As part of our acclimatising we decided to explore the wine area nearest to our base in Sydney. Kathy researched well and booked us on a trip with a small company, Boutique Wine Tours. As the name suggests they specialise in small scale wineries. They have only 3 14 seater busses and our guide, Jason, was a fount of information and enthusiasm.
The Hunter Valley is today home to many of Australia's illustrious winemaking families, a myriad of boutique wine producers, as well as acclaimed Semillon and Shiraz wines. The region abounds with cultural history and the spirit of passionate and hard working families. The collaboration of the soils with the sun, wind, rain and mature vines contribute to Hunter Valley’s complex award winning wines.
Wine tasting and estate tours are on offer at various wineries. Jason took us to 4 bodega producers. We were given 4 structured tasting, including a total of 27 wines. Most wineries have what they call “cellar door” sales counters. Indeed some are only the producers of the grape and the outlet for the wine, leaving the actual production to a contracted third party – mind you, from what we saw, they set the rules and very high standards. Of the 100 wineries in the Hunter Valley 70 are just celladors and 24 are owned by or part of a multi-regional operation (such as Lindeman).
We enjoyed each winery and each was very different. In 2 the owner is vigneron and chief executive. And each showed real innovation in the wines that they offered. Our favourites was the Iron Gate Estate. Roger Lilliat, a retired chemist from Whitstable in Kent set up the winery on virgin terroir only 8 years ago. His innovation reminded me of Peter Arnold. Perhaps we should introduce them! Roger owned a home on the Costa del Sol and wanted to bring Spanish bodega style to his operation. The architectural style and the modern production deliver this in spades.
The vineyard is small – that is an understatement. We could see all his lines of vines from where we stood chatting.
Roger produces just 70,000 bottles in a good year. And his was the largest of those we visited – the smallest produces only 8,000! Virtually all his production is sold directly on site. He does export a small selection for sale at The Cellar Door in St Albans – which is run by his sons. He introduced the group to the technique of fluffing some of the lighter wines to enhance the nose. And proudly told us that the Hunter Valley produces the finest Semillon in the world. And we saw several examples of the wines aged over several years to produce a very different colour and hue, plus amazingly complex nose and flavour. The grape does not tend to be used this way elsewhere.
The wines are all bottled in similar shaped and sized bottles, differing only in glass colour and label colours. He presented us with 7 wines to taste. As everywhere we visited we tasted Semillon, in his case in a Chardonnay blend. His was a lovely, very quaffable summer wine of the 2008 vintage.
Next we tasted a 2003 Verdelho (Portuguese name for Verdejo). His had the signature pineapple melon and passion fruit overlays with undercurrents of other light fruits. It would be a great accompaniment for oysters or scallops.
The Rosado that he served, named Rose after his 96½ year old mother who died last year, just 4 years after upping sticks and moving from Whitstable to live with Roger. This refreshing glass was very slightly sweeter than the whites with flavours of watermelon.
We then tasted 2 Shirazs – another staple of the valley. The 2004 was very light, despite 12 months in French oak. He achieved a beautiful and very subtle blend of flavours and aromas with real fruitiness. It was full of flavour, but not a heavy wine. The second, a 2006, was much more akin to a French Syrrah, combined with Ozzie fruitiness. It would be great with meat, with no likelihood of overpowering the meal.
We finished with 2 of his dessert wines. The first, named Mandala, a Semillon/Verdelho blend, had peach, apricot and tangerine tones. It would go well with a Thai curry, a big cheese or even a cheesecake or pavlova.
The second was made from Shiraz. Roger insists that this should be served cold – not just chilled! It would be a fine accompaniment to a hot spicy meal, Indian or Mexican. But, as we discovered, with chocolate it presents strong black cherry flavours.
I was surprised to see Verdejo so prominently exhibited here. And was told more than twice that the only other country in the world that produces single variety table wines from the grape is Portugal (Vino Verde). I corrected them all.
But my surprise was greater when I was shown rows of Tempranillo, nearly ready for the harvest. I don’t remember ever seeing Tempranillo listed on an Australian wine label.
The 2008 harvest was badly hit by the weather. Indeed most of the Shiraz crop was ruined. One effect of small producers, as we know from our experiences in Spain, is that stocks can be unpredictable. Once a wine is sold that’s it. So Shiraz will be in short supply over the the next couple of years.
This was the only wine producer that we visited who continues to use only natural cork. Screwtops are now the order of the day, both here and in New Zealand. After years (in their opinion) of being sent second grade cork from Europe the producers have rebelled and turned closure on its head. Wines are now maturing well and long in screwtops.
As so often the wines sent for export come almost entirely from big name conglomerates, especially true as Tesco has a major control over distribution of the product. It was refreshing to uncover a wonderful array of gems.
Sherry as served up by Tim Ladd on 17th April 2008 at Restaurant Gemissant, Moraira.
For many members of this Society and society in general, sherry probably was once a far more familiar wine than it is nowadays.
That goes for me too. Indeed though that may be, for the greater part of my working life I was totally dependent on that particular wine, along with some port. For those that do not know so much about me (the lucky ones) I am of course speaking financially. (See Addendum)
The history of sherry itself is far longer than that of most wines that we know today, but I shall do my best to condense it (into just a few hours). When the British had lost access to Bordeaux as their provincial wine barrel, (it having come under English control as a handy dowry together with Eleanor of Aquitaine) the search for replacements soon got underway. Down the coast was Portugal with port wine and further down again Cadiz and its adjacent sherry area.
By then the Moors had been gradually ousted, leaving behind them their skills in distilling and a fondness for wines, whatever the Koran might say. It did not take long to grasp the benefit of adding some of one to the other as a clever means to preserve the wine for the sea voyages north. There is some evidence to suggest that as early as Chaucer’s time, the wine from the Cadiz area was stronger than most, as that bard in his Tales endorses the benefits of the strong wines from Lepi, a town within that area, but now not featuring on the sherry map.
By Shakespeare’s time, sherry, or sack by which it was also known, had become so popular that it was referred to by Falstaff. Of course it was with a few thousand barrels of sherry (known in Jerez as botas or butts containing 500 litres)) that Drake made off having singed the king of Spain’s beard with a risky raid on Cadiz to fire the Spanish fleet at anchor.
Sherry imports to Bristol had become so popular locally that by the 17th century sherry was known there as Bristol Milk.
Regulations and a Denominated area for sherry were established in 1933, in an attempt to protect the genuine article from the many say-so imitations from around the world, though sherry had come from large tracts of Andalucia. In fact, the grape still used for sweetening sherry, Pedro Ximenez, still comes, as it always had, from the Montilla Moriles area, south of Cordoba. Although that area now has its own D.O., for use as sherry these sweeter wines are aged and usually blended in Jerez.
Since the 1930’s, the sherry triangle has been delimited by the inland town of Jerez de La Frontera, and the coastal points of Sanlucar de Barrameda at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and Puerto de Santa Maria around the corner on the bay of Cadiz.
The soils in the area are chalky (albariza), sandy (arena) and clay (barro). It is the white rolling, rounded low hills of albariza soil that give the area a distinctive look, producing the most delicate and prized yields. These hills rise to only 100 to 150 metres above sea level, and are cooled by their proximity to the Atlantic. The key grape variety is the palomino, but the style of sherry that comes from these different soils is by no means a foregone conclusion.
As an aperitif here this evening, you were served a table wine made in the area from the palomino grape. It is light and innocuous, sold under the name of Antonio Barbadillo, and is nowadays the best selling white wine Spain.
The main difference between this table wine and wine that evolves to be called sherry is twofold. One is the addition of some grape spirit to take the alcoholic strength up to about 15º initially from its natural 12º or so, once the natural fermentation cycle ends. The other is the emergence of a local natural yeast on partially filled barrels of the lighter wines. This yeast, known as flor, is only found naturally in very other few wine areas; the Jura in France is one of these where the rare Château Chalon is made. The wine largely decides for itself which style of sherry it will become once it is transferred into casks, which are filled to 80%. The lighter, finer ( fino) sherries will start to grow this flor as a milky skim or crust on the surface of the wine. The fuller bodied wines grow little flor and these casks are filled to the brim with more wine and extra grape spirit to about 18º of alcohol. At that higher alcoholic strength, and without air, flor cannot grow. These fuller wines will oxidize very slowly, developing a distinctive bouquet (or olor) and are thus simply known as oloroso; the fuller-bodied but still naturally dry style of sherry.
The flor yeast has some remarkable beneficial properties: it overwhelms any vinegar yeast cells and prevents air (oxygen) reacting with and thus spoiling the wine it covers.
It is sensitive to temperature variations and needs fresh air. It continues to thrive if new wine is added to the cask. Thus starts the sherry blending process. Wine of a year old is kept in rows of casks called añadas (from año). Wine from añadas are gradually drawn off and put into criaderas (the nursery casks from spanish criar in the sense to bring up). After the criadera stage, the wine is used to refill the solera, those casks from which the final customary blend is extracted for bottling.
If, say, 10% of a wines content is withdrawn and replaced by some wine just a bit younger, that replacement 10% wine rapidly takes on the character of the 90% slightly older wine. This process can be repeated up to three or more times a year. Even so, the age of some fino soleras can be as much as eight years.
Fino sherry aged in the town of Sanlucar on the coast is known as Manzanilla, and is lighter and more delicate in flavour than finos aged elsewhere in the demarcated area. But there is a limit as to how long the flor can be live and be refreshed with younger wine. At that stage the wine is passed into filled casks, maybe some additional brandy is added and the wine becomes an amontillado. However, the wines for amontillado styles can be selected much earlier. The name by the way derives from the town of Montilla. Thus Amontillado originally described Montilla style sherry. True amontillado depends on having been first a fino. It is the flor yeast in the fino criaderas and soleras that eats up any vestige of glycerol. This element remains in oloroso styles that will have had not contact with flor. Amontillado styles are therefore naturally dry. They become medium dry to suit northern European tastes only by the judicious addition of some mistela. Something we know here on the Costa Blanca from the moscatel grape but in this case simply made from palomino wine to which extra grape juice is added during fermentation until the exhausted yeasts can no longer convert all the natural grape sugars into alcohol. Amontillado sherry, no longer protected from oxygenation by a covering of flor, starts to turn through shades of pale gold to amber. The powerful, rich natural unsweetened flavour is an acquired taste.
Oloroso sherry (spanish olor for smell, but in the fragrant sense) are chosen from the start as fuller bodied wines that are placed in right away in casks filled to the bung hole. They are topped up with brandy to a shade over 15% alcohol and then left to age in the same way as the amontillados, all naturally dry but with their natural glycerol giving a smoother feel in the mouth. Again a naturally aged oloroso is an acquired taste, one that is typically enriched and sweetened by being blended, before bottling, with Pedro Ximenez aged wine, this made in the same process as oloroso, but the grapes themselves still coming from the Montilla- Moriles area, that was once part of the greater sherry area. Apart from these three basic styles of sherry, there are others, of which Palo Cortado is a rare halfway house between a fino and an oloroso.
In recent years, in order to help justify the costs of keeping sherry for years in a solera, new styles that are age verified have been encouraged: - VOS (21yrs) VORS (30) . Their age is supported by carbon dating analysis as well as by taste. It should be added that such wines are very much an acquired taste, needing far more euros to acquire and are not being sampled tonight. May you enjoy the samples you try and to remember sherry as the first quality wine from Spain. Sherry still holds its own in that respect with an edition this year of Vinos de España magazine including 19 Sherries and Pedro Ximenez wines among the top 160 wines in Spain. Worth noting that three of these 16 cost just 6 euros or less !
Addendum,..personal note.
I started soon after leaving school by taking a temporary job in my hometown with Harveys of Bristol, then well-known sherry shippers and wine merchants.
My plan was to decide what I should be doing in the longer term. It took me over twenty seven and mostly very happy years with Harveys, with only the briefest of breaks, to make up my mind to stay with the drinks business, by then moving into the umbrella drinks company into which Harveys had for many years been integrated. That was Allied Domecq, where I stayed for nine years before concluding that early retirement was the best option after all… far less paperwork, but alas no one to pick up the drinks tab.
(member of the Wine Society and wine columnist for the C.B. News)
Bodegas Luis Alegre of Languardia, Rioja, have asked me to taste their wines and to report on Rioja, the most famous area of Spanish wines.
I don’t seem to be having much luck with the C.B. Wine Society’s tastings these days, I’m finding that other commitments too often clash with these evenings and I therefore miss out on good wines and speakers.
So it was when Luis Alegre presented their wines at Restaurante Ca La Iaia in Moraira. However, a phone call to Jose, at A Catarlo Todo in Teulada, was sufficient for him to set up a meeting with me after the very well received Wine Society event.
The bodega Alegre makes a range of wines in their superb custom designed and built brand new wine making facility in the middle of their 54 hectares of vines. The building is circular with an amazing restaurant on the first floor and then various stages of wine making in the three levels underneath. Wine making was founded here by Luis Alegre in 1968 but in the 90’s a new management team took over – average age only 36, but whose philosophy provides a bridge between tradition and innovation.
The aim is to produce only wines of quality from their own vines along with the 30 hectares of vines over which they have complete control.
In common with some of the best French chateaux this forward thinking bodega takes with them into the vineyards at harvest time a mobile selection table. On this the bunches of grapes (from old and new vines) are carefully categorised and sorted. Inferior grapes are ruthlessly rejected on the spot.
The family believes that in this way they ensure the perfect health of the grapes and the best of the best are destined for crianza and reserva. After vinification in small stainless steel vats, they are moved into oak barrels (French, American and/or Hungarian).
The wood from which the barrels are made are bought up to 3 years before they are needed – this allows for regular analytical checks during the maturing and drying process. When the wine maker is ready to place his new wine in oak he has a battery of test results that enable him to choose which oak is most appropriate for which wine – emphasising their determination to produce quality wine, and it works!
The Luis Alegre Joven Carbonic Maceration Tinto 2007 is a gloriously fruity wine from Tempranillo 90% Garnach 5% and Viura 5% (the latter being Rioja’s white wine variety). The nose develops into a full on fruit aroma and is inexpensive – if you like tropical fruit, a suggestion of pomegranite/grenadine, this could be for you. It is most agreable with or without food.
The Crianza 2004 will last for two or three years and is also most enjoyable now. It consists of 85% tempranillo with graciano, mazuelo and garnacha. It has enjoyed 12 months in oak, has a refreshing acidity, with a balance on vanilla oak and study red fruit like plums and damsons – even coconut. A rich and highly acclaimed wine.
The 2003 Vendemia Seleccionada is big and elegant in the mouth. Only the best tempranillo, mazuelo and graciano grapes are used. After a 14 day fermentation it is decanted into french oak where it remains for 14 months. It continues to develop in the bottle for 24 months and is best decanted to obtain full flavour. This is a wine born of a marriage between tradition and innovation.
The final red wine, Gran Vino Pontac 2004 is their signature wine. It is a special, single estate wine from tempranillo (95%) and graciano. About 7,000 bottles have been made from just 8,000 kilos of ‘the best of the best’. An hour before tasting, I decanted this wine and the full aroma and flavour were evident.
The wine I had was number 122, one of the first bottled. It has a lovely nose of figs and damsons with a endearing faint bitter coffee taste – a wine of considerable finesse. This is a wine that seems to bridge the Pyrenees, quite French in subtle style but with a Mediterranean, Spanish element too.
Bodega Luis Alegre also makes a rosado, an unoaked white and a traditional oaked white (the latter I enjoyed but found a bit lacking in fruit, with oak being the predominant flavour) a rosado and a cava. I will look forward to tasting and buying more Rioja wines from this bodega in the near future.
After 14 hours of flying Kathy and I landed in Santiago de Chile expecting to be surprised by what we were to find. We were not disappointed.
The first surprise was the amazing sense of home – Repsol, Telefonica and the major Spanish banks are to be seen everywhere. But the best surprise of all is the vibrant, modern and sophisticated city that is Santiago. We are finding fabulous cuisine and outstanding wines – and all at affordable prices. It is a great advantage to have a decent degree of Spanish here – but the welcome to foreigners generally is very warm.
We have endeavoured to extend our education in the few days since we arrived, especially in terms of the wines of the country.
Our first pleasant discovery was the fast growing popularity of the variety Carménère. The vines were imported to Chile by mistake at the end of the 19th Century during the phylloxera crisis in France. Vines were taken en masse to Rioja, California and South America to protect the future of wine production before the bug could take hold. But it was assumed that Carménère had been lost. For nearly a hundred years the Chileans produced a poor quality wine thought to be a bad Merlot that was identified only in the closing years of the last century for what it is.
In the Medoc Carménère had been used mainly to blend with varieties such as Petit Verdot and was “lost” with sadness by the claret houses.
A member of the Cabernet family it produces deep smokey wines and we have found a number of excellent examples, both single varietal wines and in blends. The Marande Terrarum Reserva from the Valle de Maipo is a super example and available in restaurants for under €10 a bottle.
We also found it strongly represented at the Concha y Toro winery – the largest in South America. Here they claim that their founder, Don Melchor Concha y Toro, was the one who accidentally brought these vines all this way. What a shame he didn´t know what he had!
In Spain Concha y Toro is best known for its Casillero del Diablo brand – named after the Don´s fable of the devil in the wine cellar to scare away local thieves!
But here we discovered many outstanding wines not yet commonly available in our local suppliers – such as Don Melchior, a complex wine grown in the Puente Alto vineyard in the Maipo Valley; Marques de Casa Concha, a selection of cellar master chosen vintages; and the Casillero del Diablo Reserva Privada, a lower price selection of quality wines.
The house has also now launched a new brand to market – Trio is always a blend of 3 varieties, where one dominates . These now offer 6 different Trio blends, including now one that uses only Sauvignon Blanc – but from three differing locations, adding a complexity of flavours.
We also discovered some super Petit Verdot varietals and a number of great Cabernet Sauvignon´s.
Later in the day, following an outstanding lunch, we visited the Santa Rita winery, also in the Valle de Maipo. Their Carménère 120 (named in memory of the Chilean fighters resisting the Spanish, who were hidden in the cellars of the grand original house of this winery) – is a little lighter and is made here but from grapes harvested in the Valle de Rapel.
Through this company we also discovered the Carmen Reserva Pinot Noir. This comes from the Carmen Valley and has more chew than we are used to from a Pinot NoirM.
The wines that we have discovered are all enjoyable, the country is welcoming and the people are charming. We are now leaving wine country as we head north towards Machu Picchu in Peru and then by cruise ship to Ecuadaor, Panama, Colombia and on to the USA before we return.
