Tasting for Style and Quality

Identifying wine aromatics are important for tasting, as is honing in on its structure. Tasting for the MW, however, I’ve noticed I’ve had to add ‘tasting for style’ to my repertoire. The quality assessment is a key component of the Practical exams, usually worth even more points than absolute identification of the wine, so I pulled three styles of dry wine this morning in order to reflect on styles and quality of wine.



Frascati and Muscadet
Frascati is made in central Italy from Malvasia and Trebbiano, two of the most neutral grapes I know. Malvasia generally has higher ripeness and a fuller body, so blending with the higher acid Trebbiano makes for a pleasant wine. I thought this Frascati had an awful lot of aromatics (I probably shouldn’t have picked a Frascati ‘Superiore’, which I am guessing is a Frascati higher in alcohol, so will have higher aromatics). Starting with the Frascati, like I said there were more aromatics than I thought there would be. It was nearly tropical, indicating a warmer climate. The acid seemed to be high until I tasted the Muscadet. While still writing down components to a traditional tasting note, I concluded that the Frascati was a soft and refreshing wine and its relative neutrality on the palate would make it an excellent aperitif.

Muscadet always smells musty – nearly corked - to me. I believe that to be the lees talking. Aromatically, this wine was even more neutral, though I did get that pure lemon aroma and flavor. There was a bit of CO2 prickle on the tongue and really mouthwatering acid. My personal preference says this is not a very pleasant drink, but I could imagine it being a lovely mignonette for oysters.


Gewürztraminer
Here was the step up in style and quality (by design). A darker color suggesting more ripeness and/or extract, and textbook Gewürztraminer aromatics easily jumping from the glass: perfume, perfume, perfume, plus a little tropical note. The palate was softer and much fuller in body, which allowed for a longer finished compared to the two above. It also seemed slightly off-dry, a little more red apple (so again, ripe), and even had a little spiciness/bitterness on the finish.

Going from the Gewürztraminer back to the Frascati and Muscadet not only highlighted the more ‘noble’ nature of the Gewürztraminer grape, but also the higher quality: Gewürztraminer had a longer length that was layers and layers of tropical fruits and spices. It probably helped somewhat that, by design, the Francasti and Muscadet retail for around $13 and the Gewürztraminer was $22.


Maybe Too Easy
The tasting was designed to focus on different style and quality levels and that was definitely achieved. It was helpful to go about this tasting with the intention of quieting my analytical mind and focusing on the quality and the setting that such a wine of this style would be served. Next up will be a look at terroir and quality.

The wines:

* Borgo del Cedro Frascati Superiore 2010 $13.50, 13.5% abv

* Hautes Noelles (Serge Batard) Muscadet Sur Lie 2010 $13, 12% abv

* Paul Blanck Gewurztraminer 'Classique' 2010 $22.50 (for 750ml), 14% abv

Channing Daughters, Pinot Grigio 2009 (Long Island) $20, 12.5% abv

::: peeking out :::

Hi.

Remember me?

You probably thought this blog was dead.

Well, it was mostly dead. See, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is still alive.

And as such, I still have things -- well, wine mostly -- that I want to talk about. For instance, this 2009 Channing Daughters Pinot Grigio.

This wine is 100% Pinot Grigio made from grapes coming from both Channing Daughters' Bridgehampton estate on the South Fork of Long Island (aka The Hamptons) and Mudd's vineyard on the North Fork. Aromatics are heavily weighted towards orchard fruits (especially golden delicious apples and pears) and pretty white flowers.

I found the palate to be medium weight with juicy acidity -- not too searing, not too soft. The wine was aged in a mix of stainless steel and various-sized oaks that helped elevate this to a classy sort of Pinot Grigio (not to be confused with the water-like cheap & cheerful versions all to prevalent in the marketplace). There was also a gentle wash of Lemonheads outside shell (ya know? The sweet outside part? Not the sour middle?) and bitter zest on the finish that I really enjoyed.

I opened this wine at home with a pu-pu platter from the local ghetto Chinese takeaway joint. The caramelized plummy spare ribs were a bit too intense (but I was dreaming of a Loire Valley gamay for that) but the Channing Daughters wine stepped up as a refreshing counterpoint to the fried chicken wings.

That's right. BBQ spare ribs and fried chicken wings. Only authentic Chinese takeaway for me.

Dr. Loosen, Erdener Treppchen Kabinett Riesling 2005 (Mosel), $25, 8% abv

I drank this casualty first from the wet cellar because it has a twist cap, and my arms were exhausted from my first attempt of bucketing out water from the basement.

One thing I was really surprised by was the quality of inks and glues used for nearly all of the wet bottles on the bottom shelf of the cellar. That label barely shows any damage. If anything, importer labels that were later added were the only label that were sliding off as I moved them to drier grounds.

Back to the wine: fortunately, the Dr. Loosen showed no signs of damage. As I would have expected, it had a medium (+) intensity of dried tropical aromatics and was already developing a petrol note. A classic mineral aroma was also present. On the palate the wine is off-dry and has a slight spritz that augments the medium (+) acidity that cleans away the residual sugar and leaves behind a beautiful kaleidoscope of pineapple, ripe lemon, and wet stone flavors.

Easy to drink all night long at 8% while checking the progress of the water pump downstairs…

Hope Estate, Verdelho 2007 (Hunter Valley, Australia) $NA, 12.5% abv

Jet Blue. Center seat. Next to a fussy seven-month old. Entertainment system broken.

Alcohol needed.

I find ‘meh’ white wine easier to swallow than ‘meh’ red wine, so I ordered a mini bottle of white and, well, color me surprised when I was presented with a Verdelho! From the Hunter Valley! That seems so random to me that I fully expect their red selection is a Blaufränkish from Lodi.


Swirling from my small plastic cup, I found the wine had medium intensity aromas of lemon peel, grapefruit, orange, lychee, wet stone, and a hint of green herbs. The body was a little fuller than medium, oily in texture, and seemed slightly off-dry on the palate (mind you, I have a blind spot on residual sugar). Acid was soft and flavors agreed with the palate and further included menthol, which I interpreted as higher alcohol (though the bottle said 12.5%).

Alternative package alert – this was bottled in a seriously solid plastic bottle (like, I couldn’t dent it or destroy it with my hands. Hey, the famous Jet Blue entertainment system was down).

This unexpected little wine option made me think what a great time in history it is to enjoy wine.

Lenz Winery, Gewürztraminer 2003 (North Fork of Long Island), $18 (for most recent release, 2006), 12% abv

Full disclosure: I worked the wet 2005 vintage at Lenz on the North Fork. More disclosure: I love Gewürztraminer.

Granted, I didn’t mean to hold on to this one for over six years. Gewürztraminer reaches high levels of sugar naturally, so they are characteristically high in alcohol and low in acid. Not a winning combination for aging a wine. Still, I find that wines from the North Fork are picked on the early side (especially when compared to a place with fabulous weather like California), and the fact that this wine is clocking in at 12% abv suggests that it’s part of that pick-early trend, so this wine is moderate on both alcohol and acid.

The Lenz Gewürztraminer is a medium gold, indicating its high levels of extract. Medium-intensity aromas of tropical fruit, spices, and the signature lycee turn into an oily mouthfeel with more tropical fruits on the palette. The acid is soft, as would be expected, and here the finish is somewhat clipped.

Overall it’s an unusual Gewürztraminer for its low alcohol and intensity if we’re going to compare it to Alsace and Germany. But that’s not at all a fair comparison.

So I say bravo for not being Chardonnay!

But back to aging Gewürztraminer: have you had any success? For how long would you hold one of these?

Nikolaihof ‘Von Stein zu Mautern’ Riesling Smaragd 2002 (Wachau), $50, 12.5% abv

I’m a sucker for locally-driven and organic cuisine, so should you ever find yourself with a free night in Washington DC, I recommend heading over to Nora in the Dupont Circle area. Nora is America’s first Certified Organic Restaurant meaning 95% of the ingredients are organic. But don’t go thinking this is a ‘health food’ restaurant. Instead, take comfort knowing that the quart of heavy cream used in your risotto is organic heavy cream.

In addition to a lovely seasonal menu, Nora presents an interesting wine list. The list is sprinkled with top organic and biodynamic producers including Chave, Meo Camuzet, Tablas Creek, and even Nicholas Joly’s Coulee de Serrant (my favorite wine in the world, ahem, in case you’re looking for a birthday gift idea).

However, I skipped the 2004 Coulee de Serrant on the list last night (I prefer them closer to ten years old) in favor of a 1990 Nikolaihof ‘Vinothek’. The damn thing was corked and they couldn’t sell me another. (By the way, I have a theory about the high rate of corked wines from Austria in the early 90s but will save it for another post.) I ended up enjoying a 2002 Nikolaihof ‘Von Stein zu Mautern’ Riesling.

Side note, the Wachau area in Austria has its own quality designations for wines based on grape ripeness (three special levels in the Wachau). Smaragd (smah-RAHG) is the highest level of ripeness, with an alcohol level of more than 12%.

On to the wine: I love Rieslings with age on them for the petrol notes they develop. In this case, I found intense aromas of stones and minerals jumping out of the glass where I thought petrol would have developed. (These were my immediate scribbling before I found out that ‘Von Stein’ means ‘from stones’.) Otherwise, I got loads of lemon zest, ripe yellow apples and pears. The palette is well-balanced between its medium body, acid, and finish. This is a dry Riesling, though not painfully so. I find Nikolaihof wines to be less austere than other producers in Austria.

One last note, see that ‘Demeter’ logo on the back label? Nikolaihof is a biodynamic producer. Biodymanic goes a step beyond organic farming by incorporating lunar rhythms into decisions in the vineyard and winery. Seriously. More for another post…

Chateau d’Auvernier, Chasselas 2008 (Neuchâtel, Switzerland), $25, 11.5% abv

Finding unusual wines that are affordably priced on a wine list is one of life’s joys. On a recent weeknight visit to Artisanal, I tried a white wine from Switzerland made from the Chasselas grape. Made by Chateau d'Auvenier in the Neuchâtel region of Switzerland (Neuchâtel is in Western Switzerland just over the border from France's (and Switzerland's) Jura region).

Let me just stop and say that I love that they offer about 100 wines by the glass at the restaurant, both as a taste or a glass. France dominates the by-the-glass wine list followed by the United States, but Italy and Spain gets their own section too. There are also southern hemisphere wines so you can get your Australia/Chile/Argentina fix as well. There’s a bottle list beyond that including a good selection of half bottles, but with so many by-the-glass options (and I find turnover to be fast enough that I’ve not had a dead wine yet), I haven’t had a reason to commit to a full bottle.

Back to the wine. Chasselas (aka Fendant in the Valais region of Switzerland) is grown in France and Germany with some distaste, but the grape has found a home in Switzerland where it is the most planted grape variety.

This wine showed medium intensity aromas of ripe lemons, grapefruit peel, stones, and something of a Alpine mountain floral-ness. It seemed to have a little more weight in the mouth than the alcohol would suggest, and the medium amount of juicy acidity mingled with lemon and a slight amount of pine flavors. It was a little too light to be a perfect match for the Duck Bourguignon I ordered, but this was a case of matching a unique wine to the person, not the dish. I’d like to serve this as an aperitif or a picnic wine on a hot summer day.

Channing Daughters “Sylvanus” 2008 (The Hamtons, Long Island) $24, 12% abv

I spend a lot of time on the east end of Long Island and the wines from Channing Daughters have always charmed me because they bottle grapes outside the popular international varieties. Tocai Friulano, Gewurztraminer, Aligote, Blaufrankisch, and Dornfelder are not typical grapes that come to mind when thinking about Long Island wine. Vinification techniques are not so straight forward either, with winemaker Christopher Tracy co-fermenting field blends, allowing wild yeast fermentations, and good ol’ foot-stomping of the grapes. For the really esoterically-inclined, he even uses a ripasso and solera process on a single red wine bottling (“Over & Over” series), and has an ‘orange wine’ made from pinot grigio fermented on its skins (“Ramato”).

Generally speaking, when a wine is made, the grapes, say Muscat, are picked & fermented on their own schedule depending on their ripeness, and then another, say Pinot Grigio grapes, would proceed the same on their own time, maybe a few weeks before or after the Muscat. The two separate wines would then be tasted, measured out, and blended together to make the final product.

Not this guy.



The Sylvanus is described as a ‘vin de terroir’ as it is a field blend of grapes that are randomly grown together, harvested at the same time, and then fermented together. This allows the wine to express the terroir of a single vineyard in a snapshot of time. Sounds romantic and all, and lucky for us, the final wine here is a gorgeous expression of the Sylvanus vineyard on the South Fork.

Sylvanus is a field blend of 43% Msucat Ottonel, 44% Pinot Grigio, and 13% Pinot Bianco. The wine is very pale straw color, and not completely starbright, reflecting its minimal handling in the winery. Medium-intensity aromas of lemon, stones, green apples, and pears develop into flavors of more meyer lemons, honeysuckle flowers, melon, and crisp green apples in the mouth. The wine is on the light side of medium bodied, with medium tingly acidity, and a minerally finish.

I had this with an easy weeknight dinner of breaded pork cutlet with lemon pan sauce over spinach, but this would be a great aperitif or as a fabulous match for ocean’s candystore of oysters and scallops.

(Sorry for the shiny pic. Silver label was giving me some trouble…)