Maker's Table

SanSì

Azienda Agricola Scagliola
Barbera d'Asti Superiore "SanSì"
2008
14.5% ABV | Price: about $40

This wine is 100% barbera, and the grapes derive from the limestone and clay soils of the SanSì vineyard in Calosso. The color is deep orange garnet with a limpid rim. Aromas of fennel, smoke, plum, spice, black tar, and wild game rise from the glass, and the wine grips the palate with smooth, smoky-earthy tannin, sweet tobacco, and black fruits. The somewhat high level of alcohol in this otherwise old-worldish wine leaves a bit of burn in the middle of my tongue, but this apologetically tapers into a savory, succulent finish.

The winery notes that SanSì is named after the knightly San Siro. But there are in fact two Saints Syrus: one of Genoa—who concocted some miracles with boats—and the other of Pavia—who was somewhat more catholic in his saintly ministrations. Genoa is in Liguria, and Pavia is in Lombardia, and so neither saint hailed from Piemonte, sandwiched betwixt, whence this Barbera hails. So we'll just have to called it—and ourselves—blessed.

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Austrian

The venue: the quaint cellar room of the über-Victorian Norwich Inn, in Norwich, Vermont. The host: Rafael Flores, director of Artisanal Cellars, a boutique wine importer. The featured guest: Klaus Wittauer of KW Selection, an Austrian restaurateur turned wine exporter. The inn had laid out a spread of schnitzel with braised red cabbage, house-smoked salmon with crème fraiche, and delectable puff pastries with mustard sauce to accompany the nine lean, savory Austrian wines—from sekt to Riesling to Zweigelt—we had gathered to taste.

It was my first full Austrian immersion, and I found the wines on the whole exceptionally pleasant: low-alcohol, savory, mineral-intensive, cleansing, serious, and food-friendly. My tasting notes:

 

2010 Hillinger "Small Hill White"
12.0% ABV | Price: about $14
A blend of 70% Riesling, 20% Sauvignon blanc, and 10% Muskateller, the wine is a very pale, clear yellow. Quite aromatic (predominantly of Riesling), with a palate that offers good but not overwhelming acidity and stony minerality with an over-layer of stone fruits. It has a long, savory, slightly tart finish.

2009 Tegernseerhof Riesling "Terrassen"
12.5% ABV | Price: about $20
This riesling is grown in granitic soils, and the wine is made from the first harvest picking. It offers great minerality and a nose that is not exactly petrol; more like diesel, or steel pennies. It is an exceptionally dry and serious wine, and the aromatics are a haunting riddle to one more used to German Riesling.

2009 Anton Bauer Grüner Veltliner "Rosenberg"
12.5% ABV | Price: about $18
This vineyard has loess soils, and the wine is vinified in stainless steel and aged in concrete vessels. It offers lively tropical aromas, with some pineapple and a little oiliness. Bone dry and cleansing on the palate, it also has great weight and intensity. Recommended, and tied for best of tasting.

2008 Tegernseerhof Grüner Veltliner "Loibenberg"
13.0% ABV | Price: about $33
This wine hails from the largest single cru in the Wachau. The vineyard is south-facing, with some loess and granite soils, and the wine, Klaus informs me, is built for aging. This '08 is still a child, but it has great elegance and savoryness. I would love to try this vintage again in, say, 2018.

2009 Weingut Michlits Pinot Gris "Graupert"
13.0% ABV | Price: about $20
"Graupert" translates to "ungroomed," and refers to the wild, uncultivated vineyard in which this wine is grown. The winery is fully Biodynamic, and uses no trellising or pruning in the vineyard, but the vines have adapted to this hands-off approach, voluntarily producing low yields and small berry sizes. The wine is concentrated and focused, and—perhaps I'm just suggestible—"wild" tasting.

2009 Steininger Cabernet Sauvignon Sekt Rosé 
Méthode Champenoise; disgorged February '11
13.0% ABV | Price: about $28
Cab sekt? It sounds like the start of an off-color joke. But the wine is wonderful: wildly aromatic, with bright cranberry and currant fruits, and more cranberry on the palate, plus a great texture and smooth, even mouthfeel. Pricey, but a show-stopper; a wine I'd love to serve to wine-knowledgable friends, blind. I can imagine the smiles. Recommended.

2010 Hillinger Zweigelt 
13.5% ABV | Price: about $18
This unoaked Zweigelt offered a sharp, black pepper nose that reminded me a little of Grenache. But the palate was vegetal—more green pepper than black pepper—and a bit tannic. Lean and tight, it perhaps needed some air to unwind. Or another three years.

2007 Anton Bauer "Wagram Cuvée 13" 
13.0% ABV | Price: about $20
A blend of 40% Blaufränkisch, 35% Zweigelt, 15% Cabernet sauvignon, and 10% Merlot, the wine delivers subtle pepper notes and brilliant berry flavors, but is restrained and settled overall. Lovely and a good value at $20.

2008 Hillinger Blaufränkisch "Leithaberg" 
13.5% ABV | Price: about $34
Vinified like Pinot noir, but aged only in neutral oak; only 3,000 bottles were made. A beautiful nose of wild roses, with a palate of blueberry and purple flowers, plus great acidity and a lingering finish of sweet tobacco. Highly recommended, and tied for best of tasting.

 

"In Austria, we are wine growers, not wine makers," Klaus said to me, smiling, echoing a refrain I'd heard often when talking with German wine producers. In other words, make the wine that nature gives you, and thank your stars you can. 

 

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Daughters of the Revolution

Channing Daughters
Sculpture Garden
2007
12.7% ABV | Price: about $30*

This wine is 88% merlot and 12% blaufränkisch, from a winery in the Hamptons of Long Island. Only 348 cases were made. My dear friend and confrère éternel Rémy Charest handed it to me the last time we met. I confessed to having never before had a Long Island red. This would be my virgin flight.

Held against the light, the wine is a nearly pearlescent suspension of fruit plus earth. Swirled in the glass, it gives bright, plummy, cherry aromas underpinned by a black toastiness that's slightly savory. Medium-bodied in the mouth, it delivers juicy acidity, more red fruits, and black currant with a layer of spicy black pepper. The finish is long and faintly vegetal.

This is an elegant and balanced wine with an earthy, slightly funky catch in the middle. If you'd handed me a glass blind and asked me to place it, I'd have been utterly flummoxed. It does not have the gravitas and savory minerality of Bordeaux, nor does it have the heft and cleavage of California Merlot. It is not like Blaufränkisch, though it's not unlike some of the German reds I've tasted. It's lean and savory and a little wild tasting like some native North American wines. But it's clearly not native, either.

It's not Old World, and not wholly New. It's from here: New York State. My mind is open.

 

*I received this wine as a gift.

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Sancerrious

Franck et Jean-Francois Bailly
Sancerre "Cuvée Chavignol"
2007
13.0% ABV | Price: about $25*

Red Sancerre is made exclusively, in accordance with France's AC laws, with pinot noir grapes. This one is fine-boned and intense. Pale garnet with a faint peach cast at the rim, when swirled it gives off slightly earthy, smoky aromas with undertones of black plums. Brightly acidic with great minerality and a slightly spicy cut, it finishes lean. After a few minutes in the glass, it opens the windows and brushes out its hair. But it's a restrained wine; its dressing gown stays on.

It is also resoundingly a food wine. I paired it with an aged french goat cheese, a Bûcheron with a white rind, both born of the same soil, nearly. The wine married effortlessly with the chalky, gaminess of the cheese, and a sip after a bite was like spring after winter: clean, bright, cleansing.

My ancestors hail from the Loire. I'll have to visit soon.

 

*I received this wine as a press sample.

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Distinctly Liminal

St. Supéry
Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
2005
13.9% ABV | Price: about $30*

This Cab's a deep inky red—on the purple side despite its six years of age. A blend of 97% cabernet sauvignon, 2% merlot, and 1% petit verdot, it offers delicate aromas of coffee, black cherry, blueberry, anise, and mint. It shows good balance on the palate, with juicy blackberry, black cherry, and plum, plus great grip—a kind of blooming tannin that expands at the very end.

Although somewhat restrained, it is not quite Bordeaux-like; it lacks the gritty austerity we associate with French cabernet/merlot blends. But it's not a California bomb, either. Somewhere in between, and quite nice.

 

*I received this wine as a press sample.

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Rosso

Collemattoni
Rosso di Montalcino
2007
14.5% ABV | Price: about $28

This wine is 100% sangiovese, from the Brunello clone. Rosso di Montalcino is made in a lighter style than a classified Brunello, and can be released younger.

Approachable and fresh, it offers pepper and plum aromas, plus the scent of saddle leather and strong black tea. Juicy and bright on the palate, it yields red fruits and lively acidity, but has an earthy undercurrent and slightly drying finish.

More elegant and nuanced that we expected from a humble Rosso. Delicious.

 

 

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Quietly Ringing

Jean-Marie Arnoux
Vacqueyras "Vieux Clocher"
2004
14.0% ABV | Price: about $21

This wine has aged a bit and sports a brickish rim. On the nose it's spicy and leathery with a blush of fresh fennel and anise seed. Lean and savory on the palate, with restrained red fruits and supple tannins. It offers a long, quiet finish.

More elegant than I expect from a Vacqueyras. Perhaps that's the age talking; if it gets any older, it might be too faint to hear.

 

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One Hundred Percent

Alain Paret
Côtes-du-Rhône Valvigneyre
2007
13.5% ABV | Price: about $15

Inky red-black, this wine smells like violets and black pepper and a raspberry patch in full sun. It's 100% syrah, with a savory, meaty core underneath aromatic herbs (thyme, sage, rosemary). On the palate I find some lovely red fruits: currant, raspberry, cranberry. It has a drying finish and (mercifully) no forward oak. Age-worthy. A steal.

 

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Clean

Jordan Vineyard and Winery
Cabernet Sauvignon "Alexander Valley"
2006
13.5% ABV | Price: about $52*

Brilliant ruby red, this wine smells like rare meat, blueberries, cassis, and sweet tobacco. On the palate it offers the same spicy bright fruits—predominantly blueberry and black bramble—with good acidity and supple tannins. It's a blend of 75% cabernet sauvignon, 19.5% merlot, 4.5% petit verdot, and 1% malbec, aged twelve months in 67% French and 33% American oak, of which 33% was new.

What's most curious about this wine is the evenness of its presentation. It tastes the way it smells, and it finishes the way it tastes. It didn't evolve much in the glass, or over the course of our terroir-driven meal of roast beef, potatoes, and vegetables from our friends' farm. I kept looking for something to latch onto, some single attribute that would define for me this wine's essence, its personality. The word that kept coming was, simply, "clean."

 

*I received this wine as a sample.

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Red Earth

Domaine de la Terre Rouge
Syrah "Les Côtes de L'Ouest"
2006
14.5% ABV | Price: about $21.50

Despite having been harvested four years ago, this California Syrah reads like a young wine. It's brilliant purple and a little foamy in the glass. It has some nice funk on the nose, very earthy and spicy (and consequently very promising), and it's full and a bit smoky on the palate—plummy with nice acidity. But it loses steam in the middle and finishes hot.

I wonder what this wine might have been like had it been picked at a slightly lower sugar level, so that the alcohol was held back a bit, and that funky, soulful, maybe soilful site expression could take center stage. I'm also wondering whether the 2010 vintage—for some California winemakers the most challenging in a long while—might yield a slightly more restrained, complex wine from this Lodi sub-appellation.

I'd say Cheers to that.

 

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