Tag Archive for 'biodynamics'

Afros in Vinho Verde

Published on June 2, 2012 in My tasting notes. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

This visit was organised as part of the 2012 Port Explorer’s Tour I introduced in an earlier post.  If you are already wondering what Afros has to do with Port, congratulations for spotting that!  Really the only relationship is that Vinho Verde, the region of Quinto do Casal do Paço where Afros wine are produced, is geographically very close to Porto.  This was the “and now for something completely different” moment of the tour, and one I was looking forward to.

We started off by surveying Casal do Paço’s vineyards.  The weather was not great.  It was cold and we did a lot of shower-dodging, but the soft light, with occasional rainbow, was very photogenic.

Vasco Croft, the producer and our generous host, was obviously very proud of the biodynamic viticulture employed at Casal do Paço and we were shown the specially constructed wooden hut, away from power lines, where the biodynamics preps were made. Initially, all the preparations were made from scratch here and hand-stirred, but as the business grew they now need to buy in some raw materials and employ an electric mixer.

And just outside the hut was a fountain “designed by an English scientist”, which pre-dynamises the water used for the preps, by way of a series of vortices.  At this point I am tempted to launch into one of my anti-biodynamic rants.  I am not going to, but I will say that I don’t believe a word about anything that biodynamics layers on top of organic agriculture.

Anyway, enough of all this biodynamics.  We headed slowly back to the main building for a tasting and lunch. En route we passed the mobile bottling line that was in operation at the time, but saw nothing of the winemaking itself. Inside and warmed-up, we started with a standing-up tasting, and then sat down to lunch with the wines and opened a few more bottles. And what a fantastic, long and relaxed lunch it was. My description here does not do it justice, but the first course was based around some wonderfully meaty prawns, the mains was wild boar with a honey coating, which was followed by a chocolate and olive oil mousse-type dessert. It was certainly one of my favourite meals of the trip – but then I did have a lot of favourite meals!

Here is Vasco at the table while we were waiting for lunch to be served.

Finally, the wines. Some of these wine used the “Aphros” spelling on the label - this is used to avoid the hair-style connotations that “Afros” might have in the USA.  Note that all the wines were from the Lima sub-region of Vinho Verde, and Loureiro and Vinhão are the white and red grape varieties used for these wine.  Where available, I have given approximate UK retail prices.

Afros, Ten, Vinho Verde, Loureiro, Branco, 2011, 12%
Watery green. Intense, fresh, floral and lemon. Medium high acidity. Soft and creamy. Excellent length. Drink now ****

Afros, Daphne, Vinho Verde, Loureiro, Branco, 2011, 12%
This has some skin maceration. Watery green. Intense, fresh, floral and lemon. Medium high acidity. Reminded me a little of red lips sweets. Excellent length ****

Afros, Vinho Verde, Loureiro, Branco, 2009, 12%, £13.00  
Watery green. Intense.  Petrol, lemon, peach. Not overpowering.  Medium high acid. Soft on the palate. Excellent length ****

Afros, Espumante de Vinho Verde, Loureiro, Reserva, 2008, 12%
Pale green. Intense.  Fresh, yeasty.  Medium acidity.  Soft and light. Excellent length *****

Afros, Vinho Verde, Vinhão, Tinto, 2009, 12.5%, £13.00
Opaque purple. Intense sweet dark fruit. Medium high acid. Low tannin. Slightly frizzante?  Drink now ****

Afros, Silenus, Vinho Verde, Vinhão,  2009, 13.5%
Aged in barriques.  Opaque purple.  Crispy bacon. Medium high acid. Low tannin. Drink now ****

Afros, Espumante de Vinho Verde, Vinhão, Super Reserva, 12%
NV, but this was from 2005 and 2008. Intense purple ruby.  Intense funky dark fruit.  Medium acid. Dry. Drink now ***

I am afraid some of the details of the wines got a bit hazy towards the end, but I think I have them right.  We were also offered a fortified red at the end of the meal, but if I remember correctly this was not commercially available.

Overall, I was very impressed by these wines.  What I remember best after several weeks were the white wines.  These were not recognisable as the cheap and cheerful Vinho Verde that I remember from the UK.  But neither were they like the intense and searing Vihno Verde Alvarinho variants that I enjoyed a few times in Porto on this trip.  The memory that lingers is one of soft, subtle and nuanced wine – a bit like the image of the vineyards at the top of this post.

Natural Wines from Les Caves de Pyrène

Published on May 28, 2012 in My tasting notes. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Less than a week after wine lovers daarn saaf were enjoying RAW and The Natural Wine Fair, a few of us oop north were doing our bit to better understand what natural wines have to offer.  My methodology was to ask Les Caves de Pyrène to suggest a mixed case for a tasting, leaving them to define the term how they wanted and send me a representative sample.  These wines were not review samples, but paid for in the normal way – in this case, effectively by the local tasting group I belong to.  In addition to the wines tasted and described below, the Occhipinto 2011 Bianco and Rosso were also suggested and purchased.

We kicked off with five whites. The empties are shown above on our 100% herbicide-free lawn.

Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Imprompta, Mattia Barzaghi, 2010, 12.5%, £10.73
Pale straw. Intense, fresh, floral. Yoghurt. Medium high acid. Dry. Clean and refreshing. Excellent length. Drink now. Very pleasant. A solid ***

Val du Loire, Sauvignon, Hervé Villmade, 2011, 13.0%, £9.65
Pale gold. Intense.  Ashtray - in a positive way! Fresh. Hoppy aromatics. Medium acid. Dry. Gooseberry. Subtle. Excellent length. Incense-like woodiness. Drink now ****

Vin de Savoie, Les Alpes, Gringet, Dominique Belluard, 2010, 12.0%, £14.63
Medium pale gold. Intense and full. Apple. Banana. Medium acid. Dry. Excellent length. Caramel. Drink now ****

Montlouis sur Loire, Minéral+, Un Saumon dans la Loire, 2011, 13.0%, £13.67
Medium pale gold. Over-ripe apple – oxidised. Medium acid. Flat, and lacking fruit. Drink now **

Chablis, À Chablis, Le Vendangeur Masqué, 2010, 13.0%; £14.87
Medium pale gold. Vaguely citrus. Medium high acid. Dry. Apply too. Fresh and tingly. Drink now ***

Then we moved onto the reds. These were also double-decanted not long before the tasting to take the wine off all sediment I was expecting from these possibly unfined and unfiltered wines. It turned out there was very little sediment.

Beaujolais, Yvon Métras, 2010, 12.0%, £14.45
Medium pale ruby. Intense fresh red fruit. Juicy fruit. Pinot Noir nose.  Medium+ acid. Excellent length. Low tannin. Drink now ****

Saumur Champigny, Domaine des Roches Neuves, 2011, 13.0%, £11.03
Intense purple ruby. Intense fresh blackberry. Medium high acidity. Low tannin. Fresh and juicy. Excellent length. Drink now ***

Côtes du Rhône, Les Romanins, Domaine Ferme Saint-Martin, 2010, 13.5%, £9.41
Medium purple ruby. Baby nappies and cheese – again in a positive way! Some red fruit too. Medium high acid. Rather nice. Elegant. Subtle. Excellent length. Drink now ****

Coteaux de Langedoc, Montpeyroux, Domaine d’Aupilhac, 2009, 14.0%, £13.43
Intense purple. Intense dark fruit. Oak. Medium acid. Medium low tannin. Drink now. A rather conventional wine ***

Cannonau di Sardegne, Mamuthone, Guiseppe Sedilesu, 2009, 14.5%, £15.47
Intense purple ruby. Intense raisiny. Slightly oxidised.  Medium+ acid. Rather nice and elegant. Medium high tannin. Refreshing. Fantastic length. Good to drink now but will probably improve over the next years.  Maybe I was over generous, but as this wine made the biggest impression on me, it gets *****

Polishing off the remains the following evening confirmed to me that the Loire Sauvignon and the Vin de Savoie were my favourite whites.  And the fact that all the reds apart from the Côtes du Rhône disappeared on the night of the tasting shows which wines were the most popular amongst the whole group!

As far as I can make out, all of these wines were made from organic or biodynamic grapes, fermented by ambient yeasts, and with minimal sulphur additions. All labels bore the “contains sulphites” text, but that could required for the low levels of sulphur that result solely from the fermentation process.

I did not experience any of the natural wine horror stories occasionally mentioned by others – everything we tasted was recognisably wine, and definitely not slightly fizzy cloudy cider.  The only faulty bottle was the Mountlouis, and to be fair there were those at the table who enjoyed that too.  The Côtes du Rhône was a tad bretty, but for me it was at a level that added to rather than diminished the overall experience.  Oh, and there was one wine (can’t remember which one) that had obviously undergone some secondary fermentation in the bottle as it let off a fizz when I opened it, and was initially a bit spritzy, but by the time we got round to tasting it all signs of pettilance had gone.  Really, I don’t think the absence of faults was too surprising in that I suspect the winemaking was not that different from the vast majority of what I would consider to be good wines.

Generally speaking, the wines seemed to go down well at the tasting.  One comment I got was that the wines were “gentle” – no hard edges.  I certainly thought they were enjoyable, but I was not sure about the idea propounded by some that natural wines allow the terroir (or the grape variety, depending on who you speak to) to shine through.  I was getting a lot of flavours that I am feeling were probably due mainly to the natural fermenation.  If we had tasted blind, I would have struggled more than usual to identify varieties and regions.  That certainly has a positive side – if I had to trade typicity for interest, I would go for interest most of the time.  But even I sometimes like to know what to expect when I open a bottle.

The Riedel Biodynamic glass

Published on April 1, 2012 in General. 15 Comments Tags: , .

I have been sent a prototype wine glass for the Riedel Biodynamic range to be launched later this year.  I can only presume that I was selected for this honour because I have blogged so much on biodynamic wine, but if they had actually read my posts they would have realised that I am not one exactly biodynamics’ biggest cheer-leader.

You might have imagined that Riedel would have aimed to produce different shaped glasses in their biodynamic range – fruit shaped for fruit days, root shaped for root days etc.  But no. Riedel are sticking to the tried-and-tested, and in fact used the classic Vinum Chianti shape for their prototype.  You might have noticed that Tesco no longer only hold press tastings on fruit days, this one for example was on July 5th 2011, a root day, and it is rumoured that they are already using these special biodynamic glasses, masquerading as Vinum Chiantis, to compensate.

Riedel Biodynamic (left) and Vinum Chianti (right)

The special thing about the new range is that Riedel are adding components of standard biodynamic preparations to the molten glass.  For the prototype they are eschewing the more exotic red deer bladder and cattle peritoneum, and limiting themselves to the ingredients of preparation 500: cow horn and cow manure.  But don’t let the manure put you off – they only use homeopathic concentrations, and the high temperature of the molten glass will sterilise the manure.  According to Riedel, the difficult bit was designing equipment that would stir the molten glass sufficiently fast to create a vortex.

If, as Riedel say, they use a 100g of cow horn and manure in every 10 tonnes of molten glass, it is easy to do a back-of-the-fag-packet calculation to show that there are only 1 or 2 cow molecules in each wine glass, and as likely as not they will finish up in the stem or foot of the glass rather than the bowl.  We cynics might take that as proof that they could not possibly have any effect, but apparently that is to miss the point.  Even if there are no cow molecules in any particular glass, the additions will continue to energise the whole batch of glass, and focus astral forces on the wine contained within it, which naturally improves the flavour.

Ever the scientist, I put the prototype glass to the test.  I poured the same wine into the Biodynamic Riedel and an ordinary Vinum Chianti, and had my wife hand the glasses to me without saying which was which.  Of course, the wine tasted identical in both glasses.  Quelle surprise!

But if you are a believer, and want a chance to win my prototype Riedel Biodynamic , add a comment to this post starting with “I would love to own a Riedel Biodynamic glass because…”   Only entries received before 12 noon today will be accepted.  Unfortunately, after my trial I don’t know which glass is which, so I would have to send out the Vinum Chianti as well.  Please return the non-biodynamic glass when you have figured out which one it is.