronne is my favorite beer. I like everything about it, from the sour Muscat-y flavor to the anthemic label (designed in 1989 by Raymond Goffin). From the website:

“The name Vigneronne Cantillon was given in 1987. This name reminds us that, while it belongs to the beer patrimony, the spontaneous fermentation, the ageing in the barrels for several years and the addition of grapes make it a distant cousin of certain white wines.”

Beyond learning of my fondness for them, I know so little about how they are made, the history behind them, or indeed the names of very many breweries who make them. Check back on this blog for that kind of information soon though, and from a real expert.