Bitter and Bubbly, the Spritz Evolves – The New York Times

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June 18, 2016 at 06:50PM

Wine Reviews: Hentley Farm

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Hentley Farm is a Barossa Valley player to watch. In the 1990s, founders Keith and Alison Hentschke purchased their 150-acre vineyard in the Seppeltsfield area. Their first Hentley Farm wines debuted in 2002. Two years later, they purchased the adjacent Clos Otto block, which is now the source of their high-end Shiraz.

Their wines display the classic Barossa depth and concentration, but I was surprised at the vibrancy and freshness of some of these wines. While the Clos Otto is truly a stunner of a wine (with a price tag to match) the relative value of the other Hentley Farm Shiraz offerings is very impressive.

The wines are crafted by Andrew Quin, a horticulturist turned winemaker who worked with St. Francis in Sonoma and Jacques Lurton in Bordeaux before returning to make wine in his native Australia.

These wines were received as trade samples and tasted sighted.

Review: 2015 Hentley Farm Riesling – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Eden Valley
SRP: $22
Lemon-lime color. Vibrant aromatic of sliced limes and white peaches, mixed in with honeysuckle, crushed chalk and new tennis balls. Precise acidity frames the wine, this is laser-like in its focus but generous in its mouthfeel and fruit (lime, white peach, honeydew, lychee). I get a lot of oil, chalk, minerals and honeysuckle as well, along with a flinty, smashed rock element that lights up the finish. Very pretty stuff, dry and bracing but plenty of flavor and significant power that will enable this to stand some cellar time. The fruit comes from two blocks planted in the late 70s and early 80s in gray sandy loam and granite. (89 points IJB)

Review: 2015 Hentley Farm Rosé – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley
SRP: $20
Gorgeous strawberry/watermelon color. Bright and fresh but tons of fruit (strawberry, watermelon, red apple peel) along with a lovely spiced tea and rose hip essence. Medium+ bodied, this is ripe and velvety but the acidity stays tart and fresh. More watermelon and tart strawberry, with some candied apple peel. I also get some white peppery spice, crushed shells and floral perfume. A fuller style but still so bright and refreshing. Grenache and Syrah. (88 points IJB)

Review: 2015 Hentley Farm Shiraz – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley
SRP: $28
Bright purple color. The aromas are rich and dark, with blackberries, plums and black cherries, along with violets, clay and some mocha. Full-bodied and saucy but pleasant, this shows smooth but structured tannins, which are balanced by moderate acid that keeps the wine from being heavy. Flavors of juicy black cherries and blackberries mix with elements of fallen leaves, sweet eucalyptus, vanilla and hints of pepper and earth. Big but suave, this is drinking nicely now but could be tamed in the cellar for a few years for sure. Aged 10 months in 15% new French oak Sourced from seven blocks in estate vineyards at Seppeltsfield. (88 points IJB)

Review: 2014 Hentley Farm Cabernet Sauvignon – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley
SRP: $28
Deep currant, purple color. Smells of fresh black currants and cherries, a lovely earth and savory herbal characteristic along with some coffee grounds. Full but silky with structured but fine tannins and some fresh acidity that keeps it in check. Juicy black cherries, cassis, the fruit has a tart and fresh edge. Notes of rose petals, bay leaf and clove, the toast and coffee elements are subtle and woven in well. Quite pretty now but I could see holding this for three or four years at least. (87 points IJB)

Review: 2015 Hentley Farm The Stray Mongrel – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley
SRP: $28
Vibrant ruby color. I love these spicy, smoky, meaty notes that mix in with all sorts of red fruit (from tart strawberry to raspberry jam) — lots going on but the aromas are nuanced. Full-bodied but so vibrant with fine tannins and bright acidity, which keeps the wine fresh and forward. Jammy raspberries and strawberries mix with some roasted plum elements, the fruit is blended with earth, white pepper, green herbs and a streak of smoky-bacony goodness. Delicious now, but could open up in the cellar. Loving the vibrancy of this wine despite the 14.7% alcohol. A blend of Grenache, Shiraz and Zinfandel. (89 points IJB)

Review: 2013 Hentley Farm Shiraz The Beauty – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley
SRP: $60
Dark purple color. Needs a bit of air to show the full spectrum of its rich, dark fruit (blueberry, boysenberry, black cherry). I also get some violets, sweet pipe tobacco, black pepper and eucalyptus. A saucy but well-structured wine with sturdy tannins. I’m really surprised by the acidity, which cleans the wine up on the palate and keeps me wanting more. Gorgeous and pure fruit, tart but full, rich but silky, pretty much all the black and blue fruit you can imagine. Accents of pepper, soy, eucalyptus add complexity, and there’s a fresh sense of rocky soil minerality as well. The vanilla, coffee and toast are integrated well. Gorgeous. I love it’s youthfulness but this is definitely a candidate for five-to-eight years in the cellar. This spends 14 months in 40% new French oak. (92 points IJB)

Review: 2012 Hentley Farm Shiraz The Beast – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley
SRP: $85
Dense purple color. Bold aromas of saucy but tart black and blue fruit (blackberry, blueberry and tart black cherries). I get a lot of smoke, scorched earth, charcoal notes, which weave together with graphite, soy and eucalyptus. Full-bodied (of course, as the name and appellation suggest) but this wine has velvety tannins and some moderating acidity that keeps this beast of a wine tamed. The blackberry, blueberry and boysenberry fruit is pure, lively, ripe and tart. Such purity and vibrancy in this fruit, it’s straight up delicious, too. Loads of smoke, loamy soil, coffee, dark chocolate mixed in with notes of eucalyptus, white pepper, soy and cedar. Long, warm finish. A beast of a wine, sure, but beautiful as well as will get even more so with five or seven years in the cellar. (93 points IJB)

Review: 2012 Hentley Farm Shiraz Clos Otto – Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley
SRP: $165
Deep purple color. The aromas unravel to show saucy plums, berry compote, blueberry and currant jams, but the non-fruit complexities packed in here are really impressive: smoked meat, cracked pepper, charcoal, clove, dark roast coffee, vanilla. This is a deep and bold wine that needs time or a good decant to show its full aromatic potential. Full and velvety on the palate, this has some refreshing and surprising acidity and some sturdy tannins, so the structure is wonderful. Flavors of plum cake, boysenberry, blueberry and currant compote, the fruit is big but also pure, even elegant. Black olive, pepper, charcoal, earth, coffee and ginger snap cookie add all sorts of complexity. With time, more and more earth and spice flavors come out. Needs four-to-five years at least, but this is a beauty. From a low-yielding, east-facing, red clay block in the estate. (94 points IJB)

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June 18, 2016 at 05:13AM

The good Sauvignon Blanc quiz – test your knowledge – Decanter

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June 18, 2016 at 04:31AM

Surprise winners – DWWA 2016

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Croatia, Switzerland, Brazil, Bolivia, China, Czech Republic and Turkey. These are not normally the first countries you might think of when looking for wine. Yet all pulled off surprise wins at this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards.

There were high-level wins throughout this year’s DWWA for smaller wine producing countries, emphasising the wine world’s growing strength in depth.

Surprise winners of the top platinum – best in show medals include a red wine from Croatia and a white from Switzerland:

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Platinum – Best in Show: Best White Blend over £15

95/100 – Diego Mathier Réserve, Nouveau Salquenen Ag, Adrian & Diego Mathier 2014, Valais, Switzerland

60% Savagnin, 30% Marsanne, 10% Petite Arvine

Platinum – Best in Show: Best Red Single-Varietal over £15

95/100 – Veralda 2015, Istria, Croatia

100% Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso

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Brazil, which hosts the Rio 2016 Olympics this summer, also performed strongly in the DWWA 2016 medals table, taking one gold and two platinum medals in the over £15 categories.

Staying in South America, a Bolivian Tannat Malbec blend picked up a surprise platinum medal beating off stiff competition from better known rivals Chile and Argentina.

Sweet Surprise

The sweet wine category perhaps showed the most diversification of new and surprising areas with platinum awards going to a Croatian sweet wine, a Vidal based Ice Wine from China and a Riesling based Ice Wine from the Czech Republic. Czech Riesling is showing promise for dry wines too with Zamecké Vinarstvi Bzenec’s 2011 Riesling collecting a platinum award.

Nero d’Avola, best known for creating Sicily’s top red reds, was the grape used to create Turkey’s platinum winning entry this year while Grace winery in Japan secured two platinums.

Just 130 platinum medals were awarded in total; one level below ‘best in show’ and equivalent to the regional trophy medal in previous DWWA competitions.

The 2016 DWWA acknowledged and celebrated that the wine map is always expanding, changing and improving. This ever evolving landscape is just one of the many things that makes the current wine wine scene so exciting and vibrant.

See all DWWA 2016 Results here

 

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June 16, 2016 at 04:47AM

Anson on Thursday: Why are Bordeaux châteaux holding so much stock back?

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Jane Anson looks at the main reasons why Bordeaux châteaux are still holding stock back…

It’s been a slow burn really.

Châteaux have always kept some wine back for themselves. In the 17th century it might have been a barrel of their best grapes for the owner. In tough times, it was often the buyers who set the terms – a contract from 1916 between Château Margaux and a small group of négociants who agreed to buy the entirety of its crop for five years specified that the estate was allowed to keep four barrels back for its own use. Later, during the 1970s oil crisis, négociants would regularly refuse to take any wine at all and châteaux would be forced to keep stocks piling up in their cellars.

So watching what is happening today must be rather surprising for some of the older guard in Bordeaux. All of a sudden it is increasingly fashionable for the region’s top châteaux to choose to keep back increasing percentages of their harvest to age in their own cellars and release at some later, usually unspecified date.

The late Daniel Lawton, one of Bordeaux’s most illustrious courtiers from the firm of Tastet Lawton, told me a few years ago, ‘Wine gathers in price when most of it has been drunk, so the chateaux should have little interest in keeping too much of it’.

If this is true, why are they doing it? And what does it mean for us?

• More Bordeaux 2015 price rises as campaign heats up

Squeezing supply

Younger brokers admit that while the old theories still hold true, land values and on-paper stock values have become increasingly important to many classified châteaux, especially if they have shareholders to answer to. Put this together with an increased demand for older wines with provenance, maintaining greater control over distribution and the temptation to keep prices high by squeezing supply and suddenly things start to make more sense.

The strategy has become increasingly obvious during recent en primeur campaigns, starting with a trickle and building slowly and steadily as the Bordelais follow their tried-and-tested route of ‘if it’s good enough for my neighbour…’.

The first nod must of course be given to the spectre at the feast of every en primeur campaign since 2011: Château Latour. It is no coincidence that a trend to holding back stock has followed the First Growth’s exit from the system, although few chateaux are as clear in their strategy.

Leaving en primeur

You can take your pick of approaches. We have Latour keeping 100% of stock back until it is approaching its drinking window (the exact time varies on the vintage) and Yquem also stepping entirely back from en primeur but selling when in bottle, so two years after harvest.

Alongside this is Palmer that sells 50% en primeur and keeps another 50% back to be sold as a mature wine, and then Cos d’Estournel and Ducru Beaucaillou, that keep perhaps 15% back per vintage. Plenty of others, from Pontet to Lynch to Margaux, seem to have a more flexible approach that changes depending on the vintage while there are a few still out there that continue to release 90%-plus (Grand Puy Lacoste just might still fall into this camp), but their numbers are dwindling. As châteaux split allocations between usually two or three courtiers and up to 30 or 50 négociants getting exact numbers is tough, but the trend towards keeping wine back is acknowledged by all.

Nick Martin of Wine Owners says that the elusive promise of the Chinese market is a big factor. ‘China is a market that doesn’t buy en primeur, and yet it is experiencing a renewal of demand for older wines after a few difficult years. This is encouraging chateaux to hold on to significantly more of the harvest so that they can serve the Asian market down the line’.

This undoubtedly is part of the equation, but dig down and you’ll find a host of other explanations.

• Bordeaux 2015 value: Wines to look for

Stocks for the cellars

‘In my opinion it is not in the nature of our mission to hold on to stock for speculative reasons,’ says Bruno Borie at Ducru Beaucaillou. ‘Our back stocks are ‘safety stocks’ for our own library, or ‘irrigation stocks’ that can guarantee continuous supply to the market. Keeping back inventory to release when ready to drink, say after 10 years,  makes a lot of sense to be honest. But it is not realistic at this point from either a distribution or production standpoint’.

For others, such as Stéphanie de Bouard-Rivoal at Château Angélus, keeping stock back is a case of learning from past mistakes, and is not done with the intention of releasing them commercially.

‘Historically, among the top 30 châteaux in Bordeaux, Angélus has always sold an extremely high proportion as futures – up to 95 % of the production in every vintage,’ says Boüard-Rivoal. ‘It was not a strategy exactly but rather an attempt to satisfy the demand within the limit of the production’.

‘The problem was it left us with critical level of stocks and did not allow us to pour old vintages in decent quantities. My intention now is to hold up to 20% of the production every year. This has nothing to do with a commercial strategy, as very little of these wines will be offered to the market afterward. We are holding them instead so that our grand-children can pour wines that are 50 years old more frequently than we do.’

Later releases

In contrast over at Château Palmer, managing director Thomas Duroux has kept 50% of Palmer back at the estate since the 2010 vintage, with a clear commercial strategy for doing so. ‘The market has changed,’ he points out. ‘There are still some people who want to build their own cellars but many more, particularly younger drinkers, do not. So we keep a significant amount of Palmer back to release after 10 years, although we still sell around 95% of Alter Ego de Palmer in the traditional manner’.

‘We do still want to release en primeur for Palmer itself but do not expect merchants to take and store the wine. We will do that back at the château, because there is a provenance premium for ex-château, and we want to ensure the best conditions for them. But Palmer has never sold a single bottle direct to consumers – we support the negociant system’.

You’ll find another reasoning over at Yquem, where managing director Pierre Lurton has said several times that the en primeur system doesn’t work for even this most iconic of sweet wines in a system weighted towards the reds. Instead, for the last few years they have released Yquem once in bottle at around €210 ex-Bordeaux. I understand that this is what they are looking to do in the future also, so offering stability of pricing combined with a regular September release (something that has worked very well for Opus One with the Place de Bordeaux).

These four different approaches show how tough it is to decipher what is happening right now in Bordeaux, and what impact it will have on drinkers of these wines in the future.

‘It’s hard to say how all of this will affect things going forward,’ Anthony Maxwell of Liv-ex said this week. ‘Latour has had mixed results with its strategy so far, but it is just one winery, plus the volumes out on the market are still relatively small. If you multiply it out to something like 30 chateaux, will the market have enough capacity and indeed thirst for the supply? Combine that with increased quality of wines from other regions, and consumers’ greater appetite to look beyond Bordeaux, and it starts to look like a risk’.

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June 15, 2016 at 09:16PM

Champagne de Castelnau Hors Catégorie launch – Decanter

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June 16, 2016 at 03:19AM

Champagne Flutes or Glasses?

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The taste of Champagne is greatly affected by the shape of the glass! So in order to have the best tasting sparkling wine, here’s a little insight on how to choose the right glasses for your Champagne preference.

First things first, not all sparkling wine is Champagne. For example, if you love Prosecco you might already know that it’s made with different grapes and a different winemaking method. If you compare Champagne with Prosecco back-to-back you’ll be surprised how different they taste. Thus, it stands to reason that each wine might taste better in a different shaped flute or glass. And this is true!

Of course, you don’t need to have every sparkling wine flute ever made, just pick the one that fits your drinking preference.

Guide to Champagne Glasses

Selecting The Best Glass For You

There are some clear differences as to how the shape will affect your perception of how different sparkling wines taste. There are a few other considerations to keep in mind:

Shape

As the illustration suggests, glasses with smaller openings and bowls are less expressive than glassware with a larger bowl shape. So, if you drink more affordable sparkling wine on a regular basis, you may actually end up preferring the flute-style glass, because it will hide flaws and make the wine taste more spritzy.

Material

The glass material will either be crystal or standard glass. The major difference between the two materials is thickness. Standard glass requires a greater thickness for durability whereas crystal can be made thinner. Generally speaking, the less material that interacts with your palate, the less obtrusive it will be to the flavor. Thus, you should expect the finest Champagne glasses to be made of crystal (both lead and lead-free). There are many outstanding crystal manufacturers to seek out, but be sure to add Riedel, Spiegalau, Schott-Zwiesel and Zalto to your shortlist as some of the most trusted brands with sommeliers.

Durability

The biggest problem with Champagne glasses is that they are top heavy which increases their potential to slide off trays or get knocked over and break. If you’re already nervous around stemmed glasses, you’ll be even more uneasy around Champagne flutes. Champagne flutes are essentially the bane of people who talk with their hands. If this sounds like you, you might want to stick to a standard white wine glass.

Maintaining Your Glassware

One last consideration to make if you’re buying Champagne glasses is your willingness to hand-wash them (who loves dishes?). Standard glass is non-porous and can handle rigorous washing in a dishwasher, whereas fine crystal is more finicky. It’s like the difference between maintaining a Toyota Camry vs a Porsche Turbo. Again, the pragmatic solution isn’t always as exciting, but remember, it’s about the wine…

What We Use

We were delighted to see that Riedel’s new high-end glassware collection, Superleggero , includes a Champagne glass that mimics the white wine glass shape.

We drink sparkling wine at least 2–3 times a week at the office and we open everything from cheap bottles of Cava to prestige Champagne. What do we use? A high-quality crystal white wine glass. We’ve found that the white wine glass gives us the most honest assessment of the wine: it doesn’t hide flaws and it’s easier to stick your nose in (and clean up afterwards). In fact, when researching the latest trends on Champagne glassware for this article, we were delighted to see that several glassware manufacturers are using something similar to a white wine shape for prestige Champagne!

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Selecting the best Glasses

Understand why certain wine glasses are better for certain types of wine.

The Importance of a Proper Glass

Wine Folly – Learn about wine.

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June 15, 2016 at 03:26AM

The Three Ages of Wine Cork Production: A Visit to Corticeira Amorim

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It is impossible to drive through the Alentejo region of Portugal without seeing the dark trees that dot the landscape. Pretty soon you notice the lines on the trunks where the bark has been harvested and then you know for sure that you are in a cork oak (Quercus suber) forest, the densest concentration of these trees in the world (see map above).

Cork’s Medieval Roots

Planting a cork oak tree is a statement of faith in the future. The first harvest must wait for 15 years and then the cork will be of low quality, unsuitable for natural cork closures. The second and better harvest that yields more usable cork comes 9 years later. Only 9  years after that (and every 9 years into the future) can the highest quality cork be taken. Few other things in the world of wine (producing 40-year old Tawny Port, for example) can compare to cork in terms of optimistic forward thinking.

Sue and I visited both Porto and Alentejo during our recent trip to Portugal and Antonio Amorim and Carlos de Jesus of Corticeira Amorim, the world leader in cork closures, invited us to visit their factories in these two regions to see first-hand what I am calling the Three Ages of cork.

Cork is an ancient product — the Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all sealed their wine jars with cork. The harvesting of it is laborious hand work since each tree has its own configuration. Photos of modern cork harvests could easily be mistaken for medieval paintings.

Industrial Revolution

Stepping into the Amorim factory in Coruche, you get an initial sense of moving forward in time to the industrial revolution. There is still a lot of hand work here. Sorting the processed cork bark pieces, for example, still requires human judgement as they are inspected and graded for quality one at a time. The key to making a profit in cork is to waste nothing, so each cork piece must go to its best use and the waste at each step recycled into a lower-priced product.

Almost nothing is thrown away. One item that was headed for the power-supplying waste burner was a piece of cork that was badly infected with TCA, the source of cork taint. What a horrible smell!  Until a machine can consistently detect all the potential problems with cork including TCA, cracking, insect damage and so on, these workers’ jobs are very secure.

The factory was loud with the clamber of industrial machinery as every task that could be mechanized was mechanized. It gave me a sense of what those 19th century British textile mills must have been like.

Interestingly, the finest corks closures made from the best quality raw material are hand-punched by skilled craftsmen (see photo above). These corks need to be as close to perfect as possible and so far nothing can replace the human eye for seeing just where the cork’s sweet spot is (and what parts should be recycled down the line for other products).

NDtech: Cork for the 21st Century

It would be easy to think of cork just this way — a medieval product made using industrial revolution technology — but this viewpoint misses a lot as we learned when we visited Amorim’s second factory near Porto.

Here we saw many of the same processes as in the south, but the focus was different because Carlos and Antonio wanted us to see the progress that has been made at improving cork closures and addressing the issues that allowed synthetic stoppers and screw cap technology to make dramatic inroads in this market.

Innovative new production processes and seriously obsessive attention to detail have now all but eliminated the incidence of detectable TCA contamination in Amorim corks throughout the product line, which is a big deal and came only after intense and expensive research and process innovation. But that was not good enough and so earlier this year Amorim unveiled its latest innovation, NDtech corks.

Amorim scientists guided us into the controlled environment that you see in the video above and we saw the NDtech (think non-detectible TCA levels) process at work. ndTech really does individually-inspect each and every cork that goes through the process and guarantees then all to be TCA-free at human sensory threshold levels.

Amorim is convinced that the process works and we saw persuasive data about these and other Amorim cork closures. Now the challenge is to scale up to meet the demand for these, the very best corks that can be made.

Three Ages in One Product

I find  it interesting that cork is so many things at once. It is a natural product, of course, but one that is necessarily harvested and then processed by hand and manufactured using machines and processes from a variety of periods. It is also increasingly a technological product.

Making excellent cork closures is complicated as we saw at the Amorim factories and doing so profitably is even more complicated. We were impressed with the way that every scrap and bit of cork is put to use in closures and other cork products and every ounce of value realized. Environmental and economic sustainability go hand-in-hand.

Meeting the challenge of synthetic and screw-cap closures has not been easy for cork producers, who saw a some of their market share disappear. Hard work, expensive research and technical innovation has turned this around, however, and now many consumers and wineries who moved away from cork in the past are taking a new look.

Someone once accused the economist John Maynard Keynes of expressing a view that was inconsistent with his previous statements.” When the facts change,” Keynes replied, “I change my opinion. What do you do?” The facts about cork — especially the TCA situation — have changed in the past few years. No wonder many people in the industry have revised their views on cork.

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Many thanks to Antonio Amorim and Carlos de Jesus for he opportunity to see the three ages of cork with our own eyes and learn about the scientific progress from the experts. This concludes the short series of past-present-future stories from the Alentejo. Come back next week for a look at some unexpected wine tourism opportunities we found in Portugal.

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June 13, 2016 at 09:01PM

Decanter wine travel guide: Santorini, Greece

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The black- and red-sand beaches of this volcanic island offer a stunning backdrop to some of the world’s most extreme vineyards, writes Nico Manessis. It’s worth braving the tourist crowds for…

Santorini wine travel guide

Most people head to Santorini to experience the jaw-dropping views and ever-changing colours, seen from the sugar-cube white houses perched all along the volcanic rim of the caldera. These jagged cliffs are the product of the huge eruption that occurred around 1613 BC.

• Spend 24 hours in Santorini

• Best Santorini restaurants, hotels and shops

What you are experiencing is the force of nature’s catastrophic power, as well as its inexhaustible capacity for beauty. There are many sides to this fashionable destination, from the gorgeous volcanic black- and red-sand beaches and vibrant nightlife to the unique cubist, cave-like architecture.

• Read also: Top Athens wine bars and restaurants

The creamy-white pumice that covered most of the island as a result of the eruption gives rise to one of the most improbable vineyard locations. Sun and strong winds necessitated the ingenious, ground-hugging, basket-pruned method of vine training.

Santorini’s sweet Vinsanto was traditionally exported, mostly to Tsarist Russia, rich Greek industrialists and the merchants of Egypt, but the market collapsed after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Much reduced in acreage today, Santorini soldiers on, with emphasis on the mineral-laden, bone-dry expressions of Assyrtiko, and some Vinsanto.

Today, the island’s ungrafted vines amount to 1,100 hectares. Of this, 65% are planted with the Assyrtiko grape. Not content with merely surviving in this apparently hostile natural environment, this variety manages to produce a singular, bone-dry white of inimitable character.

When Assyrtiko stepped onto the world stage 15 years ago, commentators coined the phrase ‘Chablis on steroids’. They’ve come a long way since, today offering mouthwatering freshness and food-friendly salinity. Their tannic bite gives them an edge, not unlike the drama of the windswept caldera cliffs. Few wines capture such a pronounced sense of place. If wine is geography in a bottle, the fact that ‘revisiting’ the island is just a click away is modern-day magic.

• See also: Greek white wines: 10 great value choices

Barren landscape

This lesser-known world can be discovered through Santorini’s extensive wine routes. Dotted with unique basket-shaped vine crowns, prickly pears and volcanic black rocks embedded in the creamy-white topsoil, the barren landscape presents an ever-changing, often lunar-like vista. The island is 70km2 and driving times to any winery, depending on your base, vary from 25 minutes to no longer than 45 minutes.

A short list of wineries invites discovery. Domaine Sigalas is a boutique winery, with refined, bone-dry whites – look for the creamy Kavalieros – and it’s one of the addresses championing the rare red Mavrotragano grape. It’s set to trial eggshaped cement tanks with the 2016 harvest.

Next stop is Venetsanos Winery, carved out of pumice on the caldera cliff edge, and rich in history and atmosphere. At its height, Santorini wine production was mostly made into Vinsanto – sweet dessert wine made from sun-dried between 1860-1920, an era when wine wineries housed in farmsteads carved into the rock – many of which are now converted to villas or boutique hotels. The terraces at Venetsanos offer one of the island’s most breathtaking views, and in the wines, nuances from their Megalochori and Pyrgos vineyards abound.

Further south, you can see what a 19thcentury canava really looked like at the Koutsoyannopoulos Wine Museum. A large part of the underground cellars have been converted into a museum and the singlevineyard Ksera Homata is one of several characterful, terroir-driven wines you can try.

 

• RELATED: More wine travel inspiration

Argyros Estate is a historic Vinsanto producer in a new, modern, Cycladic-styled winery. It’s a must-visit to try the island’s most significant aged Vinsantos – the 12-year-old is a particular star. This sweet wine style is a life-saver – literally. The late Mattheos Argyros, grandfather of the current namesake, used to tell of how intertwined the islanders’ lives were with grape farming. During World War II, they hid cherished casks of Vinsanto, knowing their worth. As there were no fruit trees on the island, and little or no sugar on the black market, they would dilute the wine, rich in residual sugar, with rainwater. This magic potion saved lives on the island, as it prevented hypoglycaemia in pregnant women.

If you’re looking to taste something unique, Gaia Wines is housed in an impressively built ex-tomato cannery on a black-sand beach. Each year workers retrieve 500 bottles which have spent four years submerged in the Aegean sea, 20m below the surface. Taste, with your toes not far from the surf, the different nuances derived from cellaring on land and underwater.

Nico Manessis is the DWWA Regional Chair for Greece and Cyprus, and publishes Greekwineworld.net blog

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June 8, 2016 at 12:42AM

Why is there no red Champagne? – ask Decanter

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Why is there no red Champagne when two out of the three Champagne grapes are black? Peter Liem gives Decanter an answer.

John Butterwick, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire asks: Can you explain why, when two of the three Champagne grapes are black, there is no red Champagne?

Peter Liem, for Decanter, replies: The fact that there is no red Champagne is probably due to historical tastes. In the late-17th and early-18th centuries, when sparkling wines first began to be produced in the Champagne region, the best wines were valued not for their power but for their brilliance, limpidity, subtlety and finesse. Great effort was made to produce wines of increasing delicacy and refinement. Dom Pérignon, for example, almost certainly did not invent sparkling Champagne, but one of his notable achievements was perfecting the production of white wine from black grapes, making a more elegant wine.

When sparkling Champagne began to be produced in earnest, it was definitely a white wine. Wine made from white grapes in cool areas would have a greater tendency to sparkle, and from a practical standpoint, a light-bodied, low-alcohol wine would produce a sparkle gentle enough that it would break fewer bottles. Sparkling Champagne became fashionable for its joyous and refreshing character, and in some circles it was regarded as healthier and more digestible than red wine, which was accused of causing gout. Probably, too, it was a way for the Champenois
to easily differentiate their wines from those of Burgundy, its great rival in the wine world.

Today, the idea prevails that Champagne should be an elegant, lively and relatively delicate wine
– red wine would be unsuitable as a base due to its body, alcohol and tannin. Some rosé Champagnes, such as those by Larmandier- Bernier, Leclerc- Briant or Piper-Heidsieck, have so much colour that they almost appear red, but these are extreme examples, and even then, these producers seek to extract colour with as little tannin as possible.

Peter Liem is publisher of ChampagneGuide.net.

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June 7, 2016 at 02:24AM