Inzolia

Whilst discussing the potential for foreign travel as, hopefully, we come towards the end of the current pandemic a friend described how he and his wife had booked a trip to Sicily. I responded with genuine interest, enthusiasm and a little envy. It was when he said 'and then we will take the helicopter back to Plymouth' that I realised either he was a man of much greater means than I had previously understood or that he wasn't going to Sicily. 

Recently we took a virtual trip to Sicily, in Week F (2021), and it is a pleasure to return there. In that week I mentioned Marsala, so it feels fitting that here we have:

Week I (2021) Martinez Marsala Superiore Riserva Dolce. 37.5cl M&S £5.95

As with the wine from our recent trip this week's wine is made from a blend of grapes. The grapes in question are a majority of Grillo, which on its own makes fresh appley-lemon wines with a nutty tang, and Inzolia (aka at least 8 other names) which also has a nutty personality. Given that, why the blend? I dunno, maybe it's cheaper :-).

Probably due to the passage of time there is a pattern emerging in these most recent pages as wines, or grapes, tasted before reappear in a different guise. Inzolia previously appeared in Week I (2015) as a dry wine and I referred to its role in Marsala and so now I'll return the favour as although Marsala can be dry this one certainly is not. It is similar to a sweet Port, being tawny in colour and having a figgy-raisin flavour with some spiced caramel and hazelnut tones, most prominent in the finish. It is a touch sweeter than I would choose, but it's great with sharp cheeses.

There are clues on the label as to the style in the bottle. To be called Superiore Riserva it must have aged for a minimum of four years, and Dolce is (obviously) Sweet. Other classifications can be applied to wines aged much longer, but you can look those up for yourself.

In common with Madeira it has in its history the discovery that the wine improved during long sea journeys. In the case of Madeira this lead to a process where the wine ages in hot warehouses, known as estufagem. For Marsala the process is similar to the solera system used in the production of Sherry, where proportions of new wines are added to older stocks several times over a few years so that the resultant wine is the product of many vintages. In Marsala this process goes under the name 'perpetuum' which is quite descriptive don't you think?

Buy again? Yup, it keeps forever and is great added to fruit dishes, if it hasn't all been drunk first.

Heritages

 H is for Heritages. This one caught my eye, partly because I like wines from the Rhone Valley in general, and partly because I liked the brand name. I have noticed while perusing the wine walls in my most frequently visited supermarkets that, like other industries, the opportunity to sail close to the wind with trade marks is often grabbed in an attempt to grasp the shopper's attention. I am the evidence that this can work.

Week H (2021) Heritages Chateaneuf-du-Pape, 2019. Tesco £19

Now, I am not accusing anyone of doing anything underhand here and I selected the bottle knowing exactly what was in it and from whence it came. However, although Chateauneuf-du-Pape is a very well known and respected appellation in the Southern Rhone, it is also one of the largest, producing approximately 14 million bottles each year. 

Further upstream in the Northern Rhone lies the appellation of Hermitage which produces some excellent red wines, but in much lower quantities: 730,000 bottles per annum, or thereabouts.

Both appellations have good reputations. With the volume of C-d-P that is produced it isn't all going to be the best, but in my experience (see other entries: Week H (2015), Week L (2015), Week V (2015)....I told you I liked the Rhone) it is one of those names that people seem to trust. Perhaps this leads to the producers needing to compete in other ways, such as using a brand name that might catch the eye of a customer seeking a bargain. A bottle of Hermitage can be expensive. A quick internet search reveals bottles for as little as £40 (i.e. twice the price of this lower end C-d-P) or as much as five times that amount. I didn't look further, but I know this is not the upper limit.

Whether that is what is happening here I can only speculate, but there are other examples from many other regions. Italy seems to produce a lot of wine way down in the south, especially in Puglia, that have names similar to Amarone or Appassimento that have their roots in the north.

There is also a word used in the United States to mean a wine made from a blend of grapes permitted in Bordeaux. That word is Meritage....

Does any of this matter? Possibly, possibly not. However, in the interest of helping consumers understanding what they are buying and, hopefully, making better informed choices, we might consider that C-d-P can be made from 18 grape varieties as long as Grenache predominates, whereas Hermitage can only use a majority of Syrah, blended with minor portions of Marsanne & Roussanne which are both white.

Having chosen my weekly wine in part because of the possibility of typing all this unnecessary guff and using it as an exercise in revision of details once learned and in danger of being forgotten, I should say a bit about the experience of drinking it.

It was deeply-coloured, rich, well-structured, full of black fruits and herbal notes, had ripe tannin and a pleasing finish. I shared it with two friends, one of whom looked at the label and said, 'ooh, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, nice!' (see above) and both of whom then drank it without further comment whilst eating a delicious lunch of chicken with lemon and olives. Another example of a match that would make some rule-based wine enthusiasts wince!

Buy again? Chateauneuf-du-Pape, yes. This particular one, if it is close to hand, yes, but I won't seek it out.

Gruner Veltliner

Gruner Veltliner is, alongside its unrelated Roter version, a grape whose home is in the lovely country of Austria. We tried it once before, in 2015, as an ice wine (wein?) which was very lovely but also very sweet. That one came from Burgenland, in the grape's homeland, whereas this one has travelled all the way from New Zealand and is dry.

Week G (2021) Yealands Reserve Gruner Veltliner, 2020. Waitrose £12.99 

The grapes were grown in the Awatere Valley in the north-east of New Zealand's south island (I'm a bit disappointed I haven't managed to shoehorn the word 'west' into that sentence, so far) which has a sunny disposition during the day, accompanied by cool nights and low annual rainfall. This provides excellent conditions in which this well-travelled grape can develop it's peppery, spicy flavours to good advantage.

There is stone fruit, some tropical notes and a bit of mineral zipidity (doo-dah. That's a neoligism to me, I think) that makes the whole thing nicely balanced between easy to drink and sufficiently unusual to make it interesting.

Along with another G variety, Gewurztraminer, the usual advice is to pair it with Asian food, but my usual response is to recommend drinking it with whatever takes your fancy. I wouldn't expect it to go well with slow-cooked Ox cheeks, but it might. Having typed that I am now tempted to try.

I have only once, to date, visited New Zealand and given the country's current administration's fierce determination not to allow that country to suffer from the Covid-19 pandemic any more than they really have to, I think it is unlikely that I would be welcomed back any time soon. They have recently 'locked-down' (why don't I like that phrase?) in response to a single case of the disease being detected and so even us doubled-jabbed (that's also unappealing) geriatric wine enthusiasts are banned from entry. This is a pity. Partly because I found New Zealand to be beautiful and peaceful, especially as in the south island it is still 1975 and there's no WiFi, mobile phone network or even FM radio for large parts of it, and partly because on my previous trip I only managed one winery visit. This was to Mission, in the north island, the oldest winery in the country. It was excellent and I should like to try more.

Awatere is closer to Blenheim, in the broad and famous Marlborough region from which so many good wines are produced. Sadly, we drove through it without stopping, on the way to catch the ferry to the south-western (hoorah! I new I could do it!) tip of the north island. This is an error to be corrected at some future date. We also didn't stop to take in Don Henley in concert in Wellington, but did catch him in Hyde Park where he was the main support act (!!!) to Carole King. Also excellent.

Anyway, I digress. Buy again? Most likely.

Frappato

Ah! Italia!  Had it not been for the wretched pandemic we would now be but a month or so away from packing our bags to attend a wedding in the hills to the north of Rome. Wouldn't that have been great.. There is a slim chance it still may be possible, provided the Italian government change the rules at the beginning of September. If they don't we will have to continue to use exploration of the world through wine as a proxy for a more personal experience. With that in mind:

Week F (2021) Corte Ferro Frappato Nerello Mascalese, 2019. Majestic £8.99 

Let us imagine ourselves on the sun-kissed shores of Sicily, on the western coast close to Marsala, sipping a red wine made from local grapes (Shirley Valentine has just popped into my head, but I think she went to Mykonos) and enjoying the evening sun, setting over the Mediterranean Sea. Nice, innit?

The wine would be a blend of two varieties grown on the island and in very few other places. The growers would be from a family that established the vineyards in 1904 and who, almost exactly a century later, had teamed up with a winemaking family from Brescia to build a winery and take control of the end-to-end production. 

What we have here is both a blend of grapes and a blend of families, who turn the juice from those grapes into the wine of the week. The families are, firstly, the local growers, named Caruso and, secondly, the Minini family from Brescia in Lombardy. They bring viticulture and vinification together.

The grapes are Frappato, which brings a lightness, acidity, and berry fruit flavours, and Nerello Mascalese, providing the structure and body. Both of these have been hand-picked, destemmed and fermented in stainless steel tanks for two to three weeks, before undergoing malolactic fermentation in the same. The wine is then aged in a mix of 225 litre barriques (30%) for four months and stainless steel for eight months. After all of that it has a labelled abv of 13.5%.

Back in the real world the wine was tasted not on a balmy Sicilian evening to accompany a mixed plate of local antipasti, but in front of the television with little more than a bowl of cashews, whilst watching a rerun of what the BBC, or at least many of their presenters, seems to believe was called the Erlympics, where 'Team GB' done really well. For all of that *sigh* both the sport and the wine that accompanied it were very enjoyable and my any measure, a great success. Medium body, fruit and acidity nicely balanced, alcohol well integrated, good subtle tannin, nice length.

Buy it again?  Yes.

Elemental

Following on from last week's wine, this week is another from Majestic. Not this time one of their own label wines but one selected for a few reasons.

Week E (2021) Elemental Organic Viognier, 2020. Majestic £9.99

My reasons for selecting this, apart from the obvious and necessary 'white wine beginning with 'E' (and there are two of those)', were that, as I have said before, I like Viognier and also that I like producer: Emiliana.

Emiliana were voted Winery of the Year in 2016, by Wines of Chile, and they have an impressive track record from their inception in 1998 for increasingly concentrating on the production of organic and biodynamic wines whilst picking up certifications and awards for environmental and ethical practices.

I first encountered Emiliana at the London International Wine Festival in around 2010 where I listened to an interesting and engaging presentation about their philosophy whilst, happily, sampling some of their output. I particularly remember enjoying the Coyam red, a blend of Syrah, Carmenere, Cabernet Sauvignon, Mourvedre, Petit Verdot, Carignan, Malbec, Garnacha & Tempranillo!

This wine is 100% Viognier. As previously noted elsewhere in these pages, Viognier originates from the Northern Rhone, where it is used in top end wines like Chateau Grillet and as part of the blend in Cote Rotie, and I have mentioned more than once that I like Yalumba's organic Viognier which is made in South Australia. So how does this Chilean wine compare? In short: very well.

Chile produces a lot of great wine and much of it at keen prices, at least in the UK when compared to some 'old world' offerings. This is a good example of one such wine. It is beautifully aromatic and has rich flavours of stone fruits, like peach and apricot, with some floral tones (I think I am supposed to say honeysuckle at this point) and a honey finish.

I like this a lot. I opened it to accompany a slow roast pork Sunday lunch and it did that very nicely. Most labels on bottles of Viognier recommend drinking it with Thai food and I wouldn't object to that either.

Buy again? Yes, without hesitation.