500 and Counting

I doubt whether many wine lovers will recognise the grape name Pais but it holds a special place in the minds of wine historians.  For the variety, also known as Criolla, is thought to be descended from vines raised from the seeds of grapes imported by the Spanish conquistadors.  That dates its arrival in Central and South America to the first half of the 16^th century and means that it has been grown across Mexico, Chile and Argentina for almost 500 years without a break.  The same variety, under another local name – the Mission grape – found its way to California a couple of hundred years later, where it remained an important variety until almost wiped out by the spread of phylloxera in the 1880s. 

So, with that long history in the Americas, why is it not better known?  Initially, it was mainly used to produce wine for use in church services – never very high quality – and, subsequently, for much of the time, the focus has been on basic, everyday wines, leaving the better-known international varieties, such as Merlot and Malbec, to satisfy more demanding consumers.

Yet, carefully handled, Pais can produce something very attractive. Clos de Luz’s Agras (Wine Society, £13.95) from 100 year old vines grown in Chile’s Almahue Valley is a good example.  Quite pale in colour with a pleasant nose of red fruits.  More of the same on the light- to medium-bodied palate alongside some subtle hints of oak from 10 months’ ageing in medium sized old oak barrels.  The style is slightly rustic but the wine is very drinkable and food friendly – a lamb stew or perhaps some sausages would go well.  The 2023 vintage we opened is perfect for drinking now; I wouldn’t keep it too much longer. 

But I will be looking out for other examples of Pais (or Criolla) as adventurous South American producers realise how to get the best from this ancient variety.

Wine for 12th Night?

The Canary Islands are a popular destination for British holidaymakers attracted to a climate offering warmth and sunshine, even during the winter months.  But, with the Islands’ position off the west coast of Africa at latitudes in the upper 20s, few would expect to find any interesting local wines.  Yet they’ve been making wine there for centuries and, although virtually unknown now in the UK, were so popular in Shakespeare’s time, that he even mentioned them by name in Twelfth Night!  

Some (Shakespeare-loving!) friends of ours have visited the Islands often so, when I saw a bottle of Canaries wine on the Wine Society’s list, I thought it would be worth buying and to invite them over to share, as well as an opportunity for me to taste something new.  Piedra Fluida’s Listán Negro (£17) is a lovely soft, plummy red made from 80 year old pre-phylloxera vines grown 600m up on the island of Tenerife.  The altitude helps keep the wine fresh and the brief ageing in French and American oak barrels gives a savoury character with good complexity and length.  The 2021 vintage we tasted was still quite youthful with hints of tannin so no need to drink up quickly.  We partnered it with a Chicken and chickpea stew – a recipe from the Canaries that we found online – and it went really well, but lamb or duck would be equally good.

As for the grape variety Listán Negro, we know very little for certain.  It is thought that it was once cultivated on the Spanish mainland and brought to the Canaries from there, but there is no record of it still being grown commercially in Spain – or indeed, anywhere else in the world.  It thrives in the volcanic and mineral-rich soils of the islands and local producers use it to make a variety of different styles from the Merlot-lookalike we enjoyed to something lighter and more akin to a Beaujolais. 

But with few being exported, it looks like a trip to the Canaries for a little research is the only option! 

Bring Me Surprises

We love sharing delicious food and interesting wine with special friends and, with the custom of the visitors bringing a bottle (or two!), it’s always good to see what they have chosen when we’re hosts.  Most of our friends will bring something they enjoy that they know to be attractive and reliable but, just occasionally, someone brings along a bottle that is either new to me or, at least, something I haven’t tasted for a long time.

This was certainly true recently when some very good friends brought along a bottle of Westcott Vineyards Pinot Noir from Canada’s Niagara Escarpment region.  This was a real left-field choice as, although I’ve tasted the occasional Canadian wine in the past, notably a couple of sensational Ice Wines, it’s rare to find them on the shelves here and so our friends’ bottle was particularly welcome.

I didn’t really know what to expect from the wine as I uncorked it.  In the back of my mind, I had the view – possibly from the Ice Wines – that the Canadian climate was on the cool side for vine growing and so, perhaps, their Pinot might be fairly light, lean and crisp, much like an example from Alsace.  But I was very wrong!  This was rich, mouth-filling and characterful with plenty of typical, earthy, red-fruited Pinot flavours, good length, a hint of oakiness and a perfect match to the duck pie we served as the main course. 

Next day, I looked at my World Wine Atlas to understand how such a wine could come from that part of Canada.  The explanation was clear: my geography was lacking!  The Niagara Escarpment, south of Lake Ontario, is on the same latitude as Nice in the south of France and, while not enjoying similar warmth to the Mediterranean, the region has a climate akin to Dijon at the northern end of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, the home of some of the world’s best Pinot Noir.

So, long may friends keep visiting and bringing wines that I might never have bought myself especially wines that challenge my preconceptions!

Say Cheese!

Cheese and wine are often thought of together but, with thousands of different cheeses and, probably, even more different wines, you might wonder if there any pairings that work particularly well – or are best avoided?  Like most lovers of both, I have my own ideas on this, but a recent cheese and wine tasting at the grandly named L’Affinage du Fromage, a local cheese specialist, gave an interesting opportunity to explore further.

Considerable thought had obviously gone into the evening which featured 5 Italian wines, each recommended to go with a pair of cheeses. I’m sure there were many opinions as to how well the matching went but, for me, the standout was the first combination we tasted.

I generally like crisp, white wines with soft cheeses and St Bede, a delicious example with a bloomy rind made in Norfolk in the style of a Camembert was a delight alongside the fresh, vibrant Corte Sermana from Lugana on the southern shores of Lake Garda.  Just across the lake is the lovely village of Bardolino, famous for fruity, lighter styles of red and Raval’s bottling was teamed with a Taleggio, a semi-soft cheese from Lombardy and a Tomme de Normandie, slightly firmer and tangier in nature.  Perhaps the former went a little better with the wine, but, personally, I’d have chosen a rich white with both.

Onto the harder cheeses – an Ossau Iraty and a slightly disappointingly dry Pecorino – and here I agree that the red, a medium-bodied black-fruited Calabretta Nerello from the slopes of Mount Etna, was a lively foil for both.  And then, all too soon, our last pairing which included a delicious blue – a mountain gongonzola – teamed with Corte Lenguin Recioto della Valpolicella, a delicately sweet wine made with dried red grapes.  I’m a great fan of sweet wines with blue cheeses and, while this combo worked well enough, something sweeter might have been even better.

So, a tasting as interesting as I anticipated, proving, once again, that cheese and wine can be perfect partners – or not – depending on your own taste.

Brunello’s Little Brother

Brunello di Montalcino is one of Italy’s iconic wines – and for ‘iconic’, read ‘expensive’!  Even the (always good value) Wine Society’s own label example is around £30 and, if you want a bottle from one of the top producers, then think £50 easily, perhaps £100; the sky’s the limit.  So, what’s the attraction?  A big, powerful, chunky, alcoholic red with lovely Sangiovese character and plenty of well-integrated oak notes.  The downside (apart, that is, from the cost)?  Good Brunello needs time to develop and harmonise all these flavours so you need to wait at least 10 years from the vintage before drinking, otherwise you’ll be overwhelmed with a mouthful of tannin and miss the best of the wine.

There is, happily, an alternative, giving you hints of the same style but in a wine that’s ready to drink sooner and without having to take out a 2^nd mortgage for a bottle.  Forget the ‘Brunello’ part of the name, the words you need to look out for on the label are ‘Rosso di Montalcino’.  This is, effectively, Brunello’s little brother, considerably more approachable and friendly and often available for well under £20.

Majestic have one from the 2023 vintage on their list from Il Patrizio for £16.  Still worth decanting in advance to get the best of it but, paired with, say, a nice steak, this is drinking very well now (and will be for some time to come).  Quite pale (as Sangiovese wines often are) and with not much on the nose, it is when you start tasting that the flavours come through.  Quite full-bodied (14% alcohol), with leathery, cedary, earthy flavours to the fore, together with some cooked plums suggesting a wine older than its 3 years although still with noticeable (but not intrusive) tannins.  Definitely a food wine although, surprisingly, when I finished the little that remained in my glass later in the evening, some attractive dark cherry fruit appeared which was missing earlier.

So, if this is your style of red, do try a good Brunello some time for a special occasion, but, in the meantime, don’t ignore its little brother.

Thinking of Bordeaux

For wine lovers, there is just one story that catches our attention every time we turn on a TV or radio news broadcast: the catastrophic wildfires raging close to Bordeaux.  And, for those of us living in Bristol, there is an added significance: Bordeaux is one of Bristol’s Twin Cities and one that my wife and I know quite well.  So far, there have been no reports of vineyards being directly affected by the flames, although smoke taint has proved to be an issue following fires elsewhere, especially in California, and may turn out to be a problem later in the year here, too.  I know all readers will share my hope that the fires – both here and across other parts of southern Europe – are put out quickly and that the damage is less than we might fear.

Away from the fires, how are these record-breaking temperatures affecting the wines we’re likely to be buying from the 2026 vintage?  My wife and I visited Nyetimber vineyard in Sussex – one of England’s top producers of sparkling wines – last week and our guide was asked that question.  The reply was mixed.  Vines need sunshine and heat to ripen the grapes but, if they get too much, they shut down and produce very little fruit.  Older vines can cope better – at Nyetimber, they have some vines that are almost 40 years old (pictured left).  These will have developed extensive root systems that can search out any moisture in the soil – so a wet winter and spring preceding a heatwave helps; younger vines will struggle more.  Also, whereas historically, English growers have often removed leaves from vines that are shading the grapes from the sun to assist ripening, this year, they are likely to keep them on to stop the grapes from burning.  And that is in a vineyard in a relatively cool area of the wine world.  Growers in the Mediterranean regions, and, indeed, in Bordeaux, are facing a much more serious battle – in some cases for their livelihood. 

Meanwhile, all we can do here is hope for some heavy rain showers to relieve the situation a little and, perhaps, raise a glass of something appropriate in support of those affected. 

Chilling Reds?

Our summer of heatwaves – 3 so far and we’re still only in July – is not only affecting our plans, but also changing the way we’re eating: fewer hot meals, more lighter dishes, more cold food, and salads rather than hot vegetables.  And that, in turn, is having an impact on what we’re choosing to drink. More whites and rosés, obviously – they will always work better with food like this and, of course, are served chilled – a real plus when the temperature is close to 30°C, even well into the evenings.

But, just sometimes, we miss a nice glass of red.  So how about chilling these?  In fact, there are more reds that can be enjoyed chilled than many people imagine despite the often-quoted expression that red wine should be drunk at room temperature.  But think about what we mean by that.  The expression originated before most houses were centrally heated and certainly before global warming produced the sort of temperatures we have had this summer.  So, ‘room temperature’ for reds may, historically, have been closer to 18°C which, unless you have a temperature-controlled cabinet for storing your wines, means moving your chosen red into the fridge for at least a half-hour before opening.

Some reds are likely to benefit from this more than others: I always think that Beaujolais and other light-bodied reds are firm candidates for chilling but, during this hot weather, I’m doing the same to many medium-bodied reds – Pinot Noir, Montepulciano, Mencia and some Merlots, for example.  On the other hand, I’d leave the bigger reds, like many clarets, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Barolo and Zinfandel, on the shelf until they can be teamed with heftier, more robust food when things cool down as they surely will.

A red we opened recently that drank really well after about 45 minutes in the fridge was Stellenrust’s Stellenbosch Manor Cinsault from South Africa (Waitrose, £11 – but watch out for their frequent multi-buy special offers).  Medium-bodied with lots of lovely, juicy, refreshing black fruits and a mere touch of toasty oak.  Not over-complex (but fair at the price) and, above all, very quaffable.  A red to chill? Definitely!  I even think it might be better that way.

Wine by Sail

200 years ago, Bristol harbour would have been full of sailing ships bringing goods from all around the world.  But then steam-power took over from sail before more recent inventions made both obsolete.  Then, as vessels grew larger and larger, the harbour could no longer accommodate them and, from the 1960s onwards, began the gradual conversion from commercial port to the pleasure harbour it is today.  With one important exception for Bristol’s wine lovers.

Port O’Bristol are using Sail Cargo’s sailing boats to bring wines from small-scale, artisan producers from Porto into Bristol.  You can find these zero-carbon transported wines at their wine bar and shop in the Cargo complex just close to M Shed which is where the Bristol Porto Association enjoyed a delicious alfresco lunch of petiscos (the Portuguese word for tapas) accompanied by some of the bar’s excellent wines and a white port.  This latter was served with some aromatic tonic water making a refreshing aperitif on a day with temperatures closer to those you’d expect in Porto, rather than Bristol.

Of the wines, 2 stood out for me. Quinta de Gomariz’s Alvarinho Vinho Verde (£21) was crisp but quite full in the mouth with lovely ripe pear and melon flavours and a long saline finish.  Alvarinho is the same variety as north-west Spain’s fashionable Albariño, although Portugal’s take on the grape is usually leaner and higher in acidity.  Not here, however, and this more generous example went perfectly with a tortilla made, unusually, with chickpea flour.   

My other pick was Encostas do Gavião’s red from the Douro (£19) which showed surprisingly well on a such a hot day – I often see Douro reds more as winter wines.  Served slightly chilled, this was beautifully refreshing with loads of crisp black fruits and herbs.  The accompanying – delicious and authentic – chorizo proved a little too spicy for the wine in my opinion. 

But the lunch showed conclusively that enjoying good wine and respecting the environment can go happily hand-in-hand. 

(For my Bristol readers, the wine bar is open from Thursday to Sunday in the afternoons and evenings – check website for times – and you can enjoy wines by the glass, bottle and – as I did – take some home).

100 and Counting!

It’s quite a while since I qualified for membership of the Wine Century Club (www.winecentury.com) – a club for wine lovers who have tasted wines made from at least 100 different grape varieties.  As a result, it’s pretty rare that I find a grape variety I’ve never come across before.  But we visited the Clifton Food and Wine Fair at the weekend and there it was on a stand offering free tastings: a bottle of Merwah.  Apologies to anyone I barged out of the way in my excitement to get to it!

A delicious, crisp, fresh saline white with plenty of depth and character.  The knowledgeable and helpful representative on the stand, from the Lebanese wine estate, Chateau Ksara, explained that Merwah was a very ancient, indigenous grape variety of the region, known to the Phoenicians more than 2000 years ago.  This wine was made from 60 year old bush vines, still on their own rootstocks (see my blog last time) grown more than 1500m (4500ft) above sea level in the Bekaa Valley.  The altitude offsets the warmth of the latitude and allows the wine to retain plenty of refreshing acidity alongside the rich, ripe fruit.

Ksara is Lebanon’s oldest wine estate, established in 1857 when a group of Jesuit monks inherited a vineyard.  Initially making wine for their own and local consumption, they gradually acquired more vineyards and expanded production until, in 1973, producing more than 1.5 million bottles a year, the estate was sold – the extent of their commercial success deemed to be incompatible with their monastic vows!

Having tasted the sample, I decided to buy a bottle (£16 on the day) – my only purchase of the visit – and we enjoyed it the same evening.  It went well as an aperitif and then perfectly with some soft cheese laced with garlic and herbs.

It inspired me to look out for other rarities.  Onwards to my double century!

Ungrafted Vines

The bottle from Cyprus I blogged about a couple of weeks ago had the words ‘ungrafted vines’ on the back label – a reference to an event in wine history that was nearly the end of wine as we know it.

At one time, all wine was made from ungrafted vines – that is, the whole vine from the deepest root to the newest shoot were all part of the same plant.  But, since the early years of the 20^th century, ungrafted vines have been the exception.  So why the change?

The answer, in one word, is Phylloxera.  Phylloxera is an aphid, originally imported on vines brought from America in the middle of the 19^th century, that attacks and destroys the roots of the European vine – vitis vinifera – from which most of the wines we know and love are made. The first sign that something was wrong was in the 1860s when a grower in the south of France noted that some of his vines were suddenly withering and dying.  The problem spread very rapidly and, before anyone could identify the reason, let alone find a solution, vineyards right across France and in many other European countries, were affected.  Outbreaks were even reported in South Africa.  Generous rewards were offered to anyone finding a cure but nothing seemed to work and vines in one vineyard after another simply died.

Eventually, one scientist went back to the source of the outbreak.  If American vines caused the problem, might they also be the solution?  Clearly, replanting with American vines, which seemed immune to the problem, would work, but the wine they produce is generally not very good – and certainly doesn’t taste like the wine we are used to.  So, he wondered, what would happen if you just used the roots of the American vines to combat the phylloxera and then graft a European vine on top?  Would the graft work and, more importantly, would the wine taste as a Chardonnay or Cabernet should?  Happily, the answer to both questions was ‘yes’ and so, since that time, virtually all of our wine has been made from European vines grafted onto American vine roots.

I say ‘virtually’ because there are a few areas of the world where phylloxera has never hit.  Cyprus is one, which gave us a rare opportunity to taste a wine from vines grown as they would have been in the past – ungrafted and on their own roots.