Browse Month

March 2012

Tire Pé? It’s me, Margaret.

Barrault “Château Tire Pé” 2010 Bordeaux “DieM” (Bordeaux) – Mostly merlot, with the cabernets each playing a 10% role. As many wine folk long lost in geekery tend to do, I spend a lot of time in stores spinning bottles to find the importer strip for stylistic clues to wines I don’t know. Pre-culling, so to speak. So I was surprised when, having noted the identity of a well-known natural-focused importer, I re-spun the bottle to find that I was holding a Bordeaux. You don’t see that combination every day.

Anyway, the wine. Yes, it’s Bordeaux. There’s classicism (tobacco-tinged fruit, fuzzy/leathery-textured tannin, a hint of graphite, dark fruit that’s more skin than juice), for sure, though its of the type more typically expressed – at least in theory – by the lower end of the spectrum rather than the showy classed growths, the sort of wine that purchasers of generic Bordeaux all over France think they’re drinking with their daily meal. But aren’t, because those wines aren’t this good. While it’s not organoleptically flexible enough to be a constant companion at the global American table, perhaps, with the right food I could very happily own and then consume a lot of this wine. In fact, I think I will. (3/12)

My bell

Meinklang 2009 “Burgenlandred” (Burgenland) – 60% zweigelt, 30% blaufränkisch, 10% st. laurent. For better or worse, these neighborhood grapes are much more compatible than the thuggish cabernet and merlot interlopers they’re so often asked to mingle with in red Austrian blends. To my mind it’s better, because the mix of slightly chilly aromatics – dried-floral, dried-herbal, dried-earthen – and richer, bluish-purple fruit of medium-mild intensity, is much more distinctive without the interference of the Bordelais buddies. Slips down easily, and with pleasure all the while. (3/12)

Jiggle the Schandl

Schandl 2008 Rust Furmint (Burgenland) – There’s an aroma to furmint that I struggle to identify: herbal, almost tea-like, but far from any vegetal expression thereof. Rather, it’s metallic, and yet the wine’s minerality is a separate issue. Anyway, this has the foil-wrapped brittle herbality I’m talking about, floating in a fulsome bisque of soft liquid sandstone – no, I don’t know how that would happen either – and with some but not quite enough structural acidity. It’s a good wine, but the volume is just a little bit high for the space in which its music is being played. (3/12)

Treau & fru

Filliatreau 2005 Saumur (Loire) – The last of a mistakenly-held batch (synthetic corks), and more or less exemplary of the mistake: the fruit has developed in a leathery, meaty, blueberry-infused fashion that would, given proper structural support, actually be quite pleasant. But the acid is razory and the tannin desiccated, and each sip – there aren’t many before the rest goes down the drain – is like a pleasant vinous interlude followed by a vigorous tongue sanding. Well, it’s gone. (3/12)

Bill Roussel

Roussel & Barrouillet “Clos Roche Blanche” 2007 Touraine “Cuvée Gamay” (Loire) – Clinging, barely, to the tatters of a life shortened by a closure insufficient to the task. There are some lovely red soil aromatics, but everything around and beneath them has fallen into ruin. (3/12)

Sölva for V

Sölva 2010 Vernatsch (Alto Adige) – Anyone who’s taken one of the various flavors of formal wine education has spent some time studying color and the tales it tells…about variety, site, age, winemaking, alcohol level, and certain faults. In this age of orange wines (very few of which are actually “orange” as such) and cloudy, browned-out natural whites, the former lexicon is a bit tattered, but the generalizations still more or less hold. Personally, I no longer find the color of a wine of anything more than academic interest, which is why I almost never mention it; if I’m analyzing or guessing, it’s important, but I tend to think that people who find the color of their wine crucial (rather than just nice to look at) are kind of missing the point.

So I wonder what anyone – analyst or drinker – would make of the optics here. As pale as many a Jura red (paler, perhaps), tending towards early autumnals like a Piedmontese nebbiolo, but also including the more cosmetic blushes of a grignolino. I can’t quite decide if it’s beautiful or necrotic.

But how does it taste, Mr. I-Don’t-Care-About-Visuals? I return to the subject of grignolino, in its combination of sharp, somewhat gritty fruit with the velvety softening of minor (but not flaw-level) oxidation. It’s a little more purple-berried than that, and there’s a keening acidity that speaks of chilly nights and early winters. It’s a fascinating wine (to my memory, my first vernatsch), frankly, and I need to own more of it. (3/12)

Gyotaku bell

Domaine Mittnacht 2010 “Cuvée Gyotaku” (Alsace) – A blend of pinot blanc, muscat, pinot gris, and gewurztraminer. Usually, such blends are completely dominated by those last three listed grapes, and in reverse order. They’ve managed to avoid that here, whether through sensibly early harvesting or some other technique, and the wine is rather better for it. I’m still unconvinced that blends in Alsace are, in general, more than pleasant quaffing wines except from rare and exceptional terroirs (and often not even then). So this is a pleasant quaffing wine, but its pleasantries are more lavish than most, its whitewashed stone-fruitedness buffed and stony. The name is an apparent reference to an art form in which paper is pressed against an ink-covered fish (perhaps making cuttlefish the Jackson Pollocks of the form), but the clear implication that this is meant to pair with things that swim is a peculiarly Alsatian one; it would take a rich, oily fish indeed to make a deft pairing with this wine. (3/12)

Enea port in a storm

Egia Enea 2008 Bizkaiko Txakolina (Northwest Spain) – A blend of hondarrabi zuri zerratia and hondarrabi zuri. Unfortunately, also quite heavily oxidized. Since I can’t imagine this was the intent, I’m going to chalk it up to either cork or storage failure. (3/12)

Gazelles

Cairn d’Eole “Causse Marines” 2010 Gaillac “Peyrouzelles” (Southwest France) – A little bit bretty at uncorking, though this is eventually surpassed by other elements, and a touch spritzy/prickly throughout. Otherwise, it’s all vivacious berries and freshly-crushed petals, with the zing of bright acidity and a hint of pleasant volatility (yes, I – Mr. Oversensitive-to-VA – just wrote that). I can’t imagine this could be held, but why wait? (3/12)