Summer: The Italian job

Packing up the wine for the summer beach holiday was easy—a case of Riesling from Germany and Alsace, another of Beaujolais 2009, a few bottles of Chablis for serious fish dinners, a couple of Champagne, and a serious red for the thick steaks we get from the local butcher in Cornwall.      
       The red was a no-brainer for us, but a surprise to our guests: Vajra Barbera d’Alba 2008, one of our favourite wines. The usual match for steak, especially grilled, is Cabernet or Bordeaux, I know. Surely not for flavour, though, with those tannins and alcohol rasping against the succulence of the meat? Barbera generally has a better balance of acidity and astringency, and a more amenable mix of fruit overtones, for caramelized, juicy steak, and its restraint doesn’t tire out your palate. No snob value, of course, but a better meal in the end.
       I first visited Vajra 23 years ago, right after they’d finished building the new winery, and the first thing that impressed me about the wines was their balance and restraint. The late ‘80s and early ‘90s saw a glut of French oak, after the ebullient Giacomo Bologna won acclaim for his woody barrique Barberas, so Vajra’s, made in large Slavonian oak barrels (as they still are) stood out as clear expressions of the grape and the soil. If anything, the wines have gotten even better. It doesn’t say so on the label, but the grapes are farmed organically. I’m not surprised.

Catch me a Cab

I went to two parties in a row held by other parents at my son’s school—a gauntlet of Pinot Grigio. I would gladly have rather settled for a beer, but none was forthcoming. By the time I got home, I was in a state, I needed a red wine desperately. Also, I had a duck breast ready, marinated in a hoisin-ginger-garlic sauce all day; grilled, it would char a bit. No wimpy wine here, for sure, but not too dry either, certainly not oaky.       
       Rummaging around, I found a Chateau St. Jean Cabernet Sauvignon “Cinq Cepages” 2001, labelled as from Sonoma County. So, the five classic grapes of Bordeaux, from different vineyards around the county. Fine. Ten years old, I thought, just right. And indeed it was, classic California Cabernet flavors predominating, classic Sonoma too, slightly less austere than most of Napa, cassis, all the right markers. It was a perfect partner for the duck too, matching it step for step all the way through, vibrant, never flagging.
       It’s where California can have the edge, if they’ll lay off the hang time and oak and extended maceration. Not only for the quality of the fruit, the way the ripeness shines through, but also the degree of fruitiness that will always be different from Bordeaux’s, and that will always be superior with most food—certainly there, but not too much, a touch that illuminates the wine. It’s become harder to find, but it’s a joy when you do.

Wine of the week: Greek to me

Here’s where blinkered vision can take you: I was reading about the severe problem of the Greek economy in the papers this weekend, and, having just had an absolutely superb bottle of Agiorgitiko the night before, my first thought was, “Why don’t they just make and sell more Agiorgitiko?”       
       Of course, the problems of corruption, cronyism, and ineptitude are not going to be alleviated by any amount of wine, however good. In meantime, there is that Gaia Estate Agiorgitiko 2006, from Nemea, in the Peloponnese (the large, scraggly land mass just below the mainland). I’m amazed that the grape doesn’t have a better reputation, but that seems to be because of very high yields in the flatland vineyards that make it something of an ordinary workhorse grape.
       In the hills above (this one is grown at heights of 500-600 meters), the grapes produce a brightly purple, velvety, plummy wine, spiked with a bit of fresh, blackcurrant  vibrancy. Although it’s deliciously distinctive, it was often used as a blending wine, to improve more ambitious wines with color and liveliness. Rather backward thinking. Isn’t that where we came in?

"Natural wine" -- let us begin. . .

The first time I ever knowingly tasted an organic wine, more than 30 years ago, it was poured by a bearded, sandaled, sweetly sincere winemaker in Mendocino, California, and I have never again been so grateful to see a spit bucket. Good manners prevented me from pointing out that the wine might have had a better fate if it had been mixed with olive oil and drizzled over the salad (also organic, of course) rather than poured into a glass for consumption by someone you didn’t loathe.
       The last time I had an organic wine was last week. It was a Chardonnay from New Zealand, bursting with peaches-and-cream vibrancy, and my reaction was a profound sadness that I didn’t own a cellar full of the stuff (for the record, it was Clos de Ste. Anne “Naboth’s Vineyard” 2008).
       It  may well be that you could duplicate a similar set of opposing experiences next week or next year, even during the same tasting, festival, or dinner, but, increasingly, if you are willing to believe that organic grapes and winemaking are the way forward, you’ll never walk alone.
       In fact, you’ll have a lot of company. It may not always be the sort of company you’d wish—there will probably be some shouting involved, even jostling—but the promise of better wine should keep us marching down the road.
       Shouldn’t it?

Malbec: Take three to tango

We tasted our way through a run of Malbecs last week, quite a mixed bag. The rejects went down the drain for what’s becoming the usual reason: Rampant body-building. Most of the overblown, over-oaked, musclebound versions were easy to spot before their corks were pulled, by heavy bottles with deep punts and minimalist designer labels—ego-driven wines, determined to bluster their way into the winner’s circle.
       Three made the cut and livened up our barbecue weekend, with burgers and ribs for lunch, steak for dinner, and a boned-out leg of lamb stuffed with feta cheese and oregano for Sunday supper. Las Moras 2009 was perfect for lunch and Altos “Las Hormigas” 2009 for dinner, both dark and luscious and supple, with buoyant, persistent, plummy fruit, while the Yauquén 2009, a little more serious, tannic, and fuller, matched Sunday's lamb (it could age a while, but its angular edginess is attractive now, and it would be a shame to lose that aspect).
       Malbec has clearly come into its own in the last few years, but with no consensus at all about style—and a lot of attempts to make it into faux-Cabernet big boys--it’s something of a minefield, and not easy to navigate. (Price and effusive back labels offer no real help.) The good ones are worth the search, though.