December Wine Focus: Outsiders!

[Robin Garr]

What's an outsider? We're getting a little tricky this month with a topic that invites us to explore the roads less taken. This is your challenge to look past the obvious and find out about the world's varieties and styles that break from their regional tradition to try something different.

A few examples:
* German red wine
* Italian Cabernet
* Loire red wine
* Alsace red wine
* U.S. Riesling
* New Zealand Pinotage
* English bubbly

Getting the idea? This is just a start. Bring us any wine that stands out from its compatriots, a wine that grabs your attention because it's not typical of the place it's from. The outsiders!

Can play with this one! How about a Chardonnay from say Germany?

[Robin Garr]

Can play with this one! How about a Chardonnay from say Germany?

That would work, Bob, assuming that, you know, you were willing to drink a German Chardonnay.

Just polished one off..delic!!

Robin, I take you mildly to task for describing Loire red wine as "outsiders". Reds are very mainstream in the core Loire regions of Anjou and Touraine. Certain appellations are exclusively red AFAIK and excellent, e.g. Saumur-Champigny, Bourgueil, St.Nicolas-Bourgueil, whilst at Chinon the whites, sometimes delicious, are the outsider. Anjou, Anjou Villages, Anjou Gamay, Touraine can be red or white. Cabernet franc is the dominant grape variety but CabSauv is allowed in some of the appellations and Gamay on its own can produce very good results in both Anjou and Touraine. In the latter there are also blends involving CabFranc, Gamay, Pinot Noir and Côt (AKA Malbec) and there are some producers making monovarietals out of the last two as well as from Gamay, reportedly with excellent results in the case of Côt but I don't think I have ever had one.

I do agree that, close to the mouth of the Loire, reds are outsiders and upstream round Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire they are in the minority but by no means oddities. Excellent reds from Pinot Noir are now coming out of Sancerre and also from the less well known neighbouring appellation Menetou-Salon. They are far more serious wines than the light, easy drinking Sancerre reds which used to be fashionable for drinking cool in Paris brasseries. Sancerre rosé from Pinot Noir can rise to rare heights of elegance and finesse for that colour.

Though mainstream in its appellation, I can't resist posting on last night's delicious Chinon -

2001 Philippe Alliet Chinon Coteau de Noiré - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Chinon (12/2/2018)
Quite light in colour and body, it was delicious in a gentle style showing fine fragrant raspberry tinged fruit, a sweetness similar in kind to an unsugared Darjeeling or China tea, fine minerals, a touch of forest floor, fresh moreish acidity and a light gamey touch towards the nicely long and fragrant finish. The hint of game may disconcert the squeaky clean adept but I love it. Very good.

Posted from CellarTracker

To post on the real outsider, here is my TN on the last white Chinon (Chenin) I opened. Bernard Baudry's two white cuvées are much better.

2014 Les Mains Rouges -Fabrice Gendrot Chinon - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Chinon (12/27/2017)
Medium bodied, dry and well focused showing bright white fruit, minerals and underlying roundness but slightly marred for me by a boiled sweet touch. However it was very popular round the table. Good wine but hardly worth its c.19€ price tab.

Posted from CellarTracker

[Robin Garr]

I hear you, Tim, and I'm sure you have an abundance of Loire reds available to you. I love them, too! I still mourn the demise (at least in the US) of Puzelat Pineau d'Aunis. I think it's a fair candidate for this Focus, though. According to the Loire Valley Press Kit, the Loire has 200,000 hectares of white vines to 100 hectares of reds; and I can tell you that the disparity in the US, at least in the wine shops available to me is more like 20 to 1 than 2 to 1.

http://loirevalleywine.com/wp-content/u ... t-2016.pdf

I agree with Tim. I was not sure that CF from Loire qualified at all. There is a whole shelf full downtown.

How about red Sherry? Back in the 1980s Emilio Lustau released a Sherry made from red grapes. It was sweet, thick, and very dark--almost black. Its aroma reminds me of pumpernickel bread. The Winecellar of Silene in Waltham MA imported it once, but I haven't seen it since. I think I still have a bottle or two of it kicking around.

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

Absolutely, Paul. That would be fascinating. I wonder what the variety is. Pedro Ximenez grapes are white, of course, even if the Sherry they make is brown.

TN: 2017 Herxheim am Berg Chardonnay Spatlese Trocken, Rheinpfalz.

Cooperative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herxheim_am_Berg). Owners of local winestore downtown found this interesting wine when visiting Germany in July. Turned out to be a good buy, Chardonnay from this area not well acknowledged.

$24 Cdn, Sc, 13% alc. Deep lemon color, nose has some smoke, apple, minerals, quince.."pear and apple" from across the table. More citrus after 24 hrs.
Dryish, medium acidity, "maybe tad one dimensional" but I enjoyed. Nice balance , fair focus. Served blind would fool many! Nice mixed fruits and plenty of mineral tones.

[Jenise]

Playing loose, very loose, with the definition of 'outlier' here. But where cabernet is plentiful, and syrah is plentiful; cab-syrah blends? Not so much. I fondly remember the Penfolds Bin 389 from Australia. There are probably others in Oz who combine the two in more or less equal measure, but I don't recall having any. The only other place on the planet I've run into the combo has been a single provence import and one or two here in Washington state. Allen Shoup's prestigious Long Shadows brand produces one called "Chester Kidder", and a winery named Efeste makes one called 'Final Final'. These aren't the 'Red Wine' kitchen sink blends resulting from end-of-season leftovers, these are deliberate blends that these wineries produce annually. I finally got around to tasting an Efeste last night, and I was impressed.

2013 Efeste Final-Final Columbia Valley Red Blend, approx 50/50 cab and syrah
Dark and serious. Spicy, with brambly black fruit and coffee notes. An interesting exploration of the marriage of cabernet and syrah, and an extremely good deal at the $25 - 30 pricepoint. You would be hard pressed to find a single variety cabernet or syrah as good as this for so little money.

[Robin Garr]

Okay, white Cotes du Rhone isn't exactly rare, but it's certainly a small minority compared to the ocean of red wine that comes out of the region. This six-varietal blend is a good one, happily not dominated by Viognier in spite of the V-grape being 60 percent of the cuvée.

E. Guigal 2016 Côtes du Rhône Blanc ($14.99)

This clear, light but bright gold wine comprises a typical Southern Rhône white blend of 60% Viognier, 15% Roussanne, 10% Marsanne, 8 % Clairette, 5% Bourboulenc, and 2% Grenache Blanc. Delicious yet subtle scents of tropical fruit – mangoes, green figs and pineapple – flirt with white flowers and a distinct note of honeycomb in the background. Fresh and bright on the palate, it's medium-bodied or perhaps a bit more on the palate, reading as rich but stopping well short of unctuous. The mixed fruits of the nose merge into something not quite as complex but just as delicious that speaks of peaches and pears, wrapped up with a firm structure of fresh acidity and 13.5% alcohol. U.S. importer: Vintus LLC, Pleasantville, N.Y. (Dec. 6, 2018)

FOOD MATCH: The winery offers broad advice, suggesting appetizers, fish, and Asian food in general. It went well for us with a Southern Italian dish, pasta e lenticchie, lentils with tomatoes and short strands of linguine.

WHEN TO DRINK: The winery suggests aging potential of three years after the vintage. While I wouldn't discard it immediately on its fourth birthday, I think drinking it up in the next year or so would be a good idea.

VALUE:
It's a very good Southern French white, a fine value at Wine-Searcher.com's $15 average retail.

WEB LINK
Here's E. Guigal's fact sheet. Click each vintage for more specific information on other years.

FIND THIS WINE ONLINE:
Search for vendors and compare prices for E. Guigal Côtes du Rhône Blanc on Wine-Searcher.com.

NV Emilio Lustau Tintilla de Rota Sherry

Yes, red Sherry. Tintilla de Rota is the local name in the Jerez area for the red grape variety usually called Graciano. Rota is a town in the Jerez region with soils particularly suited to Tintilla. Expansion of the US air base there almost wiped out the vineyards in the 1950s, and there still isn't much of the variety planted. In making Sherry it gets the same sort of treatment as Pedro Ximinez and Moscato: the harvested grapes are dried in the sun for a few weeks before vinification.

Lustau owns a tiny bit of Tintilla de Rota vineyard and in the 1980s and 1990 produced a few of Sherries from it. Winecellar of Silene in Waltham MA imported one in the mid-1980s; this is the one I own. There has been no Tintilla de Rota Sherry from Lustau since 1990.

The wine is a deep, inky red-black. Its aromas are of baked or roasted fruits. It reminds me of pumpernickel toast. On the palate it has almost a syrupy mouth feel. It is very sweet but not cloying, and the dominant flavors are of dried black fruits. Even after 30 years in my cellar, it still has a lively finish. I suspect this wine is immortal, like vintage Madeira.

Very much not a wine for everyone, but I like it. Double Curly.

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

NV Emilio Lustau Tintilla de Rota Sherry

Good one, Paul! I doubt many of us will have a chance to compare notes on a red sherry. I'd like to, though!

Agree, nice and unusual note Paul.

[Jenise]

Interesting, Paul; had no idea such a thing existed. My husband's crazy about sherry, so we do pay attention to the category.

[Jenise]

Went to a dinner with wine pairings on Whidbey Island earlier this week, and as I was inputting the notes to Cellar Tracker it occurred to me that three are definite Outsiders.

Dessert included this port style wine made from Rattlesnake Hills AVA barbera. Barbera's definitely an outsider; some wineries are experimenting with Italian grapes but most disappear into blends. It hasn't caught on here, not the least of which reasons is the fact that you can't grow and vinify barbera here as cheaply as we can get the real deal from Italy.

NV Whidbey Island Winery Barbera fortified red wine
Spicy red fruit, mildly rustic, with a good finish. Nice acidity avoids the sappiness of many North American 'ports'--it's credible.

During the meal we enjoyed this pinot noir:

2015 Whidbey Island Winery Pinot Noir Cultus Bay Vineyard on Whidbey Island
Given that this is probably the furthest west pinot noir vineyard in North America, this little Whidbey Island vineyard was thoughtfully planted to an early ripening Spatburgunder clone. It's barely medium-bodied with bright cherry fruit and interesting minerality in the German tradition. Really good, but one should understand the style to enjoy this. Kosta Browne-trained palates beware.

And the dinner started with the next wine, a sparkling Gruner Veltliner (that's, like, two outsider points!) from a vineyard on the Columbia Gorge (which straddles two states, OR and WA). Gruner is not (but should be, it's perfect for our climate) widely grown here and then to go methode champenoise with it? Wow:

2016 Syncline Scintillation Gruner Veltliner Brut Underwood Mountain Vineyard Columbia Gorge
Very dry, no gruner typicity to my tastes, but zippy refreshing with green pippin apple notes and something a little vegetal like pea sprouts. Zero dosage. Low production so only available at the winery.

[David M. Bueker]

So this is not at all what the thread was intended for, but people make wines in defined areas that taste like they could come from anywhere, so...

2014 Domaine Jean Royer Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée Les Sables de la Crau - France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Châteauneuf-du-Pape (12/9/2018)
Sorry, but I just can’t call this good wine. It’s notably sweet, hot and shows no defining Chateauneuf du Pape character. It’s anywhere juice that might as well be $7.99 a bottle. I am not even sure I would cook with it.

TN: 2017 Herxheim am Berg Chardonnay Spatlese Trocken, Rheinpfalz.

$24 Cdn, Sc, 13% alc. Deep lemon color, nose has some smoke, apple, minerals, quince.."pear and apple" from across the table. More citrus after 24 hrs.

It is 6,90 € in Germany. I pay 5,50€ for a "Herxheimer Himmelreich" Chardonnay from Messer-Kalsch. We had a 2016 and a 2017 last weekend. They both were about meeting your description, the 2017 seemed more concentrated though. Maybe a result of the low yields that year.

2015 Cantina Le Monde Fruili Grave Cabernet Franc.

Good natural cork, 13% alc. No new oak, very little neutral oak used.
Medium ruby in color, attractive nose with green pepper, herbs, some spice. Cherry as it opened and boysenberry. Think pretty typical for a CF eh. "Tad floral from across the table".
Initial entry thoughts are soft tannins, chalky, earthy, very good acidty showed up better on day 2. Dark cherry, good medium length finish. Wonder how long to cellar but nice now and will get some more.

20 years ago most Alsatian Pinot Noir could be mistaken for rosé and its body on the palate was similarly light. Recently most have been acquiring a lot more weight and are becoming really serious wines. I opened one last night and in many ways the TN on a bottle from a few months remains valid -

2016 Domaine Barmes-Buecher Pinot Noir Reserve - France, Alsace (5/13/2018)
Quite light coloured and medium- bodied at most, it showed Pinot fruit which got more attractive and fragrant as the bottle progressed as well as lively moreish acidity and fine minerals. At first there was an odd powdery perfume which receded sonewhat and the finish was not very long. The first of these blemishes will probably disappear with a little more time. Elegant and good though.

Here is my private CT update on last night's bottle -

As before without powdery perfume and a touch more roundness.

Another French area where Pinot Noir has become a more serious proposition is the Central Loire basin which is largely Sauvignon blanc country. Here is an example from the little known appellation Menetou-Salon -

2014 Domaine Henry Pellé Menetou-Salon Morogues - France, Loire Valley, Upper Loire, Menetou-Salon (6/3/2018)
Medium/light in colour and body but elegant with fine Pinot fruit, delicate minerals and spice, some depth and complexity, fresh acidity and discreet backbone. Moreish and reasonable in alcohol (12.5%), so we found that we had finished the bottle in one sitting. Very good.
Posted from CellarTracker

This Brulhois is an outsider in the sense of its being a very obscure appellation from France's Sud-Ouest. I had to look it up on the map. It is located on the southern side of the Garonne river about halfway between Bordeaux and Toulouse close to the town of Agen which is famous in France for prunes (pruneaux d'Agen) rather than for wine.

2016 Etienne Nicolas Côtes du Brulhois Brulhois - France, Southwest France, Côtes du Brulhois (12/16/2018)
IRRC this is the first Brulhois which has passed my lips. It is made on the southern side of the Garonne close to Agen from a cocktail of merlot, tannat, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, malbec and fer servadou but I don't have information on the precise contents of this particular bottle. It was medium bodied and quite round with flavours of bramble tinted red fruit and decent acidity. The back label claims flavours of spice and liquorice but I didn't get those. My first acquaintance with Marcillac and Fronton impelled to look for more but this rather dull bottle does not give me the same urge with Brulhois. Fair.
Posted from CellarTracker

[Jenise]

Graciano, so important to blending in Rioja wines, is rarely seen on its own. Had a gorgeous one at Contino when we were in Spain a few months ago, but here's the first one I've ever seen in the states.

2015 Principe de Viana Graciano (Tinto Roble), Navarra
Tastes like someone made wine out of the grape soda of my childhood. $13, not recommended.

This Brulhois is an outsider in the sense of its being a very obscure appellation from France's Sud-Ouest.

Indeed. Bravo for that. Had never heard of the appellation either.