Just Arrogance

Posted on August 31, 2022 by thewineraconteur

I used to enjoy telling friends and strangers alike, especially when we are out that there are wineries in all fifty states.  I always enjoy looking at the expressions on people’s faces when I make that statement.  Of course, now disinformation forces will come out and this will become a non-issue.  One of the leading periodicals about wine “Wine Enthusiast” has made an editorial decision that only five states in the country are worthy of discussion, even though they acknowledge that there are good wines being made elsewhere, only five coastal states merit discussion and all of the others aren’t worthy of their ink.  All of the “fly over” states plus others, have been eliminated by some arrogant elitist or elitists, that probably want to speak for all, because they evidently know more than anyone else in the country.  The top ten wine producing states in the nation are: California, Washington, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Vermont and Virginia.  According to the elitists only California, Oregon, Washington, New York and Virginia should rate your attention. 

I find it almost laughable, because when I started learning about wines, California wasn’t even mentioned.  This was the time of Gallo and Almaden and others who made jug wines with names like “Mountain Red Burgundy.”  I started my real wine education when I started high school in 1969; some punk politician that owns a winery and allowed it to stay open during the China Flu wasn’t even two years old (and Snopes had to admit that it was open).  I graduated from college before “The Judgement of Paris” occurred in 1976.  The first wine reference book I purchased as a kid was published in 1971 and only afforded twelve pages to America with subsections for California and New York.  Wine arrogance back then, really only thought of France, Italy and Germany with a few “also mentions” for other countries on the Continent. 

I mention all of this, because I live in one of the top ten wine producing states in the country and it took me years to really try and give the wines a taste.  They have slowly, but steadily increased in quality and perception.  At first, I was as arrogant about California as I was about Michigan wines.  The more I learned, the less arrogant I became, because I realized that there was a whole world of wines that I would never really discover or to pass judgement on. The first agricultural college in America was founded in 1857 and is now Michigan State University.  For years, Michigan was only known for having a puppet-governor that defended Michigan as a felony state for the shipping of wines to a residence and thankfully she lost.  This one term governor went on to a bigger job in politics and she wasn’t capable of being a governor.  All I know, is that I have stopped being arrogant about wines and I look forward to trying wines from all of the other states that I recognize, as being part of the union; even if an editorial staff does not.  Not that we travel that much, but I have tried wines from Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Hawaii, Kentucky, Arizona plus New York, California, Oregon and Washington; I have had some great reports about other states that I do want to try.  I am smart enough to not turn my nose down at any wine these days, which I guess may be another reason that I will never be respected as a wine writer.  

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August 2022 Wine Club Selections

Posted on August 29, 2022 by thewineraconteur

I got to my local wine shop, The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan almost at the tail end of the month.  Considering all that my Bride and I have been going through, I am glad that we got there.  The good news is that they still knew who I was, and had been keeping up, so they understood about my absence.  I had to get some basic wines as well, as my Bride had kept taking wine with her for the past month to keep everyone mellow, and that is a lot to ask from wine.  As I have said in the past, I think that this is one of the most affordable and quality-driven clubs that we have ever belonged to.  There are two bottles each month, one Old World and one New World.

The wine representing the Old World was Joseph Mellot Destinea Sauvignon Blanc Val de Loire IGP 2021.  Joseph Mellot is a wine producer in the central Loire region of Sancerre with a portfolio of labels and domaines covering a huge swath of real estate in the region.  The estate was established in 1969, but the Mellot family name goes back to the 16th Century.  Since 1513 Pierre -Etienne Mellot established his domaine and began his winemaking dynasty.  Cesar Mellot acted as a wine advisor to King Louis XIV.  In the 1920’s they were the first Sancerre winemaker to showcase their wines at the Foire de Paris.  Unfortunately, there was an inheritance split and one brother began Joseph Mellot. By far, Sauvignon Blanc is the grape of choice for the estate from one-hundred-hectares of vineyards in the Loire; and each plot is harvested and vinified separately.  Val de Loire IGP basically covers the entire Loire Valley, encompassing fourteen departments and in terms of area, is one of the largest in France.  It basically follows the Loire River for about 350 miles.   The designation was established in 2009 from its prior Vin de Pays, or its proper and more floral Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France.  The grapes are destemmed, then pressed.  A short maceration period and a short fermentation period of ten to fifteen days and then aged for a short period on the lees before bottling to maintain the fresh fruit finish.  The wine is described as pale gold in color with notes of florals and orange and passion fruit.  On the palate the fruit is fresh with tones of lime and lemon, and well balanced with a “zippy” acidity and ends with an aromatic finish.  The Sauvignon Blancs of France are usually classified as Green and flinty, to differentiate the wine as it can be found especially in New Zealand and Australia.

The wine for the New World this month is Cline Family Cellars Ancient Vines Carignane 2018.  Cline Cellars is a producer based in Carneros and known for Zinfandel and Rhone varieties and established in 1982 in Oakley.  Fred Cline is one of the original Rhone Rangers of California.  Farming is sustainable and the wines are vegan-friendly.  Contra Costa County AVA is directly east of San Francisco Bay and is home to some century-old plantings of Zinfandel, Mourvedre and Carignan (English is Carignane).  The fruit for this wine is from four separate plots in Oakley, where the newest vineyard was planted in 1940, the rest around 1900.  The fruit is hand-harvested, because the vines are too gnarly, then the fruit is destemmed with gentle crushing.  The fermentation was done in Stainless Steel with indigenous yeasts and then aged for fifteen months in French Oak.  The accompanying notes for the wines say the wine offered notes of berry, spices and plum.  On the palate it offers tones of dark fruit, spice and pepper with structured tannins and bright acidity and a strong finish.  

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Le Ragnaie Casanovina Montosoli and VV

Posted on August 27, 2022 by thewineraconteur

The last two wine tastings for the afternoon of Le Ragnaie wines at my local wine shop, The Fine Wine Source of Livonia, Michigan was upon us.  The tasting was supposed to be conducted by the owner and winemaker Riccardo Campinotti, but alas, he was stuck in some airport, part of flotsam and jetsam of today’s air transportation.  Riccardo and Jennifer Campinotti purchased the original property, a mix of new and old vines and established Le Ragnaie in 2003.  The organically farmed estate now has three distinct parcels and has forty-two acres in Montalcino, with olive groves mixed in as well.  It has some of the highest altitude vines in the region, and this area also is very popular for bird catchers, and hence the traditional birdwatchers’ net that is on the label.

Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie “Casanovina Montosoli” Brunello di Montalcino DOCG 2017 is pure Sangiovese and is one of the cuvee wines made since 2015.  This is a one-hectare vineyard adjacent to the cellars of an historic estate.  The wine undergoes fermentation and maceration with indigenous yeasts in concrete vats for forty-five days.  After the wine is aged for thirty-six months in Slavonia Oak vats, followed by additional aging in the bottle, before release.  It has been written up as one of the wines of the vintage and less than three-thousand bottles of wine were produced.  A pretty ruby red wine with notes of dark fruits, red cherries, mushrooms and violets.  On the palate dark fruit and smoke, with very tight tannins and tinges oranges and truffles, with a very long count finish of spices and terroir.  It drank beautifully and I am sure that the tannins will mellow in twenty to thirty years and give the wine a totally different memorable taste.

The last wine of the tasting was Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie “Ragnaie V.V.” Brunello di Montalcino DOCG 2017.  The V.V. stands for “Vigna Vecchia” or “Old Vines” with fifty-years of maturity; instead of a Riserva this wine is treated as another cuvee offering.  I saw one set of notes that suggested that this wine might have had ninety days of fermentation and maceration with indigenous yeasts in concrete vats.  Followed by the thirty-six months of aging in Slavonia Oak and more aging in the bottle.  There were three-thousand-eight-hundred bottles made.  The ruby-red wine offers notes of currants, spices and roses.  On the palate, it was the fullest bodied of all the wines, probably from the older vines which create compactness and richer flavors.  There were tones of cherry, licorice, spices and orange peel, fully balanced with a nice long finish of spices and terroir.  Another one for the cellar, or absolutely fine right now.  It was a pleasure watching my Bride taste and her writing her notes.  I guess being a Street Somm has rubbed off on her.  

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Le Ragnaie Petroso and Passo del Lume Spento 

Posted on August 25, 2022 by thewineraconteur

It was interesting watching my Bride as she was writing notes about the wines at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan. It was quite an event, and I truly enjoy how they have the wine tastings.  They are never stuffy affairs, structured only by the sequence of the wines, but not by time.  It kind of reminds me of how wine tasting in Napa Valley was back in the Nineties, and still today in Michigan.  Wine tasting is fun, and as far as I am concerned, it should still be.  Hell, I have still never learned the art of spitting, maybe because I was raised by parents that survived the Great Depression, and I can’t waste.

Our next wine was Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie “Petroso” Brunello di Montalcino DOCG 2016 and is pure Sangiovese.  This wine had about forty-five days of fermentation and maceration in concrete vats. Then the mandated thirty-six months in Slavonia Oak vats and followed with more aging in the bottle.  The Petroso Vineyard is just over one hectare in size and is located close to the village of Montalcino, and is located in one of the oldest winemaking zones and is surrounded by a forest.  This is the first time that it has been used as a single vineyard cuvee, a la Burgundy, as prior it was blended into the light label Brunello di Montalcino.  This pretty ruby red wine offered notes of plums, cherries and violets.  The wine was almost feminine (like a great Burgundy) as on the palate it was showing ripe plums and dark cherries, spices, some cedar, softer tannins with a nice long count finish reminding you how nice the initial taste was.  Totally drinkable now, but I think it will be spectacular with some extended cellaring.

The next wine was Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie “Passo Del Lume Spento” Brunello di Montalcino DOCG 2017 and is another example of their single vineyard cuvee offering of pure Sangiovese.  It is on the highest elevated sandstone plateau for the winery and the name translates to “pass of the extinguished lantern” as this part is so high up and windy that the lanterns in coaches would be blown out.  This is the first year for this cuvee offering and only three-thousand bottles were produced.  This wine had about forty-five days of fermentation and maceration time in concrete.  Then the mandated thirty-six months in the Slavonia Oak vats and followed with more aging in the bottle.  Ricardo Campinotti feels that this is the highest elevation permitted in Montalcino.   Another pretty rub red colored wine with notes of dark fruit, some leather, fennel and lavender.  On the palate tones of red cherries, plums, a touch of tobacco with a smokey finish, bright acidity, nice tannins leading into a nice long finish of terroir.  This wine had a lot of class to it, chewy as I like to call it, drinkable now and it bet it will be very interesting in twenty to thirty years from now; great for the cellar to try at different intervals of time.    

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Le Ragnaie Brunello and Fornace

Posted on August 23, 2022 by thewineraconteur

There we were enjoying a tasting of Le Ragnaie wines at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  Actually, everyone in the shop was having a wonderful time, but we were all missing the chance to meet and talk with the proprietor and winemaker Riccardo Campinotti, who was stuck in some airport, God only knows.  The importer of the wines and the staff at The Fine Wine Source were making up for the missing Mr. Campinotti, whose photo was posted around the shop.  After the initial wine the Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie Troncone Toscana Rosso IGT, all the other wines poured were Brunello di Montalcino wines and pure Sangiovese.

The first was the Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie Brunello di Montalcino DOCG 2017 and this is considered his entry level Brunello.  The fruit comes from the Ragnaie, Petroso, Loreto, Fornace and Cava vineyards.  The initial fermentation and maceration using native yeast is done in concrete vats and may take up to forty days.  Then the wine is aged for thirty-six months in Slavonian Oak vats and then aged in bottle before release.  A beautiful Sangiovese with notes of red fruits and florals.  On the palate the striking tones of cherries, strawberries, cedar with a nice structured tannins that I am sure will even be more graceful in another ten years.  This was a nice chewy wine, that ends with terroir and spices.  An excellent chewy wine that belies the fact that it is the entry level offering, especially with my Bride continually telling me that she likes this wine.

The next wine was the Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie “Fornace” Brunello di Montalcino DOCG 2016 and the first of the black labels, which denotes his desire to create a Burgundian single vineyard cuvee, because of the difference of each plot.  The estate has been described as a four-sided pyramid and this plot “Fornace” which means furnace is the hottest clime and the lowest altitude and basically a clay soil, which creates a richer and stronger wine.  The vines were thirty-five-years old and this wine had about forty-five days of fermentation and maceration time in concrete.  Then the mandated thirty-six months in the Slavonia Oak vats and followed with more aging in the bottle.  A rich color with notes of cherry, roses, spices and a touch of anise.  On the palate, this was a much muscular wine with cherry and plum, tones of kirsch and very earthy with dusty tannins, with a nice long finish of terroir and a nice touch of orange peel that was refreshing.  This wine was drinkable now, but another ten years to really enjoy the maturity of the multi-layers that I think this wine will deliver.    

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An Afternoon With Le Ragnaie

Posted on August 21, 2022 by thewineraconteur

We were going to a special wine tasting at my local wine shop, The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  And yes, I said we, as my Bride was going along as she really enjoys the shop, the owners, his family and the staff; and she always feels comfortable.  We were going to a tasting conducted by the proprietor and winemaker of Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie, Riccardo Campinotti and we had to book a time slot, as this was going to be a very busy tasting and the shop is not that big, especially when you add in, all the additional cases of wines for this tasting.  And of course, I would be breaking up the flow, by taking my photographs and notes.  Of course, not only were restaurants and wine shops affected by bug of mysterious origins, the airline industry was also affected and Riccardo Campinotti was stuck somewhere in an airport, and never made it to the tasting.  The owner of the import company was up north in Michigan on holiday with his family, and he had to drive down that morning to assist with the tasting.  The Fine Wine Source posted some photos of Riccardo Campinotti, just to keep the feeling of the moment.

Le Ragnaie is based in Montalcino, Tuscany and the estate is dedicated solely to growing Sangiovese grapes, which is the most planted grape in Italy and has a major home in Montalcino.  The estate is now twenty-eight hectares and has four distinct vineyards and the winery is one of the leaders of the region for creating cuvee-style wines taking advantage of the distinct vineyard qualities, very Burgundian in concept.  It is also enjoying some of the highest altitudes in Montalcino, in fact some are higher than the allowed height of six-hundred-meters, but he is working on that.  The original winery was started in 1991 in a much smaller estate with one of the original agritourism farmhouses and Riccardo took over and started expanding in 2002.  He was considered more daring and innovative and he has slowly mixed tradition with modernism.  He claims that he originally wanted to make big jammy style wines (to please the critics), but now has gone for a more elegant wine, that he would rather drink.

The first wine of the tasting was Azienda Agricola Le Ragnaie “Troncone” Rosso Toscana IGT 2019 and the winery is based in Montalcino, Tuscany, Italy.  The winery uses cement vats for maceration and fermentation which can last up to forty days.  They then use Slovenian and Allier Oak barrels for aging.  The Troncone wine showcases the youngest vines, and is a way to observe the progress of the vines.  The Rosso wine is aged in barrels for nine months and then stored in bottles for another couple of months.  Toscana Rosso IGT is the most popular designations for the region, and the winemakers can enjoy and try different techniques using it.  The wine had a nice garnet color with notes of red fruit.  On the palate the flavor of red cherries and raspberries with softer tannins and a medium finish of terroir.  A softer Sangiovese wine that would work very well with some lighter pasta dishes.

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A Very Sad Wine Tale

Posted on August 19, 2022 by thewineraconteur

“My story is much too sad to be told, but then practically everything leaves me totally cold…”

Actually, I don’t know the entire story, in fact I know very little about the actual story, but when I saw this bottle, I and probably everyone else probably cried.  Here is one of the most famous wines internationally acclaimed and now it is just a curio, a bottle that will never be opened and this particular bottle that should have been truly worthy of being the nectar of the Gods, is probably the most expensive bottle of red-wine-vinegar known to man.  This may be the worst example of ullage I have ever seen.  Ullage is the Anglicized version of the French word ouillage and it has a couple of meanings, both kind of similar in the big picture with wine.  To put it in easy-to-understand layman’s terms, it is the amount of air space between the wine in the bottle and the cork that I am going to discuss, the other meaning is for the evaporation of wine in a barrel while it is aging, before bottling and normally the winery “tops” the barrels with additional wine to keep the barrels full, to prevent oxidation. 

If you look at a normal bottle of wine, especially in the older bottles, there was a lead capsule that was applied over the cork and bottle, to further hinder the evaporation of wine if the cork became porous.  On an average bottle of wine, the wine actually is filled up to the bottom of the capsule, if not above that line.  This particular bottle is called a Jeroboam and is equivalent to six standard bottles of wine, just compare it to the normal wine bottle at its side.  I would venture to say that this bottle may have lost the equivalent of a bottle of wine, as the wine is down to actual slope of the shoulder of this bottle and a Burgundian bottle has more of a graceful sloping shoulder compared to a Bordeaux style bottle that most people immediately think of, as the classic wine bottle profile.

The Societe Civil du Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, or DRC is Burgundy’s best-known and most collectible wine producer.  DRC is based in the village of Vosne-Romanee and the domaine sells wines from eight different Grand Cru vineyards the span the length of the Cote d’Or.  While saying that, there are a total of twenty-eight hectares almost entirely Pinot Noir, except for three white (Chardonnay) Grand Cru vineyards.   The Society was created to save the vineyards by skirting the dreaded Napoleonic inheritance laws at that time, and has basically stayed within the realm of one family.  Richebourg is one of six Grand Cru vineyards in the village of Vosne-Romanee.  The wines are noted to be the most opulent with dense fruit and very long cellar life.  Unfortunately, I am sure that this bottle will just enjoy the rest of its days as a decoration in a wine cellar.

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Adieu

Posted on August 17, 2022 by thewineraconteur

I have never understood Mother-in-Law jokes as I had a tremendous one.  My Bride was going back and forth about choosing her retirement date.  Her client would have loved to have seen her continue, until he retired.  She had earmarked a date for retirement to make all the ducks get in a row, but in the end, she decided on another date.  As she has repeatedly said, God had told her to retire, because right after she retired, her mother got ill and was hospitalized and they got her back to a stable condition.  She was 96, and the last of eleven siblings, and a widow since 2006; mother of five, grandmother of thirteen and great-grandmother of ten.  So, she gathered her five daughters and basically announced that she had lived long enough, and really didn’t want to prolong her life, in that she was tired.  She first attempted palliative care, and when they wanted to put her back in the hospital for more tests, she talked it over with the five daughters again and she decided on hospice care. 

This was the reason that my Bride was sure that God had wanted her to retire.  Of the five daughters, one was out of town, two were still working and three of the daughters took turns to make sure that there was round the clock monitoring of their mother, as hospice delivered a hospital bed to her house, along with portable oxygen (when it was required) as well as medicines and other medical equipment.  They also put a twin bed in the same room, for the sister that was doing the monitoring.  The monitors were enjoying these days, as best as they could, they played cards with her, they cooked and cleaned for her.  My Bride even decided to start recording some questions and answers sessions with some of the daughters and the grandchildren.  While hospice care is a great service, they should provide even a pamphlet to hand out to the survivors, at least giving to prepare them for the last days.  Eventually, even with great meals, oxygen when required, the body was shutting down and morphine became the saving grace.  Thankfully, the family had a physician to rely on, and also a grandchild that was a fourth-year medical student doing his classes in the immediate area.  I saw less and less of my Bride, as she wasn’t even concerned with the rotation schedule that they had carefully worked out for the initial two-month period.  I went a couple of times, but I have never been able to really handle seeing family members as they were leaving this world, ever since I had witnessed my mother in a coma, just before she died when I was fifteen.  All five of the daughters were there in the house that they had grown up in, of course it seemed more crowded now.   I was home when the phone call came.

They had some lead time, to start make preparations, the funeral home and church was easy.  The regime here must have declared war on Canada, as the Canadian mourners complained that it took them about an hour and half to cross the bridge. The luncheon venue was just as difficult.  One of her favorite restaurants that she had enjoyed going to once a month with all the female cousins, would only accommodate fifty, sixty perhaps, because they were still have trouble getting people to work, and he seemed rather indifferent to the request even for steady customers.  The restaurant may have survived the governor’s edicts, but the owner will destroy it.  The daughters found a steak house that could handle the crowd.  They created a menu of either Chicken Marsala or Grilled Salmon.  Everyone also got a Caesar Salad, which in the evening, can be done tableside.  Originally it was going to be one drink for a toast, but then that changed and I went and chose a couple of bottes of wine to open.  I figured on two easy to drink wines.  The first was Barone Fini Pinot Grigio Valdadige DOC 2021 part of the Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits. The Bonmartini-Fini family began making wine in 1497 when the two noble families merged in a wedding up in Northern Italy.  It is still family owned.  This wine is their flagship showcasing the grapes of the Valdadige DOC.  The fruit is hand-harvested and I will go out on a limb, though not a long limb and presume that the wine was fermented and aged in Stainless Steel, though it is not revealed by the winery.  The wine has a nice soft yellow color and offers notes of citrus and lemon.  While on the palate tones of melon and apples in a balanced acidity with a touch of mineral terroir at the finish.  The second wine I chose for the dinner was Meiomi Pinot Noir California is a very easy wine, even for non-wine drinkers.  Meiomi Wines is a California winery that was founded in 2007 by Joe Wagner, the son of Chuck Wagner of Caymus Vineyards.  The winery started with Pinot Noir, then a Chardonnay and finally a Rosé.  Meiomi means “coast” in the language of the Wappo and Yuki tribes of the region.  The Pinot Noir is a blend of three coastal regions; Sonoma County, Monterey County and Santa Barbara County and hence the California AVA.  Their first vintage of the Pinot Noir was in 2007 and they produced ninety-thousand cases and quickly became one of the most requested wine labels for restaurants.  In 2015, Joe Wagner sold Meiomi Wines to Constellation Brands for $315,000,000, and he stayed on as a consultant for the 2016 and 2017 vintages.  The wine is aged for six months in French Oak.  The wine has a deep red color and offers notes of perfumed fruit jams, mocha and oak.  One the palate, you can tell this was made for the California wine critics as it is a big fruit bomb of ripe strawberries, black cherries, mocha and vanilla, balanced and a lingering finish of fruit.  I think that this wine is getting “jammier” with each vintage. 

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Vina Tondonia and Habemus

Posted on August 15, 2022 by thewineraconteur

There we were, my Bride was with me, for a wine tasting at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan, but we were tempted with a couple of other wines as well.  As I have stated, I think my Bride is truly the star when she enters the shop.  The hardest thing is to get her to try new wines, sometimes she gets settled with a wine and this has happened over and over, when she finds a new “go-to” wine and I usually have to try to find a wine that is affordable, as she thinks that I am too capricious.  I mean, have you ever heard of a wine lover as being capricious?  Then there are other times that I just enjoy looking at her when she tastes something stellar.  She was tempted with two stellar wines back-to-back, and it was fun watching her response.

The first wine was interesting as Rioja is a wine region that my Bride will tend to look for on a wine carte, especially is she is with her girlfriends as she enjoys the wines from this region.  It was great to watch her enjoy R. Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Reserva Rioja DOCa 2010.  This winery is considered by many to be one of the world’s great wine estates.  It was founded in 1877 and the Tondonia Vineyard is so famed, that it is now part of the winery’s name.  The vineyard is over one-hundred hectares and provides the fruit for the winery’s top red and white wines.  The vineyard is along the Ebro River and the soil is a mix of alluvial clay with a high limestone content. The winery is in La Rioja Alta and near Haro, and is one of the oldest in the entire region. The winery only uses fruit from their own vineyards and they have acquired a respected special guaranty. The wine is seventy-five percent Tempranillo, fifteen percent Grenache and ten percent Mazuelo.  Since this wine is a Reserva, it is aged for six years in oak, and the wine is racked twice a year and fined with fresh egg whites, then it is bottled and stored for another six months minimum before being released.  This was a pretty red color and offered noted of dried berries and vanilla.  On the palate a very rich wine of red and black fruit mellowed with firm tannins, good balance with a nice long finish of terroir.

The other wine made my Bride gush enthusiastically the entire time while were tasting San Giovenale Agricola “Habemus” Red Wine Cabernet Franc Lazio IGT 2018.  The estate was established in 2006 in Alto Lazio near the village of Blera.  Lazio IGT is the most widely used of the six IGT designations for the region and encompasses all types of wines.  The vineyard is clay with stones, one hectare in size and all twelve-year-old Cabernet Franc vines and organic certified.  The fruit is hand-harvested in small boxes, destemmed and soft pressed within an hour of harvest.  The wine is fermented for fifteen days in Stainless Steel using indigenous yeast.  Then aged for thirty months in new French Oak, followed by six months in bottle, before release; there were one-thousand bottles produced.  This beautiful garnet red wine offered notes of cherry and dried plum, vanilla and other spices.  The wine was just full of fruit, vibrant, elegant, balanced and structured.  The finish just went on and on, very long, and I have always felt that Cabernet Franc displays great offerings of terroir.  My Bride was over the top, she was totally gushing about the wine, but she looked at me, and said don’t even think about it, as she was retired.  Though I did hear about this wine during the rest of the tastings and even on the way home and into the evening.      

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Chalky and Coravin Sparkling

Posted on August 13, 2022 by thewineraconteur

I actually was able to get my Bride to accompany me to our local wine shop, The Fine Wine Source, for a tasting.  Needless to say, my Bride is the celebrity and all the attention is geared towards her, which is fine.  She is the exchequer, at least she enjoys that position and since everything is fine, I don’t care, it is one less thing to worry about. Beyond her appreciation of wines, she also has a fascination with gadgets.  She could have been Bob the Builder, and it may be from all the times that she would assist her father, who was a plumber by trade.  I remember when we had the front foliage removed at the house, she probably wished that we had more, because she had to even call me to share watching the grinding of the stumps, she was enthralled.  Yes, we have gadgets, especially in the kitchen.

We were treated to a tasting of Champagne Andre Clouet “Chalky” Brut NV.  Champagne Andre Clouet is a grower Champagne in the Grand Cru village of Bouzy and its wines are made exclusively from Pinot Noir on their eight-hectare estate on the famous chalk soils of Champagne.  Jean-Francois Clouet, a Bouzy native with a family history in the region before the Seventeenth Century.  1741 is the year that the foundation of house was built by Andre.  I was a little surprised, because this wine was pure Chardonnay, from vineyard sources of one third of the southern slopes of Montagne de Reims and two thirds on the Cote de Blancs.  The fruit was handpicked, and immediately soft pressed and initial fermentation was done in small Stainless-Steel vats and then aged in the bottle for seven years on the yeasts until ready for the secondary fermentation.  All the fruit was from the 2013 vintage which was considered outstanding. This very pretty soft-golden-colored wine with plenty of tiny bubbles offered notes of stone fruit and minerals.  On the palate a perfectly balance of acidity and salinity with minerals throughout, including a very nice long finish.  I am not a real sparkling wine fan, but this wine, really made me rethink my feelings, it was delicious.

After enjoying this lovely wine, they went and resealed the bottle with the new Coravin Sparkling System.  My Bride’s eyes lit up, when she saw this system being used.  It will keep the wine and its crisp flavor and effervescence for up to four weeks after opening.  After the wine was poured, they took the Stopper’s locking handle all the way to the unlocked position and pressed it firmly into the top of the bottle.  They then aligned the CO2 Capsule Charger on top of the Stopper and pressed down firmly.  There was a pressure indicator that went from red (for ready) to green when the bottle is fully charged.  The bottle of wine that we had tasted from had already been prior sealed with the Coravin Sparkling System and it was truly fresh as a newly opened bottle.  It made quite an impression on the Gadget Queen.    

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