To Father Christmas, Please may I have?

CHRISTMAS WINE WISH LIST 2014

NV Prosecco 'Sottoriva', Malibran - Veneto, Italy

This Prosecco is unfiltered so its cloudy, it is fresh and super light! It will be perfect for breakfast and lunch preparation work!

2006 Mineral Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut, Agrapart - Champagne, France

Harmonious and expressive! A match made in heaven for any fish or seafood starter. This fizz really delivers and is worth every penny of its price. The wine is made from two 40 year old vineyards.

2010 Chardonnay 'Cuvee Florine', Ganevat - Jura, France

This wine is ridiculously cheaper than any Chardonnay of this quality from Burgundy, and will be perfect with my roast chicken!

2009 Nerello Mascalese 'Gibril', Guccione - Monreale, Sicily

This is the wine to bridge courses or for those who enjoy reds with fish. Its alluringly fragrant and perfumed, light but with supportive tannins that are soft. I drank my last bottle of this wine several months ago and it is out of stock with the supplier so I would love to be able to drink it again!

2006 Barolo 'Cannubi-San Lorenzo', Guiseppe Rinaldi - Piemonte, Italy

I love having roast game birds or beef at Christmas and I really could not enjoy them in the same way without some Nebbiolo! Barolo is the monarch of all Italian wine. This wine is pure perfection at the moment, I was lucky enough to enjoy a bottle alongside some white truffles recently and really cannot wait to taste it again.

2007 Pinot Gris Selection de Grains Nobles, Pierre Frick - Alsace, France

From a small estate that are producing hand crafted wines, this wine is rich and honeyed! Brilliant with Christmas Pudding, Stilton or as an alternative to a dessert! This Pinot Gris is quite rich and slightly oily but it has lovely balance so it isnt too heavy or sickly!

 

Redefining Cava by Emily Harman

Cava is one of Spain's most infamous wines - this sparkling wine finds itself sandwiched in between the cheaper, less exciting offerings on a wine list or shop shelf. Most serious Champagne drinkers steer themselves well clear of it.

I never understood that despite everything I read on paper about Cava (that is must go through the same expensive production method as Champagne to give it a natural bubble as opposed to the quickly produced carbonated bubble of Prosecco), it was cheap and quite frankly unpleasant.

I started to look into the ‘Why’s of it. Why did what I was tasting seem so far away from a quality wine? Why was some much money and time being spent on a wine that was made in such a way for the end the end result to be lackluster and drab?

Whilst the majority of Cava is produced in and around Penedes, near to Barcelona – the legal requirements for a wine to be called Cava is that it is can be produced anywhere in Spain providing it is made with the traditional method and has been aged appropriately.

I drew my focus to Penedes and what happens there in the heart of Cava production.

Each year around 260 million bottles are produced and approximately 80% of this is made by two producers. There are around 250 producers of Cava with less than 10 of these producing cava from their own vineyards.

On those facts alone it starts to become very clear as to why the quality falters. Alongside this, the Cava DO is very relaxed in comparison to the legal requirements in place in other sparkling wine regions such as Champagne.

As mentioned earlier, legally Cava can be made from many regions all over the country. The producers are legally allowed to produce Cava from up to 9 different grapes and due to hot climate in some of Spains regions – it is legal for producer to acidify their wines too. It is also commonplace that the majority of the producers buy their grapes and base wines from other growers.

As my research progressed, the facts revealed the truth in what I had been tasting but with every region and appellation this is always more than what is seen on the surface and Cava is no exception. It is a small movement here, there are around a dozen producers that revert from the norm and produce wines with care from their own vineyards.

And with relief I was lucky enough to discover the Recaredo wines.

Recaredo is a 3rd generation estate with 50ha of vines. The estate was founded in 1924 and is now in the hands of Ton Mata. Ton converted all the vineyards to Biodynamic several years ago and has never looked back.

Ton is a curious man who seeks to produce a high quality cared for wine, he has extended his research further afield – Recaredo are working alongside the Foods Technology Department of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. This research project is on yeast – Recaredo are selecting yeasts from their own vines and then experimenting with to see how this affects he personality of their wines.

The ethos at this estate is for all their wines to express grape, place and vintage. Recaredo try to work majorly with Xarelo - for it's ageing potential aswell as its capability of expressing where it is grown. 

All wines are Non Dose and vintage, with longer ageing that they are legally required. It is worth mentioning that there is no acidification here. The long ageing of all their wines (with some of their wines ageing for over 100 months) before their release, these deliver something quite special, with high levels of complexity that has been derived from the long time on lees. Recaredos’ Gran Reserva is aged for 50 months when the DO only requires 30 months. All the wines are hand riddled and hand disgorged.

Whilst other grower producers have chosen to break away from the Cava appellation, Recaredo decided to stay with the intention to improve and develop the DO. They are pushing for it to be a legal requirement to write recoltant/negotiant on the label to enable the consumer to be able to distinguish between those who work with their own fruit and those who buy grapes.

All of their wines are striking and individual. The 2010 Intens Rosat – a pink Cava made from bleeding the juice from Pinot Noir and Monastrell grapes. The Rosat is then aged for 33months on the lees – the result is an innovative and delicious glass of bubbles - I can't wait to see what else this appellation will bring in the future.

Wine Teeth by Emily Harman

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It has been commonplace since the beginning of time (in wine terms that is!) to see wine drinkers with teeth that have been eroded away and stained by their regular wine tasting and drinking habits. At parties, bars and wine tastings it is often no challenge to identify those who have been enjoying red wine.

I guess in every day life it is not a huge concern. When you work in a wine role, you could be tasting anywhere between ten and two hundred wines in one day, sometimes more. Reams of wine know how is shared freely amongst everyone the wine community. Yet nothing is passed down to you on what to do to maintain the one set of adult teeth you are given.

It was not until I lived in Melbourne that I was fortunate enough to find a very meticulous dentist, who insisted on teaching me new ways to look after my teeth.  He quizzed me on everything relating to my dental hygiene, all my wine habits (both social and professional) and how all these overlapped with each other.

I remember recounting a tasting I went to earlier that week. It was a masterclass on wines from Heathcote. For those who have yet to experience these wines, they are a brilliant alternative for those who love the wines from the Barossa Valley. The wines are rich and full bodied – making them some of the best candidates for staining teeth from white to black after a few sips.

After the tasting I was due to work at Attica that evening and couldn’t bare the thought of any of our guests catching a glimpse of my teeth so I brushed my teeth until there was no trace of red wine to be seen. This wasn’t the first time either.

It turns out that brushing your teeth immediately after drinking or tasting wine is the worst thing you can do to your teeth and the enamel to protect them.

It is common knowledge that soft drinks are terrible for your teeth. It is often assumed that this is because of their high levels of sugar, but the high levels of acid found in these are also a big problem. Further to this the bacteria in our mouths use any sugar we consume to produce acid. When a tooth is exposed to acid regularly (for example if you regularly drink or taste wine), the frequent acid attacks cause the enamel to lose minerals.

Due to the levels of acid in all wine, brushing immediately means you are in effect brushing that acid onto your teeth so with every brush you are damaging your protective layer of enamel.

The enamel on our teeth is a one time only deal. So once it is gone, it is never coming back.

So what can be done?

  • Daily flossing – this is vital to keep your breath fresh and to reduce any staining in between your teeth.
  • Drinking and rinsing with water whilst tasting wine – water has a higher pH than wine, this can help to balance the acid in your mouth  – meaning the acid has less chance of attacking your teeth!
  • Avoid brushing soon after tasting and drinking.
  • Use fluoride rich toothpastes and products. Fluoride not only strengthens enamel but it also reduces plaque bacteria’s from producing acid that will cause the decay. Toothpastes such as Pronamel are designed to help reduce the damage of acid wear on teeth. I also use Tooth Mousse overnight, this is a crème that you leave on your teeth to help keep your teeth full of minerals.

It is about time!

Have healthy, happy teeth and drink well.

Feeding the Ox by Doug Wregg

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Doug is known for pioneering a new way of thinking and communicating about wine to make it exciting and engaging. Doug previously working in London as a Sommelier, is now a core part of the team at Les Caves de Pyrene

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be ~ Lao Tzu

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go ~ T. S. Eliot

We speak confidently about faults and flaws in wine, yet these are not cut-and-dried issues. Wines that are truly oxidised are dying the moment they hit the glass. They are brown, rusty, musty and lifeless.

Wines where oxygen is a factor in the elevage – either overtly (such as rancio Banyuls and Maurys from Roussillon, traditional yellow wines from Jura, Oloroso from Jerez, Madeira and Marsala), or more subtly, (think Loire Chenin, Chateau Musar Blanc, and northern Italian whites and Istrian wines with a certain amount of skin contact) – these wines not only last, but improve over the course of time. 

Whilst I may enjoy uncomplicated fresh wines – they are as snapshots of bright fruit – I do also appreciate the profound qualities of oxidative wines which are like paintings with a rich impasto of texture.

Yes, oxygen contact may confer fascinating secondary notes and layers of vinous flavour – it can soften and enrich the wine and bring forth aromas of honey, truffle, walnut, cooked pastry, humus, spice and toast. Those seductively complex integral liaisons of aroma and flavour can persuade one to return over several days and discover something new in every sniff and slurp.

Yesterday, I drank a beautiful natural wine that was fresh, utterly vibrant and charming beyond belief. Throbbing with health the flavours were clean and crunchy, the palate full of sap and zip with a trace of graphite minerality bringing the wine to an exhilarating close. This was real grapes-to-bottle stuff sans funk. This was an oxidative, low-sulphur wine.

Cue reeling and writing and fainting in coils from sceptics.

Yet I would venture that no-one would find such a wine remotely objectionable. Once enough people acknowledge that natural low-intervention wines are not only not “off”, but can also be deliciously flavoursome, then we will have advanced the tenor of the debate.

Stefano Bellotti from Cascina degli Ulivi explains how this might be achieved.

“The other way we can do without sulphites is following the natural way of wine making using “managed oxidation” where oxidation is no longer viewed as a monster to fight but as a friendly component of wine. But this is only possible when using grapes of excellent quality. No yeasts, no enzymes, no vitamins, no salts. A natural fermentation and a careful use of lees. Lees contain many colloids that have an anti-oxidant and protective function but to do so, one needs to vinify in wood and that entails more effort and higher costs.

By using this method I have always produced red wines with no sulphites and a guaranteed stability of decades and lately I have also managed to produce white wines with no sulphites added that not only they are stable, but have – if anything – the opposite problem: they need a couple of years in a bottle to reach optimum harmony, a quality that they will maintain for several years thereafter.”

 “Reaching harmony.” Slow and fluidic elevage produces wines that are not fixed fruit-bombs instead they unveil their personality by degrees. Mutability, in my book, is to be celebrated – glasses one to five give you a thoroughly different experience as the wine moves and changes shape. Oxygen aids this process – a wine may not be oxidised if the addition of air enables it to articulate its nuances rather than rudely terminating the fruit. Yes, it serves as a kind of “inoculation”.

Meanwhile, there are numerous misconceptions about low-sulphur wines. One is that they can’t age because, deficient in sulphur preservative, they are unarmed to combat the process of natural decay. Whilst it is true that some wines are intended to be drunk in the freshness of youth (and are usually protected during their vinification by a layer of CO2), others have the wherewithal to last, having an in-built defence mechanism against oxidising.

One thinks of wines made by Giulio Armani, Dario Princic, Frank Cornelissen, Josko Gravner, Stanko Radikon and Emmanuel Houillon to name but a few.

As difficult and ornery as the wines may be when first poured, exposing them to air usually reanimates them. First impressions are not always reliable either. I can adduce numerous examples of wines that most experienced tasters would logically write off as undrinkable, which, after a day – or three days – or five –find their natural balance. The proof of this particular counter-intuitive pudding is in the tasting. These wines are living things that evolve in their own time. It is often said that what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger. In these cases, due to O2, they have constitutions as strong as an ox.

The most obvious examples are to be found in Jura where vignerons may either “top up” their wines or leave them to age under a veil of yeast. Because Jura is the spiritual home of the sous-voile style, and because these wines can age for decades, they are rightly cherished. Nevertheless, certain cognoscenti notwithstanding, they (the wines) are often seen as quaint ’n’ quirky period pieces.

What quirky wines! Cut yourself some nutty nutty slack and, if you’re suffering sotolon deficiency, pour yourself some liquid fenugreek…’ If you like your Savagnin or Chardonnay to have that sensation of “jaune” ne sais quoi, from a sojourn under a yeasty veil, you’ll love the uncompromising earthiness of these Jurassic wines. At just 50 hectares Château Chalon is home to the extraordinary Vin Jaune (“yellow wine”), made from the Savagnin varietal.

The grapes are harvested late and then aged in small oak barrels for a minimum of 6 years and 3 months (although some producers age their Vin Jaune for up to 10 years in barrel). The slightly porous oak barrels are, by design, not completely airtight, and a considerable portion – nearly 40% – of the wine therefore evaporates over the years (the so-called “angels’ share”).  No topping up is done. A thick layer of flor yeast, known as the voile or veil, looking like a white foam, develops on the surface of the wine and helps prevent excessive oxidation. This ageing method, similar to that used for fino sherry in Spain, but in France specific to the Jura (and Gaillac to a lesser extent), allows the wine to acquire its distinct flavours, characteristic of walnut, almond, spice and apple, before release. This remarkable dry wine, at its best immensely complex and very aromatic, is best appreciated after at least 10-15 years in bottle and has the ability, in good vintages, to age for a century or more.

How to describe a typical Château Chalon? Green walnut, caraway, fenugreek seed, pickled ginger jostle for attention with a hint of medlar segueing into peanut brittle and salted caramel. The finish is taut, verging on stony-metallic with gripping lemon-grazed acidity and an amazing nuttiness that reverberates around the palate for such a long time. If Chateau-Chalon were a book it would be A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Sake for the Wine Drinker by Ben Gardiner

Originally from Perth, Australia. Ben is part of the management team at Roka, Mayfair. Previous to this he was the Head Sommelier at Roka on Charlotte Street.

I was at my first Sake tasting and I was tasting Sake number five. I realised that they all tasted exactly the same to me. My fellow taster, the infinity talented and patient Natsuki, hummed thoughtfully over the his glass,

“Do you get that clear flavour of green apples?”

What? No! “Oh yeah”

“Mmmm… and fennel on the finish”

“Uh-huh. And a bit…err...ricey?”

I cried a little inside. Years of tasting and the best I could do was ‘ricey’. Even as I type now a squiggly red line appears below that combination of letters to further remind me that this is not a real word.

It can be the same when tasting something new. You find yourself lost because tasting is all about remembering. You set up markers in your mind that steer the flavours in your mouth to a destination in your memory. With a wine you might be looking for a familiar acid or tannin structure or fruit or mineral character but these markers have little relevance for Sake. I had to reset my palate and break some old tasting habits.

For starters Sake contains around half the acid of wine. You do not get the same levels of tart malic and tartaric acid and there are not any strong citric characters here either (sorry Riesling fans!). Instead there is an abundance of lactic acid. It’s normal to expect some milky or even creamy notes in your sake especially among the less polished Honjozos and Junmais.

Then there is also the fact that Sake production does not allow any preservatives so most Sake are pasteurised, twice. This does mean no sulphur and no bad bacteria but it also means less nutrients, no good bacteria and none of the volatile living goodness that we take for granted in wine. Combine the pasteurisation with the fact that sake is often carbon-filtered for clarity and you get a product that tends to taste restrained and pared down.

This probably explains why our first sip of sake can seem a little flat or limpid and it’s also the reason why I love giving sake initiates unpasteurised (or, Nama) Sake. Nama Sake is wilder, sharper, brasher if you will and in that there is something more familiar for wine drinkers. Most sake breweries make a nama sake that is identical in production to their standard sakes, barring the sauna treatment, so tasting them together can be a particularly educational exercise. Fun too, if you do it right.

Natural wine fans and hipsters can take it one step further and hunt down some Muroka Nama Genshu (un-carbon filtered, un-pasteurised and undiluted) sakes. The higher alcohol content of this ‘pure’ style of sake also helps to push the volatile esters making it that little bit easier to smell what’s going on in your glass. Sake production generates twice the amount of aromatic esters that wine production does but somewhere between the filtering and pasteurisation you seem to lose a lot of the rawer aromas.

Starting at the more extreme styles of sake can actually seem more familiar to wine drinkers and working your way back towards more traditional styles suddenly becomes a much more rewarding journey. So grab a glass and get tasting. It’s time to start a new habit.