Icons grace the Real Wine Fair 2019

Icon - a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration.

In all the time we have been blogging this blog, we had never had the pleasure of meeting Eric Narioo, the founder of Les Caves de Pyrene and founder/impresario of The Real Wine Fair, not to mention vigneron. So it was a terrific honour to be introduced by our dear friend Carla Capalbo, writer, photographer, Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medallist and much more (see below).

M. Narioo now lives on Mount Etna and makes wine from a 2 ha. property under the name Vino d'Anna after Anna Martens who is Eric's wife. 

Mr. Narioo had brought some volcanic rocks from his estate to give an idea of his interesting but difficult terroir. An original touch.

The grapes are mainly Nerello Mascalese with the white being a field blend of Catarratto (50%) and Grecanico Dorato (40%) with approximately 10% of Minnella Bianco, Carricante and Insolia. 












As if this wasn't worth the trip to Tobacco Dock in London's Dockland area, there was a plethora of other luminaries as you will see below. A great tribute to Narioo's charm and success.

Photo taken with glass accidentally in forground even before tasting a drop of wine.

The day we visited there was a big crowd of the young and hip.

The tables started with three young/hip English and Welsh vineyards: an inspiring sight. Davenport is the trailblaiser here with organic vineyards in Sussex and Kent.

Their popular Pet Nat is made from an interesting blend of Auxerrois (53%), Pinot Meunier (30%) and Faber (17%).

Next door was Tillingham Wines. We have already signalled our admiration for Ben Walgate's operation in this blog. He is making cool wines from bought-in grapes while waiting for the vineyard he is planting to come on-stream.

This white is an aromatic, skin contact wine, made principally from Ortega grapes and part-aged in old oak barrels,

This Pinot Noir is made in Qvevri. Who would ahve thought English wine would be going in this direction?

The Tillingham team are enthusiastic proponants. We have no doubts that although young this winery will become an icon soon.

This Orange wine is made from Albarino.

Ancre Hill of Monmouthshire, Wales are a fixture at wine fairs. If hard work is what it takes then they will succeed. It helps to have a state of the art winery and a Demeter certified vineyard that goes above and beyond organic standards in line with the full Biodynamic accreditation they achieved already in 2013.

Grape-wise, you may say that their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay appear to be playing it safe but they have also planted Albarino and they have a certain amount of Triomphe (the grape that dares not speak its name) from which they make a drinkable red - something no one else has been able to do.

The Real Wine Fair always has novelties to offer. This year, Polish wine. We had heard of the valiant efforts to plant vineyards in the south of the country so it was fascinating to be able to taste the early results of this initiative.

Dom Bliskowice use Johanniter (good choice), Riesling, Hibernal, Seyval Blanc, Regent, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Cortis, Cabernet Cantor and Rondo.

Icon, Icon, Icon! The great Oszkar Maurer was there. We had met him at the RAW Wine fair some years ago but he hadn't been able to come to London for some years. But here he was, trimmer and with improved English. His great wines already partly available in the UK thanks to Isabelle Legeron's initiative and now thanks to les Caves de Pyrene.

On show were various Kadarkas for wich Maurer is famous plus Furmint. We have imported his Szeremi Zold and Bakator from Vinoteka Sopron in Hungary (Maurer wines are from a Hungarian enclave in Serbia) and have been fortunate enough bto be able to buy his Fodor Orange wine here in the UK which is made from Welschriesling.

Still on cloud 9 with meeting Oszkar Maurer again we might have missed a nearby exhibitor altogether

but the blackboard slogan caught our eye

as did this spaghetti of different coloured tubes in and out of some transparent kegs.

Keykegs is a means of providing fresh wine on draft in restaurants, pubs and so on. We had an interesting conversation with Keykegs and learned that wine is kept fresh by vacuum and that potentially any wine could be sold this way. All that was needed was to send the kegs to the producers for filling with their wines. The kegs are kept on the small side for ease of carrying. The ecologically best way of bringing wine from the winery to the consumer.

Dierdre Heekin, La Garagista and icon is ubiquitous. She makes wine in Vermont which is hardly the obvious place to do so. Her miracle is to make wine at all in such a difficult environment, especially with some of the less than promising grape varieties which need to be resorted to in that climate.

This Pet Nat for example is from Frontenac Gris. The miracle is that it is very toothsome, as are her wines from the Elmer Swenson variety called La Crescent (sic).

Next icon: Andrea Occhipinti. We had enjoyed his Aleatico vinificato in bianco 'Alter Alea' very much indeed only a week or so previously so it was a happy coincidence to see the winemaker at the Real Wine Fair. Making white wine from red grapes doesn't always produce great results but on this occasion it did.

This is the first mention of that true icon, Salvo Foti in this blog. Shame on us! He is Mr. Mt. Etna wine himself and in many ways Mr. Sicilian wine also. He worked as an oenologist, agronomist and consultant to top Sicilian estates including Benanti, ViniBiondi and Gulfi before setting up his own winemaking operation, I Vigneri di Salvo Foti in 2001.

Foti makes wine from different plots on Etna. One of these, Il Bosco may be Europe's highest vineyard. All the work is done by hand with tonly the aid of a mule called Ciccio.

The main wine in the photo here is 'I Vigneti'. Foti named this after a medieval guild of vignerons (1435) whose tradition he has revived. The owners of Etna's vineyards give a portion of their grapes to the vineyard workers every year so they can make wine for their personal use. There is even a DOC devoted to this wine now. The winemaking is without refrigeration or filtration.

Vinudilice is a Rose from Alicante, Grecanico, Minella and other unspecified varieties.There is also a Spumante version.

Other Foti wines on show were

Vigna Aurora (Carricante 90% and Minella)
Vigna di Milo Carricante
Vinupetra Rosso (Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio, Alicante and Francisi).

We came across Francisi a long tome ago when trying to find out what grapes went into Palari's  'Santa Ne.' Francisi or Francisa was one of them but its real identity is not clear. There is no mention of it in D'Agata, Robinson or Galet. Some even think it might be Pinot Noir hence 'francese' or francisi. It may also be a completely individual variety of its own. A website called Xtrawine lusts it only to say it is from Etna which we know already. 

There is so much to say about Salvo Foti and his wines. We are just beginning with this preliminary skirmish, but just one other wine - not shown at the RWF caught our eye: Vinujancu made from Carricante, Riesling, Grecanico and Minella.

Where had we first heard of Vinujancu? From Dierdre Heekin, whose Vinu Jancu (from La Crescent grapes) is her homage to Salvo Foti. Vinujancu is the Sicilian term for Orange Wine apparently.

As you can see above, both Salvo Foti and Dierdre Heekin were present at the Real Wine Fair - not a stones throw away from eachother.

Our next icon was Antonio Caravaglio from Salina, Aeolian Islands whose dry Malvasia had already reached the River Cafe in London before we had the pleasure of meeting him and visiting his winery a few years ago. Our interest was particularly in his Neru du Munti Corinto Nero red wine - the only Corinto Nero of our acquaintance. Some say this is 'merely' a seedless Sangiovese but we like to think of it as something idividual. In any case Caravaglio's Corinto Nero is a delicious wine.

Also featured on the Caravaglio table was his Palmento di Salina Rosso. We couldn't determine what grapes go into this but the Rose version has Nerello Mascalese, Corinto Nero and Calabrese (Nero D'Avola).

Returning to the beginning of our tour, Carla Capalbo merits icon status of her own. As well as having written the book with our favourite title of all time: 'Cheeses of the Amalfi Peninsula' (even better than 'Murderers' Cottages or 'Golfing for Cats' in our view), Carla has written 'Tasting Georgia;' an increduble culinary and anthropological guide to that oenologically extraordinary country. The work of some years of research and writing it is an extraordinary achievement for an author who previously had no personal connection with Georgia. She took her own photos as she has done in previous works she has written or contributed to;

Roger Dean - Views
The book of Gingerbread
Best of America Cookbook
Le Creuset Mediterranean Cookbook
AA Spiral Guide to Venice
The Food and Wine Lover's Companion to Tuscany
Cheeses of the Amalfi Peninsula
La costiera dei fiori: wild flowers and traditional horticulture from Naples to Paestum
The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania
Collio: Fine Wines and Foods from Italy's Northeast.

And here she was helping out at the Okro's Wine table.

This is only a small  selection of the icons at the RWF. John Wurdeman could be seen for example as could Kelley Fox and Martha Stoumen. An all-star lineup.