Valle dell’Acate

Published on June 5, 2013 in My tasting notes. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

While staying at COS, on Sicily we popped North a little, to the other side of the Acate Valley to visit the eponymous Valle dell’Acate cantina.  We had pre-booked using the contact details on the website and were offered tastings of 3 wines for a price that depended on the food that would be provided.  I said we would take the more expensive €25 per person €option, but asked nicely if we could taste all their wines, mentioning that I was a wine enthusiast with a blog.  Very kindly they agreed.  I say this not to offer hints about getting better tastings, but to declare that I was offered something on the basis of a possible implicit agreement to give them a write-up.  But I actually promised nothing, and am writing this because I think they have wines of genuine interest.

We started with a tour of the older and more photogenic parts of the cantina – the cellar with large double-barrique barrels for ageing, and the early 20th century cantina, now a museum.  The old cantina seemed to be very nicely designed, with, on the left in the picture below, shallow containers for treading grapes. against a wall with doors through which the grapes would be delivered.  The must would then be allowed to run into deeper fermentation vessels.  The opening to one of these can be seen in the centre of the picture.  The wine would then run along channels, now covered, but you can see one or two to the right of the picture, into an area off to the right, and at a much lower level, where the wine was aged in barrels.

acateoldcantina

In the picture above you can see an open window throwing light into the cantina.  Here is the view from the window, looking South across the mainly dry Acate valley.  If I understand the geography correctly, the Acate Valley is carved into a more-or-less flat region, and the top of the hill you see represents the start of the flattish area where COS is located.  The valley bottom, is also rather flat. If you want to see something to rival the landscape of Tuscany, don’t bother with this part of Sicily.  The upside though, is that you manage to avoid the touristy gentrification that seems to plague the more obviously pretty parts of the world. acatevines

Finally, after asking specifically, I was briefly shown into the modern cantina.  It was certainly modern – lots of stainless steel and control panels.  I was told that a lot of the kit was due for replacement.  Actually, maybe the buttons on the panels did look like they belonged to a time a couple of decades ago, but I was still impressed that it was already up for modernisation.  Maybe I am not a typical visitor, but I think they should be less coy about showing how wine is made today.

I vini

These wines were presented as a tasting, in the order listed below, and the notes were taken before the food was served.  They are all the current releases, and I understand that we covered the full range of Valle dell’Acate wines.  The prices are approximate/estimated UK retail prices.

Insolia, Vittoria Insolia DOC, 2012, 12.5%, £11
Watery appearance. Light, fresh, floral nose. Medium low acidity, dry, viscous, OK length. Drink now ***

Grillo, Zagra, Sicilia Bianco DOC, 2012, 13.0%, £12
Pale green. Fresh. Orange blossom. Medium low acidity, dry. Excellent length. This had a lot more character and flavour than the Insolia. Drink now ****

Bidis, Sicilia Bianco DOC, Chardonnay Insolia, 2011, 13.5%, £18
Light greeny gold. Estery nose, maybe some banana, and oak. Medium acidity. Dry. Light, fresh and sharp finish. Excellent length. Although a little oaky, this was not a heavy international style.  Drink now ****

Il Frappato, Vittoria Frappato DOC, 2012, 13.0%, £14
Pale purple ruby. Light confected red fruit. This reminded me of stereotypical Beaujolais. Medium low acidity. Medium low tannin. Drink now ***

Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico DOCG, Nero d’Avola Frappato, 2009, 13.5%, £16
Medium pale garnet. Intense. High-toned. Complex. Medium low acidity. As nose. Excellent length. Medium low tannin. This is more like it!  Drink now ****

Il Moro, Nero d’Avola, Sicilia IGT, 2009, 13.5%, £16
Medium pale garnet. Intense, fresh dark fruit. Medium acid. Medium tannin. As nose. Excellent length. Good minerality. Another good wine. Drink now or keep a few years ****

Rusciano, Sicilia IGT, Syrah and local grapes, 2010, 14.0%, £20
Medium pale purple ruby. Vaguely Syrah-like. Medium acid. As nose. Medium tannin. OK, but this wine did not really hold my interest. Needs more time ***

Tané, Sicilia IGT, Nero d’Avola Syrah, 2006, 15.0%, £25
Medium garnet tawny. Intense caramel and figs – flavours I perhaps wrongly associate with oxidation, but I know others like more than me. Medium low acidity. Medium tannin. As nose, but lighter than expected. Drink now. Not really to my taste ***

All in all, I felt this was a good range of very different wines.  The acid test is perhaps which wines we took away with us.  We were offered the remains of 2 bottles that were opened for the tasting.  Without much thought we decided on the Zagra and Bidis.  Despite the lack of thought, they turned out to be good choices, and we drank them as aperitifs over the next few days, and with a bread, cheese and ham meal.  After a few days of drinking the wines, I did not feel the need to change my original notes to reflect any new impressions.  And we bought a Zagra and Il Moro to take back to the UK.  The cantina prices were particularly favourable compared with UK prices, so it is a good place to stock with wine to take back in your car - unfortunately we had an airline luggage allowance to contend with.

Azienda Agricola COS

Published on June 2, 2013 in General and My tasting notes. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

We have just returned from a week staying at Locanda COS - accommodation at the Sicilian wine producer Azienda Agricola COS.  You might already know that I am a bit of a fan of COS wines (see here and here for example), but you probably did not know that we have long intended to holiday in Sicily, amongst other things to take in some Greek temples, like the Temple of Concord at Agrigento shown below. What a great solution it was to stay at COS.

costemple

I do not pretend to be a hotel critic or travel writer, so I am not going to dwell too much on the accommodation and the sightseeing.  Let’s just say we would be happy to return, and if you want any more details please ask.  However I feel confident in saying that we were provided with great breakfasts, dinners and wine.  The dinners, often just cooked for the us two, were excellent.  It is difficult to describe them briefly, as they varied so much.  In the best possible sense they were rustic rather than sophisticated, and the flavours and flavour combinations were superb.  Great raw ingredients were clearly an important basis for the quality of the food, but they were also put together very nicely.  Our chef was usually Pino, but one evening Angela (Guisto Occhipinti’s sister) stepped in to present some local Sicilian dishes.

The wine service was good, and equally varied.  You really have to dine several evenings to get a good picture!  When it was just the two of us, Pino usually opened a couple of bottles and let us get on with it.  On other occasions, I think basically when new people arrived, Joanna joined us and guided us through smaller quantities of a greater number of wines.  By the end of the week, we had worked our way through all the current COS releases (some more than once, but I am not complaining), and a couple of older wines.  A sip of their experimental sparkling Frappato, white and with the base wine fermented in amphora, passed my lips too, but it was sadly corked.  Our dinner hosts, Joanna and Pino are shown below.  They both deserve a big thank you for making our stay there enjoyable.

cospinojoanna1

And here is the view from our apartment (Tramontana), over the vineyards to some mountains on the horizon.  Just out of shot to the right, on a clerar day you can see Etna.  You can also see one of the COS dogs, keeping my wife company on an evening stroll. That particular one is easily distinguished from the others by his crazy sticky-out ears.

cosvines

One morning we were given a tour of the cantina.  Here are some of the amphoras used for the fermentation and initial aging of Pithos wines.  Red and wihite wines are fermented on their skins, and allowed to sit on their skins in amphora for a while after fermentation.  During fermentation the cap is pushed down with specially designed implements.  One can be operated through the small whole in the lid that is clamped to the top of the amphora. For some reason I expected there to be more amphoras – the image shows something like 40% of the total in that room, and there were 4 amphoras elsewhere for the base wine of the experimental sparkling Frappato.  All the ones shown are used for the Pithos Rosso.  Production of Pithos Bianco is relatively small, and occupied only one corner of the room.  The 2012 vintage had already been pumped out of the amphoras, but there was a problem with some of the wine, so it was returned to amphora in an attempt to rectify it – that is why two amphoras are in use with their lids clamped down

cosamph

But only the Pithos wines are fermented in amphora.  Most is fermented more conventionally in epoxy-lined concrete tanks in a recently designed building.  Again the scale is not huge. You can see there are 4 pictured on the left, and there are another 4 to the right, and that is it.  Gravity drives most of the flow.  You can see where the tanks are loaded from the walkways at the top, which is close to ground level, and the large neutral barrels used for aging some of the wines are at a lower lever level than the fermentation vessels.  Pumps only need to be used to get wine to the bottling line, which is again roughly at ground level.

cosconc

I didn’t hear the words “biodynamic” or “natural” mentioned once at COS, though I understand both terms apply to their wines.  But there were a couple of hints given in the tour.  One was the constant classical music being played in the main building with the concrete tanks, because the wines liked the vibrations.  The amphora room however survived without – perhaps the amphoras were enough to compensate for the lack of music.  The other hint was the reluctance to use stainless steel as a container, as it acts as an antenna and transfers unwanted energy to the wine.

I vini

Firstly, some brief notes on the designations.  The most important local designation is Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOGC, which can also have Classico appended if the grapes come from a more restricted zone and the wine is aged a bit longer before selling.  It is made from a blend of the local light and fruity Frappato variety, and the better known and more structured Nero d’Avola.  Typical proportions are 60-70% Nero d’Avola and 40-30% Frappato.  The COS Pithos Rosso blend would meet the Cerasuolo di Vittoria regulations, but the amphora vinification means it is not entitled to use the name.  Recently the catch-all designation of Sicilia IGT ceased to exist, so producers now have to use an alternative on their labels – either Terre Siciliane IGT or Sicilia DOC on the label, depending on their wine and how they wish it to be perceived.

The wines were each taken with one or more of the dinners we had at COS.  This was an ideal way of appreciating them, but as the food was different on different occasions, any comparisons must be taken with lashings of salt.  And, as ever, I make no claims to objectivity – indeed, I don’t believe it exists in wine tasting.  The prices are approximate, or estimated, UK retail.

Ramí, Sicilia IGT, Isolia - Grecanico, 2011, 12.0%, £17
Medium deep amber gold. Medium intense on the nose. Apricot and orange peel. Medium low acid. Sweet fruit. Drink now ****

Frappato, Terre Siciliane IGT, 2012, 12.0%, £17
Medium purple ruby. The nose seemed to get a bit lost in the glass. Medium low acid. Medium tannin. Intense confected raspberry fruity. Drink now, or soon. Gave *** on first occasion, but I enjoyed it more subsequently, so ****

Nero di Lupo, Sicilia IGT, Nero d’Avola, 2011, 12.0%, £17
Medium purple ruby. Intense sweet dark fruit. Medium acid. Low tannin. Drink now or leave to age a little ****

Pithos Bianco, Sicilia IGT, Grecanico, 2011, 11.5%, £20
Medium amber. Intense apricot and marmalade. Medium low acid. A little sweetness perhaps, or just ripe fruit. Some astringency. Excellent length. Drink now, but no hurry *****

Pithos, Sicilia IGT, Nero d’Avola – Frappato, 2011, 12.0%, £20
Medium pale, purple ruby. Fresh, vague red fruit.  Some vegetal notes, broad bean pods, or maybe raw mushrooms. Medium acid. Delicate. Sweet fruit. Medium low tannin. More attractive on palate than nose. Like Burgundy with a little age perhaps. Sweet fruit on finish. Drink now, but no hurry. The vegetal notes would have cost this wine a star, but I did not get them on subsequent bottles, so  *****

Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico DOCG, Nero d’Avola – Frappato, 2010, 13.0%, £20
Medium pale ruby garnet. Intense light berry fruit. Hint of raspberry maybe. Tad vegetal. Medium low acid. Medium high tannin. As nose. Could be a young non-Burgundian Pinot Noir. Excellent length. Drink now or maybe keep a few years ****

Maldafrica, Sicilia IGT, Cabernet Sauvignon – Merlot – Frappato, 2009, 13.0%, £20
Intense purple. Intense Cabernet blackcurrant nose. Medium acid. Medium high acid. Sweet fruit as per nose. Needs more time.  Not really for me, and there are plenty of good alternatives for this type of wine ****

Maldafrica, Sicilia IGT, Cabernet Sauvignon – Nero d’Avola, 2008, 14.0%, £20
Intense, dark fruit. Slightly Smokey. Serious wine. Medium acid. Sweet fruit.  Medium tannin. Excellent length. Drink now, but no hurry.  A different blend from the 2009, and a big step up in quality *****

Contrada, Sicilia IGT, Nero d’Avola, 2007, 13.0%, £40
Intense purple ruby. Intense mature dark fruit. A little towards an oxidised style, with prune and caramel notes. Medium acid. Medium tannin. Good now, but may improve over several years ****

The notes above are written in my usual telegraphic, rather grumpy, style, but I would like to stress that I enjoyed all of these wines, and was very happy to drink them with food over the course of a week.  Not once did I think I’d really rather be drinking something else.  I brought a couple of bottles of Contrada back with me, choosing that wine largely because it is not so readily available in the UK.  Then, one of my first acts on returning home was to order a case of Pithos Rosso – now only 11 bottles.

In praise of Swiss Sylvaner

Published on April 30, 2013 in My tasting notes. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

swisssylv

I recently hosted a small tasting of what I think of as mainstream and traditional styles of Swiss wine.  I wanted the tasting to have focus, so I limited myself to white wines from the French-speaking Cantons, in particular Sylvaner and Chasselas wines – or Johannisberg and Fendant as they are respectively known in Valais.  In the past I have defended Swiss wines against those who say they offer poor value for money, but now I am not so sure.  Perhaps to an extent I was a victim of the positive effects a good holiday can have on wine appreciation.  Now I will just agree with everyone else.

The 6 Chasselas wines we tried varied from “so flat and tasteless I’d really rather not bother” to “quite decent” (* to ***), but the prices varied from £10-16, and in that range you should hope for better.  Most wines were bought in Switzerland last year, mainly at the local Co-op supermarket, but a couple came from Nick Dobson Wines. Just for the record, here are the Chasselas wines we tried, with ratings and approximate or estimated Swiss retail prices converted to Sterling.  If you want to buy any of these from Nick Dobson Wines, they will be significantly more expensive.

Fendant, AOC Valais,Vins de Chavaliers, 2010, 11.5%, £11.50 *
Fendant, Sept Dizains, AOC Valais, Badoux, 2011, 12.0%, £10 ***
Aigle les Murailles, AOC Chablais, Badoux, 2011, 12.5%, £16 ***
Chasselas, Epesses, AOC Lavaux, Dizerens, 2011, 12.0%, £15.50 **
Chasselas, St-Saphorin, AOC Lavaux, Dizerens, 2011, 12.0%, £15.50 **
Chasselas de Satigny, AOC Genève, Domaine des Abeilles d’Or, 2011, 11.5%, £8.50 **

But I don’t want to focus on the negatives of the tasting.  The big eye-opener for me was how characterful the two Sylvaners were, how different they were from each other, and how much better they were than the Chasselas varietals.  See also how much more alcohol the Sylvaner wines have – 13.5% versus 11.5% for the two varietals of Vins de Chavaliers.  Neither Chasselas nor Sylvaner has a particularly good reputation, but at this tasting it was the only the Chasselas that conformed to stereotype.

Johannisberg, Hurlevent, AOC Valais, Les Fils de Charles Favre, 2011, 13.2%, £13.00 
Intense, fresh, vaguely citric and floral on the nose. Medium low acid, with some residual sugar.  Orange  on the palate, and some apricot. Gentle sweet flavours.  Full bodied and viscous. Excellent length. Finishes sweet and fruity.  Drink now.  ****

Johannisberg, AOC Valais, Vins de Chavaliers, 2011, 13.5%, £12.70
Intense and pungent. Cats pee and blackcurrant. Very much like a ripe Sauvignon Blanc with little fruit, but with no grassy and herbal notes either. Medium low acid and dry. Intense, as nose. Full bodied - can feel the alcohol in the mouth without it being hot. Excellent length. Bitter, slightly astringent finish. Refreshing.  Drink now.  ****

After the wine tasting bit, we continued to drink with Swiss cheeses from The Cheese Hamlet: Classic and 1er Cru Gruyère, Appenzeller, Raclette and Emmental.  For me, the Gruyères were the Sylvaners of the cheese world, while the others were more Chasselas cheeses.  So next time I want a Swiss wine and cheese evening, it will be Johannisberg and Gruyère. (Update after further cheese eating: Actually the Emmental is pretty good too.)