A magnificent obsession

 

There's not much that gives us greater pleasure than stories about rescuing plants from extinction. 

Normally we reserve these for wine grape varieties. We even started a Hall of Fame for those intrepid people who have found maybe a single vine thought to be extinct and propagated cuttings patiently over years (Thierry Navarre mentiones 20) to be able to plant a vineyard with them and produce wine. 

It really is like ressicitating a being though to have died. The world is richer as a result.

'Alles was vielfaeltig ist, ist schoen,' (everything diverse is beautiful) Karlheinz Stockhausen.

 On the plan of the property, there is written the following notice;

Huerto Botanico el Bartoli

El nucleo de la Fundacion es su coleccion de citros, que conforma el huerto Botanico el Bartoli. Este jardin unico cuenta con unas 500 variedades diferentes de citricos, cultivads en una extension aproximada de 4.5 hectareas.  

 

Bartoli Botanical Garden

The core of the Foundation is its collection of citrus, which makes up the Bartoli Botanical Garden. This unique garden has about 500 different varieties of citrus, cultivated over an area of approximately 4.5 hectares. 

list of donors to the foundation

The garden is now owned by Todoli Citrus Foundation of which Vicente is President. There is a long list of supporters. Being a foundation until recently, none of the fruit was sold commercially. Now the UK has become a market for certain produce which is sold to 200 restaurants here. Gradually others in Spain and elsewhere are becoming aware of the many culinary uses of  these fruits and are using them in restaurants also.

In these pages we have already departed from just wine grapes to report on the 'Children of extinct trees,' the gene bank of saplings at the gardens of Ninfa (Lazio) taken from in some cases the last examples of an Oak species in existance.  

 

This time we would like to pay tribute to the Todoli collection of some 500 species of citrus fruit at Palmera, (Valencia) Spain.

We already hailed Vicente ("I love all grapes") Todoli in a post here and indeed awarded him our Special Award for Diversity in 2023.

We hope we will be forgiven for reproducing what we wrote at that time, This makes for a very long post as we can now report on an actual visit to the Todoli Foundation:

Special Award for Diversity

 

Slotovino - a plea for diversity in Wine. That's our headline but strangely enough we have never given an award for Diversity itself. 

This year, quite by chance, nealy all our awards are for Spain - a country so obsessed with Tempranillo and in which Airen is the most planted variety - that their secrets remain hidden in a way that, say Italy's do not. 

So once again, and completely by happenstance, our new Diversity award goes to Vicente Todoli wose own biography is a very model of diversity.

Vicente Todoli, yes - he who was Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Valencia Institute of Modern Art, founding director of the Serralves Museum in Porto and Director of the Tate Modern in London from 2003 - 2010. His career in art continues with the artistic directorship of the  HangarBicocca gallery in Milan, Trustee of the Fundacio per Amor a l'Art in Valencia and President of the Botin Foundation Visual Arts Advisory Committee and no doubt much else.

So what about wine? He is not involved in any aspect of the wine world and apart from his most distinguished accomplishments in the world of art and what follows, he may be unknown to Wine.

What follows is extraordinary. Through inheriting a family estate he found himself the owner of a citrus grove. A trip to a private collection near Perpignan of 80 varieties of citrus grown in pots gave him the idea of planting an orchard to preserve the genetic diversity and heritage of citrus fruit. 

 

There are now over 400 varieties grown at the Todoli Citrus Foundation at Palmira, Valencia where Vicente was born. Also a gastronomic laboratory, a library and of course a museum, an ethnobotanical museum. You don't see many of them but Vicente is the man to build one.

So now we can get the picture about diversity but what about a connection to grapes and wine? On a recent visit to London, we asked him that question. Here is his answer;

"I love all grapes"

 

Vicente leads the 2-hour tour, lecturing as we go

Our visit was only one of very many Vicente welcomes several times a week when he is not running his gallery in Milan, the Pirelli HangarBicocca. We arrived at 11.00 but he had already led another visit that day. 

The fruits are laid out in categories on tables

He shares his magnificent obsession with great seriousness abut also great joy. He introduces each species and guides you on your tasting.

down shaded avenues

enough for everyone to taste

each tree a different variety

Everything is arranged to give you a panorama of what the collection consists of. 

big ones, small ones, some as big as your head

Vicente knows every tree. He doesn't use chemical fertilisers, weedkillers or anything that is not natural and ecologically sound. Perhaps the most surtprising thing is that he doesn't prune the trees with the exception of some straggly low growth perhaps. He says he likes each tree to have its own shape and personality.

strange fruit

Those small brown ones look like dates.

 

the ramp leads to a viewing platform where you can see all 5 ha.

 There were no dead trees. All seemed to be in the best of health.

Paella alla Valenciana - no fish!

 

At the end we were treated to a magnificent lunch. It wasn't clear if all Vicente's tours end this way but it seemed that his colleagues were not cooking the meal for the first time. 

A slap-up meal.

Wine Paris 9.2.26

 

Wine Paris 2026 seemed to be even bigger than before. Before? We couldn't remember when but we were not prepared for the gigantic hell that characterised this year's fair. Even if you attended from opening to closing on each of the three days, you would only have scratched the surface - there were that many exhibitors and wines.

 

Looking back we couldn't find this event in our past posts but we did find reports to another fair, the Salon des vins des vignerons independants which we attended at the same exhibition venue at the Porte de Versailles in 2016 and 2017. We had enjoyed those 'Salons' very much.

 

Not so much this Wine Paris - presumably with vignerons who are not somehow independant (?). It was just too vast and frenetic. What is more, we had been told that our profile 'does not match the criteria required to get a Media Credential.' That was a first but honestly we didn't hold the decision against them and if our report seems a bit ungenerous it is because we didn't have enough time or energy to cover all the interesting bottles there may have been on show. There certainly were enough of them among swathes of other less esoteric wines.

We thought we would start with Italy. Perhaps the range would be not quite as ginormous?

 That was a 'forlorn hope' as it were. 

 

 Near the entrance to this pavilion (each pavilion is the size of an large airport teminal by the way) we found this Grignolino. With modest 12.5% alcohol this should have made a good start but the wine showed how difficult this grape must be more than anything else.

 

 Ploughing on, we were encouraged to find the outstanding Piemonte producer Roberto Voerzio. Things were looking up.

 

 And then our good friends from Azienda Agricola Obiz from whom we had received advice on planting and working with our grape 'Soreli' which we had bought from the Vivai Cooperativo Rauscedo and planted aat home in the Thames Valley. 

They were on their lunch break probably but we hope they did good business at Paris Wine; they deserve to do so. 

 

 

Also deserving were the charming people from Scolari. We had enquired after a Groppello (one of our latest manias). This Posone is made from Groppello blended with Marzemino, Sangiovese and Barbera and designated Rosso Superiore from the Riviera di Garda Classico DOC. All very nice but at 14%, not for us, and where did they get their Sangiovese and Barbera from? Are they grown on Lake Garda? Just wondering.

 

Then, as happens more often than not, we stumbled across someone who is extremely important in our lives. In this case dott. Claudio Lenotti of Cantine Lenotti, the maker of the best Bardolino known to us!

It is impossible to describe to others the pleasure of actually meeting this wonderful person and being able to discuss his great wine. Goodness knows we have searched for years and tasted a great number of Bardolinos before alighting on Lenotti.

Why this obsession with Bardolino - a wine not held in high regard and invariably passed over for Valpolicella. We are happy to explain once again that we find so-called 'simple' Bardolino the very essence of a business-like food wine that can be drunk with as much pleasure as anything else and on all occasions. 

Why should Valpolicella keep pipping Bardolino to the post all the time? It is made from the same grapes, Corvina and Rondinella in a neigbouring area so what is going on? As explained to us and reported elsewhere in this blog, Valpolicella is regarded so to say as the first stage wine on the way to Amarone. Amarone is a big deal. People love it for its power and intensity. It sells well worldwide so there is enough money for Valpolicella producers to invest in their vineyards and winemaking.

Bardolino doesn't have this investment and has been tainted in the past with over production and less than the highest standards, rather like Chianti at one stage many years ago.  

In the case of Lenotti, it is not a question of a lack of investment because the company also makes Valpolicella and Amarone. Could that be the explanation of why their Bardolino outperforms so many others?

 

 

 

 

 

There was considerable icing on the cake in that Dr. Lenotti told us there are two UK importers of his wine. We didn't hesitate to buy 4 bottles as soon as we came home.

Nota Bene: when discussing the grape varieties used in Bardolino, there is in the 'Disciplinare' a mysterious category of 'altre tipiche della zona' which may amount to 10% each or 20% combined of the total. These 'altre tipiche' are named thus;

Barbera

Cabernet Sauvignon

Marzimino

Molinara  

Merlot 

Mentioning Molinara, D'Agata (Native Wine Grapes of Italy) writes "Molinara is increasingly being phased out in Valpolicella and especially Amarone wines, for its rosy light colour wine strikes fear in the hearts of producers looking to make the biggest, blackest wines possible. Nowadays it plays a much more important role in Bardolino. where it can make up even40 percent of the blend, providing Bardolino with lovely freshness, lightness, and a strong saline note."

France next

 

 Going straight to Jura we hoped to find something new in Poulsard.

 Without knowing it we stumbled on something very new indeed. You won't find Chateau de Verreux in Wink Lorch's 'Jura Wine' book originally published in 2014 but you will find it in her 'Jura Wine Ten Years On' (2024).

'Chateau de Verreux 

Wines from the estate's first 2023 vintage will be released in late 2024, and were made in the cellars of the dilapidated 18th-century chateau, currently under restoration, and once owned by Joseph Girard, a historically important figure, creator of the AOC Arbois... Vincent (Remillet), who worked for Domaine du Pelican for eight years, runs the estate in partnership with Vincent Richard, ownerof the chateau. The vineyards are mainly in Arbois, with some Cotes du Jura parcels, and more is being planted to reach 9 ha, Demeter certified. Both the wines and the chateau have great potential for the future.'

 

 Ch. de Verreux' Poulsart was beautiful.

Admire that colour!

 

Next to 'Wine Regions'

 by way of an enormous number of non-alcoholic wines. Not exactly a crowd there. 

 

 Suffering from overload at this point we noted in passing a  Ridge presence among others. We checked in case there were any of Ridge's more esoteric bottlings but we didn't see any. Could there have been a bottle of Montebello on offer? We could only think of getting out of these.

 

But not before we had the pleasant surprise of seeing a bottle of Reze. Not something you can find easily. It is an ancient variety, first mentioned in 1313. Quite widespread pre-philloxera it may cover little more than 2 ha. today. It tastes good too. 

Together with the Rauschling  discovered at the end of the RAW tasting the previous day, this had been a trip notable for Swiss discoveries among others.

RAW Paris 8.2.26

 

 

The RAW Wine fair is a fantastic instution. It used to be an annual delight here in London but has been missing from our schedule for quite a few years now. We look with envy to places all over the world where RAW sis still held: Berlin, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto, Copenhagen, Tokyo. Apparently, post-Brzit red tape is the reason RAW London is no more. Shame.

So when we saw that there would be RAW in Paris in February we decided that if  RAW didn't come to us we would go to it. Conveniently we could combine this with a visit to Wine Paris 26.

 

RAW was held at the Espace Clacquesin, Malakoff - just outside the Boulevard Peripherique. 

 

Claquesin is a once popular aperitif made from Norwegian pine sap among other things. This factory ceased production in 1942 and was declared a historical site in 1995. A good place to hold the fair you would have thought but in the event, somewhat cramped.

 

Clearly a victim of its own success there are now so many participants that it is difficult to negotiate so we can only figure a few standouts.

 

Loire. We limited our Loire and Loir researches to Grolleau Noir and Pineau d'Aunis.

 

Normally we love Grolleau Blanc, Gris and noir but not all the noirs were as good as this one from '68 1006'

 

Strange name.

 

 In terms of Pineau d'Aunis (warning: obsession!) we found an excellent producer, Domaine Maunoury whose 'Aunis soit!' was first rate.

 

 There was another fine producer of Pineau d'Aunis;

 Emmanuel Haget's wines are quite widely available, You can even buy this Pineau d'Aunis at People's Wine of Dalston and Roman Road, London.

 

 Quite a bonus to be able to obtain even one of the RAW wines in this country.

 

The mec from Quebec

 

Quebec We have always wanted to visit Quebec to taste their idiosyncratic wines. Only dating from 1980, the Quebec vineyard is now the third largest in Canada. In fact we have heard it tell that wine-growing in Quebec is difficult because the summers are too hot! In that respect Nova Scotia is better.

Frontenac Blanc

 

Frontenac was created as a red grape in 1978 from crossing Landot Noir with some Vitis Riparia varieties. It was licensed only in 1996. It has outstanding cold-hardiness. Frontenac gris is a white wine version of Frontenac, introduced in 2003. It started as a single bud mutation, yielding grey (gris) fruit and amber-coloured juice. Frontenac blanc was introduced in 2012 from white fruited mutations found in both Frontenac and Frontenac gris vines in Minnesota and Canada.

 

Pinot Madeleine

 

Next was a wine from a grape called Pinot Madeleine. Cue intense excitement. On qustioning Le mec from Quebec however, we learned that this is just a synonym for Pinot Noir Precoce, aka Fruehburgunder. As if that wasn't enough we have subsequently found out that this grape has a ton of other names. Why? 

They are:

Augsttraube, Augustiner blau, Augustclevner, Augustklevner, Augusttraube, Black Inly, Blaue Jakobstraube, Blauer Frühburgunder, Burgundac crni rani, Burgunder früh blau, Champagner schwarz, Claevner früh, Clevner, Clevner Frühburgunder, Frauentagtraube, Frühburgunder blau, Frühe Jakobstraube, Früher blauer Klevner, Frühreifer schwarzer Burgunder, Frühes Möhrchen, Frühtraube, Gospinsza, Ischia, Iskiya, Jackobstraube, Jacobitraube, Jacobstraube, Jacobszoeloe, Jakobstraube, Jakubske, Jakubske skore, Juliusi szoeloe, July Grape, Korai kek kisburgundi, Laurenzitraube, Laurenziustraube, Loerinc szoeloe, Lujega, Luviana Veronese, Maddalena nera, Madeleine noire, Magdalenentraube, Magdolna szoeloe, Möhrchen, Morillon hâtif, Morillon noir hâtif, Morillon parisien, Noir précoce de Gênes, Noir précoce de Hongrie, Noir printannier, Petit noir précoce, Petit noirin, Pineau de juillet, Pineau Madeleine, Pino cornij ranij, Pino ranii, Pinot de juillet, Pinot hâtif de Rilly, Pinot Madeleine, Pinot nero precoce, Pinot Noir précoce, Pinot Noir précose, Pinot plant de juillet, Pinot pommier, Pinot rannii, Pinot timpuriu, Plant printanier, Précoce noir, Raisin de juillet, Raisin de la Madelaine, Raisin de St. Jean, Raisin précoce, Rani modri burgrendac, Saint Jacques, Szent Anna szoeloe, S. Lorenzo, Tidlig bla burgunder, Tuannes negres, Uva de Trivolte, Uva di Tre Volte, Vigne d’Ischia and Zherna mushza. 

We asked our mec friend if he had any L'Acadie Blanc or Marquette but those he said had been left at home. 

These wines from the Conseil des vins de Quebec were not all great but there were good ones to be sure.

 

Romania. We were delighted to meet the affable Edgar Brutler of Weingut Edgar Brutler, Transylvania. He is a modern icon among winegrowers

Edgar Brutler himself

The name Edgar  Brutler has figured in these pages because he is the only producer of the white grape Gruenspitz in he world. The family had had holdings over this part of Transylvania for generations. They emigrated during the Communist period and returned thereafter. Edgar studied oenology at Geisenheim and made it his project to revive the ancestral plots. He and his father Johann have done this very successfully, following all manner of organic practises.

The Brutler 'assortiment' included (from left to right), Sefu Blanc (Furmint, Riesling and Chardonnay), Drum Bun (Feteasca Regala), Gruenspitz, Sefu Red (Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir), Wieso Nicht? (Blouge Field Blend), Cod (Blaufraenkisch). All good.
 

Switzerland. Bioweingut Rebhalde. 

 

So good to be with the Swiss, especially the Zurich lot. This gentleman from Rebhalde, Sven Hohl was also extremely affable. He is the fourth generation of Lake Zurich winemakers.

 You don't get Rauschling in the Valais! This is their flagship white wine.

Their Baechler red wine is a blend of no less than 7 grapes;

31% Pinot Noir
21% Merlot
13.5% Syrah
13.5% Blaufränkisch
7% Malbec
7% Bl. Zweigelt
7% Cabernet Sauvignon 

They also grow Syrah, Malbec and Grenache, Dornfelder, Cabernet Cortis, Cabernet Carbon, Gamaret, Garanoir, Marechal Foch, Muscat Olivier (aka Irsai Oliver) and - Roter Rauschling!

If their Roter Rauschling was there we missed it. It is a colour mutation of Rauschling, also known as Gelbhoelzer and Blauer Rauschling. Once thought to be extinct, there are now 17 ares or 1.7 Hectares in existance. We'll just have to see if one day we can get it from Bioweingut Rebhalde.

For our last stop we went to

 

Japan. Katsuki Wines. The gentleman pictured above was helping out and did not profess to be an expert. From the helpful RAW Fair website we learn 

"Located in Aya, Miyazaki, Katsuki Wines is a boutique family-run winery focused on creating small production, handmade natural wines. After over a decade in New Zealand and Germany making and studying wine, Yoshitada Katsuki returned to his native Miyazaki to pursue the family- and community- based winemaking he experienced abroad. He hand-selected and personally imported a diverse lineup of varieties suited to Miyazaki’s challenging climate, and, inspired by Akinori Kimura’s “Miracle Apples,” began completely pesticide, herbicide, and chemical fertilizer free sustainable grape production in 2013. Adapting Japanese table grape growing techniques to European wine grape varieties, Yoshi grows quality organic wine grapes previously thought impossible for the region."

 

There were helpful laminated sheet on the table and from these we gleaned the grape varieties in Yoshi's wines;

Kyoho

Niagara

Portland. 

Regent 

Merlot

Fuji
 

The first three of these are Labrusca varieties and make up Katsuki's Aya Topia wine. Kyoho and Fuji are Japanese table grapes.

Portland (also New York 4393) is a cross between Champion (Concord x Hartford) x Lutie (Dracut Amber O.P.). It contains genes from Vitis labrusca and Vitis vinifera. The hybrid was crossed in 1912 at the Vine Breeding Institute of Cornell University in Geneva, New York.. It is mainly used as table grape. In 2016, 12 hectares were reported in Japan.

There was so much more but the above was reward enough for our visit.