on wine (5)

August 2010 Report:

This month's wines were rather unexceptional if quite palatable. For one thing, I developed a middle ear infection that became a neuralgia and alcohol made the pounding in my head still worse. Most of the month we were in Southport, Maine and rather than lug up some better wines from the cellar, we relied on what was available at Hannaford's in Boothbay Harbor. They had, for a grocery supermarket, a wide selection of American wines, mostly white (no doubt because it's summer with lots of seafood) and a relatively minute selection of Europeans. This surprised us, for with all the money around for yachts, expensive rentals, etc. you would expect a more sophisticated selection. Maybe people on vacation temporarily abandon the sophisticated, although twice some people examined the Europeans and decided to wait till they got to the Market Basket near Camden, and upscale delicatessen. I also noticed that the selection in restaurants had barely one French wine and that often a generic one. It made me wonder whether some wholesaler's buyer is a Tea-party Patriot. Anyway, there were some good stand-bys, all around $10 or less. The one we drank most was the generic Chianti "Borgho d'Elsa," some Spanish Temperanillo and a few well made Riojas. We had two memorable meals, one at the Port of Tuscany (a very inventive fennel/orange/field green salad and a fine maigret de canard) with one of the better Montepulcianos di Abbruzzi; the other was at the Waterfront in Camden where we each had a different salad with a surprisingly dry Pinot Grigio from the Venice area (which usually are too sweet for my taste). It was a splendid day and in the morning had walked around the Merryspring Gardens where we were entertained by a juvenile Redstart that sang for about 10 minutes as if it was Spring.

When we got back and added some "every day wines", the State Store had a Campo Viejo (Rioja) 2005 reserva on sale. A "never seen before" bottle. Although grown in the Rioja region, the wine was actually a tempranillo and it was a bit rough; C. called it "rustic," her catch all for immature roughness. In fact, as I drank the first sips, not having looked at the label carefully I was taken aback having expected a smooth true rioja. This actually reminded me more of a Catalayud garnache, earthy and rustic, not much like the other tempranillos that I mentioned in earlier entries. So I checked Hugh Johnson's 2009 Guide where it says: "there are also many brands [for ex.] dark, often jarring Campo Viejo." Indeed. Another disappointing bottle was a 2006 beaujolais Ch. de La Chaize, which we had enjoyed a few times throughout the year. This had spent the summer in the bottom of the sideboard in the normally a.c. living room. But as we were away and August here turned out to be as hot as July, the wine turned out rather flat. It poured pale brown and had a musty nose. As the temp at lunch was 74 after a cool night the color became darker and the mustiness disappeared, for wine can restore itself; alas, the fruitiness of beaujolais remained lost.

While in Maine a read Feeding a Yen, a collection of pieces by the often humorous and generally smart wordsmith Calvin Trillin who portrays himself as an overeating barbecue and beer loving cholesterol sufferer in somewhat of a sophisticated put on. In one of these he tries to find out whether the U. of Cal. Davis wine courses actually subjected students to a blind tasting test to distinguish not one grape from another, but white wine from red. The rumors as well as an alleged participant indicated that the tasters had not been successful. This I can understand, for while taste is affected by vinification of grapes with (red) or without skins and stalks (white), the real difference is made by the type of grape, soil and climate. Thus a sauvignon de St. Brie, adjacent to the Chablis region in Burgundy, tastes differently than a sauvignon from the western Loire valley; not to talk about the winemaker's skills and the requirements of regional style. Trillin and the experience with the Rioja tempranillo made me pick up some older wine books that had been very fashionable among British cognoscenti before the expansion of wine drinking in the 1970s. One of these was George Rainbird's little manual of 1963, another H. Warner Allen's l932 The Romance of Wine. Both spend some time on the "great wines," their service, etc. Rainbird's is very basic and though he recognizes other countries produce wine also, his wines came from France. All very British and with chapters on Cognac and Port. Allen's is more fun. A worker in the trade, he gives due attention to wines that were fashionable among his clientele, thus he has a good deal to say about German wines, the "hocks." He has two long chapters on the making of a "natural red" and "natural white" wines; i.e. not Sherry, Port or Cognac which are manipulated products of the vine and each have their own chapter. The last chapter is, to me now, the most alluring as it deals with ancient Greek and Roman writers about wine.

But what struck me was that both writers pay little or any attention to the relationship between grape variety and the taste of wine. Rainbird doesn't mention the varieties that go into a bordeaux and how taste (as well as other aspects) is affected by the relative percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in a wine. For that one has to rely on Penning-Rowsell's The Wines of Bordeaux(1970). C. de Rhones, Chianti Classicos are other wines that consist of a varying blend of grapes (unfortunately, marketing experts are changing these blends to satisfy an alleged demand for a specific taste favored by wealthy consumers that did not grow up in a wine drinking culture). To Rainbird and Allen, "blended wines" are Sherries and Ports.

Meanwhile there were some nice bottles in August. One a non-vintage Heidsieck brut to celebrate Marijke's arrival in Main, drunk on a clear evening overlooking the Sheepscot in Edgemont and the others, at the traditional lunch for our friend who took care (very well as always) of the gardens, a 2003 barolo from Michele Chiarlo. If hot 2003 was not a truly great year, I wrote, this was nevertheless a worthy barolo: dark, long lasting (2 hours after opened) with a slow robe and no trace of chaudron.