O Fournier Urban Uco Torrontes 2009, Cafayate, Salta, Argentina (£7.50 Bowes Wines) Clean, fresh, zippy, the grapey edge of Muscat meets the more perfumed hand-cream and lychee edge of Gewürztraminer, not hugely complex but good perfumed quaffer. B(+)
Snoqualmie Naked Riesling 2008, Columbia Valley, Washington State, USA (~£11.50 Stratfords Wines) Fresh, quite rounded and rich, simple but balanced with tangy citrus acidity and cooked apple and peach flesh. B+
Meulenhof Erdener Treppchen Riesling Kabinett 2008, Mosel, Germany (£9.90 Tanners) Delightful, sprightly style, with lively quince and citrus fruit, mineral notes like wet slate and racy acidity – long, fresh, pure and delicate. S(+)
Leitz Rüdesheimer Riesling Kabinett 2008, Rheingau, Germany (£13.50 Booths, www.everywine.co.uk) Richer, rounder and more peachy than the Meulenhof, with crystallised pineapple and crystallised and fresh orange, still with the tangy backbone of acidity and touch of mineral. S
A couple of wines from a well-known (in the UK at least) singer’s estate in the Algarve plus a rather unusual sweet wine from the Ribatejo – or Tejo, as we should now be calling it.
Onda Nova Verdelho 2008, Algarve (£9.99 www.mollybrownswinelist.co.uk ) Clean, fresh, tight peach, citrus peel and gritty pearskin character with a touch of brine, ripe but still refreshing, wears its 14% alcohol well. B(+)
Onda Nova Syrah Rosé 2008, Algarve (£9.99 www.mollybrownswinelist.co.uk ) Bouncy rosé, packed with strawberry (fresh and tinned) flavours, fleshy and ripe but still dry, with an honest lively finish. B
Quinta da Lagoalva de Cima Late Harvest 2008, Ribatejo (N/A in UK – Clark Foyster are Lagoalva’s importers) A touch of volatility (think nail varnish), then oodles of fruit – peach, pear, apricot, grapefruit, elderflower, orange marmalade – but there’s also a less ripe, almost smoky edge that seems slightly at odds with the lusher sweeter side of the wine. Overall though, pretty tasty. B+ (see notes on the 1995 here)
Cast your mind back, dear reader, to the year 2000. Pulp fans were actually able to discover what that girl in the song was doing on Sunday Baby (not much in reality, but the cafe at IKEA was open), Bordeaux produced a spectacular vintage, certainly a candidate for vintage of the century, although no one was fully sure whether it was the 20th or 21st century, and a group of winemakers in the Clare Valley banded together in protest at manky corks and released their Rieslings with Stelvin screwcap closures.
Now I’m not a Stelvin zealot. It’s a bit of metal that holds in an inert disc, in the hope that all the bottles opened anywhere around the world will contain something that bears more than a passing resemblance to what the winemaker put in them in the first place. Food writers write about things such as meat, cheese and vegetables, not the packaging in which they’re delivered to the end user. Shame then that so much wine writing over the past decade has been about packaging.
So why am I writing more words about Stelvin? Simply to say that on the evidence of the thoroughly splendid, svelte and delicious bottle of 2000 Mount Horrocks Watervale Riesling I’ve been on tonight, the closure did what it’s supposed to to the wine – nothing. It delivered a sleek, perfumed beauty, showing some toasty, honeyed age as it enters it’s tenth year, but with its lithe citrus, apple and mineral flavours shining through. Still wonderfully lively and zesty, with at least another five years life ahead of it – shame it was my last bottle…
Thanks Enotria for the six Rieslings that landed on the doorstep recently, two with corks, two with screwcaps and two with those very pretty Vinoloks. It’s been a rather soggy afternoon in the Pennines, but these brightened up matters considerably. More on this week’s First Taste page here.
Anyone else have to delay their evening meal because of this afternoon’s tennis? And while we’re on the tennis – and I’m not trying to take anything away from the achievements of Roger the Dodger – did anyone get to a stage in that final set where they just wanted the whole thing to finish? OK, I did have some potatoes in the oven, but they were swimming happily in duck and wine juices and didn’t object to the extra cooking time, but non-tennis loving heretic that I am, I have to confess that after it got to 8-8, I did get a bit bored. No matter, the potatoes and the duck (legs – poached then grizzled up under the grill) were interesting, as were the accompanying wines.
First up was Joachim Flick’s Wickerer Mönchsgewann Riesling Erstes Gewächs 2003 from the Rheingau in Germany. And despite 03 being a warm vintage in the region (not to mention elsewhere in Europe), this had pithy citrus acidity to back up the voluptuous, peachy, tropical fruit and mineral flavours, and reminded me of top-notch Alsace Riesling. You might find some of Flick’s wines at The Winery in Maida Vale, but they’ve probably run out of this gem.
Equally duck-friendly was the 2006 Stift Göttweig Grüner Veltliner Gottschelle from Krems in Austria. This comes from an estate founded in 1083 which received a new lease of life recently when its vineyards were leased to a group headed by Fritz Miesbauer of Weingut Stadt Krems. In the couple of years since I last tasted it, the plum and peach flavours have fleshed out, but there’s still a savoury, mineral tang, the classic peppery overtone, and the potential to develop further in bottle. O W Loeb are the UK agents (and if you get the last glass from the bottle, beware – it’s already throwing lots of tartrates)
I’m not sure what Roger would have been supping this evening, but he’d have struggled to match these two intriguing and tasty whites.
