A Fortified Desert Wine

I’ve tasted several Ice Wines on my wine adventures, but I’ve never seen or heard of one that had been fortified, until now. On a recent trip home a friend bought me a bottle of Kittling Ridge Ice Wine & Brandy, which sounded like it could be very interesting.

The first thing I had look into was where did the brandy come from, and unsurprisingly it was Canadian. Produced by Kittling Ridge themselves from grapes grown in Niagara, Ontario, using traditional copper stills and then age the brandy in small oak casks for seven years.

The Ice Wine is made from the Vidal Blanc grape, and as with other Canadian Ice Wine the grapes aren’t harvested till the temperature drops to minus eight degrees Celsius, to ensure most of the water is frozen to leave a very sweet and concentrated grape must. It is then fermented in steel tanks and bottled; it receives no oak ageing in this case.

To blend the two of these together I thought the brandy would have completely over powered the flavours and aromas of the Ice Wine; however I was very pleasantly surprised.

In the glass you had this bright lemony gold colour, which you could almost see the sweetness of the wine due to its viscosity. On the nose you got these wonderfully pronounced aromas of tropical fruit and almonds with floral notes coming through in the background. To taste it was as you could imagine, lusciously sweet that almost coated your mouth with the fruit flavours, then came the warming sensation of the Brandy, which just complimented the Ice Wine superbly. Their was a low level of acidity which cut through the sweetness perfectly making it all faultlessly balanced and an amazing drink, not what I would have expected.

This fortified desert wine, due to the Brandy was not as sweet as Ice Wine, but beautifully blended to extract all the aromas and flavours of each component, without either one over powering the other. Would I recommend this, absolutely, it took an amazing wine and added another completely dimension, without ruining either.

A Great Gran Reserva Rioja

Having said in my last post that I don’t drink much Rioja, I’ve had two bottles in quick succession to review, this one being a Gran Reserva, namely Marques de Carano Gran Reserva 2001.

Being a Gran Reserva, it has spent 24 months maturing in new oak barrels and a further 36 months in the bottle before being released. Unlike the last Rioja I reviewed this is a blend of the two most widely planted grapes in the region, Tempranillo and Garnacha (Grenache), this help to give the wine another dimension of flavours.

On pouring the first thing I noticed was that it was tawnier in colour than the last one, but much more opaque. On the nose I got the aromas of red berries again, Raspberries and Red Cherries predominantly, but they were not as pronounced, once you got through the fruit, there were these aromas of Spice, Vanilla, and Cedar which came from the oak. It had a good level of acidity and these wonderfully fine, silky tannins, which helped it to go on to be a wonderfully balanced and complex wine that was a thoroughly enjoyable drink.

Would I recommend this wine, yes I would, if you can still find it, I’ve been having a bit of trouble, but if you do, it would go fantastically with a roast such as lamb, or a rich meaty casserole!

A Fantastic 2004 Rioja Reserva

Rioja isn’t a wine I tend to drink very often, and I’m not really sure as to why, since they do produce some fantastic wines at very reasonably prices. Rioja is Spain’s leading wine producing region and can be found in the northwest of the country, the name is derived from the river (Rio) Oja, which is tributary to the Ebro which runs right through the heart of the region.

They produce Red, White and Rose wines under the Rioja DOC (Denominación de Origen Calificada), which can be a blend from any of the seven permitted varieties (four red, three white). It is then fermented in large stainless steal tanks and aged in new American or French oak. The time spent maturing in oak will determine how it’s classified, with Crianza and Reserva meaning it must have spent a minimum of twelve months in the barrel, Gran Reserva requiring a minimum of two years. There is another classification which is Joven, meaning the wine is unoaked; these however only apply to the reds.

The most widely planted red varieties are Tempranillo and Garnacha (Grenache), with Mazuelo (Carignon) and Graciano which are planted in much smaller quantities. You can use a blend of any of these or just use a single varietal to produce your wine.

Barón De Barbón 2004 Reserva is produced by Bodegas Muriel, and the first thing you can take from the label is the term Reserva, which means that it has spent a minimum of 12 months maturing in an oak barrel before being bottled. The back label however states that it has spent up to two years in both American and French oak; all the grapes are hand harvested to ensure the highest quality of fruit and most importantly is produced from 100% Tempranillo.

After opening the bottle I gave the cork a quick smell, as you do, and got the strangest of aromas, Smoky Bacon Crisps! In the glass you got a ruby colour at the centre of the glass with the edges starting to become tawnier, a sign of the ageing this wine has received. On the nose you got some really pronounced aromas of red berries, Strawberries, Raspberries and Red Cherries, with Cedar and Vanilla coming through in the background, which again came from the oak. On the palate you got all of these flavours which lingered in your mouth for ages, along with these you got wonderfully smooth and silky tannins and a good level of acidity. Combining all of these together you got a wonderfully balanced and outstanding wine, showing how a good Rioja can taste, which I would highly recommend to anyone.

Blood Into Wine

Last Wednesday I went to the screening of new film/documentary about two guys who are trying to make wine in Arizona, aptly named Blood into Wine. The guys in question are Maynard James Keenan, owner of Merkin Vineyards and the front man of American rock groups Tool, A Perfect Circle and Pucifer, and Eric Glomski, owner and winemaker at the award winning Page Springs Cellars.

If anyone had mentioned Arizona to me before this, it would have conjured up images of the Grand Canyon, and a very hot and arid landscape. But this is not the case, in the town of Jerome in northern Arizona where these guys are based; they have to deal with every type of weather condition you could think of, from blazing sun to snow and frost. The result of this in the beginning meant they lost vast quantities of vines to frost damage, but their biggest problem has been trying to secure water, something which makes their attempts all the more remarkable.

The film showed clips of Maynard out in the Vineyard planting vines and talking about his passion and interest in trying to make the wine he loves; throughout the film it is littered with references to his music, and interviews from friends and journalists who have followed his career. You also got an insight into the very private man that is Maynard and the motivation to name his wines, such as the Caduceus Judith, which is named after his mother (the vineyard that the wine comes from is where he has scattered his mother’s ashes). You also got to see them at bottle signings, where Maynard (rightly) won’t sign any Tool merchandise, so you get a lot of his fans buying the wine to see him. Like you, it’s not what I would have expected of the average tool fan, but anything that gets more people interested in wine is great by me!

As for Eric, it was great to see his driving passion for making good wine that he likes, though not necessarily what the critics will like. He got a bit more technical, taking about his role in the winery and why they do certain things to help along the process and extract the flavours and colour from the grapes.

The film is littered with humour all the way through, more around Maynard than Eric; one of my favourite scenes is a spoof talk show interview with Maynard, ‘Focus on Interesting Things’. I’m not a film critic and I’m certainly not going to try and be one, but there were definitely several films in one here. The main two revolved around Maynard, rock front man and beginner winemaker, and the other around Eric, the winemaker, and in my opinion, they worked really well together.

Blood into Wine to me comes over as very much trying to appeal to the masses, while not trying to be too technical or alienate Maynard’s fans. There were several odd additions to the film though, the first being the tasting with James Suckling, the former senior editor at The Wine Spectator. Unless you have an interest in wine you’d have no idea who he is, and he contradicted several points made during the film. The other is the tasting with Steve Heimoff, where they try to see if he can tell the difference between their wines and those from California (his area of expertise), and then not tell you which he thought were what.

However, despite those few minor grumbles, the film/documentary was very entertaining and kept my interest the whole way through. Definitely worth going to see when it gets released in September over here if you’ve got an interest in the industry.

A Great Full Bodied Classico Chianti

My girlfriend asked me to make a lasagne for her the other week as a friend from work was coming for dinner, being the good boyfriend that I am of course I agreed. While checking what I needed for the lasagne I asked who was coming, as said her name a sense of dread came over me, she’s Italian and I’m cooking lasagne!

I needed to pull out all the stops for this, so I went down the shop and bought all the best quality ingredients I needed and raided my wine rack for what I could find. Fortunately for me I had a bottle of Don Tommaso Chianti Classico 2006, which couldn’t have been any better.

On opening I obviously needed to taste the wine to check that it was ok for what I was cooking. On pouring, it had a beautifully opaque ruby colour, with wonderfully pronounced aromas of blackberries and plums and a touch of smokiness coming through. Now to taste, you got all those flavours of the fruit and the smokiness which had come from the 18 months of oak ageing it had received, but you also still got these very robust tannins which you almost had to chew your way through.

There was a lot to this wine, and you could see the complexity in flavours and what it was going to become, which was its problem, it needed several more years of ageing before it would be really ready to enjoy fully.

Would I recommend this wine, yes I would, but probably worth buying a few bottles and putting them away for several years to enjoy them fully, but if you’d want to drink it now, serve it with something that would be able to stand up to it such as a roast or a steak.