We opened that nice bottle almost by accident : B. had this Cour-Cheverny in her own stock of bottles but at some point it had turned a bit oily like it happens sometimes (rarely) with some white natural wines. The wine went back to a normal state by itself after a while but she was worried that this episode could have made the wine less pleasurable and she had decided to head off the possibility and open it for a check. When a wine becomes oily it actually becomes a bit turbid but with a special twist, that's why the common word for this state is oily. Being alive, natural wines are more prone to this type of accident during the élevage, be it in vats or bottles, even though this odd visual aspect doesn't always translate into tasting faults. Whatever, thanks to what may have been excessive precaution, we ended up drinking a beautiful Romorantin. Romorantin is another of these little-known varieties that you find in the Loire, it yields white wines of character that can stand very long laying down. This bottle was a "les Petits Acacias", this vintage had a lower alcohol level and Hervé Villemade decided to shorten the élevage time and label it under a lower cuvée. I love when good winemakers downgrade their own cuvées, they're usually over cautious and the wine gets out better than expected, at least for consumers like us. I had tasted the wine during my visit at Villemade in 2008 when it was still in the casks, it was the first wine tasted in the flight then. The wine was is a well-structured white with a mineral feel and a good length in the mouth. There is character and elegance in that Romorantin wine, something particular with the variety and which grows with the years I think. I have to pinch myself to believe what I wrote after my visit, that it was priced 5,5 € only when bottled... Why is that that it's often when a wine is sold out that you realize that you missed a great opportunity....
Are we wine geeks perceived as nerds ?
Spending time in wine tastings chatting about all the winemaking process, the vineyard-work challenges, the filtering & fining before bottling and all sorts of very specialized issues, I wonder sometimes if we wine geeks aren't going too far and missing the point when we're perfectionist to the extreme, risking to be perceived as trespassing into the vignerons' field of expertise. That's where we probably look more like wine nerds and risk raising the wrath of the Ogre-led mob of anti-nerds bullies, I mean the outraged winemakers revolting against our invasive curiosity. I remember hearing vignerons telling me that sometimes they get upset (even if they don't show it) when being told by wine geeks, be they cavistes or buyers, how they should conduct their vinification or vineyard management to improve their wines. Didn't I myself allow in a few occasions to suggest such or such winemaker to abstain from filtering his wine (I only risked that when I knew well the vigneron) ? More than one vigneron must have been irritated by our wine-nerds attempts at meddling into their mysterious art. In the place of a Revenge of the Nerds, we're more likely to face a revenge of the stressed winemaker as a backlash for our know-all behaviour, beware of the Ogre-led mob of artisan vignerons getting at us for our deserved punishment.... Let's remember that wine is best enjoyed with a light mind in good company and that we can live happily without fully understanding the how and whys of its alchemy. And there is no higher score for a wine at a given time and place than when the bottle is downed without restraint. The picture above is for illustration of knowledgeable wine amateurs only, it of course doesn't imply any parallel to the notion of wine nerds...
A very nice wine in a humble container
This was at the opening of B.' exhibition in Paris : in the back of the gallery, I'm filling small jugs of a natural-wine bib from the Languedoc that I had bought the previous days for that purpose. B. wanted some red in addition to the sparkling and I went to the Crus du Soleil, a wine shop in Paris specialized in wines from the Languedoc. I remembered from when I profiled them in my Paris artisan cavistes page that they had a nice choice of bibs from that region too. The lady at the rue
d'Aligre shop (they have two shops in Paris) gave me the choice between three of the bibs as I was saying that I looked foremost for easy drinkability. When I saw that one of them was from Loïc Roure (domaine du Possible) and that the wine was sulphur free, I thought that would make it. There are so many exhibition openings where the wine is utterly disappointing that I was happy to take part to the selection of what the visiting artists and friends would drink unsuspectedly. This wine was a wonderful surprise , such a smooth easy drink with velvety mouthfeel all the while with a bright freshness and a beautiful range of fruit aromas.... It was a hit among the crowd, and after having myself worried that this wine from Loïc Roure could be a wine that failed the standards due for bottling, I was immediately relieved when I swallowed this fruity velvet. I paid 27 € for these 5 liters, really a steal and while I'm writing these lines, I'm worrying that it may be soon sold out at the shop because I mentioned its availability in this post. This wine has been made the most natural way, without additives, and this shows again how talented vignerons can make very affordable fresh little gems in regions that are known to be hot. Imagine how good value this is : at 27 € for 5 liters or barely over 5 € a liter, it is the equivalent of maybe 3,5 € for a 75cl bottle... Hard to believe when you swallow glass after glass of this thing... The wine is a blend of a majority of Grenache with some Syrah and Mourvèdre. Makes 13° in alcohol. Name of the cuvée : Nunc Est Bibendum, under-titled C'est maintenant qu'il faut boire, by En Attendant la Pluie, which may be a négoce owned by Loïc Roure. P.S. The sparkling was an André Fouassier Saint Phallier 2008, a méthode traditionelle that we bought for 4,7 € tax included at the winery. Nice stuff, easy drink too.
Philippe Combes, geologist in the Languedoc
Thanks to Victorine Crispel of the wine communication agency Vinifera, I had the opportunity to attend a very interesting and diverse wine tasting centered on the terroirs of Languedoc. This multi-faceted event, which took place in Saint Germain-des-Près right on the other side of the church, opened our eyes on the complex geology of the Languedoc region and allowed us to taste wines made there on different terroirs where the mineral part was particularly central and striking. To make it short, three people sharing the same adventure in the Languedoc were present that evening, Philippe Combes, the geologist pictured here pouring a white, Thierry Rodriguez the vigneron and négociant at Mas Gabinèle and Jean Natoli the coordinator and enologist. Philippe Combes, with the help of 4th member of the team Olivier Proust (who designed the slide show), gave a long speech about the geological history of the Languedoc and its implication in the different terroirs. Very insightful conference indeed, the man knows very well his subject (the picture illustrating my geeks/nerds story was shot during that conference). The white wine he's going to pour on the picture was my favorite white that evening : Mas Gabinèle Grenache Gris 2009, a surprising wine labelled ad vin de table : refined nose with hints of honey, honey candy in the mouth. Very nice mouthfeel down to the swallowing, pleasant and balanced. Yields were 20 hectoliters/hectares here. Makes 14,5 ° in alcolhol and you need to read it yourself to believe it. Very well made.
Jean Natoli of Stratagème
From what I understood, Jean Natoli is the initiator of this terroir- and minerality-centered project where vineyards and cuvées are selected for their striking minerality. Agriculture engineer by training, Jean Natoli is also an enologist and he created an enology consulting firm and an analysis lab under the mother company of Eonoconseil. Through this activity, he met many vignerons working in different terroirs across the Languedoc, and he saw the great potential with making parcel-selections wines in several unique stony soils of the region. The growers weren't always aware of the potential interest of this approach or too busy and isolated to do it and market by themselves. Jean Natoli convinced the vignerons to vinify separately the plots that he considered were particularly promising and he helped set up the Stratagème project in Thierry Rodriguez's négoce Prieuré Saint Sever. The word Stratagème itself plays with the words strats (strates) and gems (gemmes), as a reference to the terroirs-gems burried under the geological strats. The wines would be terroir selections and maketed as such, and the wine range of the négoce offers 8 cuvées, with a mineral-sounding terroir name like Argile (clay), Galets (pebblestones), Schistes (schists), Grès (sandstone),Poudingue, Calcaire (limestone), Marnes (marls), Basalte (basalt), Sable (sand), Tuf. What I tasted was pretty impressing, it combined the thick minerality of the selected terroirs with the expert winemaking of Jean Natoli. Here are the two wines of the Stratagème wine range that I prefered : __ Stratagème Poudingue 2007. Coteaux du Languedoc. Poudingue as a name is inspired by the English word of Pudding, it refers to cement-like compacted sediments in the undersoil where different types of stones are packed together. The wine is elegant in the mouth and well balanced, a nice drink with a nice substance and minerality. 33 000 bottles have been made of this cuvée. It sells about 10 € tax included, which seems good value to me. I should be ashamed but I didn't ask (or remember if I was told) about the varities in this wine. This show how the question takes the back seat compared to the striking minerality here. __ Stratagème Basalte 2007, Coteaux du Languedoc. Nice mouth, precise and neat, small ripe red fruits. Something fresh, bright in the mouth with refined tannins, goes down pretty well, very onctuous. Majority of Syrah here with some Mourvèdre. Costs 10 € public price (tax included) or 5,5 € for professional buyers. A steal.
Here is the technical sheet (in French) about all these cuvées and terroirs.
Jean Natoli is undefatigable and he's setting up hiw own winery in Aniane...
CRB's Catherine Roussel queuing at a stall in Saint Aignan
Going to the market on weekends in Saint Aignan in the Loire is always a pleasure, the size of the maket reflects the size of the town and you come across familiar faces, some you can put a name on and some you don't really know but it's as if you knew them forever. I feel like an expat here, sharing briefly the life of an almost foreign country compared to Paris. There are markets in Paris of course, but while it's also pleasant there it's not really the same. I also visit street markets in Paris (there are some every day, just in different parts of town). In Paris the markets are not that different, of course there is the size, and also the leaflet-handing activists (usually off-duty public-sector employees who seem to have too much free time) that you won't find so often in small towns. The products may not be more authentic than in several good Paris street markets (except for the goat-cheese farmers' stalls) but the air, the mood is different, and that's what I like. Along this topic, I read recently a very interesting FT article by Simon Kuper, who analyzes the magic of being an expat somewhere, ignoring by cause of transplantation the codes and the status of a given society, and I think that this factor may play a role in this enjoyment of the market day in Saint Aignan. Although as a convinced citizen of the world, I'm having to some extent an expat view on the French society and its weird psyche and modus operandi, I'm still aware of the subliminal codes at work in Paris and I feel that this awareness vanishes when wandering in the deep provinces. Read this FT artile, it's eye opening and gives you the taste for freedom and the advantages of drowning oneself in a completely alien culture of which you don't understand fully all the codes.
Sommelier pouring
This was at the Languedoc terroirs event, I was sure to have seen this fellow taster somewhere before but couldn't find out where, until I suddenly remembered this wine-tasting performance last year in the Centre Pompidou in Paris (Snow White story) : Linda Grabe was the sommelière in charge in the event designed by Catherine Bay. These days she is still involved in events where modern art and wine are intimately mixed : she set up Flying Dinners with a friend : This is about one-time dinners gathering no more than 10 people, they never take place in the same venues and there is an exclusive thing in every detail, including the wines of course. In each of these special dinners, a modern-art artist presents his work in a sensible way. These dinners are also like a cruise in the sense that the experience has this certain uniqueness that makes that these people who shared good time around a table usually become friends and keep in touch. You'll object that I'm mono-maniac but I think I know what kind of wines she might use for that purpose...
Flair bartending in Japan
Lots of flashy colors in these glasses, which shouldn't make salivate the amateur of real cocktails, but I take it for what it is, simple, no-fuss fun... The music in the background is pretty bad (why is that flair bartending is often associated with loud, ugly music ?), but one of the reasons I like this video may lie in the background comments by the TV crew and journalists : I love these typical sounds of the Japanese onlookers and public oooh-ing and awing in front of a performance they like, it's so typically Japanese... It's like when we French say oh la la, we don't really think about it but foreigners smile and like it when they hear that, this is everyday France, and Japan woudn't be Japan without these spontaneous vocal expressions... We learn at the end that the guy here __here again, only in Japan__ is not only a qualified sommelier but a qualified bartender... His name is Takanori Masuda and he was among the best flair bartenders in the FBA Advanced Tour. No need to say that we hope that the situation gets under control in Japan N-plants and that the Japanese get back to their cheering mood.
Unpasteurized Sake 3 years later
I was supposed to post this mini story in my last wine news but I considered then that there was enough of them, and I was inspired to think so because now is the time for it. We opened this bottle of sake a few weeks ago, having brought it back from Nihonmatsu in the Fukushima prefecture in 2008. We had bought it at the Himonoya Sake Brewery when
we visited, it is Nama-zake, or
unpasteurized sake and the manager took it from the brewery shop's fridge. Nama means alive in Japanese, and you can see the Kanji sign on the left. The unpasteurized sake is on the rise I think, I'm not expert enough to pretend to say why but I think it's more tasty and alive than the pasteurized version. It just needs more caution in the handling and storage which is an important hurdle in its spread. All along these years, we kept the bottle in a fridge, waiting for an opportunity to open it with amateurs. This time cale recently and it was such a pleasure (but to be frank, it's the case with most sakes for me). It was a fresh and silky drink with very pleasant aromas that I have a hard time to remember as I didn't take notes. The back label (pic on right), which says it is made from 50%-polished rice, advises to store the bottle in a cool place and drink it without delay, but like natural wine, a living sake can have a surprising life span (this one travelled to the other side of the world and was 3 years old when we drank it).
Read this insightful Sake World page by John Gauntner on Nama-zake. I don't know if the Himonoya brewery suffered damage but it is located in the vicinity of the tsunami-stricken area; it is a traditional brewery which works only in winter and they may have hopefully bottled already all their sake, which would leave them less exposed to the next months' difficulties. We're also thinking to the Daishichi brewery that we visited nearby in the Fukushima Prefecture as they are also located well inside the potential evacuation area. There are 73 breweries in the Fukushima prefecture, 20 having sustained quake-related damage, according to this follow-up page by Sake World.
Please consider helping Japan in these difficult times, there is also a fund to help affected breweries overcome the destruction (see this page). But money is not the only mean, and like John Gauntner puts it : Prayers and good vibes will be felt as well. Also, help stem absurd aversion toward Japanese products, be they sake or otherwise, that might arise related to events that took place here. Finally, drink lots of sake. Especially Tohoku sake. While this may seem like a joke, it is not. All supportive efforts will help! And of course, drink Japanese Whisky too... Go read Tokyo Bling where you can follow Japan's difficult recovery.
Better bread every day
I've been casually making our own bread from time to time for a few weeks, and thanks to the comments and advice I got from my dedicated story on the subject I improved noticeably the quality of the bread, in particular by letting
the dough rest and take size a whole night
before baking it. The result is having a bread with more air in its inside, still far from Cory Cartwright's home-made bread but there's progress... I must also concede that I'm still lazy in the respect of important details, for example in the recent tries I used the tap water which has some chlorine and is not ideal for bread making, the fermentation organisms needing to be left unharmed. Preparing your bread makes you look like a substance dealer, I noticed, with this leaven powder weight estimation with a knife on a paper sheet (I've nothing precise to weigh the leaven in Paris)... I'm considering making one-kilogram breads now, it would take off this weighing problem, at least for the flour. Speaking of flour, You can find organic flour at 99 euro-cents in shops like Dia or Auchan.
Comments
i can say i only had this experience one time where wine turned as you say "oily". for the life of me i cannot remember the type of wine but i believe it was a white. this was a few years ago though
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i can say i only had this experience one time where wine turned as you say "oily". for the life of me i cannot remember the type of wine but i believe it was a white. this was a few years ago though
Posted by: Cindy McMichael | April 01, 2011 at 10:09 PM
Was the award presented to the Japanese bartending juggler for Most Excruciating Wait for Your Drink for No Apparent Reason?
No tip from me!
In other thoughts, I hope the natural wines in my cellar don't one present me with an oily "treat".
Posted by: King Krak, I Drink The Wine | April 19, 2011 at 03:56 AM