What’s your take on white blends?

Polls are always fun. So what do you think of white blends in general? (Good ones, especially, if you reckon there are such things…)

A fortuitous chance to recommend wine

Face it, few blokes can resist when a group of attractive teenage girls approaches them and wants their opinion on something. I was fortunate enough to have this experience earlier this evening while shopping for wine at a local supermarket. They were five young lasses from Spain, unfamiliar with local wine but looking for gifts to give to their dads. (How sweet is that?) One of them spoke passable English and asked me to recommend some good reds. I tried to find out what their fathers like, but there was a bit of a language barrier. They were all interested in Pinotage because it doesn’t exist in Spain, but I thought it might be touch-and-go to recommend a Pinotage for wine-folk who aren’t used to it, and Cabernet Sauvignon was agreed on as a safe bet. Most of them went for the Backsberg – always a reliable quality Cabernet – but the English-speaking one was keen on a blend. She wasn’t sure whether her old man liked his reds mild or heavy, so eventually we agreed that the Landskroon Cab Franc/Merlot was the answer… and right for her pocket too, at R45.

What would you have recommended to these winsome señoritas? Comments always welcome – I’d like to see what you think.

Skottel breakfast with Viognier blends

Yesterday one of my lady-love’s young friends invited us to a wonderfully unconventional breakfast: a communal English breakfast made on a skottelbraai in Tokai forest, under the pine trees in the summer sunshine. For anyone who doesn’t know what a skottelbraai is, it’s a type of barbecue meal made in a wok-like metal dish over a fire.

Naturally, the foremost question on my mind was what wine to bring. I knew she was taking a bottle of Krone Borealis Rosé, so that took care of the champagne side of things and all options were open. I went with a Chenin/Sauvignon Blanc/Viognier (51-45-4) from Malanot called The Flower Pot. Most of the group were people I’d never met before, but they were fine folk who were already tucking into the Buck’s Fizz when we got there. One of them had brought a bottle of Pierre Jourdan Brut – one of my favourite bubblies – and we decided that this was too good for Buck’s Fizz and had it straight.

The Malanot blend went down a treat with the pork sausages and mushroom omelette, and I was delighted to find that my girl had brought along another Viognier blend – the Boekenhoutskloof Wolftrap, which is a Viognier/Chenin/Grenache Blanc (67-19-14). Great minds think alike, as they say.

Good grub, the right wine and new friends – it was an excellent way to spend a Sunday brunchtime. There was a little too much excitement when a sizeable male baboon showed up unexpectedly and wanted a piece of the action, but even he could be dealt with (nice one, Derek!) and didn’t ruin the experience. So it turns out Viognier blends are a great accompaniment to English breakfast. Whodathunkit?

Dates to diarise: Caroline’s reviews

The dates for this year’s Caroline’s Red and White Wine Reviews have been published. They are:

• Wednesday 25 July 2012 for Caroline’s Red Wine Review
• Wednesday 17 October 2012 for Caroline’s White Wine Review

These public tastings are highlights of the Cape Town wine year that you should not miss if you’re keen to taste really fine wines that are usually sold in the top price bracket and therefore are out of budget for everyday purchase. Then you can take notes and you’ll know which wines really are worth their price tag for gifts and special occasions. Apart from that, you get to swig seriously top-notch wines for 4 hours for something like R120 cover. Trust me, it’s worth every cent!

Unmuddle that winespeak!

At long last, my glossary of wine terms on this blog is nearly complete. You can refer to it when you want to know what’s behind those obscure terms on the back label of a bottle or in the tasting notes in a wine guide, or you can read it all the way through for a thorough, no-bullshit grounding in winemaking and wine tasting terminology.

Needless to say, it’s not 100% comprehensive. For example, I didn’t go too deeply into viticultural (vine-growing) terms, which are technical and not commonly found on labels. I’ll still be adding to it, and if you can’t find something you want to know about, send me a mail or leave a comment on this post or on the page itself.

D.I.Y. white blends

Last Wednesday the S. A. Wino Society got together and tried something different: instead of our usual varietal or regional tastings we made our own white blends. As the organiser, I teamed up with the host and bought a range of ingredients from which we would construct our blends. The idea was that they should be unwooded, express their varietal identity clearly and come in at an average of under R40 a bottle. I’m going to share this list with you because it also functions as a shopping list of good-value white wines with strong varietal character:

• Alexanderfontein Sauvignon Blanc 2011
• Kleine Zalze Bush Vines Chenin Blanc 2011
• Arabella Chardonnay 2011
• Withington Sémillon 2010
• Excelsior Viognier 2011
• Orange River Colombar 2011
• Koelenhof Koelnektar Gewürztraminer 2010

The most expensive of these wines was R52 (the Sémillon) and the cheapest was R23 (the Colombar), with the average lying at about R36.

We started with basic, well-established blends like 50/50 Sauvignon Blanc/Chenin Blanc, 60/40 Sauvignon Blanc/Chardonnay and 50/50 Sauvignon Blanc/Sémillon, and these were very popular. (There’s a reason why so many wineries make them.)

Then we became more experimental with our mixes. The most successful combinations from this phase of the evening were a Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon/Colombar of equal proportions, an equal Chenin Blanc/Sémillon with a dash of Viognier, a 70/25 Sauvignon Blanc/Chenin with a 5% dash of Gewürztraminer, and a rather adventurous five-way mix of Chenin, Chardonnay, Colombar, Gewürztraminer and Viognier at proportions of 55/20/10/10/5.

Towards the end of the evening, many of the wines had run out and we were down to those that had been used to provide a dash of interest. The last blend we made was a 55/45 Viognier/Sauvignon Blanc that was much more interesting than we anticipated. Delicate and floral at first bite, it had a complex palate with plenty of substance and ended on a tart note from the Sauvignon.

We learned a great deal about varietal flavours that night, but even more about what happens to them in combination. Some of these blends had strong individual flavours that were present in none of the component wines, which clearly demonstrated the subtle alchemy and creative potential of blending.

Full notes, if you’re interested, are about to go up on the Wino Society page of this blog.

Getting adventurous with Avontuur

Still on the subject of bubbly (I just can’t get enough of the stuff at the moment!)

 

Avontuur is currently selling a noteworthy bubbly. It’s non-vintage, so who knows how long it’s been hanging around in those bottles, but one can tell it’s been a while. Some say this is good, some say it’s bad. My German friend likes his bubblies crisp and fresh, and can be a trifle short-tempered. Late last month he was visiting Avontuur, got a whiff of this stuff and had his hair set on end. He felt it was well past its expiry date, reckoned it was insulting to the public to be selling this stuff at the regular price, called the winemaker and said so. The winemaker (according to my friend) cocked an eyebrow and walked away.

 

Each to his own, as it so often is with wine. My friend disliked it so much and felt so offended that he insisted I take a look for myself. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. It was certainly no crisp fresh virgin champagne, but then most of the time the best champagne isn’t. He sniffed it and said that was exactly what he was talking about, and it still didn’t make sense. The Avontuur is undoubtedly not a young wine, but it shows the interesting and complex characteristics that often emerge from white blends. There’s a fuller mouthfeel, more minerality, less fruit and a touch of that honey and dried fruit flavour that tends to cling to the end of a well-aged white wine. I thought it was a fine, if unusual, specimen  and bought  a bottle. My friend was astounded.

 

Last night I opened it with an old comrade(tte) in wine, who I know to be interested in aged whites. In fact it was part of her birthday present. She liked it very much and esteemed it worth the price tag. (I had to tell her the whole story.) We drank it alongside a creamy, aromatic chicken korma (no chilli) and it worked really well.

 

So that goes to show: Wine is ever subjective. Presented with a well-crafted, bottle-matured masterpiece and a dodgy house-brand blend, even a hobo drunk on beer could tell you which was better. But things are seldom so clear-cut, and in the wide wine world in between, one man’s meat can certainly be another man’s poison.

MCC: not French but fizzy, festive and fantastic

So yes, those bubbly tastings I mentioned. As usual, I went down to my favourite local wine shop, Vino Pronto, where Shirley runs a tight shop and offers tastings from whatever new places she’s found, Wednesday to Friday. Great place, incidentally, and I shop there often.

This time there was a new-ish bubbly being presented, called Genevieve after the patron saint of Paris, no less. This is a small-release bubbly that one could call garagiste (see Unmuddling winespeak on this blog). Vivacious and fresh would be good words to describe this excitingly different concoction. It reminded me very much of pear cider. It had exactly the same kind of effervescence, the same touches of ripe pear on the nose and on the palate.

(No one makes pear cider in South Africa, except for a couple of batches I brewed in 1999, and that hardly counts. But if you’ve been to the West Country of England or the west of France, as I was in 2010, you might know the delectable flavour I’m talking about.)

Vino Pronto also hosted a tasting of Silverthorn wines. They have two bubblies, both MCC and both very good in their  own way. The Green Man bears a wonderfully Pagan name, named after the Wild Man of the Woods, and it lives up to it with its fresh crispness. It’s not “green” in the way wine critics mean it, but it crunches with springtime goodness. It’s a pure Chardonnay, so it lacks the roundness of Pinot Noir, but it does very well.

Their other bubbly is a Shiraz rosé named The Genie. This one’s a tad on the fruity side for me to enjoy, and has a fair bit of sweetness for an MCC, but it exactly the thing for anyone who wants a subtle, sexy pink champagne without the bite of a truly dry one.

There was also a Weltevrede tasting. I must admit that was more of a relaxed chit-chat because I know the wines well and I knew Shirley and the clientele too, so my recollections of the evening are vague. But as I say, I know the wines well. They have four MCCs. There’s a rosé, which is delicately fruity. There’s The Ring, which is a crisp and satisfying Chardonnay MCC that is nowhere near as ominous as its name suggests. There’s the Entheos, which is the driest of the bunch and comes very close to being the best of SA’s dry champagnes, in my opinion. And there’s Aletheia, my personal choice. Full-bodied and rich with yeasty, biscuity, gently matured character. This one definitely gets my vote, although it would disappoint anyone looking for a light, crisp bubbly. I’ve heard say that champagne can be matched to any kind of food. If that’s true, I’d take the Entheos with a light starter and the Aletheia with a crème brulée.

The Wino Society also had its usual December bubbly tasting. There were some surprises, including a Villiera Tradition magnum that my friend Lester had been maturing for several years, but I’ll get around to that story next time.

Happy New Brut

… and I’m back.

After a significant break from writing, I’m back in the saddle and ready to resume business. It could be something as cheesy as a New Year’s resolution, but I’ve really missed the singular feeling of making sense and stories out of nothing.

New Year is always a time for champagne (or whatever else they call it when it doesn’t come from France). As usual, there was a surge of special offers and new entries in the last weeks of December. The supermarkets in Cape Town had entire shelves devoted to them.

In amongst the carols and tinsel and cheap Pongracz I noticed that JC le Roux have launched a new bubbly, a bottle-fermented (MCC) Brut in the R70 price range. They already have a very successful Brut MCC in their range – the Scintilla. But the Scintilla is sold as a luxury champagne, whereas the new one is entering the fray against Pongracz and Kaapse Vonkel and their many competitors. That may be why they felt the need to wrap a satin sash around each bottle that proudly proclaimed it to be “The New Brut”. It’s true, bru!

While it doesn’t measure up to the Scintilla in complexity, the Brut is certainly decent festive fare. Tastes vary in bubblies as much as in any other wine, so it’s not an easy thing to rate it. It’s yeasty and a bit biscuity, but balanced with a fair whack of fruit – more than I expected from a Brut. If you like fresh, zesty bubbly then you’ll probably like it. If you prefer a fuller-bodied, creamier type of thing, you might not. Surprisingly, it’s mostly made from Pinot Noir, which goes to show that not all Pinot Noir bubblies are as round and heavy as they’re cracked up to be.

All in all, The New Brut makes a fine addition to the ever-growing JC range of MCC bubblies: they’re up to 6 now, including the unusual off-dry La Vallée and La Vallée Rosé, which I highly recommend for anyone who doesn’t like their wine too dry but still wants the refinement of a bottle-fermented bubbly.

Still on the subject of supermarket bubbly specials, there’s the Odd Bins range from Checkers. They have at least three MCC bubblies on the go at the mo: the crisp and fruity Bin 10, the more yeasty and biscuity Bin 11 and the elegantly dry rose-pink Bin 20. Not bad at all, and definitely more affordable than anything else of similar quality. I brought a Bin 11 along for Christmas lunch and cracked a Bin 20 for New Year, and both times they were the best champagne at the table.

There was also a spate of champagne tastings in December, at which I got to taste some exciting new things… but more about that in a while.

Mixing woods

I just stopped by for a quick tasting at Vino Pronto, my friendly neighbourhood wine shop, and got a sip of something unusual. There were two wines from Pepin Condé for tasting, the 2010 Pinot Noir and the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cabernet has been matured in a combination of French oak and American oak. A portion was matured in each and then the two were blended.

Perhaps my taste buds were taking the afternoon off, but I couldn’t discern the different oak influences. I was expecting to find some of the vanilla flavour usually associated with American oak, but it wasn’t there. The wine was light in colour for a Cabernet, with up-front cassis (blackcurrant) on the nose and palate. The fruit was offset by tannins, making for an elegant, almost delicate wine.  Very satisfying, but the impression it made on me was French. For once, the American influence was lying low.