This bottle was stupendous.
The Balla Geza winery is in Transylvania, 20 Km east of Arad. Formerly part of Hungary, it was ceded to Romania in 1920. Hungarian is spoken there but not encouraged.
Wein Plus Lexikon:
The red grape variety Vidoc (also INRA/JKI 58) is a complex interspecific new breeding between VRH 3082-1-42 (genes of Aubun, Cabernet Sauvignon, Garnacha, Merlot) X Regent. It contains genes from Vitis Labrusca, Vitis Lincecumii, Vitis Rupestris and Vitis Vinifera as well as Muscadine. The hybrid was created in collaboration between INRA (Montpellier, France) and the Julius Kuehn Instiute (Siebeldingen, Pfalz, Germany) as part of a project launched in 2000 for the development of PIWI varieties. It was with the same parents that the new breed Artaban was created as part of the project. The Vidoc variety is characterised by total resistance to powdery mildew to and high resistance to downy mildew.
'Ce vin est un temoin de la resilience du vivant et de sa capacite surprenante a s'adapter. Issu entierement des vignes resistantes cultivees sans aucun intrant a la vigne et au chai, Darwin prouve que l'on peut faire du vin differamment. Vinifie entierement en levures indigeness puis eleve en cuve pendant 2 annees.'
Which translates as 'This wine is a witness to the resilience of life and its surprising capacity to adapt. Coming entirely from resistant vines grown without any input in the vineyard and cellar, Darwin proves that you can make wine differently. Vinifies entirely from indiginous yeasts then aged in barrel for 2 years.
'Oaken Grove' was started in 1986 by the Rossi family. At that time there was a snailery on the property. Now it's all Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay, Madeleine Angevine and Bacchus.
Over the years Phil Rossi has enlarged the vineyard and wine has been made to ever higher standards ending up with sales to Waitrose who described Oaken Grove white wine as one of England's most loved.
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| Phil himself |
Phil is a popular member of the community at Fawley. The vineyard provides one of the centres for villagers and others to get together for the Jazz concerts that Phil promotes or to watch football championships on the wide screen. Delicious food is also served.
Our experimental vineyard is nearby and Phil has been a source of kind advice and collaboration over the years, on one occasion allowing us to take his stock of old rabbit guards for our use.
So on one of his open days we dropped in to say hello and bought a bottle of his Pinot Noir Reserve. This is made only in exceptional years. Vinification and bottling is by Litmus Wines, associates of Denbies in Surrey.
Wow! This was really good. Probably the best English Pinot Noir we have tasted so far. Competition is stiff though. Recent examples from Bride Valley, Furleigh, Simpsons have all come close. In the past, other UK Pinot Noirs have tended towards the watery or acidic. None has been cheap.
Could we be getting better at Pinot Noir?
The 2024 London Wine Fair was reduced yet again. This time the gallery was closed as you may be able to see in the photo above. There used to be perhaps half as much wine up there as on the ground floor.
Nevertheless, there were plenty of interesting wines on show.
Ukraine provided some important examples of these but we have combined the large Wines of Ukraine exhibit at this LWF in our post of July 7th with those shown at the SITT Spring Tasting earlier this year.
So the unheard-of variety first; Mouhtaro (Greece)
Previously noted but not tasted were Aleksandrouli/Mjuretuli blend. (Georgia), Cabernet Moravia (Czech Republic) and Romeiko (Greece), all very good.
The Cabernet Moravia was developed to resemble Cabernet Sauvignon as closely as possible and according to this sample, it does so very well indeed, much better than any of the other Cabernet Somethings we have tried.
The strong Greek presence yielded a true rarity, Mouhtaro. Mouhtaro is not to be found in 'Wine Grapes.' Google provides us with this information;
Until recently it could only be found in Askri Valley, where the old bush vines produce low yields of concetrated grapes. The high demand for white instead of red wines and the low yields that the variety tends to produce in the arid slopes under the mountains, are responsible for its near extinction, as growers favoured other local varieties. As a grape that can withstand the heat, more and more producers of Central Greece turn lately to Mouchtaro.
The revival of Mouhtaro or Mouchtaro is thanks to Athanasios Zacharias of the Muses Estate. He was the first producer to revive this variety bringing it back from near-extinction and producing the first vintage in 1998. This one was from the Katrisiosis family.
The Georgians were out in force but once again they were playing it safe with lots of Saperavi, Kisi, Mtsvane, Tsolikouri and so forth.
Aleksandouli + Mujuretuli = Kvanchkara
This Aleksandrouli caught our eye as an odd man out but we would have drunk it previously in Kvanchkara, a semi-sweet wine popular in Georgia. As here, it usually comes in a blend with Mujuretuli. This bottle was Aleksandrouli 50% and Mujuretuli 50%.
Interesting also to Black Muscat is also grown in Georgia. Black Muscat is probably Muscat of Hamburgh, aka Schiava Grossa, a very well-travelled grape.
"When their father Andreas established the winery in 1988 it was not as popular to grow indigenous grape varieties, but Andreas believed that it was important to keep Greek grape varieties alive and show the world why these unique grapes are so excellent. Today, the winery grows almost all of the 11 indigenous Cretan varieties as well as a few international grapes."
Cretan varieties apart from Romeiko include Dafni, Muscat of Spina, Malvasia di Candia (on the basis that Candia is an old name for Crete), Plyto, Vilana, Vidiano, Thrapsathiri, Kotsifali, Liatiko and Mandilaria.
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| Dry Red |
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| Sparkling |
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| Brut |
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| Dry White |
This was quite a Romeiko-fest reflecting the grape's versatility and also a certain indecision as to what it does best.
1, Spontaneous fermentation followed by deliberate oxidative treatment. Modernised to elevate its identity without compromising its rusticity. (Red).
2. Orange wine
3. Sparkling (white) wine.
4. Dry white wine.
How about that?
Other highlights of the fair were provided by China/Yunnan and England.
At a stand with the name 'Vinum Eurus' we met Dr. Zhen Tian Xie, an extraordinarily intelligent and well-informed person as well he might be with degrees and at least one doctorate from various universities around the world, currently at Cambridge,
The poster says 'Explore the mystery of Chinese terroir'
Amazingly Dr. Zheng was talking about the Himalaya and specifically Tibet or what is called 'Tibetan Area.'
Julien Boulard's notes include the following statements;
"Yesterday, during the Xige forum, I said that the best Chinese wines aren't on par with those from Western countries. I take back these words."
and
"I’m convinced that this wine will finally put China, and especially the “Hauts Plateaux de l’Himalaya” region, on the world map of fine wines. 94pts"
Coming back down to earth as it were, we noted that Wine GB had a small presence bringing together 9 producers mainly of sparkling wine of course.
Concentrating on the still wines we noted progress in the wines of Giffords Hall who fielded a Pinot Noir and a Pinot Noir/Rondo blend.
Then a new one on us, Burnt House. The name is intriguing but nowhere can we find out the derivation. Burnt House is a farm in Suffolk of which a part has been planted to the three principle Champagne grapes plus Bacchus. As with an increasing number of sparkling wine producers, Burnt House offer a straight Pinot Noir.
Divico? Yes! Halfpenny Green is one of the very few British winegrowers to have planted this variety. We once imported 6 Divico vines from Switzerland but they all died.
The blend in Penny Red is Rondo, Regent, Triomphe d’Alsace and Divico.
Finally, another new one for us - Radlow Hundred. This is a farm in Herefordshire going back eight generations. Radlow Hundred is an administrative area noted in the Domesday Book (1086). Here, they grow Solaris and Rondo.
