The UnCorker

Weird Wine of the Week: 2008 RiqueWihr Gewurztraminer, “The Scholium Project”

In the spirit of intellectual nourishment, sometimes we punish ourselves. We override those shallow, superficial messages from the senses – you know, those ones that say hey, brain! this tastes like ass . We have to do this, otherwise the palate we have as a 16 year old would determine the course of our gastronomical lives and Bartles & Jaymes would be routinely poured for wedding toasts. Other times, artists are the ones punishing us. Modern architects in the 1930’s designed hard, glaring rooms and insisted their clients not soften them with curtains and throw pillows. Buñuel made film snobs sit through razor blades slicing eyeballs to prove a narrow point about cinematic montage theory. Then there is Abe Schoener – a man of the vine who insists that we think about what we drink. He sets out with the explicit goal – stated on his website – of making one taste decay, decomposition, and transformation. This is followed by a secondary goal – that the wines should make one happy to be drinking them. How much of a wine aesthete you are will likely determine how contradictory you find those two objectives.

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2006 Wolfer Estate Reserve Chardonnay

When you think Long Island and wine – and you do by now, right? – you naturally drift towards the North Fork. This is where Bordeaux grapes (especially Cabernet Franc) reign supreme – and a few big names like Schneider and Lenz have carved out a reputation for natural, old-world grace and command high prices for their wines. When you think South Fork & the Hamptons, what you probably don’t think about is Bridgehampton loam – but you really should. Because this is the stuff that is behind the scenes of a true off-the-beaten-path source of unique wines with exactly what the Frenchies dream of – typicity. Long Island itself is one big glacial morraine – which is the big mound of crud that a glacier dumps at it’s terminus. Sensibly, the glaciers in the last ice age decided to stop and turn around just before entering New Jersey. They left behind a giant mound of loamy goodness, perfectly suited for topping with Beaux Arts style waterfront McMansions with helipads. The previous owners at Wolffer Estate also recognized that nature had bestowed a great agricultural opportunity in this soil, so naturally turned to potato growing – and that’s the way they planted the place for a 100 years.

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2007 Kingston Family Syrah Casablanca Valley Lucero

A sure sign that the world’s wine tastes might be turning away from heaviosity for good is when the Chileans – yes, the Chileans! – head for the coast in pursuit of cool climate growing conditions. Actually, a more accurate statement would be that the wine business in America has decided to look and see if there is anything besides the bargain behemoths Cab Sav and Carmenere coming out of the country and take a chance on trying to sell it. New world wine regions like Argentina, Chile, and Australia are increasingly complex and hard to generalize, and that’s a good thing. Value lurks here – even for you Burg-hounds and Rhone-snobs. Last week we reported on the fabulous Chilean-Argentinian joint venture in sparkling wines – Bodega Cruzat. Today let’s focus on the Casablanca Valley northwest of Santiago – a coastal valley with cool nights and dense morning fogs.   These are Carneros-style conditions that are perfect for Syrah, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir, and the wines reflect that style.  Intertestingly, Chile’s hottest wine region – Aconcagua – is a neighbor just to the north – so this is a true microclimate.

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Weird Wine of the Week- 2004 Coturri Zinfandel Frieberg Vineyards

At first glance, you might be thinking, “what in the world is weird about another Cali Zin?” After all, we know that California produces veritable oceans of the stuff- from the Central Valley to the Napa Valley.   Drank by the miners back in gold rush days, Zinfandel was in decline until the mid 1980’s when the ‘craze’ for ‘white’ zinfandel spread like a blight on the land. While its popularity declined, zinfandel properly vinified took off with cult producers like Turley demanding huge sums for its polished single vineyard zins.

Still to the question of why the Coturri zin is weird, which we wish it wasn’t- Oh God, how we wish it wasn’t weird at all. We at The UnCorker fervently hope to one day be able to consider this a delicious but un-weird wine- common even, which it certainly is not. Let us consider the ways. Its organic- and yes, lots of Cali wine is organic, but the Coturri folks put the O in organic. No SO2, no inoculation with sulfites, no yeast cultures, no use of concentrates to boost sweetness(yes, people do that all the time in California), no added water, acids, or other manipulation of the wine, all of which can be done in a wine deemed ‘organic’. The Coturri winery is a small production family run outfit- 3rd and 4th generation Coturri’s manage the vineyards, pick the grapes, and unlike just about everyone else, make the wine- no consultants, no lab technicians,  just farmers making wine.

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Hey Importers! Where’s Our Cruzat Larraine?

Few seem to be aware that Argentina has a terrific specialist in sparkling wines – Bodega Cruzat.  Think southern-hemi Schramsburg.  Carefully made, ambitious and captivating sparklers – clearly made for the world stage and intended to provide a high-quality, high-value alternative to the wines of Champagne. Good restaurants in Buenos Aires pour this stuff almost to a turn.  American expat living in Chile, Liz Caskey, blogged her recent visit to the winery here, which reminded us that we love this stuff too… and it remains our favorite-wine-we-had-all-over-Argentina-but-can’t-seem-to-get-at-home wine.   (As opposed to lugged-home-5,000 miles-only-to-find-it-widely-available-and-cheaper-here-wines.)  It’s time to raise the general level of chatter about just where the heck is this stuff in the Northern parts of the world?   A well-funded, modern producer, nice slick labels and fancy Flash winery website, decently large production runs, a romantic story and paternalistic “man of terroir” at the helm…. what’s the deal?

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Weird Wine of the Week-Breaky Bottom Sparkling Brut 2004 Cuvée Donna Elvira

We will admit right off that this is gratuitously weird; like we’re trying to be too clever by half, or ironic in that smug, annoying hip way that we thought our friend, recently returned from England was being when he gave us this bottle of Breaky Bottom(yep, Breaky Bottom) Sparkling Brut 2004 Cuvee Donna Elvira. So it sat on the desk at The UnCorker headquarters for awhile, until we realized we’d be crazy to not run to our first chance to drink English wine.

We poured and raised our glasses all toasting ‘Breaky Bottom’, and we were, well, fairly impressed; this was real methode champenoise wine- straw yellow, green highlights with apples, pears,  hazelnut and a yeasty finish. Not a fine Champagne, or Franciacortia- but lets face it, our expectations weren’t exactly high either. So maybe this piece shouldn’t be a WWOW, maybe it should be a Weird Wine Region piece. We decided to look into the British wine scene(at least as best we could, there are no English wines imported to the States) and it seems that in England, there is a confluence of events and trends that are rapidly changing the agriculture of Southern England.

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Weird Wine of the Week: Primitivo Quiles 2002 Alicante Raspay Reserva Tinto ‘Brut’

Ok. We admit it. The UnCorker staff has maybe 20 years, combined, of serious wine snobbing under our belts – and most of that has been more or less on the cheap. So who are we to call one of the oldest wines in one of the oldest wine countries in the world, weird? Apparently a fancier version of this stuff called Fondillan was on the table of the Sun King himself, Louix XIV, paired with sponge cake. And given that this is a hearty, unfortified Valencian red, that’s a little weird – wouldn’t you say? C’mon, sponge cake? (ahem… just getting warmed up here). Dissecting the label is the first challenge. Primitivo Quiles is the name of the winery. Alicante is the name of the DO (There’s also a grape named Alicante which isn’t popular in it’s namesake DO.) Raspay is the name of the town. Tinto means “red.” (Ok that one was easy.) And ‘Brut’ (quotes are theirs) just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever in this context. We guess that they are just contrasting this to the sweeter, and more famous, Fondillan.

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Monsters!!!!!!!

Monsters!!!!!! Huge Teeth Staining Monsters!!!!!

Some wines are like love notes, delivered from across the seas, others like post-it notes on the fridge- still others are like like gruesome horror films, powerful in their ability to hold our attention, yet monstrous in conception, overwhelming and bloody.  We at The UnCorker were struck this week by the similarity of two wholly disparate wines that, like a horror film, repelled and held us bound in equal measure. Like a Hollywood film, these wines have glossy production values, lots of style and no substance.

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2007 D. Ventura Vina Caneiro Ribeira Sacra

The UnCorker moves it’s way through yet another obscure Spanish DO – this time a tiny neighbor to Bierzo that also specializes in the Mencia grape – DO Ribeira Sacra. Here is an appellation curiously immune to international “tastes” and the Spanish tendency to oak and/or blend their way towards uniform flavor profiles. A region that emphasizes natural wine-making, vine-to-bottle minimalism, finesse, and terroir – a Spanish wine region that’s basically, well, umm… French – at least the pre-modern, pre-Robert Parker France of Kermit Lynch’s imagination. Comparing this wine to a cru Beaujolais is not a stretch – it’s fruity and soft, combines freshness with minerality, and has acidic grip and expressive terroir. It’s fun to drink and great at table, and it doesn’t kick your (or your palette’s) ass. Is it worth $27? Well, that’s another story. That all depends on your point of view, and how much of a wine-store-clerk reactionary anti-snob you are against black, tannic, extracted oak-monsters. We like it all, but frankly – based on pure taste, if this wine was $5-$8 less we would feel better about the deal.

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Weird Wine of the Week-2006 Re Manfredi Basilicata Bianco

Basilicata is an isolated and obscure region, second to only the Molise as the smallest in wine production in Italy. Known primarily, and only really recently for Aglianico del Vulture (the region’s only DOC wine), Basilicata doesn’t seem a likely place for a cutting edge weird wine- its like stumbling on haute cuisine in your grandmother’s kitchen- at first, it seems so unlikely, its suspicious- but when you try it, it makes delicious, perfect sense.

So, some mad genius at Re Manfredi looked around Mount Vulture and saw something maybe nobody else had even considered; that the potential for northern white grapes was huge, and that taking a chance might pay off. And why not? German grapes have thrived in the Alto Adige for centuries; the Adige valley is searingly hot during the day, but the nights, nice and cool. As you have read in these pages, the Aglianico in Basilicata is one of the latest harvested grapes in all of Italy- the slopes of Mt. Vulture have vineyards planted up to 800 meters, giving a huge temperature differential between day and night. Traditionally, what white grapes there are in Basilicata are the ubiquitous malvasia and moscato, dry and sweet, still and sparkling, and with the rare exception, uninspiring, and not much exported.

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