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The world of wine is by its very essence cyclical. Vintage follows vintage and wine follows wine in a stately procession that can ether prove fascinating or somewhat somnolent. Whenever I find myself less than thrilled to be reading about the intricacies of the most recent Bordeaux vintage, or exactly how much the emerging Chinese desire for Burgundy is going to hamper my future enjoyment of said region, my thoughts turn to Italy.

Endless complex, gloriously varied, and possessed of a soul that honestly does seem to leap out of the glass, gesticulating wildly whilst fretting over the fortunes of their local team in the scudetta.

As an aside; how do you stop an Italian from talking? Tie their hands behind their back....

Interestingly the Italians have been enthusiastic adopters of the minimal interventionalist movement, I guess that there's something about the devil may care attitude and snubbing of convention that appeals. None the less, there are a huge number of Italian natural wines making their way to our shores, many of the growers (actually lots of them) are going to be at RAW fairin May. 

I had a little sneak preview of some of them with Isabelle earlier this week. 

'If I was Prosecco, I'd be cool and art deco, you could drink me in the penthouse you could drink me in the ghetto' so went the short bit of verse an Oddbins colleague of mine penned many years ago for some competition or other. At that time we saw Prosecco as a frothy, simplistic sort of drink, ideal for folk who didn't really understand why Champagne was better. God we were snobby in our ignorance. Still, I like to think that I've moved on somewhat, now I only look down on the people who unthinkingly drink Prosecco, not the drink itself, an important distinction (I keep telling myself). Any way, the real excitement in Prosecco is all about the words 'Col Fondo' directly translating as 'with the bottom' while actually meaning bottle with the lees. Opaque, enervating, gloriously moreish, this is Prosecco that seems to birth vitality. 

Malibra, Sottoriva (Col Fondo, 2011), coming from a tiny 7ha vineyard this seemed to me like a grown up lemon barley water, delicately sparkling with subtle fruit notes and an invigorating minerality. 

Tuscany, the Chiantishire of so many idyllic new Labour retreats. Sangiovese the blood that runs through the valleys, Malvasia and Trebbiano the Lymphatic to the better known reds. Columbaia Bianco 2011, from just outside of Siena, a blend of the two white varieties. Somewhat spiritually cleansing, tart peach floral notes, just a touch of fatness from its time on lees, the chalky clay soils coming through in the persistant minerally finish. Pacina, Il Secondo 2010, like the Columbaia this was a steel tank job, the inert vessel maintaining a lot of the freshness and aromatics of the Sangiovese, all dark cherries, black tea and primal meatiness. Some very chewy tannins suggest that this was a wine that really wanted to be sidling up to something with a healthy whack of meat fat. Nothing bad with that though.

Not strictly Italian, but given its proximity to the border I'm letting the Vipava valley in Slovenia slip into my Italocentric round up. Mlecnik (if anyone can help me out with the short cut for the little v on top of the c I'd be most grateful) Chardonnay 07. Three weeks on skins puts this wine firmly in the orange category, however it's still recognisably Chardonnay, and a surprisingly youthful one at that, its six years of age merely contributing a nice earthy creaminess, ripe apple and peach contributed the fruit notes while the measured tannin extraction made for a most satisfying body.

Wrapping up our little tour of Italian staples was La Biancara, Recioto Garganega 2007 from the Veneto. Half of the crop dried in a traditional passito fashion, the other half given extended skin contact, this seemed to me to sum up why natural wines can be so much fun. All sorts of naughty volatility on the nose, but I didn't really care, figs, prunes, toffee glazed walnuts, rich, sweet and lovely. The kind of wine that makes me want to just ditch the hassle of making a tart tatin, far too much going on to dick about with a pudding..

Links on the wine names take you to the suppliers. 

Memory lane...

I'm going to take you all on a trip down memory lane:

It's sometime in 2010, there's a great controversy raging, everyone wants to have an opinion on Biodynamics. There's a website called Biodynamics is a hoax there are more op ed pieces than I can think of to link to.

It's now late 2012 and Jacob's Creek, yep Jacob's Creek have launched a Biodynamic Shiraz. I'll let that sink in for a moment, one of the largest wine brands in the world has decided that grabbing the Biodynamic flag is a good way for their brand to go. Admittedly it's pretty easy to do this in the McLaren as there are a host of excellent growers all working Biodynamically, off the top of my head I'm listing Battle of Bosworth, Gemtree, Chapel Hill, Kangarilla Road, Paxton, and I'm sure there are others a quick Google search could find. But really my point is that somehow in the last couple of years, people have just stopped ranting and raving about Biodynamics.  Why would this be the case? After all, Biodynamics hasn't changed, it's still pretty much the same thing that it was 50 years ago.

now going all bd, getting down with the Steiner loving....

What's that you say, the world has moved on? Really, there's something else to get the goat of the professional troublemakers?

Natural wines... Oh, yep, that makes sense, all the people ranting about Biodynamics, now rant about natural wines, I'm sure that all their carefully constructed philosophical and semantic arguments as to why natural wine can't possibly exist will prove so much comfort and satisfaction as it creeps ever so slowly more mainstream and as the producers that favour it become more and more accepted.

I for one am waiting for the Echo Falls minimal intervention, soft and fruity red. That and the Gallo family vineyard's zero SO2 Sauvignon....

In favor of calling shit out…

The wine trade is a very nice place, often people give me lovely things, they send me bottles, they take me to nice places, they buy me lovely meals. This happens to virtually everyone that writes about wine. I’m not complaining. Well actually I am, a little.

We’re all too nice, underpinning everything is a sense that if we don’t say nice things, or at the very least not say bad things, it’ll all grind to a halt.

The most influential wine commentator of the last 30 years, Robert Parker, made his name by, amongst other things calling bad wines bad. Why don’t we see more of this? Are all modern wines so good? Is the market so well regulated that the default quality of the average bottle so good that we can stop worrying any more and merely focus on the fabulous?

No.

In fact, there is still a lot of very bad wine on the market. This ranges from the stultifyingly dull supermarket propositions, produced to a budget that wont make anyone any money. The growers are nailed down as tight as they can go, hell even the supermarkets have probably accepted that most of the time their wine ranges are loss leaders.

Mid range we see a huge number of wines seemingly made to a recipe. How to make New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc 1.01? I guess that this might not be such a bad thing if people are looking for consistency in what they buy, after all Diet Coke wouldn’t sell anywhere near as many cans if there was a significant variation between each can (though if it got you pissed it might). But lets pretend we’re not always looking for consistency, after all it can get a bit boring after a while. Oh and don’t get me started on wineries that trumpet terroir while delivering a very cleverly produced cellar cuvee.

Finally, and possibly most controversially, natural wines. Now I’m a big fan of natural wines, and have on many occasions written in their favour and defense. However I accept that there is a greater chance of things going wrong, indeed one of the thrilling things about natural wines is that they are that much harder to get right, the grapes have to have been grown in the right place, the wine making has to be very careful in its non-intervention. However it does sometimes go wrong. There are bad natural wines out there, some are crippled with Brett (way beyond where it stops being an acceptable bit of complexity), some are properly oxidized, and not in a good, intentional way. What concerns me is that in an already quite stressful market place for the consumer, we’re busy pulling the rug of certainty away from already slightly worried buyers. So I think it behooves us advocates of natural wines to ensure we know our faults, and to be doubly vigilant whilst buying and proposing natural wines. And yes calling out and naming the wines that really fall foul of the quality line. After all, how else are we going to get the detractors to stop labeling the whole category with the reputation of its worst examples?

Nikolaihof

‘If you drink wine everyday you drink sun energy’ we need life energy.

Christine Saahs.

Say what you like about biodynamics and it’s adherents but there is no doubt in my mind that it is practiced by some of the world’s finest estates.

Nikolaihof:

The Wachau is on the Northern shore of the Danube river. The Bohemian massif, a large granite feature forces the river to take a winding detour leaving a south facing slope of granite leading down to clay silt closer to the river.

It is believed that the Celts brought viticulture to this part of Europe, with the Romans carrying on the tradition, however it is certain that it has been practiced pretty much constantly for the last couple of millennia, for centuries the Krems monastery was it’s focal point.

Similarly the Nikolaihof estate has a good bit of history, it’s first referenced in the time of Saint Severin and the Romans (around 470AD). I mention this because there is something about the wines that seems somewhat ageless. Or at the very least they seem to age on a different timescale to other wines.

The Saahs family started working biodynamically in 1971, if this seems very early, remember that Maria Thun the major proponent for much of second half of the last century was German and it always had a stronger following across the German speaking parts of Europe.

Intrinsic to their wine making is the natural yeast colonies, which Christine says are unique to each vineyard.

‘Every vineyard has a different yeast’ as such young vines don’t ferment properly for about 6 years or so as they’ve not developed a strong enough vineyard yeast culture. The 1^st vintage is always half dry as the yeasts are not yet strong enough to ferment the wine to dryness.

Christine went on to mention that when samples of different yeasts were taken from around the area, theirs were the strongest and most efficient at consuming sugar. This leads us to one of the other marvels of the Nikolaihof wines, their low alcohols. 11.5% up to 12.5% but with no attendant lack of body or intensity. A couple of weeks later Christine showed me their 1999 Zu Mautern Jungfern Wein (11.5%) and still incredibly vibrant, with floral, mineral notes, a lovely off dry lime edged fruit. A wine that hardly betrayed anything of it’s 12 years of age.

Certainly I was starting to think of the wines ageing on a human scale. With 18-20 years of age being when they start to have something interesting to say. That’s not to imply that there were no precocious youngsters, as they were all fascinating, but it made sense when one looked at the 1993 Gruner Veltliner Vinothek aged for15 years in old oak casks 1500-12500l and 4yrs bottle. A wine they released when it was legal to drink, makes sense no?

Slightly waxy polished edge, salted preserved lemons (almost an herbal vodka like note). A smooth and almost sensual palette, dry, savoury and intriguing. A hint of dried fruit showing on the finish, but all in all very fresh and remarkable free of oxidative notes.

Gruner Veltliner Federspiel 2010 11.5% from the Urgestein – Granit/Gneiss

Vibrant herbaceous, white pepper, austere, mineral with an underlying breadiness, good length and nice purity, a slight herbaceous tang on the finish.

Similarly the 88 Elizabeth cuvee Gemischter Satz (field blend) Riesling, GV, PB, Neuburger, Fruh Rot Veltliner, from a vineyard they planted in 85 to celebrate the estate anniversary. They chose to interplant the varieties in the old style, and commensurately harvest them all at the same time. Not unlike the great Marcel Deiss crus this has the richness, complexity and satisfaction that comes from a blend of varieties all quite at home where they belong.

Ripe apples, some complex old floral type notes, a lovely richness intertwined with the bottle aged characters, a very delicate acetyl note (not enough to be bad) finishing with some tasty ripe apple notes. Some lovely acidity gave it structure (from the slightly early harvest Riesling).

Other wines tasted.

2007 Steiner Hund, Riesling Reserve 12.5%

Complex minerally lime (thai lime?) green apple skin notes, medium bodied but with a creaminess to the acidity. Very assured and intense.

1990 Riesling Smaragd, Zu Mautern/Wachau

Maturing vegetal notes betray some bottle age, cream and a hint of peach. Incredibly mineral palette, medium ripe with stunning length.

1986 Honigfogel GV (Honigfogel predates Smaragd as a category)

Slightly toasty nutty sort of nose, reminds me of old Champagne, some lovely fading fruit over a mineral skeleton, citrus, crushed slate, great acidity and a caramel edge bottle age character.

1983 Gruner Veltliner (1^st great year)

Dusty subtle cellar mould like note, like smelling damp age worn rocks, some ghostly fruit notes and lovely length.

Finally a last word of wisdom, ‘Green matter is always the link between sun energy and animal life’.

The tasting was held at Spring Boutique, 56 Rue de l'Arbre Sec, 75001, Paris.

Bistrot Paul Bert

The underground walkway between the line 4 and line 12 of the metro at Marcadet Poisonnieres is interminable, throw in a trip that took three changes an empty stomach and a slight hangover, you’ll understand why I was a bit jittery by the time I arrived at Faidherbe Chaligny to meet my friend Juel (@winewomansong).

Lunch was to be at the storied Bistrot Paul Bert, an old school place down a little side street. They were middling busy when we arrived, 1pm on a Tuesday in February possibly not being their busiest service.

Service was gloriously French in that it had that charming inattentiveness that only the French seen to quite manage. They had their own pace for feeding and watering us and little I could do seemed to change it. Mind you aside from the quibbles over getting a jug of tap water and a basket of bread there was little for which we wanted.

2007 Overnoy Arbois Pupillan: Savoury and salty with some neatly delineated dusky oxidative lowlights, but nothing too outré. This was all about the coiled acidity and tightly wound minerality.  

Turning established gender menu choice stereotypes neatly on their head I opted for the red mullet carpaccio followed by the brill, while Juel took the agricultural laborers option of terrine de campagne de la maison and tete de veau avec sauce gribiche.

The mullet was a beautifully arranged carpaccio of luminescent stained glass like slices decorated with milky white disks of daikon and lightly pickled spring onion. The slices came slightly thicker than at Au Passage, and though the plate was marginally more cluttered both dishes were astonishing in the freshness and quality of fish presented.

In contrast to the carpaccio, the terrine was a veritable doorstep of country bluster. An edible cliché of traditional peasant directness and honesty, it’s muscular porky depth bristling like stable boys stubble on a ladies cheek.

Jean-Francois Ganevat, Cuvee de l’enfant terrible Poulsard 2010 was almost schiller wein in colour, being fresh and like a deep rose. Light carbonic style tannins came with fresh Jura alpine influenced acidity. Some faintly cherry like fruit notes, but really this was about restrained site specific expression.

I have long held that there is nary a dish that cannot be improved with the measured addition of pork product. The Brill with Puy lentils (aux lard) was a prime example, marvelously cooked brill, seemingly needing no more than a shrug of the knife to come away from the bones, the flesh still juicy in it’s chunks. The flesh had been crowned with two perfectly crisp rashers of bacon that neatly proved a flavour bridge to the slick of creamy lentils, their lovely earthiness grounding the dish.

I didn’t try any of Juel’s tete de veau, but there was very little attempt to gussy it up for the restaurant table, indeed the waiter congratulated her on her order and left with a wry grin on his face. A pile of fatty, meaty head was topped with a pile of sauce gribiche, there were a couple of boiled vegetables added as an afterthought and a surprise treat of a largish morsel of wobble brain. Judging from the heroic amount that Juel ate and the entirely positive noises I kept hearing it was rather good.

 

I’m always less impressed with desserts that I feel I ought to be, it’s probably related to my tendency to work my way through the bread basket at the start of the meal. That said the desserts were great examples of Parisian classics, my Paris Brest coming liberally decorated with bits of nut and fair bulging with praline cream. Juel’s Baba aux rhum looked like a particularly extravagant mediaeval hat with it’s towering spiral of cream at its centre. As usual the bottle of rum was left on the table in the off chance that we’d need to add more.

I loved Bistrot Paul Bert, it was exactly what I imagine of a French bistro, bold traditional flavours where necessary, delicacy if called for. A stunning wine list of natural wines, though taking the more liberal French interpretation of the term means that there are wines for everyone here.

I will be back

Bistrot Paul Bert, 18 rue Paul Bert, 11eme Paris
+33 1 43 72 24 01