This wine is the result of a collaboration between winemaker Grant Phelps, and husband and wife team Tunku Soraya Dakhlah and Sharif Majid, who farm the vines and also get stuck in with the winemaking from harvest to labelling. It’s made from organically farmed vines in a small enclave called Santa Ana, in Colchagua.
Santa Ana, which is a small enclave, has a number of small farms with a very cosmopolitan group of owners: Brazilian, English, Spanish, American, Bolivian, Chilean, and of course also Malaysian. These folk produce everything artisinally, working the vines by hand. The wines are also made on a small scale. Tunku and Sharif have 4 hectares of vines: Petit Verdot, Carmenere, Petite Sirah and Grenache.
This wine is blend of 63% Carmènere, 28% Petit Verdot and 9% Petite Syrah. The wine is bottled unfiltered, after spending 22 months in French oak (two-thirds new).
I met Tunku and Sharif in Malaysia last year, connected through a mutual friend. She’s actually a Malaysian princess! But despite the royal connection, they are both really fun. So it was great to finally get a chance to try the wine, which is quite rich but beautifully defined.
Beso Negro El Decadente 2015 Colchagua Valley, Chile
14.5% alcohol. Beso Negro translates as ‘black kiss’. This is a deeply coloured, concentrated wine with rich flavours of blackcurrant, blackberry and cherry. It’s quite ripe, but well balanced, with a lovely grainy tannic structure and beautiful perfume and spice. And under the silky, liqueur-like fruit, there’s a chalky sort of character that I get with Cabernet Franc and also Carmenère. This is a really interesting expression of the place: it captures the warmth of the climate, but it’s quite a serious wine, with texture, concentration and structure. It should age pretty well, I reckon. 93/100
from Jamie Goode’s wine blog http://www.wineanorak.com:/wineblog/chile/beso-negro-el-decadente-a-serious-red-blend-from-chile
We were in Galway for a Beaujolais masterclass, and it went well. But folks need to eat, and so we made a reservation at Aniar, the town’s Michelin-starred restaurant, opting for the 6 course tasting menu (it’s tasting menu only here). How was it?
In short, fabulous. Aniar means ‘from the west’, and the source of the ingredients is the west coast of Ireland, with lots of local and foraged ingredients. Indeed, the menu changes depending on what’s come in that day.
The cooking here is intensely creative and clever, in a Scandi sort of way. The dishes are very pretty, but they also taste good. The six course menu, of course, comes with lots of embellishments and extra courses. I don’t like gimmick cooking, but this wasn’t gimmicky: the flavours all worked.
Summer pies with goat’s cheese, flowers, fresh peas and mint
Smoked eel rolls
Potato, confit in charcoal oil and then blow torched, with some mayonnaise on top: such a clever dish
A kelp soup with some sea radish
A bread course, including butter with wild leek vinegar, and it includes a poem about bread
Salted pollack fillet, with sour cream, sea lettuce and seaweed
Charred oysters, blow torched, and served with oyster mayonnaise, pickled seaweed and sea parsley
This egg contains salted pollack belly tired in the oven with cured egg yolk
21-day-aged lamb cooked on the bone in a Green Egg
Fermented strawberries and woodruff, with rapeseed oil ice cream with yogurt and pickled birch leaves. Quite the dessert.
Meringue plates with elderflower syrup
Crispy beetroot cheesecake
To drink? The list here is pretty good, and quite eclectic, although it’s also quite concise. We chose a Rhône white, from Eric Texier.
Eric Texier Adèle 2017 Côtes du Rhône, France
Fresh, textured and quite fine with nice citrus and pear fruit. Richly fruited but with freshness. Supple and expressive, finishing with some baked apple depth. 91/100
from Jamie Goode’s wine blog http://www.wineanorak.com:/wineblog/restaurants/a-great-meal-at-aniar-galway
It was the second stop in the Ireland Beaujolais tour. After a very successful seminar, we headed over to the Fish Shop, Benburb Street, for a remarkable meal including some stunning wines. This place is incredible: small, informal, but some of the best seafood I’ve eaten in a long time. There were six of us, and we drank well, mostly from the excellent wine list. This is the sort of place I love to eat at: amazing food, a good, eclectic wine list, and a relaxed vibe.
Equipo Navazos La Bota de Manzanilla 55, Spain
This is nutty and tangy with lovely depth, some savoury nutty depth, and bright, complex, expressive flavours of citrus, salt and fine herbs. 93/100
Telmo Rodriguez Branco de Sta Cruz Viñedos de Galicia 2015 Valdeorras, Spain
Fine and expressive with pear and white peach, as well as some melon notes. Lovely fruit and nice texture: a bold, rich style. 91/100
Bodegas Cota 45 UBE Miraflores 2016 Vino de la Tierra de Cadiz, Spain
This is 100% Palomino from the Miarflores Pago (single vineyard) in Sanluca de Barremeda, and it is unfortified, but matured for 8 months under a thin layer of flor. This has a remarkable nose: pithy, lemony and waxy. It’s tangy and bright on the palate with a salty edge to the intense citrus and pear fruit. Spicy and vital. 94/100
Viña Tondonia Rosé 2008 Rioja, Spain
This is an incredibly rare – unicorn – wine. So it’s amazing to find it on a wine list in a fish and chip shop. Aged for four years in barrel, it’s not your typical rosé, and this should be aged for another decade for it to show its best. Bronze/copper/orange in colour, it’s savoury and spicy with a hint of earth, some tangy citrus peel, and notes of marmalade, cedar and saltiness. There are also some mealy, spicy notes. This is complex and spicy with lovely deph. 92/100
Domaine Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fumé de Pouilly 2013 Pouilly-Fumé, Loire, France
Vividly aromatic with almonds, mint and pear, as well as some pithy density on the palate. Lovely concentration and weight: tangy crystalline pear and grapefruit characters with precision and harmony. Such a beautiful wine. 95/100
Pascal Rossignol of Le Caveau holding a magnum of Foillard, with Phoebe in the background
I’m in Ireland doing some Beaujolais seminars, and the tour began yesterday in Cork. Post-work yesterday evening we headed off to L’Altitude 51, a really cool wine bar, and drank well.
Foillard Morgon Côte du Py 2014 Beaujolais (magnum)
Warm, spicy and tangy with bright raspberry and cherry fruit. This has a lovely savoury, grainy, crunchy edge to it, with some raspberry rasp. Lovely stuff, with edges. 93/100
Didier Desvignes Moulin-à-Vent Clos les Charmes 2013 Beaujolais (magnum) Smooth, supple and sweetly fruited with lovely texture. This has nice freshness with some black cherry and plum fruit. There’s some spicy framing too. An elegant style. 92/100
Nicola Vutchi Vini Vidi Vinci Chanavan Bourgogne Coulanges La Vineuse 2015 Burgundy, France
Ignore the terrible label; this is a really good wine. Mineral, taut and reductive with fine spices, some citrus fruit, a bit of mealiness and some flintiness. Lovely precision with lemon and white peach. Taut and linear. 94/100
Domaine Belluard Les Alpes Gringet 2016 Savoie, France
An old favourite! Taut and fresh with citrus and pear fruit. Lively acidity with a lemony, mineral edge. Dense citrus pear and spice fruit here. 93/100
Vin de Frantz Un Salmon Dans La Loire 2016 Vin de France
This is a blend of Sauvignon, Chenin and Loin de L’Oeil, from Frantz Saumon in Montlouis. It’s really lovely. Complex and textural with broad, mineral pear fruit together with some almond. Smooth, pure, stylish and a bit nutty. Some ripe apple, too. 93/100
Alexandre Bain Pierre Précieuse 15 Vin de France
This is Pouilly-Fumé, but it has to be declassified to Vin de France. Nuts and almonds with some fennel too. Rounded and expressive with citrus and pear notes. Nice detail here. 92/100
Martha Stoumen Post Flirtation 2016 Napa, California
11% alcohol. A blend of 65% Carignan and 35% Zinfandel. Juicy and bright with fresh raspberry and red cherry fruit. Bright, zippy and tangy with lovely depth. 92/100
Ovum Big Salt 2016 Oregon
This is a really lovely white blend, based on Riesling and Gewurztraminer co-fermented, together with a splash of Muscat. Very fresh and a bit pithy with some nice grapey notes and a bit of saltiness. Rounded and textured with some sweetness to the fruit. So expressive. 92/100
Claude Geoffray is the sixth generation of his family domaine, which was purchased in 1877 by Zaccharie Geoffray, a farmer from Villefranche sur Saône. Then, it had just a couple of hectares of vines, and since has expanded greatly. Based in the Côte de Brouilly cru, this is benchmark Beaujolais: the Thivin wines are classic and structured, and repay ageing.
For the last decade, Claude has been assisted by his son Claude-Edouard, who studied viticulture and wine-making at Changins in Switzerland.
Viticulture is sustainable, heading to organics (they are almost there), with working of the soil. Winemaking is traditional, using large foudres to mature the wines, with the exception of the Zaccharie cuvée, which gets barrel treatment.
Château Thivin Beaujolais Blanc Clos de Rochebonne 2016 France
Limestone/clay soils. Stony and lively with nice freshness. Has citrus, pear and some tangerine notes. Textural, bright and expressive. 90/100
Château Thivin Brouilly ‘Reverdon’ 2016 Beaujolais, France
From pink granite. Supple, fresh and bright with red cherries, fine spices and a nice hint of green. Nice raspberry edge. Pure, classic, fine and expressive. 91/100
Château Thivin Les Sept Vignes Côtes de Brouilly 2016 Beaujolais, France
From diorite (volcanic) blue stones. Lively, spicy, mineral edge to the vivid black cherry nd raspberry fruit. Very focused with nice structure. Stony, grainy and mineral with freshness and density. A lovely wine. 93/100
Château Thivin Clos Bertrand 2016 Côtes de Brouilly, Beaujolais, France
One of the seven vineyards around the Château. Supple, open and bright with nice fresh red cherries, some raspberries, fine herbs and an open, elegant personality. Good structure here: has a smoky, mineral edge. Nice and expressive. 93/100
Château Thivin Les Griottes de Brulhié 2016 Côtes de Brouilly, Beaujolais, France
5 hectare plot in the middle of the hill. Very expressive and elegant with light, supple, bright red cherries. Supple and open with bright raspberry fruit. Vital. 92/100
Château Thivin Cuvée Zaccharie 2016 Côtes de Brouilly, Beaujolais, France (magnum)
This is pressed into small oak for the end of alcoholic fermentation and malolactic, a practice that was common in the 19th century. Some spicy, cedary oak here alongside the dense, fresh red fruits. Shows oak a bit at the moment but could age well. 90/100
Château Thivin Les Sept Vignes 2017 Côtes de Brouilly, Beaujolais, France (cask sample)
Very pure and fresh with slightly grippy raspberry fruit, some red cherries and a bit of spice. Nice tannic structure: this is firm and focused with nice density. 91-93/100
I’m just on the way back from Penticton, BC, in the Okanagan Valley, where I’ve been part of the team judging the Wine Align National Wine Awards of Canada. It’s my fifth year as a judge, and in this time we have been in Penticton, then Niagara Falls, then Penticton, then Halifax and back again to Penticton.
With the exception of me, the judges come from Canada, and it’s a tight crew. It’s very much like being part of a family, and as well as working hard, we socialize enthusiastically too (but always with the knowledge that we have to be fresh and in top condition to judge wine the next day). Although we get paid to judge, we’d probably do it for free, because it’s such a lovely experience.
The judging process is cleverly thought out. The first few days involves tasting through all the wines (this year, a record 1871 – did you realize that there were this many wines made in Canada?) in panels of three or four judges. We score them out of 100, and then discuss them, adjusting our scores as necessary in order to reach a verdict.
Then there’s a second round, with the high silvers and gold medal winners reflighted and then retasted. This extra round adds some robustness to the results: seeing the best wines from the first round again in a fresh context enables us to make sure we’re getting it right.[/caption]
After the judging, each evening we were hosted as a group by individual wineries or winery associations. The first night we went to the swanky new Martins Lane winery to taste the wines from the Anthony von Mandl group: Mission Hill, Checkmate, Cedar Creek and Martins Lane. The second night we joined the West Kelowna wineries at Off The Grid organic winery. The third night we were at Play winery with the Naramata Bench producers. And last night we were hosted by the Summerhill wineries at Dirty Laundry. This gives us a chance to meet producers and taste their wines in an informal setting, as well as having a feed and a few drinks, which is something you want after a day of judging.
Then it’s back to the hotel for the after party. Not everyone comes out every night, but there are a few regulars. This involves gathering somewhere (someone’s room, or the pool area, or the hot tub) and enjoying each other’s company. We drink interesting things and there’s usually a guitar involved, with bad singing (our repertoire could do with some refreshing, it’s true). This is the highlight of the week: lots of people from different backgrounds getting along fabulously together.
On Sunday, Brian Smith and I had some time to spare in Oslo, so we lunched. We’d been recommended Nedre Foss Gård, which is a restaurant in an old building in a park on the Akerselva river. The restaurant reopened in 2017 after a fire two years earlier, and it’s very stylish. We lunched well: the menu on Sundays is more geared towards brunching, but I had a sensational fish soup, and then a perfectly prepared beef tartare. To drink, we made two very good choices from an excellent list, packed full of the sorts of wines I love to drink. As you can see from the bill, the only downside about Norway is just how eye-waveringly expensive everything is, but this lunch was worth it.
Herve Souhaut Syrah 2016 Vin de France
11.5% alcohol. Tight, mineral, peppery and elegant. It’s dominated by bright red and black cherry fruit with some reductive notes and compact fruit. Lovely iron and blood savouriness. Fantastic stuff. 94/100
Sandhi Santa Barbara County Chardonnay 2014 California
12.5% alcohol. This is very Chablis-like, with a subtle creamy edge to the pure, restrained pear, citrus and pineapple fruit. No evident oak but it has some bread and nut character. Balanced with nice flavour but also delicacy. 94/100
from Jamie Goode’s wine blog http://www.wineanorak.com:/wineblog/restaurants/lunch-at-nedre-foss-gard-oslo-with-sandhi-and-souhaut
Envinate began with four friends, who met studying wine at university, near Alicante. They decided to form a wine company together, and are now making some of Spain’s most exciting wines, with a focus on Ribeira Sacra and the Canary Islands.
I met with two of them, Alfonso Torrente and Roberto Santana, to look at their Ribeira Sacra project. They were inspired to start Envinate by some of the old vineyards here, which were too small to interest big companies and which were being abandoned as the older generation retired. They bought a 0.75 hectare plot in 2008, and started making wine, as well as consulting. ‘We are not rich people,’ says Roberto, ‘and we had no land. So we started little by little. At the same time they began working in the Canary Islands, where Roberto comes from. They make the wine, and take decisions together.
A film of the visit:
We looked around some vineyard plots, which were spectacular. This is one of the most remarkable wine regions of all, with impossibly steep slopes planted through intricate terracing. You can manage the vineyards by walking along these terraces, but you need a good head for heights, and sure footing. The main grape here is Mencia, but typically a vineyard will be 80% Mencia and something else: perhaps Brancellao, or Muraton, or Garnacha Tintorea (the red fleshed Alicante Bouschet). In the Bebei valley, one of the subregions, there’s often a mixed co-planting of red and white grapes, although the law says you can’t ferment them together. Brancellao in particular is very elegant, and Muraton works very well with Mencia.
Envinate make three wines from Ribeira Sacra, plus also another own-label for their US importer, José Pastor. The blend is Aldea, 30% of which is made in concrete, and the rest in barrels. Then there are two single parcel wines: Camino Novo and Seoane.
They use stems almost all the time, and the wines are never green because of them, even though the stems aren’t brown and lignified. Roberto says that it is only when you work them too hard and break them that you get greenness in the wine. He says it is impossible to get ‘ripe’ stems without overripe grapes. ‘You need to work with hands and feet,’ he says. ‘The stems have potassium and so you lose acidity, but the sensation in the wine is fresher.’ The wines are made quite naturally here with the only addition being some sulfur dioxide at bottling.
But all the plots are fermented and aged separately, and we tried through the 2017s in barrel:
Aldea, concrete portion: so fresh, vital and pretty, with a bit of nice reduction.
Christosende (close to the cellar, high up, west facing, slate with some gneiss, 100% Mencia): lovely definition here; structured but silky.
A Curva: 30% non-Menica, fleshy, lively, crunchy and a bit spicy.
Monterosso (east-facing, 80-100 years old vines, 85% Mencia): intense, fresh, vivid and well structured. Nice reduction. Tastes fresh but grippy.
Alaish (20 year old vines): very reduced nose, firm and a bit grippy, some tar and chocolate notes, very distinctive.
Alaish, but one-third each Garnacha Tintorea, Brancellao and Mencia. Powerful, fresh, elegant, nicely fruity, perfumed.
Penso: north facing, very old vines. Powerful, zippy and fresh with vivid fruit.
Peuquena (a section of Penso): so fresh and vital. Bright, pure and elegant with nice freshness.
Navallos (north facing, in front of Camino Novo): this is doing malolactic and is hard to taste, but it has freshness, structure and intensity.
Quiroga (east side of the River Sil, a very warm terroir, with lots of different varieties. Sappy and savoury with nice richness and good intensity. Different mouthfeel, with some richness.
Rosende (granitic soil): very fresh and light with bright, fine grained fruit. So fresh.
Seoane (on the west side of the river Sil): fleshy, ripe, elegant and generous. Has lots of ripeness but it’s balanced.
Puntos: (small vineyard next to Camino Novo, 60% Mencia): fresh and fleshy with nice weight and purity. Fresh and well defined.
La Espalada (small south-east-facing plot): supple and elegant with lovely purity. Has nice texture and mouthfeel.
Camino Novo: has lovely density and purity with raspberry and cherry fruit. Textural, elegant and fine.
Brancellao: this is a single variety from Navin. It’s so pretty and fresh with lovely elegant red fruits. Floral and sappy with great definition.
Sousón: this is the same variety as Portugal’s Sousão (Vinhão), and it is smoky and reduced with intense, powerful, structured fruit. Vivid.
Then it was time to look at some bottled wine:
A Chingao Vineyards and Envinate Misturado de Abelada 2016 Ribeira Sacra, Spain
This is a collaboration between Envinate and José Pastor, their US importer. It’s made from 100 year old vineyard, with around 35% white grapes in it, and there are no added sulfites. It’s fresh and supple with bright cherries and raspberries, with some crunch. Bright and perfumed, this is floral and delicious, with incredible purity. 95/100
Envinate Lousas Aldea 2016 Ribeira Sacra, Spain
Really perfumed on the nose with a peppery edge to the sweet floral raspberry and cherry fruit. Fresh, floral and vivid on the palate with bright red fruits, subtle pepper notes and some faint traces of meatiness. Good structure and freshness. 94/100
Envinate Lousas Parcelas Camino Novo 2016 Ribeira Sacra, Spain
This has fantastic definition. Pure, quite silky and with nice freshness to the supple raspberry and cherry fruit. Shows amazing texture and finesse, with a seamless quality but also freshness and good acidity. Combines flesh with elegance. 95/100
Envinate Lousas Parcelas Seoane 2015 Ribeira Sacra, Spain
Sappy, taut, slightly reductive nose with some leafiness. Hints of tea, Juicy and crunchy with vivid bright raspberry and red cherry notes, showing good definition. There’s a nice grip, too. Pleasurable and just a little wild. 94/100
