In Apulia (4): Three wines that work well

In my recent series on Apulia I have been fairly critical of some aspects of the region’s winemaking. Back at home I sat to a relaxed tasting session with some potentially controversial wines, to see whether my feelings have softened. 

Feudi di San Marzano is a large commercial winery making wines in a very fruity style (they’re high on the list of favourites of Luca Maroni, Italy’s most controversial critic), including the Primitivo Sessantanni that embraces the grape’s excesses I mentioned here. ‘Sud’ is San Marzano’s range of everyday varietal wines, and includes (interestingly) a white Verdeca alongside a Shiraz, Primitivo and Malvasia Nera. This latter grape is ubiquitous in Salento, the southern part of Apulia, but has always been used exclusively as a blending variety for its deep colour and lush fruitiness. (I’ve heard a theory that it belongs to the Grenache family). It allegedly lacks structure to be bottled on this own. Well, this Sud Malvasia Nera 2007 works very well indeed. It is a simple wine with not much bouquet to speak of, but making a statement about Apulia as a serious source of irresistibly tasty ripe fruit. The New World inspiration is very obvious here but the whole has a natural freshness and joyfulness that is rarely seen in an overseas wine. Unsophisticated but delicious, in a word. (It’s about 8€ retail).

With the Santa Lucia’s 2000 Le More, I wanted to double check my mixed impressions from a Nero di Troia tasting organised for us at Canosa by the Radici association. This grape is another former blending variety that has quickly risen to fame in recent years. But it’s still much a work-in-progress as producers are trying to figure out what winemaking styles suit it best. Rosés, light unoaked reds, classic long-aged large-oak examples, as well as turbocharged new oak modern fruit bombs are produced. The latter solution is the least interesting, the general feeling about Nero di Troia being that it tends towards overextraction, and doesn’t digest new oak well at all. The 2006 Riserva Le More from Santa Lucia was a case in point, and I much preferred their lighter Vigna del Melograno bottling. Well, I was proven wrong with the 2000 vintage of this wine. Time has been gracious to it, and it’s showing brilliantly. It has two major merits today: it has totally digested its oak, and shows Nero di Troia’s exuberant floral profile well. Colour is still dark, bouquet only mildly evolved, softly olivey, rather simple as befits this rustic grape variety, but with good overtones of violets and other flowers. On the palate this still is quite dynamic and bit of tannic-punchy, with Nero di Troia’s typically moderate acidity. Modern and dark-fruity but with really good structural balance, and more seriousness than most Troias. 

Leone De Castris is one of Apulia’s veteran wineries, but with a recent change of style with the hiring of consultant Riccardo Cotarella I have been very underwhelmed by their wines. Especially by the Salice Salentino Riserva 2006, and all-time classic of traditional Apulian balsamic evolution, and following the Cotarella ‘revolution’ more of a blueberry muffin milkshake Mendoza Malbec-wannabe. (It is declared to be 100% Negroamaro grape aged in large oak; judging by what’s in the glass I have every reason to question both claims). So as a consolation I opened my last remaining bottle of the pre-Cotarellean Salice Salentino Riserva 2001. What a delightful wine! An unashamedly evolved, transparent ruby colour and an engaging bouquet of ripe cherry and red berries, with a hint of Salento stewed fruit preserve character, with minor herbiness for complexity; no oak, no tar. The real interest is on the palate with excellent volume of ripe and fleshy but vibrant fruit. And there’s quite some tannins on the finish. Still too young, should wait another 2–3 years at least. Where the latest vintage is flabby and boring this is poised and refreshing, structured and drinkable, sturdy and elegant at the same time. If you have bottles left, cherish them. This wine is no more. 

Giacomo Conterno Barbera d’Alba 2000

Much to my chagrin I cannot afford the Barolos of Giacomo Conterno. This 45K-bottle estate in Piedmont’s Monforte d’Alba could well be the most famous and hyped of all Italy. And the entry ticket to the theatre of its epic, majestic, supremely ageworthy Barolo Cascina Francia is a hefty 95€ (the Monfortino Riserva, the last of the Barolo Mohicans, is three or four times that). 

 

That’s a real shame, because I tremendously admire and enjoy these wines. I admire their absolute composure and uncompromised reverence of tradition. I delight in their raspberry & rose petal finesse (although that finesse is a polite grammatical way of making their stern structural statement). I admire Roberto Conterno’s soft-spoken way of refusing to depart even an inch from his father Giovanni’s and his grandfather Giacomo’s qualitative and stylistic standards. Non si cambia una virgola was his answer to what he'd change when I visited him in September 2005, a couple of years after Giovanni passed away. 

Elephantine casks hosting Barolo in the Giacomo Conterno cellar.

 

Thankfully Conterno also makes one more affordable wine: a Barbera d’Alba that comes from the Cascina Francia plot in the commune of Serralunga and sees shorter oak than the Barolo here (although 14 months are quite a long élevage by Barbera standards), but otherwise comes close to a Barolo in structure and longevity. This 2000 version cost me 22€. (The current release, 2007, is 25€ at the winery). 

 

It is a fairly aged example of Barbera, with little obvious fruitiness and a tertiary bouquet of game meat, dried herbs, with some balsamic oak overtones. The flavour is ample and long, bone-dry, with high acidity and still quite some unresolved tannins, although the fruit is a bit too low to speak about much further potential to age. Technically it’s not a perfect wine, with some rustic touches to the bouquet and a hint of volatile acidity. 

Winemaking taken seriously: Roberto Conterno with geological analyses of Cascina Francia. (Photo taken September 2005).

 

Yet there’s something quite remarkable in how this wine completely ignores the modern ‘consumer taste’ and the flavour profile of contemporary wine. It’s not merely a traditional-style wine, like there are many in Piedmont. This Barbera is really more papal than the pope. It makes no concession whatsoever to the drinker: it’s stern, bone-dry, tart, bitter, tannic; there is sense of harmony and peace but it is the ascetic harmony of Gregorian chant. It’s the taste of wine from a now remote era, when great wine was something to aspire to, and not banally ‘consume’. A time when vintners weren’t told by journalists (or bloggers) what their wines should taste like. A wine to admire – and to enjoy, but humbly, not Vaynerchuk-style self-magnifyingly.

In Apulia (3): A good... beer

I didn’t bring much wine back from my recent trip to Apulia but I did grab this intriguing bottle of beer in the nice Liberrima wine & book shop in Lecce.

Coming from the local B94 brewery in Lecce, this Terrarossa red ale comes in a serious 750ml bottle, and is made in the style of a Belgian double or, better, radieuse. It pours a a nice deep amber reddish colour and is instantly inviting with notes of Christmas spices and red fruits (strawberries, cherries). It is even more convincing on the palate with a very clean, deep, well-defined malty flavour, yet avoiding the excessive caramelly sweetness of many beers in its style. Instead, it finishes with proper hoppy bitterness that make this a very good match with food. I’ve tried it with one of my favourite beer & food matches – a mid-aged Camembert cheese and endive salad.

One more useful detail – at 5% alc. the Terrarossa is lighter than comparable Belgian beers, and so finishing the bottle could be done more or less innocuously. Raffaele Longo makes a few more beer styles and while I’m not sure about distribution, be sure to give him a try when you have the occasion. 

Benshan clay pot, and how it performs

I have been looking for a Chinese clay pot to infuse my high mountain oolongs from Taiwan (and the little Anxi oolong from mainland China that I drink, as they are produced in a similar style). So far, I’ve brewed these rolled-leaf teas in a porcelain gaiwan, but I’ve been looking to expand the horizons of these teas a bit.

I have been facing two problems. One is that these oolongs are very high in aroma, often with lifted floral and exotic fruit notes, which tend to be slightly handicapped by brewing in certain types of clay (in my experience); the choice of a Yixing-style teapot usually aims at improving your tea’s mouthfeel more than anything. The mouthfeel of gaoshan oolong is important to me but so is the aroma.

The other dilemma is that some of those oolongs are very slightly oxidised and unroasted, essentially bringing them fairly close to a green tea, while others have higher oxidation and, importantly, a medium to high roast. My teapot of choice would need to work equally well with both types. Is it at all possible, I wondered?

Recommendation for rolled oolong teapot usually steer towards tighter, harder, less porous clays whose effect on the tea is a little more discreet and gentle. Zhuni pots are one match that seems to be recurrent among experts. But I already own a zhuni pot that I felt wasn’t doing a great job with the unroasted types.

Placing an order for 2009 puer recently with Yunnan Sourcing, I browsed their selection and found some green clay teapots made of Benshan clay (similar to duanni clay I understand, but more green-coloured). Green clay tends to get mixed reviews. Some people like it, while others dismiss it altogether even going as far to say it’s only good for display purposes. This ‘dragon egg’ shaped teapot was $35 so I thought I’d give it a go. It is not a masterpiece of craftsmanship but a solidly built piece of equipment with thick, temperature-retaining walls and a swift pour.

I must say it’s really performing well. I wasn’t expecting miracles but the difference in the quality of the brew is very clear from beginning to end. It actually happens to fit my purpose very well indeed, performing equally well with the unroasted and roasted oolongs.

Here are some summarised tasting notes from brewing two identical teas in both porcelain gaiwan and Benshan teapot. Parameters were 3.5g of leaf for 120ml boiling water, infusions of 40s and 20s (I didn’t continue the experiment beyond the second brewing).  

2008 Spring Fenghuang ‘Verger de Montagne’ oolong (purchased for Teamasters)
The gaiwan produces an unremarkable lid aroma and a simple brew aroma but the taste is very good, balanced, with plenty of yun sweetness. However on the finish there is quite a vegetal edge to this slightly stale 2008 tea perhaps. A second brew is again a very good quality cup, very nicely composed with floral-fruity sweetness and buttery density. Now more balanced, less vegetal than #1.

 In the Benshan pot, there is a considerable difference already in the aroma of dry leaves warming in the pot: while the gaiwan is emphasising the caramel and light roast, Benshan pot is exuding a lovely floral, clean, sweet aroma. Brew colour is also visibly darker. A sweet, fat, floral buttery lid aroma. The brew is obviously a little stronger than in the gaiwan, slightly more drying, less immediate and buttery-smacky but admittedly a little more complete. It definitely rounds off the vegetal edge. In a second 20s brewing, the difference is less pronounced, though the Benshan pot colour is still a little darker golden, and there is more dark honey spice sweetness, and obviously more complexity.  

Very similar colour of #2 brew in gaiwan (left) and Benshan pot (right).

2009 Spring Dongding ‘Classique’ [medium roast] oolong (purchased from Teamasters)  

Here again the gaiwan gives an entirely satisfying brew with a balanced roast, good creaminess both in aroma and flavour, and a bit of dryness on end. But the second brewing might have been just a bit too long here with 20 seconds, with the tea showing quite vegetal, drying and a little chaotic.  

In Benshan clay, the warmed dry leaf aroma before you pour water in is more exciting, with a more succulent roastiness and a touch of raspberry. And there is definitely more precision in the brew aroma, where the roast is mellowed and there are finer, subtler notes of white butter. It is a rounder, richer, more generous tea from this pot. A second 15s brewing is much heftier here, dark-coloured into orange, and dominated by roast, but seemingly less overbrewed and unbalanced than in the gaiwan.

Expired leaves of the 2009 Dongding Classique: what a skillful roast here.

Bottom line: the Benshan clay pot is doing a great job in removing some of the hard edges of the tea (though admittedly both teas I chose were extremely high quality and hardly in need of ‘correction’, so we’re talking minor fine details of aroma and flavour here). It works well both with the drying-tannic vegetality of unroasted types, and the throat-drying action of the less well balanced roast in the roasted types. At the same time the texture is enhanced, and the tea tastes rounder, more voluminous and complete. Importantly, my fears about the aroma being diminished found no confirmation. If anything, the aroma was more complex and precise from the clay pot than from the gaiwan. It was an interesting experiment and I think for any more inquisitive session, I will now be using the Benshan pot as a standard. 

In Tokaj (2): The grassroots revolution

Tokaj made its name on botrytised sweet wines, aszú, yet as mentioned in my previous post, these have fallen out of fashion and become notoriously difficult to sell both on the domestic market and export. As Tokaj has had to find a proper productive balance to survive at all – it’s actually a work in progress – the unthinkable has happened: it’s now possible to taste through several dozen Tokaj wines and climb to 90+ ratings without having a single botrytis wines on the table. It’s what happened to me last Friday when I met with the young up-and-coming vintners of the Tokaji Bormívelők Társarsága (that’s Tokaj Wine Artisans’ Society, you’ve guessed it, but let’s call it TBT hereafter).

Classified vineyards of Tokaj. © TBT (click for more info).

They’re a weird bunch really. Zsolt Berger was a business journalist before he came to Tokaj and started making wine out of the blue. Attila Homonna (see a brief entry about him here) was a successful marketing guy and then owned a wine shop in Debrecen but he got the Tokaj bug too; it’s all made remarkable by the fact that after 8 vintages made he’s still only 35. Judit Bodó (née Bott, which is the name of her winery) came from Slovakia without the merest experience in winemaking (though she’s travelled to vineyards in Alto Adige and South Africa to learn, on her own expenses); in the first couple of years of production her dry Furmints instantly propelled her into the regional superleague. There are arguably some very successful autodidacts in the wine world but nowhere in such high proportion.

The fact that it took a young generation with little or no background in winemaking to produce some of the most breathtaking dry wines in Tokaj is a paradox that one day, I hope, will become the subject of a sociological and psychological study. But it’s another fact that the heroes of the 1990s focused on the sweet wines and haven’t really come to terms with making world-class dries. (The situation is vaguely similar to that of port and dry Douro wines in Portugal). Sure, there have been some successful bottlings such as Oremus’ Burgundian Mandolás or János Árvay’s turbocharged (and excessive) single-vineyard Furmints, but it was not the breakthrough Tokaj needed to establish itself firmly on the great dry white wine map of the world.

Zsolt Berger tasting a luminous 2009.

It was István Szepsy, the region’s veteran and consistently the author of its greatest sweet aszús, who showed the way with his 2000 Úrágya Furmint. Old vineyards, low yields, ripe but unbotrytised grapes, oak fermentation, big structure (but balanced alcohol) and a touch of residual sugar to balance Furmint’s notoriously punchy acids: Szepsy’s recipe for success has now been developed by a large group of dedicated estates.

They all have a few points in common: they are small (‘boutique’ or ‘garage’ is a good descriptor here), own pockets of vines in Tokaj’s most prestigious vineyards (that were listed in 1700 in Europe’s earliest attempt at vineyard classification), make little or no sweet wine, and have an ambition of making Tokaj a great terroir white, rather than a FMCG marketable alternative to save the company cashflow. In 2006 the Artisans’ Society (TBT) was created: a list of classified crus was drawn, members meet, talk and taste together, agreeing on which submitted wines adhere to the strict criteria and the overall philosophy of the project. Those that pass the exam get the TBT logo. The system works a bit like the Grosses Gewächs one in Germany, and in due time will hopefully become the foundation for Tokaj’s official premiers and grands crus.

A happy TBT bunch: Hajnalka Prácser of Erszébet, Stéphanie Berecz of Kikelet, Sarolta Bárdos of Tokaj Nobilis with her 3-month-old daughter, Judit Bodó of Bott, and Zoltán Asztalos of Néktar. 

We’ve tasted some impossibly limpid, pithy, stoney-mineral 2007s and 2008s from Attila Homonna, and a very idiosyncratic 2008 Palandor Furmint from Karádi & Berger: peppery, violent, very volcanic indeed, with a rare expressiveness (the 2007 is a touch shier and there is also a 2003 Dry Szamorodni, essentially a mildly oxidative version of the same wine). We’ve tasted the impressive 2007 Öreg Király from Károly Barta, vinified by Homonna from high-perched terraces in this, perhaps Tokaj’s most majestic and uncompromisingly mineral cru. Béla Török showed some fun wines including a 2008 semi-dry Muscat of rarely seen minerality. Stéphanie & Zsolt Berecz from the Kikelet estate poured a delicious sweet 2007 Late Harvest but also my favourite expression of Hárslevelű (Tokaj’s second grape variety), zesty, witty, springtime-refreshing instead of the chunky, alcoholic, oxidative thing it so often becomes. Sarolta Bárdos and Péter Molnár of Tokaj Nobilis also make an excellent Hárs as well as a pure and limey 2008 Furmint from the cru of Barakonyi (and an intriguing semi-sweet Spätlese-styled Kövérszőlő, from Tokaj’s oldest, almost extinct variety). Judit Bott surpassed herself with a 2008 Csontos Furmint that has about the best mineral and structural balance I’ve seen in the region.

I tasted 60 Tokajs on that Friday and there was hardly a sweet botrytised aszú in sight. And yet it was as exciting as if I’d been in, say, Chablis or Rüdesheim. Revolutions always start quietly but eventually turn our world upside down. This one is no exception.

In Tokaj (1): Wounded heroes

For the visitor from outside, wintertime Hungary is depressive. The derelict villages are desert and the atmospheric depression coincides with very harsh economic times for Tokaj. A mixture of unwise business decisions from the late 1990s and Hungary’s suicidal governmental policy of the last few years has resulted in a complete standstill of sweet wine sales. Large companies are reporting hundreds of thousands €’s losses, and many small estates are struggling to survive.

 

It’s an irony that this decadence is coinciding with the production of the world’s very best sweet wines. I apologise to those Yquem or Kracher or Egon Müller lovers out there but they cannot really equal the sheer sensual bliss of a Királyudvar Lapis Aszú 2002 or István Szepsy 2003. This simple truth found more than a few confirmations during my short stay here in Tokaj.

Vineyards on the eastern slope of Tokaj Hill.

 

It is also becoming clear that after the royal duo of 1999 and 2000 and some extremely convincing 2002s, it’s 2003 and 2006 that are now delivering Tokaj’s best wines of the decade. (They will need to last a few years; there was almost no sweet wine made in 2009 to due adverse autumn weather). 2003, Europe’s hottest and driest vintage on record, gave birth to some mildly atypical but fantastically tense and driven botrytis wines that will live the life of a generation, or two. My tastings have been far from exhaustive but István Szepsy, Zoltán Demeter, Úri Borok’s Szt. Tamás, Royal Tokaji’s Mézes Mály, and even the lesser-known Erzsébet’s Aszúeszencia provided the most excitement; Demeter’s 260g-sugar, 10.5g-acids warhorse might well be the wine of the vintage. 

Tokaj, as mentioned, is in crisis. Thousands of bottles of botrytis aszú going as back as 1998 remain unsold, and the obvious vineyard buying & planting overenthusiasm of the late 1990s has now become a serious hickup. I’ve seen one winery where dry whites from 2007 are still in tank because there’s no cash to buy bottles. Those estates that debuted on more realistic business estimations later in the 2000s are faring better, basing their turnover on dry wines, but it’s still far from an easy game: in a region where low yields and long ageing is a prerequisite of quality costs remain high, and Furmint is hardly an automatic selling card on export markets.

Tokaj needs some cleaning.

But moments of crisis are a good time to make friends. Although Tokajers seem keen on keeping their prices where they’ve been (I’ve seen almost none of the unsold stock discounted), they'll appreciate your purchase and especially your fidelity. Next time you’re after a solid mineral white with lots of terroir identity that goes brilliantly well with food, forget those Mâcons, Rheingaus and Savennières for once, and ask for Hungarian Furmint. You’ll be surprised – and might well be hooked for life.

Attila Homonna Furmint Határi 2006

Attila Homonna building his winery in June 2005.

I’m on my way to Tokaj to get updated on the latest vintage (and an overdose of residual sugar). In my habit of tuning up my palate to upcoming tasting I opened this bottle from microproducer Attila Homonna. He’s a mildly crazy fellow in his early 30s who started a 1-hectare estate out of the blue in 2002. The first wine he ever made, the Furmint Ordinarium 2002, was one of heck of a mind-blowing late-harvest Furmint that gave Zind-Humbrecht and Marcel Deiss a good run for their money. (I remember roaming around Vinexpo 2005 giving people a taste of the stuff and trying to spread the word, including to a politely uninterested Steven Spurrier). 

Homonna’s breakthrough came in 2005 when his high-perched, ungrafted 80-year-old vines in the vineyard of Határi produced arguably the best dry wine of the vintage in Tokaj. Now Homonna is known to the cognoscenti and can charge 25€ for a bottle.

This 2006 Határi is very impressive in that it comes from a very difficult vintage. Excessive summer heat produced unbalanced dry Furmints with high alcohol and burnt fruit. The high elevation of Határi was no remedy. But Homonna judiciously picked early and made a wine that is a gem of vibrancy and mineral structure. It needs airing though, being dominated upon opening by dusty-varnishy oak of not very high quality (a recurrent problem in Hungarian white wines, that I attribute to poorly seasoned oak). In fact it’s easy to dismiss the wine as unbalanced and drying on the palate. Decant in a tall carafe and chill for 5–6 hours and you’ll be astonished by the change: a core of appetizing tangerine fruit, Furmint’s iron-cast acidic structure, a pure crystalline minerality, length, length, depth, solidity. It’s not a perfect wine in terms of winemaking but the stellar quality of the terroir is strongly shining through. The wine easily surpassed a 2006 Furmint from regional star István Szepsy that I opened alongside.

Stay tuned for live reports from Tokaj over the next few days. 

2006 12 Gents Dabaihao

Time for more puer today. Here’s the 2006 Dabaihao cake from the 12 Gentlemen company, available through NadaCha for £28 / cake.

I reviewed four teas from 12 Gents back in March 2009 (see links below and archive link on the left). I have a weakness for their productions: they process some impressive leaves and have a very elegant, subdued, sweet style I enjoy very much. That being said, these are pricey teas, and brewing this sample from Nada made me realise they more often than not lack a bit of expression and oomph.

The dry leaves look very similar to the 2006 12 Gents Yiwu, and quite different from the 2007 Yiwu and Menghai: while the latter have small leaves and tight compression, both 2006 cakes are loosely pressed and consist of impressively intact, large, healthy leaves that have a glorious sweet tobacco & vanilla smell. Contact with the uninfused sample couldn’t really be better.

I’ve had several sessions with tea, both in porcelain gaiwan and in yixing clay pot (the latter surely more successful, with more body and juiciness). No matter how high you dose (I’ve reached 7g / 140ml which is about as much as I can put into my pot without squeezing the leaves) this tea is fairly unintense and light-bodied. The initial infusions are particularly puzzling, very simple, light-coloured, low on fruit, dominated by a beany profile, with a smokey hint on the finish the only real point of interest. Yet there is also notable patience in the xiangbei [aroma cup] which is one of the lovelier I’ve encountered of late, starting with sweet tobacco and evolving lengthily into caramel and candies; it’s really a very ‘long’ smell.

You have to push this tea quite a bit, with a high dosage and brewing times as long as 1 minute by infusion #4 to coax any intensity and character from it. A bone-dry tea, broad-shouldered, architectural, mineral, smokey, never too bitter though with more than a hint of dryness at end (emphasised not the lack of much flavour at mid-palate); notes of mushrooms, a bit of wood, white beans throughout the sessions, a mere hint of smoke.

I really wanted to like this tea in order to keep my positive feelings about the 12 Gents production. But in all honesty, as much as I was looking throughout the session for the tea to finally reach a satisfying extraction, it never happened. It just lacks content; it’s thin and vague. On the positive side it’s clean and noble in aroma, and both the dry and infused leaves are a joy to look at. But it’s just not enough to justify a £28 cake.