St. Louis Food Blog

2008 Pazo das Tapias Alma de Blanco Godello Monterrei

2007 Pena das Donas Verdes Matas Mencía Ribeira Sacra

Exploring Spanish wines often means encountering unfamiliar grape varieties. Two recent encounters -- mencía and godello -- came at the suggestion of Andrew Traughber at Bon Vivant Wines (123 South Main Street, Columbia, Illinois; 618-281-3464), which Riverfront Times named "Best Wine Shop" in 2009. Both these wines provide further evidence in favor of establishing relationships with good merchants.

Wikimedia Commons

The mencía grape of Spain

​Godello and mencía are indigenous Spanish grapes that hail from regions only a few miles apart. (In fact, godello is grown in the region where today's mencía wine was made.)

Godello's a white grape, and the wine featured here comes from Monterrei, which forms part of Spain's border with Portugal. Monterrei is not exactly a star of Spanish wine. In fact, authorities suspended its status as a Denominación de Origen (D.O.) for a time before restoring it in 1994.

Mencía, a red grape, is similarly obscure in terms of international recognition, though not quite as much so as godello. Today's example comes from the Ribeira Sacra, a small region comprising only about 3,000 acres of vines, and one that only achieved D.O. standing in 1997.

The Ribeira Sacra is becoming increasingly prestigious and has seen the founding of many new wineries over the past fifteen years, but the region's history dates back to Roman times. Remnants remain of ancient terraces on vineyards that rise steeply from the rivers that run through the region. It's heartening to see them revived, particularly with their indigenous inhabitant, mencía.

First up...

This week we continue our exploration of German riesling. I have a particular passion for the grape, the subject of either misunderstanding or outright dismissal by most people interested in wine.

User "Siego," Wikimedia Commons

A vineyard growing Mosel riesling

​Germany enacted a comprehensive (if probably wrong-headed) wine law in 1971. That statute created several levels of wine quality with separate requirements: geographic, minimum alcohol, added sugar, etc. The one of most interest to geeks is the qualitätswein mit prädikat (QmP) designation.

Traditional Rioja holds a special place in my heart: It's one of the few wines that can achieve a captivating level of elegance. These wines have tremendous complexity, but in a very understated manner. This alone distinguishes them from most every other Spanish wine on the shelf.

User "Gurrea," Wikimedia Commons

A vineyard in Spain's Rioja region

​The other nice point about traditional Rioja: Producers are kind (or crazy) enough to cellar their wines at the winery until they believe they are more or less ready for consumption. For example, the wine tasted for this column is from 2000, yet it was the currently available vintage when I purchased the wine. (Since then, the 2001 has been released.) Some wineries also release older vintages that they believe are drinking well. While these wines are expensive, they are among the great values in aged wine as their provenance is impeccable.

When to open a cellar-worthy bottle of wine? Unlike many wine-based anxieties, there is a real basis for concern about making this calculation with any accuracy. Determining when a bottle is "ready" presents an incredibly complex matrix of variables: grape variety, producer style, vintage, storage prior to purchase, storage after purchase, personal taste preferences and potential food matches (just to name a few).

After spending my early wine years pursuing perfection in this regard, I concluded that I really wasn't going to worry too much about it.

Toni Lozano, Wikimedia Commons

Spin the wheel and open that special wine.

​Now, this isn't to say I recommend opening a bottle of First Growth Bordeaux from the most recent vintage the night you get it home. But the idea of opening a bottle at the "perfect" moment in its evolution is just another example of post-hoc self-congratulatory ego stroking by a certain subset of wine lovers. Many wine critics add fuel to this fire by providing drinking windows: "drink between 2025 and 2030" or "best after 2017." Such proclamations of dubious precision add to the unnecessary anxiety many wine drinkers feel.

Unlike several of my fellow Gut Check contributors, I'm not much for reminiscing about, dissecting or ranking the past year. Instead, I enjoy the challenge of looking forward and setting goals. So here are my plans for both my personal wine consumption and The Noble Writ in 2010.

Aaron Logan, Wikimedia Commons

A Napa Valley vineyard: Could it yield surprises for the Noble Writ?

​Personal

1. Revisit areas I've mentally written off: I certainly have my favorite regions around the world and, like most folks, I'm tempted to select from among these the vast majority of the time. However, some recent samples reminded me that there are producers even in places like Napa and Bordeaux that I should be checking out.

Let's admit two facts. First, 2009 has been a hateful year, economically speaking, for a lot of folks. Second, most folks will have enough drinks in them by 11:59 p.m. on New Year's Eve that opening a bottle of fine Champagne will be an ego stroke rather than a wine experience to savor.

Quinn Dombrowski, Wikimedia Commons

​This week, I suggest a few sparkling wines that offer good flavors at a good price. As a bonus, my mother-in-law, an avowed lover of all wines sparkling, but especially Champagne, was in town and gamely volunteered to taste along with me. I've added her conclusions to my notes.

Do try to buy from a store that moves a good volume of sparklers, or at least matches its inventory to its sales volume. Unsure how long a bottle has been on the shelf? Ask. That dusty bottle in the sunny front window of the local minimart is unlikely to provide much pleasure, regardless of the price.

User "doomych," Wikimedia Commons

​I track my wine inventory online with CellarTracker, which lets me update my Twitter account with what I'm drinking. Here's a recent example: "Not for the poop-averse, but sleek Cab. Franc underneath."

A good friend replied that he most certainly was poop-averse. A post on this divisive range of flavors and aromas was in order.

​No concept is generating more discussion, misuse, vitriol or hype in the wine world right now than "natural" wine. If you've been spared the hubbub to this point, this should offer a gentle and balanced introduction.

What is a natural wine? Well, the very term is a primary cause of the friction that the concept has generated: The existence of "natural" wine implies that all others aren't natural or are artificial in some way. This alone seems enough to irk, annoy or outrage many of the critics to the extent that civilized discussion is impossible.

​This week's post is the story of trying to write this week's post. Well, not exactly of writing it, but of finding good examples of the wine I want to write about, one which I've enjoyed a great deal over the years: Rioja, a very interesting region of Spain.

However, most of my experience with Rioja has been through two very traditional producers, Lopez de Heredia and CVNE (don't ask -- just look for CVNE on the label ), neither of which, as far as I can tell, are available in Missouri. So I undertook a quest to find quality examples to taste for this post.

​'Tis the season for gift-giving, and if you have some wine lovers on your shopping list, you may be puzzled over what to give them. Having been both a giver and a receiver of wine-related gifts for many years, I offer the following humble suggestions:

Gift Certificates

From my experience, buying wine for the wine lover is not a good way to go. For many wine lovers, a not-insignificant part of the fun is the hunt itself. Whether trying to track down a rare bottle, pursuing some self-devised and regimented approach to tasting one's way around the world of wine or somewhere in between, most wine folks love the act of purchasing wine themselves. Buying wine for a wine person deprives them of this pleasure.

John Menard, Wikimedia Commons

Vineyards in Tuscany, Italy

​Chianti is another wine making a comeback from a poor reputation. I find myself choosing it to accompany a vast array of Italian and Italian-American dishes, as it can be an excellent companion to food. There's just something about its bright fruit flavors and robust acidity that say "Italy" to me.

And Chianti is Italian. More specifically, it hails from the region known as Tuscany, the magical landscape that continues to enchant us despite the endless stream of enthusiastic prose and gorgeous pictures. Chianti's heartland lies conveniently between Siena and Florence, which has been a boon from a commercial perspective, but over the centuries Chianti's success has seen a legion of hangers-on try to trade on its name. The first attempt to control people passing wines from other regions off as Chianti dates from 1716, which gave the producers from only four villages the exclusive right to use the Chianti name.

​Following up on my post a couple of weeks ago about wine being fun, I decided to have some fun myself. I saw a post on the Wine and Cheese Place's blog about an upcoming tasting featuring the wines of Chateau St. Jean and Beringer. Regular readers of the Noble Writ will likely realize that these producers are outside my normal palate preferences. That we'd be tasting some high-end cabernet sauvignons from these folks moved me even further from my normal hunting grounds.

​Thanksgiving increases interest in food and wine pairings. Since I have fun experimenting with combinations of wine and food, I generally enjoy the conversations I have with friends and family looking to step out and try something different.

However, a significant number of conversations I have about Thanksgiving and wine are dripping with anxiety. Much comes from people on a quixotic quest for a meal of Rockwellian nostalgia, filtered through lens of Martha Stewartesque perfection. For these folks, I have learned to make only the most general of recommendations and then shamelessly pawn them off on our town's better wine merchants.

The other common Thanksgiving pressure point seems to be the guests. Frequently, it is in-laws or, even more anxiety provoking, in-laws to-be. Usually, one of the guests is into wine, and the person seeking input is not. In these instances, I advise finding out what sort of wine the guest likes and then getting something similar. Even if it doesn't work so well with the dinner, it's likely to make a positive impression on the special guest.

​Too often we forget that wine is fun. Critics are overcritical, writers try to convey too much useful information, normal people get uptight, and wine geeks have been known to manage all three simultaneously. It can be difficult to turn these qualities off, especially after years of conditioning. Sometimes, though, we need to step back, think about what we're doing and attempt to recapture the fun.

I present myself as exhibit number one. A fundamental wine moment for me occurred in the fall of 1995. It was cold and rainy, and I was cutting class because I didn't feel like walking to Wash U. from my apartment. So I popped a bottle of wine in front of the TV to celebrate my sloth: a 1992 Jayer-Gilles Bourgogne Haut Côtes de Nuits.

I pulled the cork, poured a glass and went into the kitchen to fetch a snack. When I returned, I smelled violets. The cool, damp breeze coming in from my cracked window had filled the room with the scent of the wine. Thus began my fascination with red Burgundy. It was a moment of pure joy.

A point comes in many wine lovers' lives when they are unable to find a bottle they really want in their local wine shops. It might be a wine from the birth year of a special person, a bottle enjoyed while traveling or just something about which they've read that simply captivates their imagination.

The simple fact about wine distribution is that far from everything is available in any particular market. While we St. Louisans are relatively well placed in a large metropolitan area spanning two states, there are times when ordering a wine from another state is the only way to get it.

Continuing our exploration of port from last week (read "A Port for Every Storm, Part 1"), we'll cover the other forms of port you're likely to see on the shelves. We'll also spend some time discussing what, if any, food will match well with the port in your glass.

First, to finish up with the red (as opposed to tawny) ports. Let's start at the top of the qualitative ladder with vintage port. For many, vintage port represents the pinnacle of port. In volume terms, vintage port makes up a whopping 1% -- yes, 1% -- of the total production of port.

As cool autumn weather begins to settle in, my thoughts turn to richer wines that can keep the chill away. One wine that fits this bill perfectly is port. Typically, port is imbibed while enjoying a good book at bedtime or while sitting next to the fireplace, but it makes a lovely match with cheese or nuts or even a not-too-sweet chocolate dessert.

This week, I'll cover the history and production methods of port as well as the most common form you'll encounter in the market. Next week, we'll delve into the other varieties of port and discuss some food matches.

Time to decode and deconstruct another term that gets thrown around way too often in the wine world: the "great" year or vintage.

In the early days of my fascination with wine, I marveled at connoisseurs' ability to rattle off all of the "great" years for the world's "great" wine-producing regions. As with points, though, it's very easy to transform "great" to "best" and quickly decide that -- given limited time, budget, liver and brain cells -- "great" should mean "only." This is especially true when vintage rankings are reduced to a handy, wallet-sized chart summarizing some critic's take on all of the world's "important" wine regions.

This path is unfortunate for several reasons.

I find zinfandel an utterly fascinating story. For many years, it has been referred to as American's own grape variety. Not because anyone thought it was native to these shores, but because its story mimics that of so many Americans: It was a humble, unknown import from Europe, adapting to conditions throughout California's wine regions. It has been used to craft wines ranging from classically-styled table wines to rich, ripe blockbusters to port-style dessert wines. It is the grape that came without pedigree or expectations and, with some hard work and luck, succeeded wherever it went.

In 2002, Dr. Carole Meredith of the University of California at Davis finally answered the question of what zinfandel was and where it had originated through her pioneering DNA research. These answers did nothing to change zinfandel's rags-to-riches story as Dr. Meredith determined zinfandel was none other than crljenak kastelanski, an obscure variety even in its homeland of Croatia.

My tastes generally run to the esoteric, the obscure, the endangered and, sometimes, the downright odd. Which isn't to say I can't and don't appreciate more "mainstream" wines, because I can and do, but with so many wines available in the market, I can't resist the urge to explore.

Occasionally, however, I want a sure thing. One of the wines that has served steadfastly in this role for me over the past seven vintages or so is the Les Hérétiques bottling from the Iché family at Chateau d'Oupia in Minervois. The Iché family has been one of the leading lights in the region, producing excellent wines from an area that has concentrated far too long on quantity over quality. The patriach of the Iché family passed away almost two years ago, but importer Joe Dressner's remembrance of M. Iché provides a glimpse of the lives behind these wines.

One of the larger areas of misconception surrounding wine is the use of sulfur compounds, most commonly sulfur dioxide (SO2), during the wine-making process. Many consumers seem to misunderstand why most winemakers add SO2 and what ill effects it might cause. Given that all wines containing more than 10 parts per million of sulfites are required by the Food and Drug Administration to sport a deadly-serious-looking official government label that warns of their presence, it isn't surprising that many sinister folk tales surround them.

Before proceeding, it's worth noting that a not-insignificant portion of the population (estimated at about 1%) seems to have an allergic reaction to sulfites. As with most allergy symptoms, these seem to vary greatly from person to person and from exposure to exposure. However, splitting headaches, nausea and vomiting aren't common allergy symptoms. You're going to need to look for another scapegoat for those -- or admit you drank too much.

​From time to time, I dedicate a post to someone doing remarkable work in the St. Louis area. In this edition, it's Paul Hayden, who has the enormous job of managing the Clayton location of the Wine & Cheese Place and buying wine (and other non-Noble Writ beverages) for the store's other locations as well as Provisions market.

Hayden started with the store as a cashier at the age of eighteen and gradually worked his way up the ladder of responsibility as his passion for wine grew. Like me, Hayden had no family tradition of wine drinking but got interested through his work in the store. There were always wines open for the staff (the over-twenty-one portion!) to taste, and Hayden quickly grew fascinated by the diversity and complexity of wine. When the wine buyer position became vacant, Hayden was ready to step in and hasn't looked back.

I graduated from high school in 1989. No, it wasn't in St. Louis, so don't waste time wondering which one. In celebration of blowing off my 20th reunion, and being two decades removed from the trying social experiment called high school, I decided to pull a wine from the 1989 vintage for this week's post.

Now, I didn't purchase this wine when it was originally released back in 1991 or so. Some wineries will cellar bottles at their facility and then release them years or even decades later. To my mind, this is generally a more reliable method of finding well-preserved older bottles than the auction market is -- although in fairness I've yet to experience a problem with poorly-stored bottles that I've purchased at auction.

Today's bottle is the 1989 Chinon Les Picasses from Olga Raffault. I purchased this about five years ago from Chambers St. Wines for around $40. At the time, the current release of Ms. Raffault's Chinon Les Picasses went for around $16, so this was not too steep a premium given that the property had cellared it for more than a decade at the time I bought it.

Matching food and wine is something that has become perilously overwrought -- almost to the point of preciousness. Articles wax poetic over the hint of Dalmatian sage that echoes the slightest grassiness of a sauvignon blanc, or over the wisdom, if not the necessity, of opting for a Cabernet from Rutherford, with its trademark earthiness, to best meld with dry-aged prime beef. The American tendency to seek "the best," has turned the simple synergistic pleasure of food and wine into a ferocious, stress-inducing competition for "the best" match.

So, first, here's your stress-reliever: There is no "best" match. Yes, some matches may work better for some people. And there are certainly some sure-fire losers, such as serving a dessert wine that is less sweet than the dessert itself -- sour city! -- or matching an extremely tannic wine like a young California cabernet sauvignon with a delicate dish lacking the fat or richness to tame the tannin. However, taste is highly subjective and variable and the notion of absolutes needs to be abandoned.

Riesling is my favorite white grape variety, and if pressed, I'd probably choose it as my favorite grape overall (pinot noir being its only real competition). So it pains me that so many folks interested in wine seem to ignore it, if not deride or despise it. There are many misconceptions about riesling, and the German on many riesling labels acts as a further barrier. However, no other grape so clearly articulates where it is grown, which makes the effort not only worthwhile, but obligatory for the someone interested in exploring the concept of terroir.

The biggest issue with riesling is sweetness. Most rieslings have a not-insignificant amount of sugar in them, and this gets into the craw of people who have learned that only "dry" wines are "serious" and worthy of their attention. I've noticed that there is a large overlap between folks holding these beliefs and those who enjoy " dry" red wines that actually have a large amount of residual sugar in them as well. Try to keep an open mind, and I think you will be rewarded with a wonderful wine experience.

On the relatively few occasions when I dine at a nice restaurant, I'm usually seen carrying my "geek bag." (I have used the 820 model for almost ten years.) Inside will be three or four wines from my cellar that I am willing to pay to open pursuant to the restaurant's corkage policy.

A restaurant that allows corkage permits you to bring in a bottle of your own wine and drink it on its premises for a set fee. In St. Louis, this fee usually ranges from $10 to $25, and many finer dining restaurants have a corkage policy, though it may not be well-advertised.

Paying corkage is an attractive alternative for me because -- with a few notable exceptions -- restaurant wine lists tend to be filled with recent vintages of boring wines offered at extraordinarily high prices.

Wait, it's pizza and beer, right? Not in my book. As someone who loves beer, pizza and wine to degrees that would probably embarrass most folks, I'm mystified how this generic "match" has become a ubiquitous populist myth.

What kind of beer? What kind of pizza? What kind of wine? These are areas rife with variations and passionately-held pedantic points of honor.

The most critical pizza component when deciding which beverage to pair is the sauce. Basically, any pie with a tomato-based sauce is going to work better with wine than beer. (Ditto for pesto sauces, too.) Thick crust, thin crust, double-crust, fresh mozzarella, whole-milk or part-skim mozzarella, Parmagiano-Reggiano or Provel: All are relatively irrelevant. The tomato sauce can be spicy, a bit sweet or as traditional as can be, but it's the key -- and it's a nightmare match for beer. Thankfully, the tomato is a great friend to fruity, acidic red wines.

This week we're going to delve into yet another virtually extinct grape variety that, in the right hands, makes absolutely delicious wine: romorantin. First, though, a bit of a rant. There are more worthy grapes out there than just cab, merlot, pinot noir and chardonnay. And, for the really adventurous drinkers out there, more than zinfandel, syrah, sauvignon blanc and riesling too!

Limiting your wine experience to these superstars is like having the Crayola 64 pack, using the red, blue, green and yellow crayons and pitching the rest in the trash.

There is a great, wonderful diverse world of grape varieties out in the world! For now. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of grapes, made into wine. For now. In previous posts, I've tried to highlight "alternative" grape varieties and hint that stepping out beyond the usual suspects is a worthy pursuit. Well, I'm saying it expressly now: If we don't buy these wines and support these producers, growers and importers, they will disappear, and we will be worse off as wine lovers for it.

Too many people take the easy route with wine, sticking with the well-known, safe, and "prestigious." And I'm not referring to the casual wine drinker here. As my choices of wardrobe and car attest, I well understand that we can't all geek out on everything, though I certainly encourage you to broaden your scope as well. I'm primarily talking to those who claim that wine is their passion -- yet they have cellars full of nothing but Bordeaux or cabernet sauvignon from California or something else equally limited in scope.

To them I ask, why?

Like many sectors of the economy, the wine industry isn't doing well. You might suppose that alcohol sales would be more resilient than most things, and to some extent that's true -- sales of inexpensive wines remain relatively robust. However, high-end wines are being hit hard.

My first clue that something was amiss? The numerous e-mails and mailings that I began receiving from wineries from which I hadn't purchased wine directly in many years, if ever.

Many small domestic producers have mailing lists through which they sell their wine. If you're not on the list, you can't buy the producer's product (unless you stumble upon the wine at a restaurant or at auction). From the late 1990s to the early part of this decade, plenty of wineries had waiting lists just to get on the mailing lists, and a select few had closed their waiting lists as there was no hope that anyone would ever get moved to the mailing list.

Then, all of a sudden, wineries that had dropped me from their lists were offering to sell me wine -- and lots of it.

Dave Nelson is the author of the blog Beer, Wine and Whisky. He writes about wine for Gut Check every Tuesday.

While Gut Check is on vacation this week, check out some of Dave's best work:

Chardonnay for the Chardonnay Hater (March 3, 2009):

The world produces an ocean of chardonnay. In California alone, almost 100,000 acres of this incredibly popular grape variety are planted. That's enough chardonnay to make -- using modest crop and efficiency estimates -- over 250,000,000 bottles. Add the chardonnay acreage in France and Australia, and the worldwide total pushes 400,000 acres.

Given chardonnay's ubiquity, it's not surprising that most chardonnay is garbage. However, despite the current hipster aversion to anything and everything chardonnay, there are some really nice wines made from this over-exposed -- and frequently over-manipulated -- over-ripe grape.

The Pointlessness of Points (March 24, 2009):

What's most important is how you -- yes, you! -- perceive the combinations of aromas and flavors in a particular wine on a particular day, and whether, ultimately, you enjoy them. This will be a function of your body, the environment in which you're consuming the wine, its temperature, your health, what food, if any, you're consuming with the wine, what you had to eat earlier in the day and countless other factors. The absurdity of assigning a number to such a fleeting personal experience is surpassed only by the idea of placing significant weight on a number assigned to such an experience of another person!

Spanish Spring (May 5, 2009):

lbariño makes its home in the Rías Baixas -- the grand estuaries that are the Spanish equivalent to the fjords, though made by rivers, not glaciers. This area is relatively cool and wet, at least in comparison to the rest of Spain.

My ideal albariño is ripe, but not too much so. Some folks let the grapes get really ripe, and others even ferment and age in new oak, but this destroys albariño's charms for me. At its best, albariño is like biting into a not quite ripe peach: The stone fruit aromas are there, but acidity is still prevalent and keeps things zippy.

Want to read more of Dave's take on wine? Visit the complete archive.