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It's Grapey - 2008 Corte dei Papi Cesanese del Piglio Colle Ticchio

Let's say you're sitting the Court of Master Sommeliers exam and you come across a wine that's made from a particularly indistinguishable non-noble grape variety. Your mind filters through all the possible sensory descriptors but you keep coming back around to "grapey". 

"Grapey"? All you've got is "grapey"?

You whisper this word to the examiner. She says "Is that all you've got, 'grapey'"? 

"Yes" you reply. "Grapey is what it is".

"You don't get the bright ruby color, tart plums and a hint of sous bois on the palate?" she asks.

"Yeah, but it's still grapey. Overwhelmingly grapey. It's smooth, soft, and easy to drink. It's not about acidity, it's about its Cesanesity. At the end of the day, it's grapey."

At this point, your examiner slaps you across the cheek with her velvet glove, forcibly rips the Level III lapel pin from your jacket and summarily exiles you to the perdition of a job at the local Shakey's Pizza outlet where you stand behind the counter in a tuxedo, draped in multiple tastevins as you dole out carafes of Chablis, Burgundy, and Rosé from 18-liter boxes.

The 2008 Corte Dei Papi Cesanese del Piglio was the first red wine coming from Lazio to receive the DOCG designation. It's made from a grape called Cesanese di Affile (Piglio is one of the villages within the region) which is related to Cesanese Comune (and people wonder why Italian wines confuse consumers so often!) but the Affile clone is generally of higher quality so one must assume that in a wine such as this (imported into the USA by Vias) that the preponderance of grapes would be from Cesanese di Affile. This is an excellent example of what happens when a few producers in a region decide to put quality over quantity. For a long time, the region was known only for Frascati - adding well-made red wines to the options increases the region's marketing potential significantly and serves to inspire other growers and winemakers to increase the quality of their efforts. Everybody wins. 

On day two, the wine loses a bit of its exuberance but picks up more noticeable complexity. More structure is evident, and the acidity becomes more apparent amid the fruit. It still fits the "grapey" descriptor but it shows more elegance and structure, and works better with food (leftover turkey and Latini Trenette, in this situation). There are no overt signs of oak, and at about $15 it's one heck of a deal. Would I want a cellar full of it? Not really...it might evolve for a little while in the cellar but it doesn't strike me as the most complex wine I've tasted recently. Quite good stuff, but not totally inspiring. 

Some excellent information on this wine and its DOCG can be found at Rob Tebeau's Fringe Wine blog (or @FringeWine) and some very thorough tasting notes of other wines from the DOCG were written up earlier this year by Arnt Egil Nordlien at Vinduet. 

Press info just wants to be free (and easily-accessible)

I regularly get to contribute to clients' websites and it's always baffled me when they want to erect walls between readers and the information they're looking for. When these readers happen to be members of the media or the wine trade, the result is often that the writers just move on to another winery with a website that doesn't make them jump through hoops to find out tech info, download photos, labels, or bottle images. And forcing someone to apply for a password to access distributor contacts? That's just nuts...

It is also a problem for consumers who just want to purchase wine. I was reminded of this by a recent conversation with a client who realized that their direct-to-consumer sales were hurt in the past by their requirement that potential buyers submit an application to be on the mailing list. Wonderful though these wines may be, the members-only business model was used to lend a rarified air of exlusivity to Napa cult wineries such as Screaming Eagle, Harlan Estate, Colgin, and it was successful for about a decade, with the result being long queues of people on waiting lists. This approach applies to very few wineries outside of the Napa Valley these days (Manfred & Elain Krankl's Sine Qua Non, Helen Turley's Marcassin and Mike Officer's Carlisle spring to mind as outliers) and there's no lack of Napa Valley producers feeling the pain of the economy. And that was before the recession decimated the ranks of new(ish) wineries (although they've been thinned out by more than 10% - is there a Latin word that fills in for 20%, 30%,40%)?

All turned out well for the client; their website has been liberated from the tyranny of the implied velvet rope and sales are booming.

I recently came across a well-written blog-post-verging-on-screed from Bobby Owsinski in his music 3.0 blog. I spent a lot of years in the music business and reading Bobby's blog is a good way to keep up on a whole lot of things. (Gratuitous photo of me playing bass with Kittra & the Cobras back when I was young and skinny)

Bobby Owsinski's site is a fabulous collage of writing about music, musicians, recording technology (and the sounds that emanate from all three of 'em), and the music business in general. Many of his topics are universal in scope and he's really good at linking back to the books he's written and keeping everyone up to date on what's going on in his life.

Bobby Owsinski

In this particular post, titled simply "The Press Section of Your Website", he touches on just about every single thing that usually pisses me off about winery websites. Hell, any website where the reader, be they consumer, media, trade, or competitor needs to make it a breeze to access the info. More than just the press section, Bobby's suggestions can serve as a template for a website PERIOD. Updates to the info, links to Facebook, Twitter, and blogs are all essential to maximizing the chance that someone will accidentally discover the site and send it off to their followers. Viral reaction is something that sounds good in a proposal but you can't create it, lest it feel contrived. However, if you maximize the accessibility of your site, odds increase greatly that it (viral response) could happen. That's really all I'm looking for these days, an opportunity. If the site is well-conceived and well-written, that's more than half the battle...

In the immortal words of Don Rice...

One picture is worth a thousand words...

 
The Beaujolais fest at Jan & John Reitman's place was the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

 

 

1994 Chateau Reynella Basket Pressed Shiraz

There's a lot to be said for opening the right wine at the right time. The 1994 Chateau Reynella Basket Pressed Shiraz is rocking my world tonight (bottle #127310, to be precise).

Earthy, herbal, peppery, meaty and a little plummy, it deftly illustrates the term "savory" (or "savoury" in Oz) and limns the metaphysical differences between Syrah and Shiraz. This wine is in an ideal state of balance tonight, equal parts fruit, acid, and whatever passes for structure these days. The aromatics have that funky/dusty thing I usually get in old Brunello but on the palate it's pure McLaren Vale, comfortable in its own frame and bringing back memories of old school Aussie Shiraz. It's not as monumental as the 1986 Rockford Basket Pressed Shiraz I had earlier this year; that was consumed at Jose Andres' Bazaar with friends and amazing food while this one was enjoyed on a Wednesday night watching Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" by myself. While I believe that context has a tremendous impact on how we approach a wine, the Rockford 1986 was a great wine and this Reynella is merely the right wine at the right time, and it's tough to find fault with that, right?

I added this bottle ($20) to my collection back around 1998 when I was working for Kermit Lynch in Berkeley, CA.  I would have to believe that, given its balance and adherence to a sense-of-place mentality, that it could have found a home for itself at that shop if Kermit was inclined to import wine from Australia. That's going to happen about the same time as he picks up Harlan Estate or Screaming Eagle for national distribution, but I'd like to think that this wine would meet his standards.

This is the sort of wine that keeps wine interesting to me. We often have a good idea as to how a given wine will evolve over the years, but we never really know what it's going to be like. In all honesty, I didn't have many expectations for this bottle, but my curiosity got the best of me. I've liked all of the wines I've had from the 1994 vintage thus far and this one has held up quite well. I don't know that it would improve much with more time, but neither does it feel as if it's going to be falling off the edge of the earth any time soon.

Cantina Roccafiore Luncheon at Terroni

How better to celebrate the first day of summer than at a Cantina Roccafiore luncheon at Terroni in Los Angeles? The Roccafiore organic wines are produced at a winery/hotel/spa located in Todi, Umbria, about 25 miles outside of Perugia. Luca Baccarelli (the winery's Direttore Commerciale) was in town with sales manager Valentina Davide and Terravino's Guiseppe Cossu was a most gracious host for the afternoon. I was honored to join a group of some of the finest sommeliers and wine directors in Southern California to taste the current Cantina Roccafiore lineup and enjoy the remarkable Southern Italian cuisine of Terroni. 

We began with the 2010 Roccafiore Bianco Fiordaliso, an unoaked blend of Grechetto di Todi and Trebbiano Spoletino. The winery's focus is on indigenous grape varieties made in a style intended to be crisp and refreshing, with or without food. This wine showed a bit more Trebbiano influence in it, but had a very succulent sapiness to it yet remained light on the palate. This was followed by the 2009 Fiorfiore Bianco Vigna d'Autore, a wine made from 100% Grechetto di Todi dei Colli Martani. The grapes are harvested and fermented in stainless steel before being aged in large Slovenian oak vessels. This adds some breadth to the wine without adding any untoward wood flavors. It was silky in the mouth but had good acidity, and really seemed as if it would improve with a little time in the cellar. Both wines worked well with Terroni's Zuppa di Cicerchie. Cicerchie are beans that have been found in Umbrian dishes for centuries. The broth was complex and the dish was topped off with a crouton and what appeared to be a piece of lardo. It was a beautiful accompaniment to both wines. 
We moved on to the reds in the next flight, beginning with the 2009 Rosso Melograno, a Sangiovese, Merlot, and Montepulciano combo. This wine was supple, with aromatics  refreshing acidity and a long, dry finish. Each variety is produced separately in stainless steel before blending and bottling. The 2007 Rosso Roccafiore is a step up from this in complexity and texture. It's made of 100% Sangiovese that's been fermented in stainless and then aged for a year in two year-old French barriques. This gives some aeration without overt woodiness to the wine. Finally, there was the 2007 Prova d'Autore, a blend of Sangiovese, Sagrantino, and Montepulciano. These varieties are fermented separately in stainless steel (stop me if you've heard this one before) but the wines are then aged for two years in new French barriques (thus the source of the oak used for the Roccofiore. Both wines receive additional time to evolve in the bottle before release. I think this added bottle time gives these wines a great advantage for restaurant use - although they would benefit from another couple of years in the cellar (particularly the Prova d'Autore), they have an inherent complexity and refinement that makes them good choices for "gonna drink it tonight" situations. 

We first drank the red wines with the Tonnarelli all Norcina con Tartufo nero Estivo. Tonnarelli are sort of a squarish spagetti that's popular in Rome and points further south. There was a sweetness to the sausage that nicely balanced out the acidity of the wines, and of course, what dish doesn't taste better when it's been enhanced with shaved truffles? There was a consistency shown throughout the red wines that struck me as being fresher and maybe a little more alive than most of the Tuscan wines I've tasted lately; they were refreshing and went well with the food.

 

The Tonnarelli was followed by a grilled lamb t-bone with a bit of rosemary, roasted potatoes and a small bit of olive oil. The dish was extraordinarily simple, and was intriguing because it worked as well with the wines as did the much more complex pasta served as a middle course. The food went perfectly with the wine (or maybe it was the other way around) and it made for a great afternoon. Afterwards, we got onto our Vespas to head home (well, Scott from Pace got on his, the rest of us drove home in cars). The service was as exceptional as the food and it was quite a memorable lunch.

There are some days where opening a schnitzel drive-in doesn't seem like a bad career move. Then again, it might not be as popular in Malibu as it is in Krems....(but doesn't that kind of look like a surfboard on top of the van?)

Vineyard Tasting with Jurtschitsch, Grillmaier, Rabl, and Höllerer

After tasting through the lineups of Kamptal Riesling and Grüner Veltliners, we broke up into groups to spend the evening with several local winemakers. Our group jumped into vans and headed up to the Heiligenstein Vineyard overlooking Langenlois where we were officially introduced to our hosts. Alwin Jurtschitsch, Josef Grillmaier, Rudi Rabl, and Alois Höllerer (Steininger was planning to attend but a family event got in the way - we drank his sekt anyway).

The view from the vineyard was amazing, but it wasn't as if the wines needed the atmosphere to show well.

Each winemaker poured one of their wines, talking about their vineyards (Heiligenstein and Spiegel, primarlily) and giving us a general feel for the history and geology of the area. I thought that the 2010 Jurtschitsch Riesling Zöbinger Heiligenstein Kamptal DAC Reserve Erste Lage particularly stood out, as did Alois Höllerer's 2010 Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben that was grown a couple of towns over.
The cover crop in the Heilegenstein Vineyard was about as colorful as I can recall seeing in any vineyard: 

After tasting throught the first round of wines, we climbed back into the vans and headed off for the Käferberg Vineyard across the valley. Willi Brundlmayer is probably the best known producer from this vineyard, but Jurtschitsch, Grillmaier, Loimer, Rabl and others source fruit from this beautiful site.
We tasted another flight of wines (Grillmaier's 2010 Weissburgunder Käferberg tasted especially good, possibly because we were drinking it a few meters away from where it was grown)(but that's why you go to visit vineyards). As the sun started to set we headed back down to the Loisium for dinner.
While a beer might have been called for, we went directly to the table, whereupon they plied us with five courses of food, accompanied by five different wines with each course. While the intentions were good, it may have been just a little bit too much of a good thing, particularly as it was a Sunday night, the restaurant was a little understaffed, and we'd tasted quite a bit of wine already that day. The food was on the creative side, with more than a touch of molecular cuisine appearing at the table. The dinner's pace was slow, to the point where we opted to do away with the cheese course entirely and we took the final flight of wines to the bar where we were joined by other members of the group who were returning from their winemaker dinners.
By the end of the night, we'd added 35 more wines to the tasting talley, bringing the day's total to "way too many". The winemakers were good sports about it and guided us through their favorites in the last two flights. As it turned out,the 100+ wines we tasted that day served as a good warm up for Monday's schedule. It would have been easier if the wines hadn't been so consistently good. It wasn't a matter of quality analysis, simply one of deciding what you liked at that moment a little more than another wine. Not exactly a bad situation to be in.

The Loisium in Langenlois (or: Bacchus goes to the Bellagio?)

After the schnitzel lessons and luncheon at Schloss Mühlbach, we departed to the town of Langenlois in the Kamptal DAC.Our accommodations were at the justly-famous Hotel Loisium, a combination hotel/restaurant/spa and wine museum designed by US architect Steven Holl.

Set among vineyards on the outskirts of town, our room had a great view of the vineyards that surround Langenlois. Some of the rooms are named after local wineries (we were in one of the Schloss Gobelsburg rooms). After getting checked in and dropping off our stuff, the group headed past the pool and through the vineyard to the adjacent Loisium Museum. The entrance is tough to miss, with heiroglyphics telling the story of wine, food and the way they come together in life (or at least that's how I interpreted them).
Upon entering the museum, we descended via elevator to a room containing a huge vat of bubbling liquid (wine? water?) whereupon a show worthy of the Bellagio Hotel burbled to life.
Fountains spewed liquid in all directions, lights flashed and changed colors and there was enough misty spray to please anyone who's ever enjoyed the splashy water rides in amusement parks.
The show concluded with a glowing amber bust of Bacchus rising from the depths of the tank like something out of a Conan the Barberian novel and spitting a stream of wine at the open mouth of the ghostly, mysterious figure undulating on the wall above our heads.
It was a little bit Wagnerian, a little bit Las Vegas, and overall as entertaining as it was mystifying. We left this wine-creation pageant through a side door and entered some ancient wine aging caves that led us to a slightly (well, entirely) more normal museum experience. I enjoyed seeing the recreated kitchen with its bread rising trough, along with the cooperage display, the cobbler's room, and the general sense of what it was like to be living in Langenlois 100+ years ago.
After wandering around through the last century, we found our way up to taste through some 50+ Grüner Veltliners and Rieslings from the Kamptal DAC. We were welcomed by Fred Loimer, one of the highest-profile winemakers in the region.

In addition to Fred's 2009 Steinmassl Reserve Riesling, I was also impressed with the Jurtschitsch Dechant Alte Reben GV, Hiedler Kittmannsberg November Reserve GV, the 2009 Hirsch Gaisberg Reserve Riesling and the 2010 Schloss Gobelsburg Kammerner Gaisberg Riesling. In general, all of the wines showed beautifully, and palate fatigue hadn't yet reared its ugly head. But we'd only tasted about 80 wines thus far (including the morning's Weinviertel DAC bottles) thus far and the day was yet young...

Schnitzel cookery lesson at Schloss Mühlback, Wienviertel, Austria

I like schnitzel. No, make that "I LOVE schnitzel". On my recent trip to Austria, I quite likely would have dined on it at every meal, but I was unable to find it at any of the breakfast buffets at the hotels in which we stayed.

My favorite schnitzel of the trip was the one pictured above, from Chef Martin Weiler of Gasthaus Weiler in Laa an der Thaya, about an hour outside of Vienna. His recommendation ("secret"?) was to fry the meat in lard. Real lard, not the namby pamby vegetably oil or butter or anything, just real old-fashioned lard. Oh, and use veal, not chicken, pork, or whatever else sort of meat you might want to use to save a few bucks. It makes a difference in the end result.

Pictured here are the OEWM's Susanne Staggl and Barbara Arbeithuber explaining the technique as Chef Weiler seemingly sweats out the details. Note that it's pound the paillards with the bottom of a frying pan, then you dip the veal into the flower, then the eggs, followed by breadcrumbs and ultimately into the frying pan containing the hot lard. Fry until nicely browned and serve immediately to the delight of anyone who happens to be in the area (and hungry). Here are the ingredients:

4 Veal cutlets

60g wheat flour

2 eggs

80g breadcrumbs

200g lard

salt

 

Place three bowls near each other, filling the first with flour, the second with the two eggs (beaten), and the third with fine bread crumbs. Japanese panko might work okay too if you want to be a little different (even more appropriate if you're not using veal).

Serve immediately after cooking, accompanied by potato salad, cucumbers, and maybe some tomato if in season.

Schnitzel is one of the easiest dishes to find a wine to match. The obvious call is Grüner Veltliner or Riesling, but Zweigelt or St Laurent work perfectly too.

Existential Ruminations on Cauliflower, Wine, and Fear

I’ve been pondering a cauliflower for the past week. I’m not a veggie-perv and I am not considering a move toward becoming a vegetarian, it’s just something I bought instead of broccoli, something that’s supposed to be “good for me”. Whether it is or not "good for me" is immaterial; what matters is that it makes me feel good for having bought a cauliflower, thereby raising me up from the ignominious doldrums of my usual diet of chicken fingers, instant soup, frozen pizza, and salami-and-cheese-on-crackers. With the purchase of this cauliflower I feel as if I’ve attained a mantel of moral superiority to my fellow man, nay, even a rosy-cheeked blush of healthitude simply by possessing this cauliflower. The difficulty lies in deciding what to do with it, and when to do it.

For all intents and purposes, I could easily enjoy this cauliflower just sitting here gazing at it, but then nobody would know that I did the right thing (ie: bought a vegetable). But what if I invited some people over and cooked the cauliflower (however one prepares such things) and it turned out that they don’t particularly fancy cauliflower, but if I’d only served them broccoli, we could have been BFFs? And what if the cauliflower I bought isn’t totally mature? Would my friends hold look at me with shame and derision in their eyes, castigating me for NOT KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE? So many opportunities to go astray, when before I thought it was “only” a vegetable. Wouldn’t my life be much better off if I just chucked the cauliflower in the trash bin and bought a bag of potato pom-poms instead? Probably, but that would do nothing to assuage my existential curiosity and search for answers.

It’s been said that a man’s character can be defined by how he reacts to such crises of confidence. If this is true, maybe my character might just turn out to be okay. Rather than get mired down in a morass of cauliflower angst, I began thinking of this brain-shaped vegetable as I might think of a bottle of wine. I went through a phase of vinous uncertainty a number of years ago, back when every wine decision was fraught with indecision, worry, and doubt. Fortunately, a wise and wizened winegeek noticed my dilemma and advised that, when in doubt about anything having to do with wine, JUST OPEN THE GODDAMN BOTTLE! He was right – there’s nothing better to instill confidence and wisdom in oneself than to experience things firsthand. And besides, it's not like I was charging my guests to drink with me - it's free education, and we're all learning together, right?

Reading about a wine (or a cauliflower)(or angst) is all well and good but nothing beats first-person familiarity with the topic at hand. Nine times out of ten, the people you’re afraid about doing the wrong thing in front of are just as fearful as you are when it comes to wine, cauliflower, rocket science, neurosurgery, or anything else not easily learned about while watching a TV reality show. There's a lot to be said for perspective - the longterm ramifications of screwing up by selecting the wrong wine with the wrong cauliflower recipe are not as dire as the ramifications of botching rocket science or neurosurgury, so take a chance. Open that Torbreck RunRig Shiraz with your fish 'n' chips, and let your imagination run wild and discover how and why (or why not) an Alsace Gewurztraminer works with a grilled ribeye. Hell, you might even find a wine that works with cauliflower.....