Positive energy

The annual Austrian trade tasting in Warsaw (read here about the 2009 edition) has been as exciting as always. Austrian wine is on the upswing (+60% sales in Poland last year), and years of consistent quality work and intelligent communication are beginning to pay out. And so it was good to see some happy faces and positive attitude in what remains a troubled time for the wine ‘industry’.

I’ve been a little more explorative than usually with my tasting this year, and one estate I’ve never even heard about before that provided some exciting drinking was Uibel from the Weinviertel (usually Austria’s most rustic and unexciting region), where young Leopold Uibel is making some very individual wines of striking mineral purity. From the positively Burgundian Zweigelt through the surprisingly Muscadetish Grüner Veltliner DAC to the crystalline low-sulphur Katzensprung Grüner Veltliner 2008, these are all very essential wines in that traditional-progressive terroir-revelatory style that is gaining momentum throughout Europe. (Thanks to Michael Turner of Austriasfinebrands.com for sending me here). 

Talking about terroir-revelatory, apart from Schloss Gobelsburg including a memorable Lamm Grüner Veltliner 2008, the major emotion of the tasting was with Weingut Muhr–van der Niepoort where wine PR virtuoso Dorli Muhr showed what might well soon become Austria’s premier red wine collection. It is the more ironic that this should happen in Carnuntum, a warm region on sands, clays and loess east of Vienna that undoubtedly has some fine red wine terroirs but has in the last decade misused them to produce some of the most indigestible oaky monsters in Austria and beyond. Catering for the insatiable home market that has a Freudian preference for Ribera del Duero-lookalikes, Carnuntum producers have so far favoured Zweigelt and Merlot as their grape varieties of choice, and with one or two exceptions (Gerhard Markowitsch) the resulting wines have proved, to me, undrinkable. 

The ancient Roman Heidentor gate, Carnuntum’s signature landmark. © AWMB

Dorli Muhr, instead, focuses on Blaufränkisch, that challenging traditional Austrian grape which with old vines and the right approach can produce wines of surprising depth and minerality. The approach here is surely very thorough and includes port-inspired food-treading for a softer and deeper extraction, unrushed fermentation (including some stems) in open-top vats and ageing in mostly used oak. The wines are made by Dorli with the help of Peter Veyder-Malberg (formerly Graf Hardegg, and now his own, promising, estate in the Wachau), Dirk Niepoort, and now South African Craig Hawkins. 

It took me some time to ‘get’ these wines: the 2004s left me lukewarm, the 2006s were very good but the 2007s are simply stunning. There is a field grape blend called Rote Erde, a straight Syrah, Prellenkirchen: a Riesling–Veltliner white blend (that sees some foot-treading!), but most importantly there is the simple Blaufränkisch Carnuntum (at 12€ easily the best buy here) and the single-vineyard Spitzerberg were vines are some 60–80 years.

Put briefly, the wines are light in colour, low in alcohol, high in freshness, with the clean fruit flavours (cherries, strawberries) and peppery spice of Blaufränkisch, good acids, and some remarkably mineral tannins unadulterated by oak. Put simply, these wines are very un-Austrian: they are going very much against the national mainstream of dense, concentrated, extracted, oaky reds. (It’s only Moric, the pioneer of un-interventionist old-vine Blaufränkisch, that comes close). You can call them Burgundian, although with their pomegrenate and brick dust spice they have more than a bit in common with some of the ‘natural’ wines of Italy and France. Most remarkably, after the dead-fruit and dead-oak inert red wine style that has dominated and continues to dominate in much of Austria, Dorli Muhr’s wines have a striking positive energy: those clean, zesty, vibrant flavours of fruit and stone resonate on your palate like a finely pitched violin string. It’s the tune of the future.

2009 Hojo Lapsang Souchong

Lapsang Souchong appears to be the gateway to the world of tea for many people. Amidst a diet of no-name blacks and teabags it’s often the first tea people identify with a name and flavour. Perhaps because the latter is so much stronger than most other teas’?

Attila Homonna brewing Lapsang Souchong...

Even during a winery visit and tasting you can be treated to a cup of Lapsang, as shown by Tokaj vigneron Attila Homonna (read post about him here) when we met him in January. (To everybody’s surprise, being a champion of limpid dry white wines, Attila used a hefty dose of sugar with his Lapsang). 

...and enjoying it.

I threw in some Lapsang with my recent order with Hojo Tea, eager to pay a new visit to my own gateway to the world of tea. The remarkable Hojo website includes a very thorough description of this tea that literally whets one’s appetite. I was particularly curious about the dried longan fruit taste, and the declared balanced smokiness. 

To say this tea is unsmokey would be a gross overstatement. The smokey notes are very present and in a long brew of 2 minutes or more the aromatic profile is not so very different from a standard commercial Lapsang. It’s in the flavour that the gap is revealed: Hojo’s is a very clean tea, balanced, smooth and juicy, never degenerating into the bitter, woody, murky notes of cheaper Lapsang. The first impression is of a medium strong smokey taste applied to a fairly high-quality leaf. 

Akira Hojo interestingly encourages to taste this tea in a tasting glass. I found this inspirational, but instead of using the whisky sniffer-like stemless tumbler you can see on Hojo’s website, I used a tasting glass especially designed for sweet wine (Schott-Zwiesel Top 10 series). 

It’s really an interesting experiment. The colour of the tea appears much lighter than in white porcelain, and is a very transparent reddish. What this dessert wine glass does is to make all the aromas subtler. Although it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, there is a myriad of subtle understated aromas in succession: smoke of course, but also dried fruits, honey, nuttiness, smoked meat, baked fruits. One thing that doesn’t really work is taking a sip. It’s an often overlooked aspect of wine tasting glasses but a glass’s rim, or lip, vitally influences how the wine tastes in mouth. Here, the tea appears thin, tart and astringent, because the lip is far too narrow (compare mentally to a tea cup which is far wider, and makes the tea’s entry in mouth completely different). This particular glass was designed to make very sweet wines taste more balanced, and so it’s natural it emphasises acidity and tannins at the expense of sweetness. Lapsang would require just the opposite. 

But another conclusion of this tea-in-glass tasting is that this Lapsang benefits from being brewed very light. Moderate amounts of leaf and flash brewing times render a tea that’s less dominated by smoke and has good subtlety and complexity. But at $45 / 100g I found this a tad pricey. (A 30g purchase is available).

Rising and falling stars

Gambero Rosso is Italy’s foremost wine guide, and in a country that puzzlingly lacks an opinion-making wine magazine, has constituted the most influential voice on wine for over a decade. Its stylistic bias has effectively changed the shape of Italian winemaking. As always when a medium becomes too influential, The Red Prawn has come under critical fire for its sins both actual and alleged, and as a strong counteraction against its pro-new oak agenda has gathered momentum Gambero’s star has started to wane somewhat. (Ironically this happened when the book’s quality, in my opinion, has clearly improved, with a more nuanced coverage and an obvious if limited acknowledgement of more traditional styles).

One of Gambero’s very engaging but equally controversial activities is the Italian Wines Roadshow, showcasing leading estates that have been among the guide’s protagonists over the last years (as well as its best business partners, one should add). And so 59 big Italian names descended onto Warsaw (as well as Moscow, London and a few other venues) and provided for an afternoon of thought-provoking drinking. 

 

My feelings are a little ambivalent as there were several producers (cooperatives and not) which should never be included in what is supposed to be Italy’s 57 best wineries. And there was more than a fair proportion of estates that are doing some sound commercial work with their wines but which eventually do lack a bit of personality and expression of terroir. The latter, in fact, was more often than not missing from the equation, with red wines displaying impressive levels of extract, oak and overripe fruit but very little in terms of finesse or minerality. Whites wines were hardly better with the vast majority showing a fairly formulaic stainless steel cool fermentation profile, or decently concentrated but with utterly predictable new oak.

Daniele Cernilli of Gambero Rosso speaks at the seminar. © Piotr Niemyjski.

There were, highlights, too, including the various mineral facets of Cantina Gallura’s surprisingly good Vermentinos, and Nals Margreid’s transparent, impeccably balanced wines from Alto Adige (including an admirably restrained Merlot). On the red wine front there was the unquestionable greatness of Sassicaia 2006, seamless, elegant, juicy, with not a millimeter of excess, and the deliciously unpretentious Cirò Duca San Felice 2007 from Librandi, almost rosé in colour with real Mediterranean finesse. Some good fun was had with Nino Franco’s Proseccos. 

 

And then four stunningly good wines from what is probably the Gambero Roadshow’s least-known winery, Provenza from the shores of Lake Garda. In the Lugana and Garda DOC appellations, some hopelessly unfashionable grape varieties are grown including white Trebbiano di Lugana, red Groppello and Marzemino. Their obscurity and provinciality are likely incentives to work really hard in vineyard and cellar, and these were truly very well-vinified wines including the Lugana Selezione Fabio Contato 2007, fermented in oak yet showing none in its flavour (and that’s quite an exploit with Trebbiano, an unaromatic grape that seems to absorb oak like a sponge), mineral, deep, balanced and elegant at the same time. The simpler Lugana Molin 2008 sees some skin contact on the Trebbiano giving it an unseen complexity and depth of mineral flavour, and the red Garda Classico Negrasco 2007 was equally good with earthy fruit and respectable depth while keeping a clean, crisp, very drinkable style that is really the essence of what Italy does so well. Whatever you say, it’s good of Gambero Rosso to endorse wines such as Provenza’s.

2009 Darjeelings (6): Autumn flush

As the first 2010 flush for Darjeeling tea is approaching, it seems fitting to summarise my feelings about 2009’s last, autumn flush. Autumn Darjeeling tea rarely gets any hype, and the tea lover’s attention usually focuses on first or second. I enjoy the former’s finesse and crispness, and the latter’s complexity and full-flavoured summer fruitiness, but I like the autumn teas quite a bit. With their herby, earthy depth and stronger oxidation, they often feel a bit more serious and no-nonsense than the summer flush where the sweet muscatel flavour can get rather repetitive. That’s my feeling, at least. 

In any case I’ve enjoyed these eight teas that were sourced from online tea merchant Thunderbolt. Benoy Thapa is doing some great job on the internet including the very comprehensive company website as well as an informative blog and good activity on Facebook. Benoy also provided some exacting tasting notes on all these teas (click on the links to see these, and the excellent photos), so I’ll merely share my personal impressions. 

All teas were brewed several times including competition style (2g / 100ml) and large glass pot (250–300 ml with dosage ranging from 2.5 to 5g). 

Arya Clonal Exclusive [DJ125] 

A well presented long twisted leaf, moderate fragmentation by Darjeeling standards. Dark brown leaves, modestly tippy. Aroma of dried herbs with an almost caramelly, milk-chocolatey sweetness. 

Glass-brewed with 4g, 2m30s: A peculiar tea, on the high end of oxidation, a little earthy, with autumnal, unsweet, not-too-fruity substance. But has a roundness and dimension of whole(ish)-leaf Darj that’s inimitable. Moderate colour and medium body; astringency is virtually non-existent. 

I actually liked this brewed lighter on less leaf, when it reaches a rounder, more almondy, less earthy expression: a round, soft, very balanced tea. This is very good not great, and although one of the pricier teas from this batch it’s actually fairly honest at $14 / 100g.

Arya FTGFOP1 [DJ107]
Standard machine-processed fragmented Darj leaf, not tippy but with a few unoxidised greenish leaf bits. Aroma is perhaps more nutty and chestnutty than usual. Warmed leaf is bready, sweet, less herby. Brewed leaf is rather green; some proportion of twigs. 

Brewed in glass pot (4g/250ml) this has a medium beige colour, a mild, fleshy, vaguely muscatelish aroma that is simple but good, and a mild balanced flavour with no special merits but pretty good quality for its fragmented leaf. On the finish there is a hint of dryness, atypically for my brewing regime. In fact it’s easy to overbrew, though even when quite bitter and drying on the finish it generates a sweet yun sensation. In a word this has a bit more guts than others autumn flushes, and is very good indeed, especially at $7.
 
Castleton FTGFOP1 Tippy Clonal [DJ312]
A very conservative fragmented leaf grade, negligible tips, generic black tea & brown bag aroma. This is a bit less exciting to look at than other teas on this tasting. 

Brew has a nice colour, not too dark. A little summer-flushy in character with a ripe red fruitiness of red apples. Just some grip on end, even with a longish brewing. No muscatel: mostly baked apples and nuts. This is wholesome but a little generic and while not a pain at $7 / 100g, lacks a bit of personality to me.

Giddapahar China Delight [DJ58]
Similar grade but even less distinctive than the Castleton TPY CL above, smaller and brownier leaf. 

However in the cup it is a different animal. You can push this quite far, the colour is not very dark and profile is better than expected. A light-bodied, grapey, sweet-fruity muscatelish style, broad and full on the palate (these characteristics are emphasises in a longer brew) but untannic, and even the autumnal herby character is very low. The fruit character and the suggestive muscatel note are really appetizing. Very good tea, and a bargain at $5.
 

Goomtee Light Clonal Tips [EX26] 

This, together with the Margaret’s Hope tea below, is quite different from the other teas in this batch in consisting of very well-handled large, wholish hand-processed leaf vaguely resembling a baimudan white tea, including silvery tips, brownish thin huangpian flakes, relatively few stems. The aroma is very herby and bergamottey, with a sweeter baked bread scent when leaves are warmed. Expired leaves are consistently green and rather thin, plantation-like. 

Logically this brews a lightish peachy colour that is only mildly black-tea scented. Flavour is light and fruity (apples, peaches) with no astringency and a touch of roundness, but also citrusy and bone-dry with good length. 

This is very well-presented leaf-and-bud quality, what Darjeeling should be doing more often to compare more favourably with the best Chinese blacks, but rarely does. Short of greatness but very enjoyable and more than fairly priced at $10 / 100g.

Margaret’s Hope Thunderbolt [DJ565] 
A variation on the above, but an even more impressive whole leaf grade, mixing white tips, some oxidised leaves, and quite a few flat unrolled greenish ‘flakes’. Aroma is faint, bergamottey, slightly reinforced into bready bake with warmth. 
Brewed competition style: A surprisingly light colour! (Although oxidising into a medium beige quite quickly in the cup). Aroma is faint, a bit oxidative / black tea-like. Clean, appley attack with succulent fruit. This is kept light but a black tea not an oolong, uncomplex and not so very fruity but has some impressive yun sweetness on the finish. Also some lovely spiciness. Really a delicious expression of Darjeeling. There’s another pleasant if less full and precise brewing behind.
This is even more outstanding in a large pot (4g / 250+ml), with lovely transparency of flavour and again that Darjeeling typicity without extraction and astringency. This is one tea that I would like to try with a high dosage in clay pot, like a Wuyi oolong. $16 / 100g: expensive by regional standards but more than fair for the quality. ($16 would buy a very average Wuyi oolong).

 
Risheehat SFTGFOP1 Wiry [DJ562]
True to their ‘Wiry’ name, leaves have an elongated straight aspect; small and fragmented. Quite some twigs, no tips. Not an exhilarating grade. Brewed leaf fragments are very small, uniformly brown, reminiscent of some gongfu grade Qimens or black Yunnans. 

Medium+ beige, a lighter colour than expected. A balanced cup with a nutty, typically autumnal character and just minor grip on end. But uncomplex and ultimately a little simplistic. Better balance in a larger pot, with the tannins kept at bay. This surely on the more oxidised end of the spectrum, with a somewhat malty, chewy character vaguely reminiscent of an Assam, but brewed light this can be kept at bay, though at the expense of complexity. This is good tea, but not quite my style. $7.

Sungma Turzum Clonal Wonder [DJ22]
Small leaves, minor tips, intense aroma. A reasonably good grade, but not that makes me ‘wonder’.
Brewed light with 90s, a moderate brown-reddish colour and again a rather intense aroma of dried fruits and apple pie. The oxidation is very balanced and the dry, herby aromas of autumn flush are underpinned by an almost second-flushy fruit exuberance: apples, raisins, plums. This is definitely good, and showing that Darjeeling needn’t be a whole-leaf extravagance like the Margaret’s Hope above to deliver superior character. The only criticism is that this Clonal Wonder is a bit uncomplex. Especially when left too long in the cup or the decanting jug, when it loses its fruity breadth and becomes quite tannic, though not astringent.
Through several brewing attempts I came to the conclusion that large pot and short steeps work best. If brewed stronger, this remains rather simple and becomes overtannic for my tastes, with muted fruit and a rather ordinary profile. Good value at $8. 

Museum shots

The Chopin week is over. Wine and tea drinking resumes tomorrow. Today, I have some clandestine photos of the Chopin Museum (see previous blog entry for details) from the staff pre-opening yesterday.

Happy birthday, Fryc!

Two hundred years ago from today, 60 km west of Warsaw in the middle of absolute nowhere, a boy was born to a modest Franco-Polish couple, and received the names Fryderyk Franciszek.

He was shy, of frail health, preferred milk to wine or tea (and so he isn’t even supposed to be featured on this blog). He loved violets, the Italian opera and wore expensive gloves. He taught the piano to some dumb princesses and countesses and British critics wrote his music was absolute crap. He lived on square d’Orléans and also travelled to Westphalia, Scotland and Majorca where ghosts haunted him in a desert monastery. He died at 39 of consumption, like many people in his time.

Fryderyk Franciszek painted by Ambroży Mieroszewski in 1829: his least evocative portrait but reputedly the most faithful.

He is a man from the past who is more present in our present than any other artist. Why this is so, and why the curious inflections of his melodies continue to be as poignant as the most emotional speech, is one of art’s mysteries:

Chopin’s 200th anniversary brings a plethora of events, from the just finished Chopin Congress and jubilee concert at the Warsaw Philharmonic, through a marathon of music-making almost everywhere in the world, up to the opening of a lavishly redesigned Chopin Museum in Warsaw. Designed by leading Milanese studio Migliore+Servetto and packed with stunning multimedia content on Chopin’s life, art and context, it is a must-see for anyone remotely interested in music and history. The Museum opens to the public on April 6th, and my modest contribution can be enjoyed on a couple of screens in the ‘Paris’ Room. Please book your flights to Warsaw today!