Diania is one of the most delectable wines you could taste.
So far so good, but it is the sheer quality of the wines that catapults Tomas and Torres into our wine personalities of the year.
They also grow Macabeu, Ull de Llebre (Tempranillo), Cabernet Sauvignon, Garnacha, Giro, Merlot, Valenci and Syrah. Wines are made "with no fuss" The vineyard comprises not much more than 5 hectares. Prices are reasonable.
Best
Sparkling Wine:
Louis Pommery England
Made in Hampshire, this is the first English Sparling Wine grown and made by a French Champagne house in the UK and very good it is too.
It started life at around £23. Now expect to pay £10 more. It is still worth it.
Best
White:
Heinrich Neuburger Freyheit. Oesterreichischer Landwein, Weinland. Trocken, Pannonien 2013. 12.5%
Bought in San Cassiano many years ago this bottle stood up amazingly well with the essence of Neuburger shining through. Neuburger is a spontaneous crossing of Chardonnay and Sylvaner and should be a lot better known.
The back label translates as
From A - Z. Don't be afraid of stem and skin contact,
without adding sulfur, just lots of your own yeast. By drawing
directly from the barrel into the bottle, we preserve the natural
freshness and liveliness as well as the charming tannins. The
loamy-calcareous-sandy sedimentary soil is naturally low in nutrients
and rather barren, which suits the variety, which has now become rare,
and leads to balanced growth of the vines. Hand-picked at the beginning
of September and left on the mash overnight. Spontaneous fermentation
and biological acid degradation. Matured in large oak barrels,
bottled unfiltered.
Best
Red:
Nakhshirgele Aladasturi.
Recently included in a list of 'wines you can chill,' the Aladasturi grape (from Georgia of course) makes our kind of wine. The taste is unmistakable, the colour bright and the alcohol low. As one of the only vineyards in the UK growing Gamay, Biddenden has in previous good years (2003, 2004 and 2011) used the variety for a single varietal still red wine. Having cut 65% off the Gamay vines not long after flowering this year, to work with just one bunch per cane, and looking at the season so far, Julian (Julian Barnes, Biddenden's Managing Director) believes another single varietal wine is probably on the cards.
“We have bunches of Gamay out there which if you were French you would be glad to have hold of,” said Julian. “We don’t know what the weather is going to do and at the end of the day it’s agriculture and there is no entitlement to it.
Biggest
Surprise:
Fidelio and Calardis Blanc
Here is Slotovino on that discovery made during a tasting of many of
the new varieties obtained at Geisenheim. The tasting was by courtesy of
Dipl. Ing. Bettina Lindner.
Gm 8107-3
a
deliciously apply (Bettina preferred citrussy) wine from grapes
descended from Ehrenbreitsteiner and FR 52-64 (meaning a grape
cultivated by the Freiburg Institute in 1952). Ehrenbreitsteiner is
itself a crossing of two generations of other crossings. As in any other
kind of breeding the hope is that progress may be made over time.
Bettina Lindner told us she had sold the GM 8107-3 to a French gentleman
looking for varieties to plant in Brasil or some such humid part of the
world and this person had decided the variety should have a proper name
and chose 'Bettina'. We were pleased to follow his lead, so 'Bettina'
it is.
We bought 25 bare rooted vines and planted them
that year so the vines are now 12 years old. They have always been
quite vigorous but the grapes have never ripened fully until this year.
Suddenly we have huge bunches of beautiful large grapes undisturbed by
birds or wasps. No sign of the rather strident taste when these grapes
have not ripened properly.
All these years we have had confidence
in Gm 8107-3. Derek Pritchard of Dunkery Vineyard in Devon sells it
through his estimable www.winegrowers.info site. Every so often we have
googled old 8107 to see if it has finally been given a name.
Just
today we discover that it has indeed been given that honour and what is
more, the name is 'Fidelio' also the name of Beethoven's operatic
masterpiece. How appropriate! So nostalgically no more 'Bettina,' welcome
Fidelio.
Shortly after finding out that our GM8107-3 had a name we discovered that our GF93-22-6 had also been so honoured. We were told that Calardis was the Roman name for Geilweilerhof but we can't find a confirmation of that at the moment. Quite a few wines have already been made with Calardis Blanc.
Best
PIWI discovery:
Calardis Blanc
This was very promising when we made it at our experimental vineyard. It was sold to us by Winzerhof Wolfs Brunnen back in 2015 as GF93-22-6 and has only recently been given the name Calardis Blanc; surely a recognition of its worth. Calardis was the Roman name for Geilweilerhof. See above.
Best
wine merchant:
Gergovie Wines.
Another guilty secret, Slotovino has been resistant to Gergovie wines because the name reminded us of the conductor Valery Gergiev who is not one of our favourites. Of course we knew that they were not associated in any way but we can only explain why it has taken us so long to celebrate this marvellous company. It is thanks to them that we discovered some amazing wines in 2023.
As well as the Cellar Tomas Torres wines listed above, we found the following. All Gergovie wines seem to be organic.
 |
| A Pinot D'Aunis by Calvez 'Bobinet' |
Predictions
for 2024:
Wines from Far East and Australasia
will become more expensive (Suez Canal).
Pretty safe prediction.
Best
wine supplies shop:
Hamstead Brewing Centre, Great Barr,
Birmingham.
Hamstead are based in Birmingham. No doubt they are a boon to wine and beer makers in the Midlands but aren't the first to come to mind in the South East. That may explain why they sometimes have equipment that is sold out elsewhere so it is very useful to know about them. Not only that but their service is second to none and they are extremely nice people.
Special
Award for the re-establishment of endangered grape
variety:
Cati Ribot - Escursac and Gregory Perez - Estaladina
The ever-informative Chambers St. Wines newsletter re: Escursac;
Cati and her father Jaume...began to
delve into the past of Mallorquin viticulture, planting old varieties in
collaboration with the island’s governing bodies in 2006. They were one
of two producers to start planting new vines of ancient varieties like Escursac,
the local Malvasía de Banyalbufar, Girò Ros and Prensal Blanc (and
other, even lesser-known varieties like Callet Negrella and Vinater that
remain unrecognized by the D.O. authorities in Mallorca). Gradually,
some of these varieties that had been excluded from ‘modern’ or
commercial winemaking in Mallorca were accepted by the governing
organizations and included on the official register of Spanish grape
varieties. Perhaps more importantly, Cati found that she enjoyed the
wines that these varieties produced far more than the wines made from
international varieties in Mallorca, and that they were suited to a
different sort of winemaking. Harvests grew earlier and macerations got
shorter as Cati explored the potential of grapes more suited to the
Mallorquin soils, her own tastes, and especially the Mallorquin climate.
Owing to Mallorca’s long, hot, and sunny summers, the indigenous
varieties tend to be late-ripening, drought resistant, and
large-berried. These characteristics prevent them from becoming
over-ripe and protect them during dry periods.
The most important of these varieties to Cati’s story is the red grape Escursac.
Large-berried and late-ripening, it tends towards the production of
wines with moderate alcohol, delicate red fruit, and soft tannins. To
our knowledge, Cati makes the only bottled varietal wines in the world
from the grape, from 1.2 hectares of vines that she and her father
planted in front of the winery in 2006. Her passion for Escursac led to the planting of another 5 adjacent hectares in 2020."
Robert Parker re; Estaladina;
The official version in Bierzo now is that Estaladiña and PanyCarne are
the same variety, different from Merenzao and Bastardo that is
Trousseau. Estaladiña has a lot more color than Merenzao and also has
high acidity, as I could see in the 2022 Estaladiña. It's a serious and
austere wine with low alcohol (12.5%), very good acidity, some herbal
notes a little à la Cabernet Franc, a more Atlantic/cool-climate profile
and fine-grained but present tannins. This matured in concrete egg for
10 months. I love this profile of austerity. Some bottles produced.
94/100
Book:
Oxford Companion to Wine, 5th
Edition. Julia Harding MW and Jancis Robinson MW.
Many years in the making, this is practically a re-writing of the 4th edition. The subject Wine is fast-developing and the Oxford Companion is indispensable, especially when newly published.
Various
accolades to…
All
good Beer
An interesting name for a company that sells some esoteric wines difficult to find elsewhere. Brendan Tracey? Kelley Fox? No problem.
Their website is cute and they are charming people. Altogether a joy.
Les
Vignerons parisiens
An excellent urban winery in Paris, not only worth a visit but worth buying a bottle. Praised in Jancis Robinson's Purple Pages.
Roig
Boig by Celler La Salada, Catalonia
Sucumulla
by Vinas D’Empremta, Catalonia.
Els
Besavia de Bardisots, Oriol Artigas, Cataonia
Also Aladasturi and Oineau D'Aunis. Food wines par excellence.
