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Posts Tagged ‘Pinot Gris’

The Eyrie Vineyards are widely credited with the creation of Oregon as the Pinot Noir state of the USA.  The state has just celebrated 50 years of growing grapes for one of the world’s most elusive wine styles, celebrated by Stephen Brook in his up-to-date tribute in the February 2012 edition of Decanter magazine. But as a recent tasting for Andover Wine Friends showed, there is much more to Eyrie Vineyards and Oregon than just attempting an American version of red Burgundy.   In fact two of the three wines that really impressed the tasting group were not Noir at all. 

Following the publication of Grape Vines, Jancis, Julia and José’s tome of late 2012, we have to learn not to speak about Pinot Noir, Gris and Blanc as three different varieties. They are merely colour variations of the genetically identical Pinot variety. Skin colour is not a big deal in the grape geneticist’s world.  If Pinot Noir flourishes in the relatively cool Pacific-influenced climate of the Willamette Valley, Oregon, it is, therefore, hardly a surprise that Pinot Blanc and Gris also do well. But we just don’t hear about them in the same way.  Pinot Blanc 2010 is a limited bottling from Alsatian clones grown in the Three Sisters Vineyards which was planted in the 1980s and so now has some vine age. The ‘three sisters’ are the three colours of the Pinot variety!  This is not the wine for you if you want something that is going to jump out of the glass at you. But if you want something which will complement a wide range of food, with mineral, ripe and green apple notes with a touch of peach, very fine acidity and good length you will enjoy  this.  It is good value at £14-75. (When the opened bottle was tasted two days later the nose had really developed with quite marked stone fruit notes.)

The real stars among the whites were the Pinot Gris and the Chardonnay, though there is a sting in the tail of the latter.  I love Pinot Gris and this was a really outstanding example. The grapes come from all four Eyrie-owned vineyards, are fermented in stainless steel and, crucially, the young wine is kept on the lees until bottled.  After five years, Pinot Gris 2007 was at a peak – but may yet be able to fly higher, like the red-tailed hawks which give the winery its name.  Medium minus gold in colour from age, and evolved honey-scented, refined apple and melon fruit on the nose. In short, beautifully fragrant and integrated.  In the mouth the lees effect was more evident with the richness and fatness which lees contact and the passing of time can bring.  A great savoury edge to a wine with real palate weight but perfectly balanced.  And all this for £12.80 …. The question we were left with was how much was this quality due to the Pinot Gris itself, and how much to the bottle age.

We loved the Chardonnay Reserve 2008 too. It is a vineyard and barrel selection, choosing the barrels which show deeper, richer and more complex flavours, as winery website says.  The wine making details there are not detailed but it does state that the wine is aged for nine months on unstirred lees in a combination of neutral (ie older) and new French and Oregon oak barrels and then lightly filtered. This results in an extremely impressive, weighty and subtle Chardonnay:  pale lemon in colour, a rich nose with layers of interest, good intensity of ripe fruit and a fine savoury yeastiness.    (That yeastiness is subtle because of the decision not to stir up the lees.)  A very fine wine – but one that does cost £29 and so it up against some pretty stiff competition from the great, mineral, white wines of Burgundy.  Sadly for us, affluent American consumers like their Chardonnay too much.

We then turned our attention to the red wines, starting with a real rarity.  Pinot Meunier is normally only experienced as a part of the Champagne blend. In other words although it is a dusky red grape, its juice is used in a white wine.  Pinot Meunier 2009 had a very pale ruby colour, a bright cherry and tinned strawberry nose, light palate with savoury flavours to the fore, medium grippy tannins and some length.  Interesting rather than outstanding.  The property’s two Pinot Noirs followed and there was a really marked contrast between them. Both are pale ruby, in other words made in a Burgundian mould rather than the much deeper coloured versions of some Californian Pinot.   Pinot Noir 2008 comes from the fruit of younger vineyards and is matured for 11 months in neutral oak barrels. It had a slightly musty nose, with a touch of volatile acidity and refined red berry fruit.  The fruit showed well in the mouth but just lacked a bit of concentration.  By contrast, Pinot Noir Reserve 2009 comes from forty year old vines on their own roots (phylloxera struck Oregon in the 1990s but this vineyard has clearly escaped it thus far).  The fruit is completely destemmed and then fermented as whole berries in small bins with punching down four hours – real, small scale hands-on wine making.  Gently pressed the wines are fermented out and then aged in oak casks for two years in which they clarify naturally and the wines are bottled without fining or filtering.  The result is a wine of great quality, a rich and beautiful nose of red berries married to attractive smoky and savoury qualities, a rich and supple palate with the fruit sweetness coming out on the long finish.  The pronounced quality difference is due partly to vine age and partly to vintage, 2009 being a warmer, better year than 2008.  Due to the same market factors, neither of these wines are inexpensive but we agreed that we would rather pay £38 for the latter than £24 for the former. 

In general the wines of the Eyries Vineyards are marked by low intervention winemaking and resulting elegance, balance and subtle nuance.  They are a classic example of how elegant, light to medium weight but balanced wines can be thrilling. 

Alongside these Eyrie wines we also tasted a couple of others from the North West.  Apart from ticking off ‘Idaho’ as a wine making state, we didn’t particularly warm to Chardonnay, Vickers Vineyard, Idaho, 2008.  The fruit is grown at an impressive 850m above sea level and showed some real tropical intensity balanced by acidity, but the oak was just so dominant making the wine that was medium minus gold in colour with butterscotch and vanilla the predominant impression. Perhaps after few more years the fruit/oak competition may become a more even contest.  By contrast Tempranillo, Abacela, Umqua Valley, Oregon 2005 was a wine of real depth, some finesse and character.   Although we are back in Oregon, the climate in Umpqua, 170 miles south of the Willamette Valley is more like Ribera del Duero than Beaune. Indeed that is precisely why Earl and Hilda Jones moved the thousands of miles from Florida to plant the Spanish variety they loved, the first planting of this variety in the Pacific North West.  Oregon clearly continues to attract wine pioneers.  Mid ruby in colour with first signs of garnet on the rim, this had fine quite powerful, fragrant fruit (from strawberry through to ripe blackcurrant) on the nose suggesting a warm climate.  In something of a contrast the palate was lean and subtle, with high acidity and medium, chalky tannins. An impressive wine at a very good value £14.50.  The oak regime here is very restrained: 94% French oak, 6% American of which just 14% is new and 26% second year, meaning that the time in oak changes the texture of the wine rather than adding flavours. 

Overall this was a fascinating tasting of some splendid wines of real character. They have been chosen by and are available from Savage Selection, run by Mark Savage MW who roams the earth looking for growers and wine makers who aim for finesse and balance in the glass.   

Outside of the New World with its focus on the characteristic qualities of single grape varieties, Alsace has got to be the easiest wine to taste blind.  Aromatic Gewurz, steely Riesling, more neutral but classy Pinot Gris and the odd glass of Pinot Noir (which has the decency to be red), this is going to be a doddle isn’t it?  Let’s see how we got on at the late February Bring a Bottle Club. 

	We started with a little flight of three whites. First up was something quite floral and then there were two wines with marked similarities. A great debate followed on whether this was one or two grape varieties or different wine makers’ approaches or vintage difference.  Light began to dawn when we were challenged to re-taste glass number one and just concentrate on the aromas and taste of this one wine.
In a rare triumph …  I got the muted tones of orange blossom and grapey notes of … Muscat! A young Muscat is normally an easy spot but rounded out, with some subtle ageing notes and less obvious primary fruit after five years in the bottle it is not so easy. But this was indeed Muscat 2006, Julien Rieffel. On then being told that wines 2 and 3 were in fact two varieties, we
	agreed that one was Pinot Blanc and one Pinot Gris and even got them the right way around with Pinot Blanc’s honeyed tone and quality Pinot Gris’s spiciness and exotic fruit: Pinot Blanc 2006, Josmeyer and Pinot Gris 2005 Trimbach.   All three were excellent wines, subtle, complex and harmonious – and mannered partners for food.
An unintended pair of wines followed. I was supposed to be bringing a Grand Cru Gewurztraminer … but it turned out to be a GC Riesling, obviously a late night pick out of the cellar.  But Grand Cru or not, the wine was in any case badly oxidised with a poor, crumbly cork.  You can see something is wrong from the colour alone (right): Brand GC, Riesling 2001, Zind Humbrecht – we missed you!
	By contrast, the more basic wine was everything it should be: a classic nose of green apples, mineral and petrol notes well to the fore, and sharp acidity.  A huge contrast to the baked apples and caramel notes which just about survived under the oxidised version of big brother.  Riesling, Tradition, 2005, Hugel.  And of course this did live up to the promise of being easily to spot tasted blind.
On to the final dry or dryish white wine:  pronounced honey notes on the nose, barley sugar and a touch of tangerine.  This wine had a lot of quality about it but there was no consensus on what it was: more practice needed: Herrenweg de Turckheim, Pinot Gris, 2002, Zind Humbrecht. Given the fate of the other two wines from this company, it was good that this was in top condition.
	Sadly the label was the best thing about this corked bottle of Zind Humbrecht’s  excellent Pinot Noir 2005.  I tasted this in October 2009: ‘a brilliant example of Pinot, fragrant, a clarity of fruit and balanced acidity presumably reflecting its northern latitude. Not cheap but a fine accompaniment to pork and prunes.’
On to the sweeties:  marked aged notes, not either very sweet or luscious, this showed good balance, some chiselled fruit, and was excellent with cheese:  Riesling, Furstentum Grand Cru, Vendanges Tardives, 1989, Paul Blanck.  Easy to identify but not as easy as the final wine:
	A dull label but a classic wine: pronounced aromas of lychee and rose water … do I need to go on: obviously Gewurztraminer … rich on the palate and again the sweetness modified by age, very good indeed: Gewurztraminer, Sélection de Grains Nobles, 2000, Henri Ehrhardt.  A fitting climax to the evening – and once we were past the first three white wines tasted together a relatively straightforward evening as promised … it won’t last!

January’s Fine Wine Supper featured the wines of top Alsace producer, Josmeyer.  It is always worthwhile to taste the wines of the most well-known domaines, to see if they continue to live up to their reputations.  Here they emphatically did.  All six wines were very good, some – in fact the cheapest as well as some of the Grand Cru – were excellent.  But the real star of the evening for me was the Pinot Gris. 

Now that is a sentence you  do not often read.  The reputation of Pinot Gris/Grigio has suffered badly due to the glut of cheap examples which are neutral at best and sometimes just seriously bland – inexpensive wines, inexplicably popular in bars and the supermarket.  Their secret is that they don’t taste of anything … which is a profoundly depressing thought.  And even on this evening of quality wines, the Riesling and the Gewurztraminer were more assertive, more flamboyant, more showy.  But for quality, balance and a subtle complexity, the Pinot Gris outshone their flashier neighbours. 

The evening was based on half a dozen wines put together by the Wine Society to showcase Josmeyer.  Rather neatly, there were two examples each of Riesling, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer.  Each pair showed a good contrast – in quality level, age or between single vineyards. 

After a pleasant glass of sparkling wine, Crémant d’Alsace from Dopff, we began with the Riesling.  If there was a prize for the best wine of the night for quality against price, it would easily be won by The Society’s Exhibition Riesling 2009, made for the Wine Society by Josmeyer at a creditable £11.50.  Beautiful green apple and honey notes, floral, moderate acidity (perhaps lower than expected due to the warm year), effortless balance, superb.  There was, however, a marked step up in quality and complexity to the Riesling Les Pierrets 2004, and so there should be at more than double the price.  The youthful, bright apple notes have transmuted into something profound, a full palate of fruit (apple, quince) and mineral complexity.  The standard ‘petrol, but in a good way’ note won’t quite do: mineral, mildly mushroom and herbal. Magnificent and long lasting.

Then on to the Pinot Gris. It was a risk tasting these between the two aromatic varieties but it paid off.  Pinot Gris Fromenteau 2008 is not a cru, being made from a number of high quality sites, but a quality white pinot which sports the old Alsace name for the grape variety. It is seriously difficult to describe – obviously more neutral on the nose but then a wonderful richness on the palate, some stone fruit, obvious ripeness off-set by perfectly balanced sharpness.   Pinot Gris Grand Cru Brand 2008 was the revelation of the evening.  The Grand Cru system in Alsace is controversial with some growers not accepting those vineyards that were selected. But what ever you call it, this showed it credentials – richer and riper fruit (melon and ripe red apples), lovely spiciness, rich and concentrated (Oz Clark calls it ‘the richness of brazil nut flesh’), outstanding length and overall quality.  Subtle and powerful simultaneously.  Forget every cheap glass of PG you have drunk and taste this instead.

The final pair of wines were suitably luxurious – two grand cru wines made from Gewurztraminer, with a decade or so of bottle age.  Brand (being the vineyard name) 2001 had a superbly fragrant bouquet with the classic rose water and lychee/exotic fruit combination, great viscosity and mouth feel, and very good length. Its partner, Hengst 2002 for me had brighter fruit, the same rich concentration but offset with better acidity.  The group had a long debate about this pair of wines, some struggling with the exotic fragrance (‘air freshener’), while others debated the merits of the two vintages and vineyards. Great wines are wines that promote conversation and opinion. 

That the best producers in Alsace make great wines is hardly a revelation. But as consumers, we can benefit here in that wines of similar quality in, say, the more fashionable Burgundy, would command astronomic prices.  There is great quality and value to be had here.  And the wines, even the simpler ones, age well. Our final bottle, a bonus, from Josmeyer was its Auxerrois (a local grape variety with the same parentage as Chardonnay) 2001 which had nice creamy ageing notes, if modest fruit.  All in all, these wines showed the very distinctive character of the three grape varieties, their food friendliness and their capacity to improve with age. And the star of the show in all these ways was – for me – the Pinot Gris.

The North Hampshire countryside is full of small treasures, the trout rivers, the attractive villages, the cricket pitches (immaculately maintained or suffering from neglect), the ancient trees in the fields.  Increasingly the pubs are having to diversify to survive.  The Plough at Longparish has gone very successfully down the gastropub route, while retaining a loyal band of local drinkers.  This proved to be a very good venue for Andover Wine Friends to hold a themed French dinner with matching wines.  The food was in the main very good, and the wines, chosen and supplied by Ian Hewson (Wine-Man Ltd) were a study in good combinations.

 

	First up a pretty ambitious starter, Fois Gras ravioli in a chicken consommé finished with truffle oil.  The consommé was excellently carried off, full of flavour and with that unmistakable truffle aroma.  The pasta didn’t quite live up to that. Clearly hand made, it was a bit rustic for such a subtle dish.  Pinot Gris Reserve 2008 from the Cave de Hunawihr was an excellent match, simultaneously rich and refreshing, with that luxury touch which matched the truffle oil.
The fish course put the ‘pub’ back into gastropub with its interpretation of Crayfish tail and lemon croquette with almond beurre noisette.  The flavours here were fine, the salty tang of the crayfish set off by the almonds and citrus. Attractively presented, the croquette was a bit on the large size with lots of potato – fine for feeding hungry manual labourers, not really needed for pampered diners.  Tourraine Sauvignon 2009, Domaine de la Colline, had those characteristic gooseberry fruit notes of Sauvignon Blanc but the very good vintage gave the wine an additional rich and rounded character.
	Again remarkable ambition here, with Date stuffed crown of duck on thyme potato rösti and duck sausage on plum mash with a cherry jus, pretty successfully carried off.  The matched wine was Chateau Brion la Romaine 2005, Medoc.  2005 was a great year in Bordeaux and by some happy accident I have some stashed away so it was good to get a preview.   This example (at a modest price) had some beautifully developed aromas on the nose but not quite the follow through on the palate.  But a good glass of wine to go with the meat course.
Lemon tart with lemon crème fraiche was excellent, especially the zip of the lemon filling of the tart.  Also very good was Côtes de Bergerac Moelleux 2006 Cuvée Dalmain which was honeyed, rounded and luscious.  If it wasn’t quite sharp enough to stand up to the Lemon tart, that wasn’t exactly its fault!

All in all, this was a splendid evening with 24 of us having an excellent time. Many thanks to David, Kerry and all the staff at the Plough.  May your dishes and wines always be perfectly matched!

A very rare sighting of an occasional attender at Andover Wine Friends!

Andover Wine Friends’ March monthly tasting was ably introduced by member, Lefty Wright, with knowledge and a light touch.  The tasting was arranged around the characteristic grape varieties of this northerly region, and Lefty’s commentary interspersed with local detail and reminiscence.  Here’s the line up, nearly all sourced from the Wine Society.

	Pinot Blanc, Cave de Turkheim, 2008. Starting with the work horse grape of Alsace, a good value everyday white.  Mildly flowery and fruit nose, clean, then a full and luscious palate with good crisp finish.  A high quality start from the large Turkheim co-operative.
Sylvaner Reserve, Weinbach 2007. Rich concentrated palate, heading towards quite tropical fruit, the concentration due to low yields and good winemaking, very good length.  Several cuts above most Sylvaner.
	Klevener de Heiligenstein, Ruff, 2009.  Something of a rarity, Klevener is only grown in 13 hectares in Alsace and is the same grape as Savagnin or Traminer, a less exotic relative of Gewurz.  Slightly honeyed or butterscotch nose, pleasant, perhaps  it is not surprising there is only 13 ha of this.
Muscat Reserve, Trimbach 2009.  light and floral, characteristic grapey aromas, a mixture of the two Muscat grapes grown in the region, rather thin and short.  It may be a noble grape in Alsace but this was a bit disappointing.
	Riesling Tradition Hugel 2008, Tradition is one step up from Hugel’s basic range. As a young wine quite neutral on the nose but zesty palate, with a sleek texture, and a shot of still youthful acidity.  Probably better in a year’s time.
Pinot Gris, Leon Beyer, 2005 The only corked casualty of the night, but just enough to go around from one bottle.  Attractive bright colour (the corked bottle was not as limpid), rich and spicy – candied fruit, mango, caramel.  Difficult to imagine that this is the same grape as cheap Pinot Grigio. But here, mainly from a Grand Cru vineyard, it makes a great wine that can be aged.
	Gewurztraminer Les Folastries, Josmeyer, 2005. Golden hue from some bottle age, Folastries is not a vineyard (which would be a reasonable guess, see Heimbourg below), but one of Josmeyer’s lines.  Classic lychees and roses on the nose, fat and unctuous, moderate acidity, a slightly clumsy finish.
Riesling Heimbourg, Zind-Humbrecht, 2001, now around £25, and a great bargain.  Some oatmeal and marmalade notes on the nose from Botrytis, not noticeably petrolly like much old Riesling, but the roundedness of mature fruit, a good balance and rich.  A very good wine from an outstanding grower.
	Tokay Pinot Gris, Vendange Tardive, Hugel, 1989.  A remarkable bonus bottle shared by Tim Pearce of Grape Expectations. Tim in turn had been given it many years ago when visiting Hugel, the founder of modern Alsace wines.  Late harvest Pinot Gris (in those days also known as Tokay), this was now rich and perfectly balanced, having lost what was its overwhelming sweetness.  The perfect way to end the tasting. Thank you Tim and Lefty.