Don’t you just love it when the wine trade gets a bee in its
bonnet about what we should call wines?
Guildford’s own Caves de Pyrène are the leading lights in a
new wine movement, which has recently held its second annual tasting of what
they are calling “real wine”. Doug
Wregg, wine trade poet-philosopher and sometime Sales and Marketing Director (a
man further removed from the image of anyone with that job title you could not
hope to find) for Caves de Pyrène is the brains behind the operation.
What is a real wine?
Are some of the things we drink, foolishly imagining them to be wine
just because that’s what it says on the label, in fact no such thing? Rest easy, wine drinkers, of course it’s all
real wine – just not “real wine”.
Now I should provide a pithy and concise definition of what
constitutes “real wine”. But of course
such a thing doesn’t exist. These wines
tend to be made with minimum intervention in both the vineyard and winery; many
are organic and/or biodynamic; usually they are made by small-scale operations;
a good number of them would probably also come under the banner of natural
wines (another rather nebulous and hard-to-pin-down category). The winemakers share an interest in producing
wines that speak of their origins and which express the growing conditions of
the vintage. The real or natural wine
movement is somewhat akin to the slow food movement.
Giusto Occhipinti of COS, a "real wine" maker - and a real winemaker |
If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to sum up such
wines in a single word, I’d say “What the h*** are you doing with a gun, for
God’s sake, it’s only wine.” as I ran from the room. If I was asked nicely (without the gun) then
“authentic” might be a decent stab at it.
Here are some of my own highlights from the second annual Real
Wine Fair, held last month in London:
I Vigneri Salvo Foti
– Vinujancu Bianco 2011 - £23.16 from Caves de Pyrène
One of the joys of exploring Italian wines is constantly
discovering new grape varieties, even as a seasoned grape-spotter. This Sicilian white is a blend of Minnella
(the new one to me, native not just to Sicily but to the Etna region
specifically), Grecanico (aka Garganega, another Italian native and most
famously associated with Soave) and Riesling (a long way from its German
origins).
As you might imagine in the Etna region, the soils that the
vines grow in are volcanic – indeed some resemble black granulated pumice,
rather than anything you might consider trying to use as a growing medium. The result is intensely flavoured,
characterful wines, helped along by the high altitude (1200m for this wine) and
ancient vines. Salvo adds no sulphur to
the wines, but there is no hint of odd or off flavours, just aromas of honey
and honeycomb, leading onto a dry, grippy and zippy palate.
COS, Giusto
Occhipinti – Cerasuolo di Vittoria 2010 - £16.80 from Caves de Pyrène
Still in Sicily, COS produce a range of wines from
indigenous varieties. Cerasuolo di
Vittoria is the island’s only DOCG (ostensible top of the quality tree for
Italian wines) and is a blend of two native varieties: Nero d’Avola and Frappato.
If you were to imagine the style of red wine that comes from
such an intensely Mediterranean setting, then I would wager it would be
confounded by what you would find here: nothing
is overdone, all is lightness and elegance.
The fruit is delicate, cherryish and fresh, with no oak flavours to tone
it down – the wine is fermented in cement tank and aged in large old oak
“foudres” (essentially giant barrels).
Bodegas Bernabe
Navarro – La Amistad 2011 - £8.88 from Caves de Pyrène
Spain has been rather slow to hop aboard the real wine
train, but Alicante winemaker Damien Perez is making enough leftfield wines to
make up for it. This one is made from
local variety Rojal and is fermented and aged in amphorae, or tinajas in
Spanish. We usually associate amphorae
with archeological digs, as these vessels were used in the ancient world to
transport olive oil and wine, but they have begun to find favour again in the
natural/real wine movement.
Amistad is a light red wine that you could serve chilled in
summer (should it ever arrive) to appreciate its lively, fresh sour cherry
fruit.
“The Wild Vineyard”
Villalobos Carignan Reserva 2012 - £15.90 from Caves de Pyrène
Just to show that the New World is also getting the hang of
this real wine thing, I’ve included this Chilean, new to the Caves
portfolio. Carignan is one of those
lowly varieties that gets labelled “workhorse” if it’s lucky. It was enthusiastically taken up by growers
in France’s Languedoc post 2nd World War, valued for its colour,
alcohol and high yields. This aim-low
strategy allied to reliance on industrial viticultural techniques was never
going to be a recipe for quality, and Carignan’s reputation suffered as a
result.
Chile, however, is home to some wonderful old vine Carignan
– these were planted in the 1940s and 50s, which makes them positively
prehistoric in the context of Chilean viticulture. Essentially organic from the word go, the
vines have never been subjected to any kind of treatment and have been allowed
to grow wild (hence the vineyard name).
Freshness is a hallmark of all the wines that I enjoyed at
the fair and this one is no exception, with masses of crunchy blueberry fruit -
though I concede blueberries are not a crunchy fruit, it’s more a combination
of crunch and blueberry that I’m trying to convey. There is plenty of body and substance, but
also elegance.
If you fancy checking out more of these kinds of wine, you
can pay a visit to RAW, which bills itself as an artisan wine fair and will
take place in London on 19/20 May. The
Real Wine Fair will be back again in 2014.
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