The UnCorker

Weird Wine of the Week-2005 Domaine Philippe Tessier Cour-Cheverny “Les Sables”

Cour-Cheverny is a weird appellation created for a weird grape, romorantin. Just east of Touraine is where romorantin has its last redoubt. Why? That’s what we at The UnCorker wondered- is it because it is sandwiched between Vouvray and Sancerre and is being pushed out by those giants, chenin and sauvignon blancs? Is it not commercially viable? Its an ancient vine, and it has been cultivated in the Loire for centuries, some vines dating back to the 1850’s somehow escaped phylloxera. There are two producers of note in Cour-Cheverny; Domaine Philippe Tessier, and Francois Cazin, who claims that in bad or mediocre vintages, romorantin produces harsh, angular wines- so maybe thats it; after all a producer can make an insipid, mediocre Sancerre, and it will still sell itself.

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Weird Wine of the Week- 1999 Movia Puro Rose

This one is chock full of weirdness- is it Italian? Slovenian? The bottle says Collio(a D.O.C. in Friuli Venezia Guilia) though half of Movia’s vineyards are in the Brda province of Slovenia. This part of Europe has a mix of tradition and cultures that rival anywhere else in Europe, but it also has an energy unleashed after decades of centralized communist rule. Slovenia was, after all, part of Communist Yugoslavia, and Movia was one of the few privately owned estates in the whole country.

Movia produces a whole range of cool, funky wines biodynamically, but nothing as weird as the Puro. What, you might ask, the geographic weirdness aside, qualifies this as WWOW- we at The UnCorker can’t think of another bottle of bubbly that hits the market without being disgorged- but the Puro Rose is, and man, that’s weird- strange, unusual, and very difficult. You see the secondary fermentation in the bottle(see glossary- methode champenoise) is started by adding unfermented must from the new harvest along with some indigenous yeast. And why not disgorge at the winery, for instance as every producer of Champagne does? It seems the respectable thing to do, right? At Movia they believe disgorging robs the wine of flavor, and the Puro Rose sure has a bunch of that, and also claim that because it isn’t disgorged, its capacity to age is endless. We at The UnCorker have had some damn fine sparklers we didn’t have to disgorge ourselves, and as for the aging, well, only time will tell. We did like the novelty- one must store the bottle upside down for a day or two, then open it under water; a mass of goo is disgorged, the wine best decanted.

100% pinot nero(noir) spends 4 years in French oak barrique, and a furthur 32 months in bottle before release, it has a pale salmon color and scents of apples, apple cider and raspberries with some grapefruit on the palate- a little toast and yeast but not as much as we would have thought, some savory notes as well; cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg- a fine persistent bead helps give this a long pleasant finish- all pinot but unlike any brut rose we’ve ever had- less then 2000 bottles produced, well worth the search.

Weird Wine of the Week-2002 Triacca San Domenico Sforzato di Valtellina

We at The UnCorker were having a hard time getting our heads around what is and what isn’t weird- after all, Mongols consider fermented mare’s milk an everyday tipple. The Merriam-Webster dictionary only gets us half way there- its definition includes “Magical” ok-good so far, “Unearthly, mysterious” well we’ll go with the latter, but wine is of the earth, literally and figurativly- finally, “Odd, Unusual”- we guess that’s the whole point of the Weird Wine of the Week feature, yet there has to be something else that leads us to include a wine in the ‘Weird’ category. Difficulty in obtaining is part, maybe only being able to understand it in its own proper context is another- perhaps there’s something simply indefinable about a wine that just tells us it belongs; after all,  antonyms include both “usual” and “normal” the opposite of the wines we include. That’s how we feel about the 2002 Triacca San Domenica Sforzato di Valtellina. Magical, hmmm, maybe not, though it does have charm- mysterious, possibly, though it won’t be when we finish discussing it. Odd and unusual certainly seem to work; though like that Mongol and his every day fermented mares milk- depends where you stand.

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Weird Wine of the Week: 2007 St. Laurent Klassisch, Hannes Schuster

The day will come when Austrian or German reds don’t automatically qualify for “weird” status in North America, but country of origin is not the only unusual aspect of this wine.  The varietal, St. Laurent, was once near extinction – a forgotten distant cousin to Pinot Noir – and the wine-making itself here flies boldly in the face of what the North American market supposedly demands from a red wine.  A  first whiff immediately reveals that this bottle is all about the fruit, which is farmer’s market fresh.  When you visit a winery and get a chance to taste the must – when the grapes have been crushed, but are not yet wine – you realize that the tannins at this point in the process are sweet and soft, like white tea.   And when the fruit itself is delicious, you can taste it – full, mouth-filling, sweet, and distinctive.  It is only during vinification, and the oak barrel aging that often follows, that red wine makers strive to tame this vulgar youthfulness in the wines and often end up struggling to keep the distinctiveness of the grapes with which they started.

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Weird Wine of the Week: Pulenta Estate Cabernet Franc Tardio 2004

Is this Weird Wine? Hmm…. where to start.  First of all, botrytis cinerea, the fungus which in it’s benign form is called the “noble rot” and is responsible for some of the world’s finest sweet wines – is not supposed to make good red wines.  Botrytis feeds on the skins, where red wines get their tannins and flavor, robbing red grapes of their pigment and producing off-odors in the wine during maceration. Sweet cabernet franc is therefore more common in ice-wine country, such as Southern Ontario – where long growing seasons are combined with early freezing conditions in certain years and complex sweet wines can be made without the help of the fungus.  Secondly, at 980 metres above sea level near the city of Mendoza lies the Pulenta Estate, which is fine Argentinian wine country – dry as hell, with thin air, and perfect for ripening red grapes.   However, its not humid enough for botrytis. The fungus just doesn’t show up, preferring damp Burgundy ocean moisture or finicky Bordeaux microclimates to this land of open ranges and pantalooned gauchos.

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Weird Wine of the Week- 2005 Vinedo de los Vientos ‘Angel’s Cuvée’ Ripasso de Tannat

OK- There’s nothing intriniscally weird about Tannat, the country of Uruguay, or ripasso wines- put those three together, and you have the unusual 2005 Vinedo de los Vientos ‘Angel’s Cuvee’ Ripasso de Tannat. Uruguay isn’t your average wine-lover’s go to country, but it is a country on the move(viticulturally speaking). The 4th largest wine producer in south America, the people of Uruguay consume on average 32 liters of wine per year- a significant amount- with almost half the population living in and around the capital of Montevideo, the demand is high, so until recently, they hardly exported a drop. Wine has been produced in Uruguay for 150 years, from vines brought over by immigrants from from Italy and Spain’s Basque country, but the focus has been on quantity at the expense of quality. At least until the last decade when quality wines from Argentina and Chile started flooding  markets in North and South America- Uruguay has been rushing to catch up- and it seems as though tannat will be their signature grape.

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Weird Wine of the Week: 2006 Gugiarolo Pinot Nero Vercesi Del Castellazzo

Weird? Maybe not, when you think about it, lots of white wines come from red grapes- a blanc de noir from champagne is 100% Pinot Noir, as are plenty of white sparklers from around the world. Still wines like this are pretty rare, so it makes you wonder, why take Pinot Noir and vinify it white? Often, as in the case of lots of those sparklers, its that that Pinot adds aromatic complexity and loads of acid despite(or because of) the fact that it often doesn’ t fully ripen in northern zones. The 2006 Gugiarolo from Vercesi del Castellazzo is a case in point; straw yellow with green highlights,  delicate floral aromatic complexity that includes a bit of lime skin, lemon and a bitter almond skin like finish and a ton of acidity-  the Gugiarolo a wine thats gonna blow your hair back? Probably not, itsclean, its bright and easy to drink, but to us at The UnCorker, its instructive- from this bottle, we learn that red wine gets its color from its skin, not its flesh, that its fun to say Oltrepo Pavase,  the DOC, which clearly allows almost anything if it allows for this unusual wine.

Weird Wine of the Week: 2002 Damijan Bianco “Kaplja”

From Venezia-Giulia in the far Northeast of Italy comes this unusual beauty- Damijan Podversic is something of a maverick, shunning stainless steel, commercial yeasts, and strives to make “living wines”. His vineyards straddle the Italian-Slovenian border, and his methods are so old, they’re practically new. A blend of Malvasia Istriana, Chardonnay, and Tocai Friulano (now referred to simply as Friulano) fermented on its skins in old upright Slavonian oak, Damijan uses bio-dynamic practices, neither fines nor filters, and bottles under a full moon. The Bianco Kaplja is a cloudy, heady brew- served at cellar temperature, it reveals orange blossom on the nose, and a piercing apricot stonefruit on the palate- from the skins comes a tremendous amount of structure, mostly in the form of tannin, which keeps the wine endlessly interesting- this is a wine to meditate over, sniff, swirl and contemplate- this is what white wine was before stainless steel, refrigeration, and temperature controlled fermentations-