Tasting Note: 2008 Txomin Etxaniz Getaria Txakolina

I was so glad to get my hand on a bottle of Txomin Etxaniz Getaria Txakolina, when I came through Astor Wines, last week, just after a very pleasant return trip to Long Island’s wine country.

I’d had txakoli, that fizzy Spanish white wine from the Basque country, only once before, thanks to a bottle of Xarmant that a good friend of mine had brought back from a trip a couple of years ago. It was pleasantly refreshing, with a bit of residual sugar, in that case. Something like a vinho verde with more fizz. A good summer sipper.

As I read about txakoli, after a friend of mine mentioned having tasted some in Spain, a few years ago, one name kept coming back: Txomin Etxaniz, generally named as the best producer in all the txakoli appellations. So when I finally got my hands on a bottle (there is a little Xarmant available in Quebec, in private imports, but no other txakoli) I was happy to finally get to taste what top txakoli is all about.

It is, I have to say, very pleasant and very well made. Bright acidity, lovely lemon-citrus flavors, refreshing, bone-dry, with a touch of yeast and a neat, pleasant mineral backbone. The fizz is best revealed when you pour the wine from a little high above your glass: the wine then fills with the tiniest of bubbles, and leaves a white ring on its edge, showing the persistence of the carbonic gas in the txakoli.

It did very well with our meal of fish baked in banana leaves with a curried coconut milk sauce, fizzing pleasantly above the spiciness of the dish and opening up flavors in an interesting fashion. Long beans in hoisin sauce also worked well, showing the intensity and persistence of that light-seeming wine.

Still. Taxes included, the wine came to above 25$ US. A fair bit of money for a wine that is, again, in many ways, a more carbonic version of vinho verde. Top vinho verdes rarely cost anything more than 15$.

There is a fashion surrounding txakoli, right now, in the United States, and I’m very happy for the producers who are getting a very good price for their wine. But at over 25$, txakoli will be a very occasional buy, for me, even the excellent Txomin Etxaniz, which was impeccable and precise, and pretty much perfect, for what it is supposed to be. Under 20$, you’d probably see me buying by the case.

So I guess I’ll have to keep it as a rare treat. Or wait a bit for the fashion to subside. Or go to the Basque country, where it sells for a lot, lot less.

Dan Aykroyd is coming to Montreal. Does his wine taste funny?

If I was in Montreal, I’d be tempted to go. Dan Aykroyd, the famous Canadian actor of Saturday Night Live fame will be touring Montreal, today and tomorrow (June 25 and 26), to present the line of wines that bear his name. He’ll be visiting three SAQ stores (see the list here) over the two days, to give the drinking public a taste of what’s bottled for him by Diamond Estates Wines and Spirits, the company behind Lakeview Cellar Wines, East Dell and 20 Bees, among other things.

If I could go, I’d certainly ask him what the deal is with all the celebrity wines appearing on the scene, this past couple of years. Like the Madonna, Kiss and Streisand wines from Celebrity Cellars. Or the Mike Weir and Wayne Gretzky wines made by Creekside Wines. Or the icewines and Napa Cab made for the Rolling Stones by Ex Nihilo Vineyards.

I’d ask him if he sees a difference between having a line of wines made by someone else, with your name on it, from various vineyards from here and there (Dan Aykroyd’s wines are sometimes VQA, sometimes not, sometimes from Canada, sometimes from Sonoma…), and actually owning your vineyards. Like Sting’s Il Palagio Sumner Family wines from Tuscany, Gérard Depardieu in the Loire, David and Victoria Beckham in California, Sam Neill in New Zealand, or even Francis Ford Coppola in California – although that last case definitely has more winemaking tradition in it than just celebrity trendiness.

Wine is certainly fashionable, if celebrities enjoy having their names on labels. It equates with luxury, health, pleasure, the good life. A good association if there ever was one. And you can even make a noble statement about biodiversity, the environment, and farming tradition – as the Sumners do in their biodynamic estate in Italy.

Oh, and by the way, I’ve had one of the Dan Aykroyd Discovery Series wines, before. The chardonnay, on a summer trip in Ontario. And no, it didn’t taste funny, despite my attempt at humor in the title. It wasn’t memorable, but it was simple and easy-drinking. In other words, it was fun.

Canadian Icewine: Quality and Diversity from Coast to Coast

I used to love Canadian Icewine and its less expensive, but often quite as tasty counterpart, the late harvest. And then, for some odd reason, I practically stopped having it.

Over the last few months, however, I drank icewines from Ontario, British Columbia, Québec and Nova Scotia. And baby, I’m back.

Those were fine, fine wines, with all the apricot, honey and floral aromas and flavors you’d want, the acidity needed to balance out the concentrated sweetness. What struck me the most, however, was the diversity of styles – a much greater range than I would have expected.

Let me give you an idea of this range of styles by giving tasting notes from West to East.

Tasting notes: Le Clos Jordanne, Le Clos Jordanne Vineyard 2006 chardonnay and pinot noir, Twenty Mile Bench

I’ve been a fan of Le Clos Jordanne wines since their first release, the 2004 vintage, two years ago. Made from young vines, they may not have had the depth of great wines, but they certainly showed the promise. It was terrific to taste pinot noir that from the Niagara that had such a clear sense of place and such a remarkable balance and restraint. 

This certainly has a lot to do with Thomas Bachelder, the Québec-born, Burgundy-trained winemaker who heads this organically and biodynamically-farmed estate. Bachelder’s approach is clearly burgundian, trying to define the specific character of each vineyard, and reveal through restrained winemaking. The only blending going on is in the Village Reserve wines, combining lots from Le Clos’ four vineyards (Claystone, Le Clos Jordanne Vineyard, La Petite and Talon Ridge). The emphasis is on single-vineyard bottlings, something that may be pushed even further as Bachelder constantly learns more about the character of various parcels within each vineyard. Le Grand Clos, selected from the best lots drawn from the Le Clos Jordanne vineyard, is already pointing in that direction.

For me, what I’ve tasted from the 2006 vintage

Tasting note: Masi Campofiorin 2005, Rosso del Veronese IGT

It’s always interesting – and often fun – to re-taste wines you enjoyed often, a while back, but had somewhat set aside and forgotten.

That’s what happened to me when a good friend of mine brought me a bottle of Masi Campofiorin, a unique wine from the Veneto, in Northern Italy. When I first started drinking wine seriously, in the early 90s, the Campofiorin had been a true discovery: a wine that tasted different from everything else I’d had before, with a richness and depth that felt remarkable, especially at such a reasonable price.

The wine’s unique profile comes from the unique way in which it’s made, a mix between a “regular”, dry wine and an amarone, the wines made from grapes that are partly dried on straw mats after being picked. The Campofiorin is first made from freshly harvested grapes, and then refermented with an addition of grapes dried using the appassimento method (see this great article on the Buzz blog, from Bastianich winery).

The mixed method for this “poor man’s amarone”, as some people call it, provide the wine with an interestingly complex set of flavors and aromas, at once fresh and concentrated. The 2005, when I tasted it last week, provided red cherries and red berry jam, spice and tobacco, with good intensity and balance. Accents like tawny port or amarone mixed with elements closer to a barbera or a regular valpolicella. I’d serve it with veal chops, pasta with a meat ragu or a roast chicken.

Beautiful now, the wine should likely age well for several years, providing a good occasion for cellaring several bottles and watching them evolve, without spending a fortune.

Pinot chocolat? Won’t those New Zealanders stop at anything?

For a guy like me who loves the most natural wines, New Zealand is often a disappointment, with wines that are pure products of modern oenology.

But I never thought the doctoring would go as far as this: Kim Crawford’s Pinot Chocolat, for which cocoa bean extract was added to the tank at the moment of fermentation. That, for me, completely takes the cake. I mean, what is wine coming to?

The only thing I don’t get about this whole operation, is why Kim Crawford didn’t think of using the USBWine network to allow us to taste the Pinot Chocolat. Instead, they’ve used a virtual tasting system that is clearly not as effective. 

The pinot chocolat, released on April 1, is a great match for a traditional English dessert called a… fool.

If you find a bottle, let me know.

And in the meantime, if you’d like a wine that’s less of a joke, why not try the 2007 Kim Crawford Unoaked Chardonnay, a modern wine, yes, but one where citrus flavors, peach notes and a little caramel on the nose combine in a fresh, quaffable drink. A very decent bottle, and a good match with grilled fish or hard cheeses. 

Full disclosure: I received the chardonnay as a press sample. But not the pinot chocolat.

The California Wine Fair is back already

A year can sure go by fast. It’s spring in Canada, and time for the California Wine Fair again. I even missed the Western Canada dates (sorry guys), and barely caught up with it on time for the East Coast part of the tour.

It’s no April Fool joke. Ottawa gets its turn this Wednesday, April 1, at the Westin Hotel, just a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill. Montreal is next on the list on April 2nd, and the event is as a fundraiser for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, while Quebec City’s Fair, on Friday, April 3rd, will benefit the Fondation Cardinal-Villeneuve, which seeks to help people with physical handicaps.

After that, it’s Toronto on April 6 and Halifax on April 8.

You can get the full details right here. As well as the list of participating wineries for each city. The list varies, but includes the likes of Heitz Cellars, Calera, Seghesio, Ravenswood, Bonny Doon, Bonterra, Kenwood, Hahn Estates, L’Aventure, Hess Collection, Jordan, to name only a few. 

While I’m at it, I should mention that the New Zealand Wine Fair will also come to Canada this spring. A first event took place on March 24 in Edmonton (sorry again), but the others will be in late May in Montreal, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver. The list of participating producers is not out yet, so we’ll come back to this closer to the event date.

Tasting Note: Two viogniers from the North

If you’ve had wines made from the viognier grape, there is a very good chance that they came from warm, if not hot climates, and exploded with aromas and flavors of tropical fruit, over a rich, luscious mouthfeel. Acidity, crispness, freshness? Not so much.

Yet there is another way to make viognier. A more northerly way, like the direction pointed to by Peay Vineyards, one of my favorite vineyards, who make a tiny bit of it in their cool Sonoma Coast vineyards. Syrah is picked as late as the last week of October, at the Peay vineyards, and without the high sugar and high alcohol that you normally see in California syrah.

What would be the perfect place to test the possibilities of cool-climate viognier? Canada, I would say.

Case in point,

Wine Blogging Wednesday 55: North vs South – a bipolar roundup

It’s always fascinating to see the many ways people can interpret a proposition. So what did the participants in the 55th Wine Blogging Wednesday make of this idea of confronting North vs South?

From Michigan Riesling to Tasmania Pinot Noir, from Spanish Garnacha to Tennessee Chambourcin, there sure were a lot of possible pairings (and threesomes, and foursomes) put together by the 33 participants who took up the challenge. Three of those, I’m happy to say, were first timers in the world of Wine Blogging Wednesday (this one, this one and this one), showing how the concept is still going strong and breaking new ground.

The sweeter side of things: check out The Tawny Times

While I’m waiting for the latecomers to Wine Blogging Wednesday 55 to send in their posts, so I can prepare my round-up, I rummaged through my tasting notes from the Salon des vins de Québec, and decided to put a bit of them online… on another blog.

But Rémy, you may ask, don’t you have enough already with The Wine Case and that French blog of yours? In fact, yes, but when you get a really sweet offer…

The sweet offer in question