New Wines In Part 2
Hi all, we've started serving sake and rice wine with our Sushi Sunday
and my initial email was going to be about that, but diving in over
this weekend I realized I needed to learn a lot more myself, so that
email will wait until next week. So for Jazz Fest I thought I'd talk
about some of our roses, and new BTG wines as well.
JOISEPH PIROSKA 2021
At its worst rose wine is merely a marketing gimmick, and the whole
gimmick is that it's pink, and it looks nice in clear bottles. In
Provence this has gotten so bad that a lot of the winemaking is
focused around getting a particular salmon color from the wine, and
little else. It's exhausting, and it's one of the reasons that rose
has such a bad reputation, and why even serious producers of rose
can't get respect for their bottlings. This wine, from Burgenland in
Austria, is one of those bottles. It's a bottle that exists on the
edge of almost being a red wine, but still having enough freshness and
drinkability to work as a rose on a hot summer day. It's a mostly
Zweigelt and Pinot Noir, with the rest being a "Gemischer Satz" or
field blend, from a vineyard planted to a number of varieties. It's a
wine I'd serve someone who is looking for a very, very light red wine,
or someone looking for a truly interesting rose.
Domaine Jaulin-Plaisantin ‘Le Dolmen’ Chinon Rosé 2021
Every since I started buying wine seriously there's always a few wines
that are etched on my memory. At one point I tried to commit every
wine I would drink to ememory, take serious notes etc. but after a
while it became tedious and the boring wines remained boring. This
wine, a simple rose from Chinon, made from cabernet franc is one of
those wines I'm always going to remember, and I wasn't expecting it
all. One thing that poor rose production does is strip away the
characteristics of the red grape and make it something completely
innocuous. Cabernet franc is a grape with very easily identifiable
characteristics, mainly bell pepper (a result of the grape containing
pyrazines, the same compound that flavors bell peppers) and minerally
earth. To have these translated into a light rose is remarkable. It's
serious and fresh at the same time. I had trouble finding much about
these wines besides this from one of their importers "The domaine is a
partnership between Sebastien Jaulin and Yves Plaisantin. Sebastien
had been a vineyard owner in Chinon for some decades. Yves made wines,
and most notably at Clusel-Roch in Cote Rotie. Jaulin-Plaisantin is 16
hectares of organically and biodynamically farmed vines in Chinon, and
more specifically, Cravant Les Coteaux." I'm going to get more of this
and pour it on special so everyone gets to try some.
Brand Wildrose Pur 2021
Brand PetNat Rose
Jonas and Daniel Brand are, in terms of winemaking experience,
children. They are 29 and 33 respectively, and it's kind of
mindblowing the quality of wines that they have managed to make in
such a short period of time. I've talked about this before, but in the
second half of the 20th Century German wines were badly in need of
some new life. The profile of the country had shrunk from one of the
great wine regions of the world to that of a country making cheap
sweet rieslings for the British, and very expensive sweet rieslings
for a shrinking market of collectors. Other wines were little
regarded, and were mostly cheaply made for local consumption. In the
past twenty or so years that's slowly began to change, with new
producers following their French counterparts to pay more attention to
little known varieties, and to start rejecting chemical farming. The
main thing that's come out of this is the resurgence of fine red and
rose wines and these two are perfect examples of this. The rose, like
the Joiseph Piroska above, is a serious rose from Pinot Noir, and the
sparkling is one of my favorite pet-nats year in and year out, from a
little known grape Blauer Portugieser.
Enderle & Moll Spatburgunder Rose
Enderle & Moll Pinot Noir
While we're on the subject of serious German reds and roses, we have
to talk about Enderle & Moll, who more than anyone in the country,
have influenced the revival of red wine, especially serious pinots.
They are working in Baden, which even at German wines height was an
unknown backwater in terms of recognition. Starting out in 2007
Enderle & Moll started making pinots from some of the oldest vines in
the area and treating them old school burgundies in the cellar,
eschewing technology and new oak for old barrels and hands off (but
clean) vinification. The pinots can remind you of the best Burgundies
but they are definitely not, nor are they trying to be. They are
absolutely transparent wines of terroir. The rose, like the roses
above, is a deeper, more serious rose, which the importer describes as
" having the making of a perfect party guest — a fun fresh side plus
depth if you dig and pay attention" and I think that's perfect.
Finally, a new one on the BTG list,
Maria Ernesta Berucci Bianco Passerina 2021
Maria Ernesta Berucci is a young winemaker from a tiny town south of
Rome who has been working a tiny plot of her family's land since 2009.
Her father was the longtime head of the local cooperative, and later
the head of a larger winery. After she learned to make wine she
decided that it was time that her family make wine under their own
name again, and she began to recuperate the best vineyards from her
father's larger projects. This wine is 70% passerina, an ancient
variety found almost exclusively in this area, and 30% trebbiano, one
of Italy's great white grapes. This wine is a bit wild and funky,
everything I love about natural wines.
Until next time,
Cory