Zorzal ZZ

There have been a few ornithological associations with wines listed in these pages and today we have another. This is not the reason for its selection and I didn't discover the connection until I was trying to find out anything of interest about the producers, but turns out that Zorzal is the Spanish name for the Song Thrush. A bit like Merlot being the French for Blackbird.  Unlike the Merlot, Zorzal also translates as 'dupe' or 'mug' (as in stupid person) and even as 'ingenious', so take your pick.

I like to think it has been chosen for the last of these three translations and I will explain in minute. For now, let me introduce:

Week Z (2019) Zorzal ZZ, Tunpungato, Argentina. 2017. M&S £9.50.

It is now a couple of weeks over eleven years since The One and I moved into our family home and we are very fond of the place. We chose it for a number of reasons, one of which was that it was a little unusual. It had been designed as a small, modern 'farmhouse' using well-thought out use of natural light and one particular material that would have been quite on-trend and the very start of the 1960's. (A very significant moment in history for personal reasons, too.)

The material in question is concrete. Something of an acquired taste architecturally as evidenced by comments from well-meaning friends when they first examined our choice of home. For example, 'do you think they left all this showing because they ran out of funds?' and 'are you going to plaster over all the unfinished bits?' No and no. It's brutalism in a domestic context; go and read about it.....sigh.

Anyway, concrete may not be the first material that comes to mind when you think of winemaking, but it does play a significant role in this case. The winemakers at Zorzal, the Michelini brothers, have chosen not to ferment their juice in either oak barrels nor stainless steel vats, but in concrete / cement 'eggs'. The brothers are pioneers in the use of this technology amongst their South American vinicultural community and seem to be proud of that fact. The use of concrete eggs, based on ancient amphora, is first credited to Michel Chapoutier in the Rhone valley and has since been adopted by winemakers across the globe, especially the trendier ones. It seems that the egg shape allows more of the developing wine to be kept in contact with the dead yeast cells and that the natural convection currents generated by the act of fermentation as it heats up the wine provide an automatic 'battonage' effect, which is where under more traditional methods the winemaker would stir the lees to assist with the development of complexity and texture in the wine. In addition to this the insulating properties of concrete help to maintain a stable temperature for fermentation without the need for expensive cooling systems. It also allows just the right amount of oxygen to permeate the egg and help the wine soften tannins and develop complexity.

The Zorzal winery was established in 2007 and has 70 hectares of mixed soil types 4,500 feet up in the Andean foothills, which makes this the highest vineyard area in Mendoza. Here they grow Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc alongside the Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon that appear in equal proportion on this bottle. The two varieties are picked by hand and vinified separately before being brought together in the final blend.

The resulting wine is rich, smooth and fruity with a spicy-herb finish. At the price it is a very decent wine.

Yalumba

As Today is our 12th wedding anniversary it really ought to have been Champagne, but I couldn't find one with a significant Y associated with it and so we have:


Week Y (2019) Yalumba Organic Shiraz 2017. Waitrose £9.99

I am finding that having returned to recording my weekly wine selection there is often a reference back to earlier times. In this case it is that Yalumba was also the producer responsible for Week Y (2014). On that occasion it was their white Organic Viognier, which remains one of my favourites.

This wine also comes from South Australia and, like the Viognier, is made from a grape whose original home is in France's Rhone Valley. There it is known as Syrah, but Australians renamed it Shiraz, for reasons unexplained.

Shiraz is a powerful grape variety, full of black fruit, bell pepper and spice flavours, often with strong tannins and capable of delivering high alcohol levels. Whilst wines from the Rhone valley appeal to me generally two of my 'bankers' are both Guigal's and Chapoutier's Cotes du Rhone, where the Syrah has been blended with one, two or even more of the twenty-one permitted varieties. They tend to be good value for money and often get favourable comments from friends and mealtime guests.

Perhaps it is because I regularly drink these Rhone blends that when I see a single varietal Shiraz / Syrah I tend to shy away as I expect it to be more challenging and possibly less enjoyable than the easy drinking blends. This probably says more about my faddy habits than anything intrinsically wine-related. I rarely order fish in a restaurant for similar reasons, but invariably enjoy the experience if I do.

So it was with that prejudice in mind I approached this bottle. Well, it's like the fish all over again. Not the wine, I am sure you understand, but the experience. This is a well made, easy to drink, fruity red wine underpinned with both floral aromas and spicy flavours. There is tannin, but it is not excessive or unripe. It is more structured than the Cotes du Rhones, but that just means it is distinct from them in a pleasing way.

Yalumba is now definitely a name I trust. There are four wines in their organic range, all overseen by a talented lady named Heather Fraser, and I look forward to trying the Pinot Grigio and the Chardonnay in the near future.

If you hurry, Waitrose have a 25% discount on the Shiraz right now..

Ximinez, Pedro

It is supposed to be a red wine week and so Pedro Ximinez, the grape used to create this week's wine, doesn't really qualify. However, I am prepared to make this exception for two reasons. Firstly, whilst the grape itself is a pale, yellowy-green colour the wine is a rich, dark, mahogany brown and a long way from white. Secondly, the rules are mine and should not be allowed to constrain my exploration. More about a particular constraint later.

Since escaping the responsibilities associated with bluffing my way through the world of IT, I have very much enjoyed becoming a volunteer in a community shop in my home village. Apart from the great pleasure derived from doing something that feels genuinely useful and is motivated by something other than financial gain for the first time in many years, I have also made a number of new friends and acquaintances, with a wide variety of background and experiences. The shop itself  sells an impressive range of essential items including a number of wines supplied by Liberty Wines. One of these is:

Week X (2019) El Candado, Pedro Ximinez Sherry. Wigginton Community Shop £22.

This is a unique drink and very distinct from anything you might associate with the word 'Sherry'. If you don't like Sherry, try this as it may surprise you.

It is Sherry, however, as it is made in the traditional Sherry way, with the wine having been matured in a solera system, after it has been fortified with grape spirit. This is where new wine is added to the barrels at the top of a stack and each year part of the contents are drawn off and added to a barrel in the next layer down in that stack until, after a few years, it has reached the bottom of the stack. Once there it can be drawn off and bottled. The liquid that goes into the bottle will be at least as old in years as the number of levels in the solera and, because the barrels are never more than one-third emptied and topped up in any one year, mostly much older. This process in known as 'fractional blending' as only a fraction of the wine from any one harvest is used at a single time and the blend is created in the solera from the juice of all the years that have ever been added to it. This wine has an average age of ten years as a consequence. (Make sense? No? OK try Wikipedia, or a proper book. Perhaps go on a course?)

Pedro Ximinez, or PX for ease, is extremely sweet. This version has 400 grams of sugar in every litre of wine. Is that a lot? Yes, as a typical dry table wine will have about 1% of that amount. In fact, this is so sweet that if it is drunk without being chilled first or, as is suggested on the bottle, being taken 'on the rocks' it can be too syrupy to be experienced at its best. It is full of figs, raisins, chocolate and even coffee and spice. Ideally, this should be drunk with friends although it won't mind being kept in the fridge for quite a long time which is just as well, given that you want to keep your teeth.

Poured over vanilla ice-cream it makes a great, simple dessert and it can stand up to a good, salty blue cheese when its sweetness and dried-fruity flavours make a great combination.

The bodega from which this comes is Valdespino, named after Alfonso Veldespino a 13th century knight who fought alongside King Alfonso X against the invading Arabs. I can't find any reference to him making Sherry which may not have come along until a couple of hundred years later, but the family who own the lands Alfonso was given in return for his loyalty, the Estevez family, produce a good volume of different styles of Sherry from 750 hectares of their own vineyards and if the others are as good as this, then I really must try some of them.

The keen-eyed amongst you will have noticed that there is a padlock attached to the top of the bottle. That's not me being overly cautious but the producer's attempt to tell you this is worthy of a bit of pilfering. El Candado translates from the Spanish as ' the lock' and, I think, hints at the close control the winemaker has on the quality of his product.

White

I did say I had relaxed the rules for my weekly wine selection, but even I think I may be pushing the limits with this one. White it is, but I did have a better reason for wanting to buy this particular wine.

I am usually quite ruthless when it comes to mail management. The vast majority of emails that reach my inbox are deleted without being read and that is after an even bigger majority has been filtered out by those kind people at Google. Those that get any attention at all have really done very well and have made it into the second round. At this stage most will get a cursory glance and then meet the same fate as the losers in round one. Some get read properly. With hard copy mail the odds of success are even less, so Majestic can consider themselves truly honoured that not only did I read their flyer for 'Aussie Rules' but, as a direct consequence, took myself off the local branch to taste and then buy six bottles of:

Week W (2019) Soumah Chardonnay 2017, Majestic £11.98.

Those familiar with Majestic's pricing policy will appreciate that this is the 'mix six' price which in this case is a 33% reduction on the amount asked for a single bottle, being £17.99.

So why did I respond to the marketing material when I am usually so resilient to such approaches? It is because when I still had a proper job that took me to the land down under, every now and again, I had the opportunity to visit a few wineries and on one such trip I visited Soumah.  I mentioned this in Week Y (2014) under the heading of Yering Farm which was the last stop that day, from where I bought a Pinot Noir for that week. I remembered enjoying the visit to Soumah, in fact I enjoyed the whole four winery tour (as far as I recall) and wanted to refresh that memory.

And very refreshing it is. This is much better than I had expected. I was prepared to discover that my rationale for selecting the wine was a misguided personal indulgence and that the reality would not live up to the romantic notion of some vague reconnection with a pleasant day five years ago.

The aromas are interesting, being mostly clean and fruity but with some hint of subtle oak, but the flavours are much more intense than I had imagined. Green apples, limey citrus and some touches of matchstick and nuts all of which lasts a pleasingly long time.

The cellar door price for this wine is A$28 and at today's exchange rate that is a touch over £15.50, so allowing for Majestic's buying power giving them a hefty discount but also allowing for the logistics, duty and vat, I think the mix six price is a pretty fair deal.

I remember meeting the winemaking family and they were very welcoming, even by Australian standards, and also that they were concentrating on Italian grape varieties, but it was only when reading the small print on the bottle that I discovered that Soumah is not a family name, not an Aboriginal name for the land where the grapes now grow, nor is it anything to do with Italy. It is a reference to the vineyard location being SOUth of MandoorAH.  I hope to go there again one day.