Ripasso

At the beginning of my explorations on Week C (2013) I selected an example of one style of Valpolicella, a red wine from the Veneto region in North-East Italy. That one was a dessert wine in the Recioto style. This week we have a dry wine, made from the same blend of grapes, but made in the Ripasso style.

Week R (2015) Ripasso di Valpolicella Classico Superiore, Waitrose £11.99

The long name of the Waitrose own brand wine tells us quite a bit about it. Firstly, it tells us that it is from Valpolicella, a wine-making region not far from Verona and the 'Classico' means it is from the traditional heart of the region and not from a more recently extended territory. The basic wines from this region are fresh, light and acidic, intended to be bottled, sold and opened soon after the grapes have been picked and the wine made. The grape varieties, for readers not inclined to go back and check, are Corvina, Molinara and Rondinella.

The next step up gives us 'Superiore' which tells us that the wine has been aged for at least one year before being released for sale and has a minimum of 12% alcohol by volume. This makes it a more full bodied and richer wine.

Richer still is the Ripasso style, but to understand that we must first consider the remaining style: Amarone.

Amarone is the Italian word for bitter, but don't let this put you off. Think of more as dry and powerful. To produce Amarone the grapes are picked and then left to partially dry on straw mats for as long as four months before being fermented and the wine produced. This is to allow the flavours and sugars in the grapes to concentrate as the water content decreases through evaporation. Once the fermentation has completed and the wine has been pressed from he grape skins, the winemaker is left with two things. A strong, fuller flavoured dry wine and a pile of skins. There's nothing unusual about this, but that is where Ripasso comes in.

More Italian to English translation: Ripasso means 'repassed'. So in this case, the Valpolicella Classico Superiore we made earlier is now repassed over the skins leftover from the making of the Amarone (and, indeed the sweet Recioto) allowing additional flavour, tannin and glycerol left in the skins to be extracted into the wine, to give us a result that fits between the standard wine and the expensive Amarone.

This Ripasso is full bodied and bursts with cherries and dark fruits. I think the Italians have got a good thing going with this range of styles. Everything from a light easy to drink wine, through richer styles to a serious red heavyweight and even rounding of with the sweet dessert wine. All good.

Quincy

It is always pleasing when one of the progeny start to take an interest in their poor old man's hobbies. My son enjoys golf and has definitely got to the point where I would be very foolish to allow him a generous handicap. Or indeed any handicap. This is very pleasing.

His younger sister is not a golfer, but does appear to be in the early stages of developing an interest in the fruit of the vine. This, I hope, is a reflection of her appreciation of the subtleties of texture and flavour that can be found in a glass and not a consequence of her career choice. She is a primary school teacher. Year two. The jury is out.

When we had a family celebration, earlier this year, of two birthdays that occur on nearly consecutive days, mine and my bonus daughter's, we enjoyed a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand from the Dog Point winery. It was excellent, as is their Pinot Noir, so I decided to try her out a more traditional French style of Sauvignon Blanc to see if it met with equal approval.

Week Q (2015) Jean Charles Borgnat, Quincy 2013. Majestic £9.99

The short answer is that it didn't. Where the New Zealand wine is all crisp, acidic, gooseberry and elderflower, this has a gentler herbaceous character, which I like, but it isn't so familiar.

Quincy is a less well known neighbour of some much more famous names. Pouilly Fume? No? Ok, then how about Sancerre? All these three, and others such as Menetou Salon, are vineyard regions in the Central Loire valley, which is surprisingly (to me) far West in France, almost due South of Paris, and not really near the Chateau rich tourist zone of that long river's course.

So, what has this wine got in it's favour? Apart from the characteristic elderflower / cat piss aroma, it is quite light, works well as an aperitif, is not overly heady, leaves a pleasant taste in the mouth of citrus fruits and nothing feline,and, quite possibly most importantly, is about half the price of the Dog Point and possibly less than half the price of a similarly tasting wine from its most famous neighbour.

The world is awash with Sauvignon Blanc. That's not a crticism, it only got to be produced everywhere because a) it can be and b) it is very, very popular. However, this one has something that a lot of the well made, reasonably priced, predictable, usually New World, wines made form the same grape variety don't have. I'm not sure exactly what it is. Perhaps it is because it is not quite so 'zippy', but it seems to me to have a more earthy, take-me-seriously, presence to it than the identikit new(er)comers.

My daughter does not like wines that have had too much exposure to oak. This has had none, but to her palate it still had a hint of the thing that makes her dry heave like a cat with a fur ball, and she would far rather I paid twice as much for more of that delicious Dog Point. So you choose.

Puisseguin Saint-Emilion

Most of the wines I drink are either made to be drunk young, as the majority of wines are, or they are made to wait a while, but I get to them too quickly.

This week there is something of a compromise. At five and a half years old it is not anywhere near as old as the claret-that-is-too-expensive-to-drink wines favoured by collectors and the 1% of the global population who hold 48% of the global wealth, but it is not straight out of the barrel and straight down the throat, either.

Week P (2015) Chateau Moulin de Curat, Puisseguin Saint-Emilion, 2009. Majestic £9.99

Is five and a half years enough? Well, yes, I think so. It has quite a lot of blackcurrant and plum fruit flavour, but herbal and spicy notes also peep through, supported by some cedar and vanilla all of which suggests that the wine has developed beyond its infancy. There is tannin and enough of it to allow the wine to keep longer without becoming tired and uninteresting and has well-balanced acidity. It is quite alcoholic, being labelled as having 14.5% abv, and that is about as much as anyone needs (having said I recently tasted a Cannonau from Sardinia that had 15.5% on its label and although was certainly a powerful wine it was also delicious).

The village of Puisseguin is a near neighbour of Saint-Emilion, one of the more famous names from Bordeaux that can be found on the right bank of the Garonne, and is one of four that are permitted to benefit from association with its neighbour by appending the more famous name after their own by way of claiming increased kudos.

There is a general truth about Bordeaux that the wines made on the left bank have Cabernet Sauvignon as the majority grape in the blend, where those from the right bank include more Merlot. This follows that rule having 60% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Franc and only a 5% splash of Cabernet Sauvignon.

I like this wine. I think £10 for a bottle of a well made, medium bodied, classic style right bank claret is a fair deal.Yes, you can pay more for greater complexity and a greater emphasis on the leather and liquorice flavours of an older and more developed wine, but as I said at the start, this is a compromise choice and one I am very happy to have made.

Oyster Bay

No, not the Sauvignon Blanc. There's nothing wrong with that and it is very well known for a good reason; it's reliable and reasonably priced. This one carries the same brand but comes from the other half of New Zealand.

The Sauvignon Blanc comes from Marlborough, like so many similar wines, and that and area found in the North East corner of New Zealand's South Island.

This wine comes from Hawkes Bay, which is a cool climate region on the East coast of the North Island.

Week O (2015) Oyster Bay, Brut NV. Majestic £11.24

Another significant difference is, of course, the grapes used. 100% Chardonnay go into this wine and more specifically a clone of Chardonnay that produces small and intensely flavoured berries.

When Champagne is made exclusively from white grapes (being Chardonnay) it is known as blanc-de-blanc, being white wine from white grapes. So in that respect this is similar to that style of Champagne, however, there is a significant difference.

Champagne and its closest rivals made in the 'traditional method' go through two fermentations. Firstly, to produce a 'base wine' and then a second fermentation within the bottle in which it will be eventually sold. There is another technique which still has two rounds of fermentation, but the second takes place in a pressurised steel tank, allowing greater quantities to be made to sparkle with fewer  moving parts (bottles) to manage.

Oyster Bay sparkling is produced in this second way; the 'tank method' or, slightly more charmingly and French, the 'Charmat' method.

The Charmat method tends to produce wines with livelier, bigger, some would say coarser bubbles, or mousse and also with far less of a complex flavour profile. There's little of the yeasty, biscuity  flavours that I think make Champagne and Traditional method sparkling wines more interesting and enjoyable, but there is a fruit-driven freshness in the better examples.

This one has crisp white fruits, melon and some softer stone fruits, but not to the fore. The refreshing lively bubbles are accompanied by equally lively acidity, which on its own may make the experience a little tart.

As a style it falls somewhere between another tank method favourite, Prosecco, and a non-premium French Charmat, but in terms of price it is about twice as expensive as a perfectly good Cava, the Spanish traditional method offering.

It is well made and pleasant to drink, but it's not the sensible option from an economic perspective.