FUN wine (Carnival Wine)
Happy Mardi Gras Y'all.
Last year on Mardi Gras day two dear friends of mine got married and
right before I carried a bottle of pet-nat to them to celebrate their
nuptials so I thought I'd talk about fun wines.
Conceptually in wine 'fun' is a hard concept. Wine is often talked
about in terms that are entirely too serious, and with entirely too
much pomp around them. There's terroir, tradition, vintages, out of
control prices, and preciousness that is at odds with just sitting
back and enjoying a glass or bottle with friends. So for Mardi Gras
here are some of of my favorites in that vein, with explanations that
are probably too serious, but pay me little mind. Here are some of my
favorites in the cellar right now.
Gustavo Riffo Pipeno
Old vine Chilean Pais certainly has to be one of the great
unrecognized treasures of the wine world. Originally brought to the
Americas by the Spanish to produce sacrament wine it became the most
widely planted grape in Chile until it was supplanted by popular
Bordeaux varieties for export. Gustavo hails from an old winemaking
family that luckily kept many of their old vines (some as old as 200
years) and eschewed making cheap cabernet. After an interneship at
Benzinger winery in California, one of the pioneers of bio-dynamic
farming, Gustavo returned to Chile, dedicated to improving farming
practices on his family land while also honoring the heritage left to
him. Pais has long been made as an everyday wine, bottled young in
liters for local consumption, and while Gustavo makes one of the best
versions I've ever had, the style remains the same, easily drinkable
for a group of people.
http://www.josepastorselections.com/gustavo-riffo.html
Mas Goma 'L'Alba al Turo' Pet-Nat
Pet-Nat (short for Petillant Naturel) is a relatively new term for a
very old style of winemaking. In the 90s winemakers from the Loire
Valley, first among them a professional clown and enology professor
named Christian Chaussard, started trying to make sparkling wines
without the expense and equipment of making them Methode Champenoise.
Methode Champenoise is the main way of making sparkling wine
worldwide. It involves fermenting a wine completely dry, and then
adding a mix of yeast and sugar to the bottle and then sealing it back
up, which kicks off a secondary fermentation in bottle that produces
c02. The equipment and time in this process is prohibitively expensive
for small producers. Christian studies led him to the small appelation
Bugey in the Savoie, which had been making slightly sweet sparkling
wines for centuries in their caves with no yeast or need for a whole
bottling line. Wine was bottled while it was still fermenting and
still had some sugar left in it, tucked away in cold caves in the
winter, and slowly as the weather warmed up fermentation would restart
and the bubbles would come. It's a delicate process, bottle too early
and the sugar would be too much, leaving a syrupy sludge. Bottle with
slightly too much sugar and the pressure would build too much,
bursting the bottles. Bottle with too little sugar and the wine would
be entirely too dry and acidic, with too much dead yeast. This is the
perfect synthesis of brand new producers reaching back and
re-discovering tradition. Winemakers in Bugey had been utilizing this
technique for centuries, winemakers like the family of Elisabetta
Montesissa in Italy (whose wines we carry as well) have been using
this technique for almost 1000 years and suddenly you have a bunch of
kids in the Loire Valley and, in this case Penedes in Spain, making
sparkling far from the industrialization of Champagne and regions that
adopted the technique. This is a very in depth explanation for a wine
that is meant to be unfussy, drunk in quantity.
https://www.selectionmassale.com/mas-goma.html
Marie Thibault Roue Qui Tourne Pet-Nat Rose
Marie Thibault is a direct descendent of Christian Chaussard when it
comes to Pet-Nat, learning from his star student Pascal Potaire at Les
Capriades (perhaps the finest pet-nats in the world) how to make these
wines. Coming from old vine Gamay in Azay-le-Rideau (where Quentin
Bourse makes wine as well) this wine is as good as it gets when it
comes to pet-nat. Pure fruit, bright, brilliant wine that you can
drink without a care.
https://www.selectionmassale.com/marie-thibault.html
Elisabetta Foradori Teroldego 'Lezer'
The first time I tried this wine was a bit of shock to me. Elisabetta
Foradori is a legend in Italy, producing the finest wines from
Trentino (I'll accept no argument on this, her wines are the best), a
small alpine region in Northern Italy. Previously I've only had wines
from her of serious depth, wines to sit and ponder over. Brilliant,
but never something you could drink chilled and fast. But, because
she's a genius, she started making this light Teroldego a couple years
ago, a 'summer wine' in her own words, something fresh, owing more to
the winemaking traditions of Beaujolais, with short maceration, light
color, and low tannins, than her own wines. The result is a beautiful,
delicate wine that I hope we still have in stock when the weather
warms.
https://louisdressner.com/producers/foradori
Until two weeks, I hope no one wants to read one of these on Lundi Gras.
Cory