Global Pinot Noirs with Lavinia

Paris des Chefs : Wine tastings

My afternoon at Paris des chefs was spent rather contentedly tasting wines through the varied afternoon degustation sessions;

I’m going to write these us as and when, however the first I’m going to look at in the Lavinia Pinots Noir from round the world session.

They opened with the 08 Momo Pinot Noir from Marlborough NZ. Momo is the second label from the Seresin estate. The fruit all comes from Seresins own vineyards, which means that it is probably younger vines, or parcels that don’t quite make the grade for Seresin’s own wines.

Seresin have a mixture of Pinot clones, UC Davis (5,6), Burgundy (113, 114, 115, 667, 777) and the better-established 10/5 Waedenswil (Swiss) clone.

Marlborough (geology) as a region is characterized by a succession of north/south(ish) river valleys running towards the Wairau river valley. The Wairau river also traces the lines of the Wairau fault, north of which one finds much Greywacke (a hard sandstone found across much of NZ), in the river valley itself the land is flatter but covered in well draining alluvial deposits. The southern valleys such as Awatere are also home to Greywacke deposits.

The Momo Pinot was a nice example of youthful Pinot Noir from NZ, showing good varietal characteristics, an ever so slight chalky note initially on the nose, but this gave way to bright raspberry and jammy cherry notes and a lovely delicately spiced bramblyness on the palette. Structurally the wine sat more on the soft and juicy side of Pinot.

With a neat synchronicity we then moved to Switzerland, home to the oldest of the Kiwi Pinot clones, the Waedenswill 10/5. Though it would be a leap to far to say that there was any clonal overlap between the two wines, as Switzerland has some very old plantings and almost certainly boasts a unique heritage of Pinot Noir genotypes. Commonly referred to as Blauburgunder or Spatburgunder (as per the German).

Domaine La Colombe are from the La Cote AOC in the Vaud, which is on the northern shore of Lake Geneva, steep alpine slopes are planted with 35 year plus vines. The wine then sees a 14-20 month period in tank, before another year or so in wooden cask.

As befitting much older vines, and I’m certain a much lower yield, the 07 La Colmbe Noir was much more powerful with noticeable oak notes, licorice, dark earthy berry fruit, coffee, chocolate. This was clearly a wine designed to show well. I wasn’t quite certain that there was enough fruit weight to fully work with the elevage, but none the less this was a dark and brooding sort of Pinot, indeed I would have probably struggled to place it blind.

Moving to Chile we had the 09 Montsecano Pinot Noir. Made by Andre Ostertag, an exceptional Alsatian producer. Pinot was planted in 04 (115, 777 and some massal, all ungrafted) in Las Dichas in the southwestern corner of the Casablanca valley.

Casablanca is one of the newer Chilean winegrowing regions, and it was planted as a cool climate area. There is a lot of cooling air that comes in off the Pacific, including quite a lot of fog.

Like his Alsatian estate, Montsecano is fully biodynamic, and is making wines on a properly handcrafted scale (something Chile can often lack). I was impressed with this, a powerful nose showing a lot of fruit, however there were some nice slightly vegetal notes, which I think is the result of a decent percent of whole bunch vinification. This certainly helped with the wines structure (along with a little bit of oak). My only slight gripe was that it felt a little lacking in acidity. However I was most impressed by both the Montsecano wines I tried.

The final wine was 09 Hubert Lignier Norey-St-Denis, frustratingly as always seems to happen when these sorts of comparisons are made, the Burgundian examples are much too young. Still Hubert Lignier is an excellent domaine making quite traditional red Burgundy, not too much new oak (20-30%) and no truck with over extraction or excessive cold soaks and such like.

The nose was a bit closed, with the tight greenish tannins that I associate with very young cote de nuits. On the palette there was a lovely craquant acitidy and the expected bracing spritz of tannins that accompanied a good amount of aromatic dark fruits. I’m sure it’ll be lovely in a few years.

So a nice selection of global Pinot Noirs, I’m not sure what the flyby comparison showed as the wines were all of vastly differing vine age/terroir/styles. However they were all very different, from the juicy approachable fruit of the Marlborough, to the brooding dark berries of the Vaud, intense deep reddish fruit from Casablanca, and stubbornly closed aromatic dark berries from Burgundy.

Sylvie Spielman 08 Alsace Riesling

Domaine Sylvie Spielmann is based just west of Bergheim, about half way up Alsace (well the chain of vineyards). The domaine is based around an old gypsum mine, with heavyish clay, marl and limestone soils.

The domaine is entirely biodynamic and the winemaking is relatively non interventionist (stopping short of the natural line).

Mineral nose with a touch of exotic lime notes, it's flirting with it's secondary characters. At getting on four 4 years old there is a little bit of bottle age. It's got the directness of acidity that I'd expect, and in contrast to Bergheim's most famous son (Marcel Deiss) it's pretty much totally dry.

Win all round really (in the context of a 11 euro wednesday evening wine)

Gourmet Powder

Admit it, you'd have bought it too, if only for the tin. MSG, shortly to be played with as a secret weapon in soups and such like.

Probably thoroughly unnecessary but it appeals to my sense of curiosity.

Le Chateaubriand

So the 9th best restaurant in the world, it's hard not to be both attracted and repelled by labels such as these. I understand it's difficult to get a table, like most of the trendy Parisian places the first sitting is booked out, but if you come about 10ish you can probably get a seat. I sat in the corner at the bar, some people would have disliked the table, but I quite like have the whole room to look at, and I was on my own.

There's one menu it's 55 euros or 115 with wine (quite a lot of wine). 

Obviously I went with wine.

I started with a glass of sparkling Gamay (though they did tell me it was a Cab Franc) called Moisson Rouge, this was a little bit of an error, because from then on the glasses and dishes came pretty thick and fast.

First was a dry Vouvray, which was apparently a mistake by the (very beautiful) Spanish bartender, so it was swiftly joined by a glass of natural sparkling Vouvray - the 'You are happy' C. Chaussard, and a glass of slightly oxidative Assyrtiko (Pyrgos 06, H. Hatzidakis).

The bouches with which I was amused were three little cheesy bread thingies. 

 

A mini bowl of ceviche with a rather fab chunk of mackerel (I think) hidden within. 

Tempura Shrimp dusted with tamarind powder, there was an amusingly Proustian moment with the shrimp as the first thing they brought to mind was Scampi fries, though to my mind that's far from a bad thing.

A thin slice of (a very large) beetroot with powdered goats cheese and little splodges of chicken liver parfait. At this point I actually asked what the variety of beetroot was as it was larger than any beetroot I'd seen before, however the waiter assured me that it was just a normal beetroot. Evidently French beetroot grow much larger than English ones. When I get round to it I'm going to look into the possible implications of beetroot envy.

 

The last bouche was a bouillon de courge (squash), though it was actually very meaty, with two pieces of raw? turnip? and a couple of slivers of very intensely flavoured meat in the bottom.

Onto the actual dishes, mackerel with cauliflower, celery and lychee, was RAW, very sexy raw mind, the florets having been rolled in finely chopped parsley and celery tops, the mackerel was needless to say stunningly fresh and beautiful. It was served with Yvon Metras, Ultime 2010, Fleurie. One of the gang of five natural Beaujolais boys it was, as expected, all about floral cherry scented lithe crisp Gamay goodness.

John Dory, baby leeks, onions and herbs was a little love letter to the allium family, obviously the herbs were chives, I could have drunk the best part of a pint of the light green sauce. I will leave it at that. Oh and the 09 Puligny-Montrachet from F.Cossart that it came with was great, Normandy apple tart like notes, some lovely biscuit leesiness and what the French would probably call puissance.

Up till this point everything had been outstanding.

Iberico pork with raddichio and citrus. I’ve never really understood the point of kumquats, yes I appreciate the humorous potential of the name, but they always seem to be a bit extraneous. Similarly extraneous was the delicate curry spicing about the pork. (Grotte di alte, Nero d’Avola/Frappato Occhipinti)

If you look at the history of French cuisine, the boldest intellectual leap was to make a break with the pan European middle ages style of spiced and curried dishes. Early luminaries such as Nicolas de Bonnefond stressed that food should taste of its primary ingredient; a soup of leeks for instance should taste of leeks. Prior to this thematic schism the cuisine across Europe had been much closer to what we’d probably identify as Persian. I don’t think that classical French cuisine has ever really re learnt how to deal with curry style spicing, it always seems to stick out like a sore thumb, never being used in a bold enough fashion to actually satisfy, but being there just enough to titillate and annoy.

The first pudding was clementine with a white mushroom and a rum/vanilla cream. The mushroom part was very odd, I really wasn’t sure whether I found it interesting or upsetting. Obviously this is a fascinating dilemma to be confronted with, however I prefer not to wrestle with it at the end of my dinner.

Tocino del Cielo, the classic Spanish dessert, came as a sugar confit egg yolk on top of a mini piece of pastry. I cannot get enough of sugar confit egg yolks, it was properly fab. There was a glass of Fidele, a Blanc de Noir Champagne from Vouette & Sorbee, of which my tasting note was the eloquent and poetic ‘FUCK YES’ read of this what you will.

Le Chateaubriand was excellent, though thinking of it along side meals that I’ve enjoyed at the Ledbury or Roganic I can’t quite justify its acclaim. The wholly natural wine list is fabulous and obviously has been as inspirational and provocative as they probably hoped. 

A final Indian note came with the petit four which was a single piece of mango with a few of the little candied fennel seeds that you sometimes find served after meals in India.

A trio of unrelated wines..

Alexandre Jouveaux (Uchizy)
vdtd France - 08 (on pense qui il et un Pinot Noir)
Initial note of smokey bacon crisps, some raspberry (framboise liquor notes), nice depth of fruit character, some lovely rasping cherry tinged tannins, still the smokey bacon crisp note is a little persuasive through to the back of the palette (hopefully it'll go once food is involved)

Catena Zapata (Nicolas) 08 - 78% Cab S 22% Malbec

Liquorice infused dark cherries and slightly minerally, some buttery edge, not massive oak on the nose (much more present on the palette) pepper, deep liquorice spice infused, lots of cloves, just a hint of smoke finishing - pretty good, I like this, less new oak than I'd expected, still a bit heavy palette wise and quite bruising, decent tannins, and decent acidity.

And then to finish off with something a little it different (sorry I meant unpleasant) Altos Las Hormigas (Vista Flores, Valle de Uco, Mendoza) 06.

Well this is 100% Malbec, 36 months in new French oak and boy does it show - for the record I'm told this is between 35-40 Euros trade so 80 on a shelf, and in it's defence you can see exactly where the money went.

Initially there is a chunk of new oak, an almost confected amount, dark fruit, quite chunky, but weighty tannins, more of a body builder than a sportsman in build. Sorry this left me rather cold, I guess I might be slightly biased but I found it tiring. So much deep dark fruit, so much in the palette.

That said, it's opening up a bit as I'm getting into it, now showing minty herbal notes, but it's just so much like hard work..

L’Homme Cheval..

Having mostly written about classic American food whilst in Paris I’m going to break with recent tradition and actually talk about a wine.

L’Homme Cheval comes in a Burgundy bottle, it’s a Vin Francais (the lowest possible appellation status). It doesn’t have a vintage. There are clues though.

Vinifie et Recolte par un Girondin. LQY9, the 9 having a little 10 scribbled in biro on it, could we be circumventing labeling regulations relating to Vin Francais not being allowed to show a vintage? Hmmmm.

The wine is a 50/50 Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon from the Cotes de Blaye, the vineyard is 5100 vine density (pretty darn high), cultivation is organic and the ground is worked by horse.

Vinification is in concrete tanks and is pretty simple, there’s no oak related flim flummery and I’m guessing a very low pre bottling sulphur addition, as there was a very natural like funkiness on initial opening.

Initially a slightly muddy earthiness with some Cabernet herbaciousness, there was a definite gravelly old pencil case character, and a nice grittiness to the tannins, I liked this a lot, though stylistically it brought to mind more the earthy complexity of Domaine du Puech in Buzet than much I’ve had from Bordeaux, even Les Cotes.

Appendix relating to double entendres, lesbians and back passages:

On meeting the ex lesbian beauty queen Elena, who’s book launch the evening was in aid of I was momentarily put off guard when she asked where she knew me from.

Also I got to have a poke about in Springs tradesman’s entrance (see also innuendo relating to back passages) fnar fnar.

A panoply of Spring related punning

(also an update on my mini quest to actually track down a proper @lecamionquifume burger)

Dark jacket zipped up to my neck, my very best don’t fuck with me face, I’m in the back of one of the less regulated phone shops on the boulevard Barbes. I’ve handed over my old iphone in return for a scrap of hand written paper.

An hour or so later I’ve been safely reunited with her (she’s always been called the Pirate Jenny) and I’m now on my way to the centre of town to locate a suitable SIM. The guy in Phonehouse has sent me to hell.

I’m assuming that, like me, you know of les Halles from Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris (the belly of Paris), and as such have visions of porters ferrying overloaded carts of vegetables, flues of sea scented ice, hard eyed merchants and charcuterers all liver cheeked in the morning cold.

Well there is another les Halles, this is a subterranean shopping complex, low ceilings, cheap shop fittings, shops selling even cheaper high street fashion knock offs. MacDonalds and Quick burger vie for the fry supremecy, both shoehorned into badly ventilated little corners, the scents of fry grease edging outwards like black rot up a damp wall. No maps and hoards of teenagers gabbling excitedly, I had actually located Hell, thankfully Hell has an Orange shop.

So to Spring, the early night gloom hung heavy in the sky, the oily lacquer of rain and streetlights was glistening on the pebbles of rue Balliol, and there across the road was @LeCamionQuiFume, and several French police officers. No doubt they were doing their civic duty, but I’d be lying if I didn’t momentarily consider civil disobedience, no French police officer was going to deny me my burger for the fourth attempt in a row.

Thankfully it appears that rather like a beautiful girl working at a bar, le Camion has had to get accustomed to the unwanted attention of Paris’ finest, papers were produced and the frying continued.

As it was early I got to introduce myself to Kristin as she was getting into her stride and very lovely she is, she recognized my name as the dope that’s been traipsing around Paris chasing burgers.

Onto the meat of the issue.

I plumped for a Classique, patty medium rare, chedder, lettuce, tomato, dill pickles and mayo (not very much mayo for those who get angsty about these things). In retrospect I could have been more adventurous, the BBQ version looked particularly appealing being put together with an onion ring and sexy as fuck crisp fried streaky bacon.

The bun had been anointed with melted butter and fried to a delicate golden, the patty was pretty spot on and the veg additions all worked well.

Minor quibbles, the chedder wasn’t 100% melted, but it wasn’t really obvious, especially with the juiciness of the meat. The bun did a fine upstanding job of soaking all the juices, but did leave me with an ear of squishy bread to finish up with, however seeing the extra sauce/juice factors in the fancier versions I imaging that it’s pretty essential for them.

@lecamionquifume sorted me an excellent burger, I will be going back in the new year when they’ll have upped their capacity to deliver. Apparently part of the issue at lunches has been people arriving and ordering 8 – 10 burgers to take back to the office, this really hammers their mini kitchen and has seen them run out very early on occasion (see last post).

I don’t score, but if I did it’d be an 8/10.

Oh and within 45 minutes of my being served, the small wine bar was slammed with people queuing for half an hour or more for their fix.

Go, but go early. Oh, and pray that someone else starts doing good burgers otherwise poor Kirstin is going to get destroyed by the huge Parisian demand for good burgers.

And yes it did out a spring in my step J