Monthly Archives: October 2021

Battle of the titans: three 2001 first growths

A visit by wineloving friends from England and America was the occasion to open some special bottles, including those served at the meal described below.

The aperitif wine was a 1994 Domaine de Chevalier blanc. While not maderized, this was clearly gently oxidized. It nevertheless was clean and showed hints of lemon, caramel, and vanilla. This old very dry white wine was a good way to set the scene for the meal to follow.

I don’t often do this, but I put out three numbered glasses for each guest (there were six of us) and we compared three red wines at our leisure with the meal (quiche lorraine for a starter, followed by roast chicken with butternut squash and cep risotto).
The wines were served totally blind.

Three of the guests correctly opted for Bordeaux from the 2001 vintage and, which is a pretty impressive seeing as I am well-known for serving oddball wines. There was far less agreement about which wines were from the Right Bank, and which from the Left.

Here are my own notes, rather short because I was cooking and serving dinner, and my wife was away at the time (one man show).

2001 Château Margaux: We had visited the château earlier in the day, tasting the 2010 Pavillon Rouge and 2006 grand vin, so it was a special treat to drink an older version that evening. The wine’s color was about as it should be and the nose was understated, but wonderful with subtle red fruit aromas and tell-tale cedar overtones. This 2001 Margaux was also very nuanced on the palate with a gentle, fresh, and resolved aftertaste. Its slightly retiring personality originally made me think it was not my favorite of the trio, but as I smelled and sipped and thought about the aromatics and taste, I changed my mind, and ended up assigning it a tie for first place. Four out of six people put it as their number one. In my opinion, 2001 Margaux is at its peak which, of course, it will hold for some time.

2001 Château Mouton Rothschild: The color here was deeper and more brilliant than the other two wines. The bouquet was rich and very Pauillac (ripe Cabernet, a touch of cigar box) and the wine was more vigorous and full-bodied than the other two on the palate. However, despite an assertive flavour, it did not have the depth and complexity of the other two. On the plus side, it will probably be the most long-lived of the three wines.

2001 Château Cheval Blanc: The color was not dissimilar to the Margaux, and the nose was wonderful and exotic, with notes of Asian spice and soy sauce (!) to blend with the ethereal fruit. The wine was soft and caressing on the palate. Lovely structure and follow-through. Delicious. It was my immediate favorite of the evening, but changed to a tie for first place as I went back to the Margaux and paid more attention to it.

All of the above wines were in their drinking window. They showed how fine an “Atlantic” vintage can be in Bordeaux, i.e., one in which the region’s naturally humid climate produces quintessentially classic rather than rich wines.

Three days in Jerez de la Frontera

OK.
This is a blog about Bordeaux, but I’m not close-minded. That’s why I also love visiting other wine-producing regions.

Seeing as I had already visited the Port and Madeira wine countries, it was inevitable that I should end up in Jerez de la Frontera one day or another…
That day (in fact, three of them) came in October 2021 and was certainly helped by the fact that there are direct flights from Bordeaux to Seville. Jerez is only an hour away by train.

The first thing my wife Christine and I did upon arriving in Jerez, a city of some 200,000 inhabitants, was to find a nice café and imbibe a fino sherry to get into the spirit of things. Fino is bone dry and very refreshing. With an alcoholic degree between 14.8 and 15.4°, it is hardly any stronger than numerous unfortified table wines. Furthermore, it’s a wine that’s intrinsically light on its feet – the perfect aperitif. Furthermore, it’s a wine that’s intrinsically light on its feet – the perfect aperitif. I guarantee that sipping one while munching salted almonds and outsize Seville olives will make the world seem like a better place…

We settled into our hotel in the old part of Jerez, a city that was ruled by the Moors from 711 to 1231. Their influence is unquestionably there to this day, most obviously in the town’s architecture.

Enjoying the balmy 30° weather, we wended our way to eat dinner at Lù, a Michelin-starred restaurant, appreciating the subtle aroma of orange trees lining the streets. Many of my wineloving friends are wary of tasting menus with matching wines. They prefer to be in control of which wine goes with what food and are especially wary of open bottles. We nevertheless took the plunge and were treated to a dizzying succession of inventive variations of local dishes in the nouvelle cuisine mold. Here is the menu and just some of the wines we enjoyed!

The waiter said that two of the wines would be served blind, a challenge I always enjoy. I took one of them to be a Manzanilla, but my wife wondered if it not might be a Jura wine (made with flor, just like Sherry) instead. Lo and behold, she hit the nail on the head! My mouth dropped open and I discovered yet another reason to think I had married an exceptional woman.

Here are is the menu and some of the wines served with the meal. This was a brilliant opportunity to see how well Sherry goes with food.

 

Our one appointment the next day was at Bodegas Tradición a relatively small, very up-market producer. We were welcomed by Eduardo Davis, whose knowledge of Sherry is nothing short of encylopedic. Thanks to an English grandfather and schooling in the UK, his ability to explain complicated things in the language of Shakespeare was dazzling. I say complicated because the production of Sherry reminds me of Champagne in that there are a great many technical aspects, some of which had puzzled me for years (such as the difference between Amontillado and Palo Cortado), and which Eduardo cleared up efficiently and in a way the layman could understand.

Like Champagne, Sherry is made from wines largely produced by independent growers. The key is not only sourcing these, but blending and ageing them, using the famous solera system. Bodegas Tradicón may have been founded in 1998 by Mr. Joaquín Rivero, but “Bodega CZ, J.M. Rivero”, the oldest known sherry house, dates back to 1650. The firm focuses on very old sherry that is neither cold-filtered, stabilized, nor clarified. The wines are unsweetened and unsulphured.
We tasted through the entire range, including fino sherries at various stages of ageing, during what turned out to be an intense master class – an unforgettable experience lasting over three hours.
The wines were some of the best we sampled over three days and their positioning in terms of pricing and reputation seemed perfectly justified.
Bodegas Tradición specializes in two categories of sherry, introduced in 2001, that I was unfamiliar with:  VORS, i.e. Very Old Sherry aged for more than 20 years and VORS, or Very Old Rare Sherry aged for at least 30 years. These are the crème de la crème of sherries. There is another reason that a visit to Tradición is unforgettable. They have a marvelous gallery of oil paintings including works by such artists as Murillo, Valequez, Goya,  etc

We spent the afternoon visiting Jerez’s two main tourist attractions, the 17th century Saint Sauveur cathedral and the 12th century Alcazar, built during the Muslim period. By the way, eight towns in Spain are called “de la Frontera” since they stood at the border between Christian and Muslim territories.

That evening we went to another fine (and much more affordable) restaurant called Carbona. Once again we sampled sherry with several courses, and if you have never tried this, you should!

Claret lovers are familiar with Bordeaux bashing in recent years that saw the wines denigrated and castigated for being too expensive (evidencing more than a little of the “fox and the grapes” syndrome with regard to pricing…). Sherry has gone through a period of falling out of fashion as well, but for different reasons. The image was of an old-fashioned wine consumed by vicars and maiden aunts out of tiny cut crystal glasses. Then came the trend for Cream Sherry, that all but obliterated familiarity with other wines from the sherry region, starting with the delicious bone dry varieties. Sales fell off sharply and it is an uphill battle to rehabilitate the wine’s image. The creation of the VOS and VORS categories have helped here. Edouardo Davis of Bodegas Tradición also feels that there is a future for table wines made from the Palomino grape.

Our last day in Jerez was spent visiting two other bodegas.

The first was also the largest producer of all, Gonzalez Byass, founded in 1835 by Manuel Maria Gonzales Angel, who later went into partnership with his English agent, Robert Blake Byass.
Manuel Maria innovated by exporting a light fino sherry that he named Tio Pepe in honor of his uncle. This has since become an international brand sold in 120 countries. Approximately three million bottles of Tio Pepe are shipped every year!
So, Gonzales Byass is a big business. However, if small if beautiful, big certainly doesn’t mean ugly! Like other large firms, Gonzales Byass have a number of wines well worth investigating alongside their flagship product. Furthermore, they are the only house in Jerez to make their own brandy, which is also a huge seller. As if this weren’t enough, they own vineyards in other parts of Spain (Rioja, Castilla la Mancha, Somontano, Rias Baixas, etc.) and wine tourism plays an important role at their Jerez cellars. Thousands of tourists visit every year, many from cruise ships stopping over in nearby Cadiz.

The Gonzales Byass cellars are so vast that visitors are taken around in a small train. My wife and I had the privilege of touring instead in a golf cart driven by Sylvain Vieille-Grosjean, who is half-French and has lived most of his life in Jerez. Sylvain told us all about Gonzales Byass as we zipped through the cathedral-like bodegas at a good clip. It is impossible not to be struck by the sheer scale of things. The traditional La Concha and Apostles cellars are especially noteworthy.
Factoid: the weathervane showing Tio Pepe in his red coat, tilted Spanish hat, and guitar is officially recognized as the world’s largest by Guinness.

We tasted through ten wines with Sylvain, going from the inevitable Tio Pepe through Amontillado, VORS Amontillado, Oloroso, Palo Cortado, Medium, Cream, VORS Cream, Pedro Ximenez, and VORS  Pedro Ximenez. This extended tasting was an excellent way of becoming familiar with the full range of sherry, and the wines were all very good. It is no reflection whatsoever on their quality if I write that I was not enamoured of the two P.X.s.  Although a fan of many dessert wines (Sauternes, Port, Madeira, etc.), these were simply too sweet for me, with some 400 grams/liter for the VORS version.

Gonzales Byass were the first sherry house to produce a type called En Rama. The story Sylvain told me is that a buyer from the Wine Society in England tasted a “raw”, i.e. unfiltered fino from barrel and asked the firm to bottle it as such. They did so, despite reservations about the wine’s stability, and it was a great success. The style has since been copied by other houses and it is hoped that it will help contribute to sherry’s renaissance.

95% of sherry is made from the Palomino grape (the rest being P.X. and Moscatel) and the wine has traditionally been aged in butts made of American oak. As opposed to table wines, these are not regularly replaced, the interaction sought being quite different from table wines. Used barrels are often sold to Scotch whisky producers to give a special “sherry finish”.

Our last visit in Jerez was to Bodegas Emilion Lustau, founded in 1896. Lustau are one of the major players on the sherry scene and much esteemed on export markets.
The cellars are possibly even more cathedrallike than those at Gonzalez Byass and are likewise a major tourist attraction.
We went around various parts of the bodega with Isabel who spoke good English. When I tasted a fino, I said that it was “poised”, a word she hadn’t ever encountered. It’s a bit of an abstract description, agreed, but it seems to sum up the house style (or perhaps focused and balanced…).

 

Lustau are famous for several reasons: their La Ina wines (a major brand taken over from the house of Domecq), their original proprietary bottle, and their almacenista range of about ten wines. This word best translates as “warehouse keeper” and describes small producers of sherry, either from their own vines or those of others, who traditionally have sold on to major houses. Lustau decided to bottle and market their wines individually, and even went so far as to register almacenista as a brand name. These unique wines are especially worth discovering, as is their especialidas range including VORS wines, a vintage sherry, and the unusual East India Sherry (an aged blend of Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez).

Our trip to Andalusia ended with 3 days in Seville, a city I’d love to go back to. A recounting of our time there doesn’t really belong in a wine blog, so here are just a few photos, and I must mention that I enjoyed a flamenco performance there more than I ever would have believed.

Château Fleur Cardinale, an up-and-coming Saint Emilion cru classé

I first became acquainted with Château Fleur Cardinale during a Portes Ouvertes (“Open Cellars”) operation in Saint Emilion several years ago. These events are always wonderful opportunities to visit numerous estates, taste, and buy wines if one so wishes.
Seeing as I had enjoyed the wine at Fleur Cardinale and appreciated the enthusiasm of the young owners, I resolved to go back and take a closer look at a less busy time.

I did well to wait, because the château has undergone a major renovation and is a tremendously different place from the one I had previously visited. Caroline Decoster kindly invited me to come by and take a tour of the new facilities In September 2021. These are truly impressive and it is obvious that no money was spared in giving Fleur Cardinale a new lease on life.

Located in Saint-Etienne-de-Lisse, Fleur Cardinale was originally known as Clos Bel Air. The story goes that, after it was purchased by the Obissier family in 1875, they called the estate Fleur Cardinale after two of their racehorses! Be that as it may, many Right Bank estates in Bordeaux have the name “fleur” (La Fleur Pétrus in Pomerol, La Fleur Perron and La Fleur de Boüard in Lalande de Pomerol, Fleur de Lisse in Saint Emilion, my friend Joseph Sublett’s Fleur de Roques in Puisseguin Saint Emilion, etc.).

The Decoster family came on the scene when they bought Fleur Cardinale in 2001. Previously owners of several firms producing Limoges china, including the famous Haviland brand, Dominique and Florence Decoster decided to sell their businesses and focus on their new estate in Saint Emilion.

They did not waste time in bringing this up to scratch, and were rewarded by its inclusion as a great growth in the 2006 classification of the wines of Saint Emilion, a status confirmed in the 2012 classification.


Their son Ludovic and his wife Caroline also decided to commit to this adventure. With no prior training, Ludovic threw himself into learning about winemaking and took over in this capacity at Fleur Cardinale in 2015.  Caroline, with a master’s degree in management in the wine and spirts Industry is involved with sales, communication, and marketing.

I asked Caroline about the upcoming 2022 classification that has been so controversial since Cheval Blanc and Ausone withdrew, and further to a long and debilitating series of court challenges. Her reply was measured, but she obviously feels very strongly about the subject. She spoke of the hundreds upon hundreds of pages it took to apply, of the colossal efforts that had been made to bring the estate up to its present level, and the fact that the media had seized on very minor aspects of the criteria (presence of a receptionist, car park, foreign languages spoken, etc.) to attempt to denigrate and disqualify it.
She and her family are proud of Fleur Cardinale’s cru classé rank.

The Bordelais are past masters in the art of combining striking architecture with a vineyard estate. Fleur Cardinale’s originality and attractiveness lie more in its interior design than its exterior. There is an exhibit of Limoges china as you enter and then a circuit taking you though child-friendly exhibits telling the story of viticulture. The new vat room is state-of-the-art and the impeccable cellar contains 100% new barrels for the grand vin.

The building’s back deck affords a sweeping view of Fleur Cardinale’s vines (75% Merlot, 20% Cabernet France, and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon) in a single block. They grow on gently rolling terrain on the highest part of Saint Emilion’s limestone plateau, surrounded by châteaux Valandraud, Pressac, Rol Valentin, and Faugères. Although Michel Rolland’s team are winemaking consultants, Jean-Luc Thunevin at nearby Valandraud has provided precious advice to the Decosters over the years. When Fleur Cardinale grew from its original 18 hectares to the present 23.5, part of the newly-acquired vines were situated on a cooler north-facing slope. Jean-Luc suggested that it would be more appropriate to plant white wine grapes there, and the Decosters heeded his advice. Their first white wine will be marketed in years to come, when the quality meets the owners’ expectations.

The estate presently produces three wines: the cru classé Fleur Cardinale, a second wine called Intuition (from the 2018 vintage onward), and another wine named Croix Cardinale from a plot that is not in the immediate vicinity.

After visiting the cellars, Caroline took me up to the second floor where there is a world-beating tasting room with plate glass windows everywhere, tasteful modern furniture, bookshelves, a sound system, an automatic wine dispenser, and an intimate feel. The look is reminiscent of a huge suite at a top-notch boutique hotel – but with a view over the vines. Everything is geared up for new generation wine tourism.

And what of the wines? I tasted through the range in the 2018 vintage. This was a hot year, troubled by widespread high alcohol levels. However, this was not the impression I had when tasting the Decoster wines. The grand vin, Fleur Cardinal, was showing very well and, although somewhat oaky at this stage, had a rich, layered, velvety texture and smooth mouth-coating tannins. It was those qualities that attracted me to Fleur Cardinale in the first place. Mercifully, the pricing is definitely on the reasonable side too, retailing in France for 45/50 euros a bottle.

The go-ahead, positive attitude at the château is contagious. Ludovic is conducting various experiments with vinification intégrale and is even considering agroforestry, i.e. planting trees among the vines!  2021 was Fleur Cardinale’s first year of organic viticulture and it would be an understatement to say that this presented a few major challenges… In fact, there was frost in the vineyard for 9 days in a row at the beginning of the growing season, followed by severe attacks of mildew like elsewhere in Bordeaux. The château is expecting only 50% of a normal crop, tops. When explaining this, Caroline smiles philosophically and says that after this terrible introduction to organic farming, things can only get better!

Like everyone else, I like success stories and I’m pleased to say that Fleur Cardinale fits the bill. It’s an estate well worth watching.

Chai Mica, or where to buy Burgundy… in Bordeaux


Chai Mica is a play on words. Chai (a word meaning wine cellar, rather than cave, in the west of France) is pronounced the same way as “chez” and Mica is short for “Michael”, as in Michaël Llodra, who founded the business. I say business because Chez Mica, is more than just a shop. It is also a showroom, tasting venue, and office for a thriving fine wine business.

Michaël, in his early forties, is a former professional tennis player who has long loved fine wine. His associate, Christophe Jacquemin-Sablon, has sales experience with Roederer Champagne and managed Pétrus for 6 years.

Christophe Jacquemin-Sablon & Michaël Llodra

To begin with, their business model was limited to helping winelovers without the time or expertise to build up a cellar, starting with a budget of 10,000 euros. This venture was enhanced by the fact that Burgundy, in particular, is a very difficult wine to purchase, and because Michaël had established close links there, succeeding in obtaining allocations as rare a hen’s teeth from some of the region’s most famous domaines.

But, let’s focus on the shop. Chez Mica is located at 13 rue Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux. This is inside what the Bordelais refer to as the Golden Triangle formed by three streets – Cours Clemenceau, the Allées de Tourny, and Cours de l’Intendance – with the circular Place des Grands Hommes in the middle. This is in the heart of the city, where the chicest boutiques are located.

Featuring wines from some 70 Burgundian domaines, as well as Corsica, Piedmont, the Rhone, and even a few Bordeaux (!) the shop opened six months. As a long time Bordeaux resident, I was totally amazed to discover a place featuring such a fine choice of Burgundy. This is indeed proof that the navel-gazing attitude so prevalent in the past has changed.  And, contrary to popular belief, the Bordelais do not look down their noses at Burgundy – it’s that they simply do not know it.
Until recently, fine Burgundy was difficult to find locally. That has now changed thanks to Chai Mica.

The shop also started a club two years ago prior to the opening of the shop. A membership fee entitles members to take part in ten tasting dinners a year with famous winemakers (Olivier Krug is scheduled in November) as well as a reduction on their purchases. Members are located in France and abroad.

I was particularly struck by the breadth of Chai Mica’s selection of village wines, proving that, if carefully chosen, good Burgundy can still be relatively affordable. The range of premier and grand crus is fascinating and I defy anyone who loves the wines of the Côte d’Or not to at least salivate, if not give into temptation…
Among other domaines, you can find the wines of Bruno Clair, Comtes Lafon, de Montille, Sauzet, Carillon (a member of the family works at the shop), Roulot, Lafarge, Arlaud, Clos de Tart, Dujac, Mugnier, Trapet, Méo-Camuzet, etc.

Chai Mica does not sell over the Internet, so you’ll have to visit the shop to see their wonderful range of wines . Prices are reasonable.