Wine News (50)

Christian Vache, of La Monardière (Rhone) This was at the tasting day of Les Toqués des Dentelles, a group of wineries from the southern Rhone doing a good work. This took place in a restaurant in Paris and I managed to go there after work. All these vintners work without additives, from what I know. The tasting was free but for professionals, and I spotted a few acquaintances among the attendees, including Agnès (on the left), the caviste behind Le Nouveau Nez (second picture on this story) and Mark Williamson (on the right), the founder of the oldest Paris wine bar, Willi's Wine Bar.
Christian Vache is the man behind an iconic winery in the southern Rhone region of Vacqueyras : la Monardière.
__ La Monardière, Vin de Pays 2011 (red). Grenache. Nice acidity & balance, with an animal side and reduction, which is not worrying for me.
__ La Monardière Vacqueyras les Calades 2011 (red). Very, very nice freshness, the mouth is splendidly bright. Balanced.
__ La Monardière Vacqueyras les 2 Monardes 2011 (red). Straight from the vat (not bottled yet, is was to be bottled in november). Surprising acidity on the tongue. Rather elegant and nice chew with somme astringency on the sides of the mouth. 70 % Grenache vinified in vats and 30 % Syrah vinified in casks, the whole being later blended in 1/2 muids where it spent a while. Unfiltered (no wine is filtered here). Very nice, this cuvée makes a volume of 250 hectoliters, that's the biggest cuvée in the estate. The vines are older than 50.
__ La Monardière Cuvée Vieilles Vignes 2010. 60 % Grenache (80 years old), 20 % Syrah (40 years) and 20 % Mourvèdre (20 years), each vinified separately. The mouth here is just outstanding by its freshness and the quality of its tannins. Here again, a beautiful balance which is so hard to achieve in the Rhone.

Jean David Also at the Paris tasting of "les Toqués" (southern Rhone), the Domaine Jean David, the wines of which were among the ones I preferred that evening :
__ Domaine Jean David Côtes du Rhone (generic) 2011, with a red label. Unfiltered red wine. Nose with aromas of garrigue in the heat of summer, eucalyptus. Mouth : outstanding balance, not burning although high in alcohol. A pleasure to drink.
__ Domaine Jean David Côtes du Rhone Seguret 2011. With a new green label, he says. The mouth here is exceptional for its freshness . There's a mineral side in this freshness here, it's like if you were drinking stones. Refined and intense wine.
__ Domaine Jean David Côtes du Rhone Seguret 2010. The previous vintage, with a smaller label. Less pleasant after the 2011, the tannins are more forward, more present in the mouthfeel.
__ Domaine Jean David le Beau Nez 2010. Another red Côtes du Rhone. This estate has been farmed organic for 35 years. Wines are vinified without SO2 until bottling (a bit added then). Very beautiful wine, powerful and majestic, with a good length and refineness. That's good ! Lots of pleasure because in addition to all this there is an obvious life feel in this wine.
__ Domaine Jean David Côtes du Rhone les Levants 2010. This red also offers a good freshness in the mouth, a bot of volatile too maybe but that's fine.
__ Domaine Jean David Côtes du Rhone Seguret les Couchants 2010. This red has a roasted aroma on the nose with eucalyptus notes. Exotic wood too. Feels quite high i alcohol but if you can hold it there's a nice aromatic concentration in the mouth here. La lunotte Tandem 2007 Sorry, picture shot too late with the bottle empty...
I got this bottle of Tandem when I visited Christophe foucher's La Lunotte a few years ago and I shamelessly let it aside for years. I fell upon this humble vin de table in my wine stock in the Loire and decided that I couldn't wait more, this table wine being probably made without added sulfites and the cellar temperature where I keep part of my wines in the Loire not being very stable, I might risk to loose the wine if I waited more. This was a beautiful suprise, a lightly perly candy with aromas of grenadine and raspberry and the immediate feel at the first sip that you're drinking something alive with its gentle energy. Don't underestimate the capability of sulfur-free wines to stand years in not-so-cool temperature conditions, they'll surprise you. A real-wine tasting event in Blois If you're in Paris around december 1st, you might consider visiting this gem of a wine-tasting event featuring only natural wines made by great people from the Loire, whom you by the way might have come across in this website : Les Vins du Coin is now a few years old as a tasting event and it's small enough for you to live a real human experience in addition to getting access to beautiful and heartening wines. Blois is a nice city along the Loire river, easily accessible from Paris by train (one hour or so if I remember - train schedules) and you can make the round trip with ease and not worry about breath checks.
You will meet there Bruno Allion, Béatrice et Michel Augé, Mikaël Bouges, Alain Courtault & Simon Tardieux, Joël Courtault, Christophe Foucher, Nathalie Gaubicher [recent posts], Renaud Guettier, Emile Heredia, Olivier Lemasson, Noëlla Morantin, Pascal Potaire et Moses Gadouche--Les Capriades, Jean Marie et Thierry Puzelat--Clos du Thierry Puzelat & Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme, Michel & Sylviane Quenioux, Jean-Pierre Robinot, Anne-Cécile Roy, Jérôme & Dominique Sauvèteauv, Laura Semeria, Cyrille Sevin, Pascal Simonutti, Jean-Luc Tessier, Philippe Tessier, Hervé Villemade...
Location : 25 rue Jean-Baptiste Charcot, Blois - december 1 & 2 - Entry fee : 4 €
www.lesvinsducoin.com Rebirth of artisanal winemaking in Russia (follow-up) Russia, where some sort of home winemaking has managed to survive under the radar during the socialist ordeal, is slowly getting back in track on all the aspects of the trade. Here on this photographic story shot in the area of Rostov-on-Don you can follow the steps of an amateur winemaker in his pursuit of the best artisanal tool, the country having no market for small-size winery tools. When you see the final result with this vertical press, you can't but admire the carpenter work. You can see here the first use of the press on actual grapes, with the juice's sugar level being measured. A new winery is born...
Beyond the Russian administration's reluctance to give the aspiring new winemakers access to the market, the artisanal winemakers are indeed handicapped by the lack of winemaking-tools distribution, and I remember that Yanis Karakezidi, the most iconic artisanal winemaker in Russia today, pinpointed the issue as one of the big difficulties in setting up a garage winery. But the Russian and slavic inventiveness can hopefully get around these hassles.
Russian blogs on wine are blossoming and this one (Wineturist or Винный турист in Russian) is very informative and enjoyable. While the wine public including bloggers like this one is gatherting steam, there is still way to go for a large part of the Russian public. On the issue of wine tastes and aknowledgment of the vinous quality or the lackthereof of wines, read (translate) this story with the video (watch it, you don't need to understand Russian) showing how passerbys and visitors in a wine fair voted a medal to a fake wine (you'll see on the video how they made this wine). The blog post says incidently that many cheap wines on the shelves in the shops are no better than this Mélange Infernal or "hellish mix (en Français dans le texte)... We may laugh at this fake wine getting good notes but we have probably our share of wines doctored with all sort of correcting additives which we occasionally mistook for real wines...
There's a guest story on the blog, about a visit at the Uppa winery in Crimea, Ukraine, where the vineyards are farmed on biodynamie. Pavel Shvets who runs the Uppa winery is fully into the organic/biodynamic farming along principles set up by Rudolf Steiner and encouraged by Nicolas Joly's group, but on the winemaking side he's also aiming at a fully-natural winemaking without forced interference. Wine tasting in Moscow Russia keeps being a promising market for French wines, even if the landscape there is not as rosy as for the automobile market where Russia is already passing Germany for the sales of new cars. The wine import scene there is still much behind that stage, and divided in far-stretched types of wines : the mass bottlings and a few high-end wines. There is alas little room in between because (I think) of the excessive margins and tariffs. While automakers have set foot in Russia building factories and thus can outdo the tariffs issue by producing in Russia, the French regions and terroirs will have a hard time to do that for their wines...
On this video you can see a few scenes of a tasting organized by L-Wine, including an interview of French sommelier Olivier Poussier. L-Wine is the arm of the Luding Group, a powerful Russian company which is a major player in the wine-import business. Have a look at the wine portfolio for France at Luding. Clos Roche Blanche Cabernet 2009 When I bought this case of Cabernet from Catherine 2 years ago, she told me that I could drink it beginning in 2012, and As I knew I'd forget that very quickly, I wrote it plain on the box : boire en 2012, the hard thing being : forget about trying to open a bottle before. I kept the box closed and temptation was distracted by other wines coming and going. But I spotted the box with its incription recently and thought, well, we're well into 2002 and I better begin to drink this wine, what wine again ? I opened the box and saw it was Cabernet. I was in the Loire alone and decided to indulge in a selfish treat. A treat it was, not only for the mushrooms I had just picked the same day, but for the wine : the Cabernet Franc was very nice and elegant, its tannins were silky, giving the well-structured wine an onctuous feel. The aromas were a complex mix where I could spot some ink notes and some exotic wood like santal maybe. To drink beginning from 2012, but I'm sure that I can keep several bottles on the side safely. We'll see if I can forget them again for a couple of years...
Look at the devatting of Cabernet Franc at Clos Roche Blanche.
This mushroom season started kind of late as the underwoods were very dry until the autumn, then the rain came and the mushrooms blossomed. Just a few days ago it was gorgeous even if some mushrooms (boletos) were pretty ripe, but the late-season hedgehog mushrooms (called pieds de mouton here in France) were for their part in very good condition and sizes (you can find them until deep into december). I do like these discreet mushrooms hiding in groups under the fallen leaves, they're not as tasty as the boletos but they keep almost crunchy even after been cooked in the pan.
All pictures shot this autumn. Pigs & wine... Found on Drinks Business through mtonvin.net
Here are news that may upset hysteric crowds in the Middle East, but the science Academia is probably infiltrated by greasy infidels plotting to unnerve them... An experiment on pigs has shown that red wine has better cardiovascular benefits than vodka (how come we haven't seen deadly riots in Russia yet for this blatantly-anti--Russian research ?!). Too bad also for the Bordeaux reds that seemed until now the sole beneficiaries of the polyphenols craze and its pursuit of miracle cure against all sort of ailments, beginning with the cardiovascular ones. All red wines are heroes now on the heart-health issue. Maybe Bordeaux should riot over there to have these scientists imprisoned for blasphemy...
Extract of the research.
Science Daily on the issue. Carrying wine easy A friend of mine from Ottawa visited Paris recently and I watched him use an exotic transportation mode for the wines he intended to drink in the followwing days : a few plastic pouches made by PlatyPreserve in Seattle, Washington, and which you can use virtually like a pocket bag-in-box, limiting the oxygen contact by keeping the air out at will along your consumption of the content. The container is not glamorous compared with a regular glass bottle but it has its plus, like the limited weight when you carry around a bottle in town, say when you're heading for a picnic. I suspect they're loved in Canada because people use them to go around the absurd Canadian severity regarding wine allowance into the country, two bottles per person only, even on land crossings coming from the U.S.A. where the choice is so wide (Canada is looked upon more and more as an oddity where tax greed is the only motive to keep such outdated regulations afloat).
Note to the wine-gadget companies out there, telling about this one doesn't mean I'll do it for yours : I love to do that when I'm not compelled or asked to...
Plus, PlattyPreserve flat containers are sold at REI, the maker of the proud Novara Safari bikes, which fitted with fenders, racks and panniers are the right heavy-duty bikes that will help you cycle across the continents or explore the North-West landscapes (If someone reads me at REI, please ship me a Novara Safari)... Easy on weedkillers Thanks to Maryse at Vin et Chère, I discovered that France ranked #3 for its use of herbicides, pesticides and other chemical products in the agriculture (after the United States and Japan). The French administration made some research on the subject and you can read the rapport here. It gives insightful details on the subject, with comparative chemicals use for fruits, vineyards and other crops. There's a map on the document showing the regions with the highest use of chemical products (red zones are the ones with the highest expenses in chemical products), and I tried to put this map side by side with the main wine regions (pic on right, you can visualize the wine regions on the left). Is it me or could it be that a few wine regions are swamped by chemicals ? If I believe the maps, Bordeaux, Champagne, Languedoc, Provence and the Rhone are heavy users. The Loire, Alsace, Burgundy and Jura seem more moderate here. Of course these products can be used for other crops but when you drive through Provence, Champagne or Bordeaux the vineyards seem to be the main agricultural asset. It's also strange because Provence and Languedoc are considered almost organic thanks to ideal weather, dry and windy. But this map found in the report seems to say that these regions also spend a lot of money in phytosanitary products...
This report also gives incidently a comical insight into the Pavlovian French response to the issue : devising news taxes on chemical products, with of course redistribution in mind in the direction of organic wineries to help the gullible public swallow it (hiding behind the fight against pollution deters any possible resistance to a new tax, so it's the big trend these days). Speaking of redistribution, these fools should know that organic wineries would just love that the State and its overstaffed administration just let them alone for a change, they're not the ones looking for subsidies, they sell all their wine, stupid...
I loved their "Effets, au prix de 2006, d'un système de taxation avec redistribution uniforme et subvention à l'agriculture biologique", it sounds almost like a political program. There's some obscure fonctionnaire over there in Paris who must have been thinking that his long-arm tax scheme was going to save the planet (and incidently help hire a few more of his likes)...
The video above shows two parcels bearing the stigma of heavy use of herbicides. The first few rows display the typical yellowish grass while the last rows have a moon-like soil, bare and desolate. This was shot in an undisclosed location in Touraine (Loire). Too bad, because the woods behind could offer lots of life and insects which would benefit the vines, the soil and ultimately the wine.
The same research report in Pdf.
Source for France's wine-regions map
Estezargues La Granacha 2005 I don't find my notes about this wine, if I took any by the way, but this comes back to me as a precious little gem. B. took this bottle from her own cellar and we had it with friends in the Loire. It was just so lovely and prfound and intense, refined and everything... When you think that this wine is made by a coop, it is so unsettling, this wine after 7 years had gently evolved, like real wines can do when they're made naturally and are not swamped by SO2 and strangled by filtration. You were not drinking here, you were reading a book loaded with wise experience and compassion. These tannins were so refined and softened, and gently intertwinned with the scents and alcohol, here was a lesson of harmony from a soukthern Rhone... A great Porto I'm not a Porto expert but it was easy to recognize a great, great Porto here. We had this gem with friends who retrieved this bottle from Belgium where they have a relative who long ago was dealing with wine import, the guy is retired today but has still a couple of pallets of bottles remaining from his former business. Man, that was a great Porto, lasting for ever in the mouth and so onctuous...
The back label just said : Porto Santos Junior 1982 Vintage, Mis en bouteille au Portugal, A. Pinto Dos Santos Junior & C.a L.da - Vila Nova De Gaia - Produce of Portugal. An appartment with view in Paris Montmartre, Paris
An appartment with view in Paris is usually associated with more conventional landscapes like the Eiffel tower or Paris' roofs, the Seine or the Champs Elysées. But there's a place where you can almost have it both ways in Paris, the wine country and old-Paris streets, the vineyard and the cobble-stone streets. This is what I discovered through friends who rented this appartment with unusual views, a little-known cemetary on one side and the vineyard of Montmartre on the other side in addition to the famed building of the Lapin Agile. Unfortunately I missed the picking last october, the weather was awful that season and they managed to pick before I shot this video. My friends rented this place for three weeks but it rained on most days of the wine festival of Montmartre.
Reservation page (I am not commissioned for this link) Unfiltered Colza Canola-seed oil This is not about wine but when no one is looking I'm indulging in treats centered on unfiltered canola-seed oil. I found a farm in the Loire where you can purchase unfiltered virgin colza oil as it is called in French and this is so good I could almost have it pure (with a piece of bread it just fine actually). It's not even organic I'm afraid but just because it's gently pressed and unfiltered it is so pleasant that I hardly use any other oil for our salads (B. is amused by my excesses and tends to be more moderate). I'd actually invent the salad for the sake of using this oil, that is to say that I'm a fan of unfiltered colza/canola-seed oil, even if it's less trendy than virgin olive oil, that's why I do it when no one is looking.... Banned from Paris I'm not sure she'll be sad about it but my loved vintage Citroën Ami 8 (pictured here this early november along woods in the Loire as I was looking for mushrooms with a friend) is about to be banned from entering Paris by the complete morons who have been ruling this city for years now. And this, even though this old lady born in 1971 has a Paris registration with its 75 signature on the license plate. Note that since she's been living in the Loire for years I'm not sure she has ever considered going back to this rude city anyway.
In one of the most idiotic moves in their doomed obsession to pretend to save the planet, the Paris council plans to ban old vehicules like this cutie and any vehicule older than 17 years as early as 2014 in the Paris streets. The poor mayor, who is probably not a bad guy if not very smart, is the hostage of a stubbornly-ideological strain of self-proclaimed ecologists (the French greens) who in fact relish in all forms of compulsive repression related to various society issues, not all related with ecology (but ALL having to do with repression, enforcement, taxes or fines). I'm almost sure that Steiner would have considered them as the reincarnation of the 19th-century Puritans as a group, landing here today to haunt us and enjoy their repressive skills against clueless real people. Yesterday in a different context they were fighting the heretics, or the booze; here in the 21st century they have slightly extended their field of operations and there's plenty of leverage dealing with guilt-rooted issues to exert their nefarious skills on a mentally-paralyzed public. No doubt my cutie would give this Paris administration the finger if she could, enjoying her pristine Loire forest where real vehicules like her are still allowed to exist...
Motorcycles built before 2004 would be also banned, which adds another layer of idiocy to this autocratic diktat. My own motorcycle which is from a make known to last for ever would be banned, although it runs fine and has a catalytic muffer. Let's try to see the positive side of these hassles, every new weird move of these fools increases the chance people open their eyes and vote them out like it happened in London years ago with Ken Livingstone (I try hard but I'm not very optimistic, to be frank)...
Read the artile about the issue from the Telegraph. Take part to Paris' waiters race You probably heard about the Paris waiters race where dozens of café waiters run while holding a tray loaded with glasses and bottle, the deal being to reach the finish line with an unscathed tray. You can as well as your children take part thanks to this vintage fairground ride found in the Musée des Arts Forains, a little-known museum where grown-ups feel as excited as children. The thing sounds more like horse racing and you almost expect to see gamblers throwing their money at the automated characters.
Musée des Arts Forains : 53 Avenue des Terroirs de France 75012 Paris
Metro : Cour Saint-Emilion (line 14 -- south-east of Gare de Lyon)

Comments

[S. Lanum]

1. What the hell is colza?

2. What are you supposed to do--junk your 17 year old car and buy a new one, notwithstanding the enormous expenditure of resources associated with the manufacture of a 3,000 pound vehicle? People who drive 17 year old cars, as opposed to replacing them once they reach five years of age because they are "outdated," are part of the solution, not the problem.

[Bertrand]

Hi Steve,
Sorry, Colza oil is canola-seed oil
You say it right about this "old" cars ban in Paris, plus, the older the vehicule the quieter your driving will be if you want to keep it running without being ruined by maintenance, which will result in overall lesser use and more moderate driving patterns, but I doubt these people (the French Greens) are very open to basic common sense...

[Zion]

very interesting ! Well done