A bullet-headed man of solid build and military demeanor, Eric Texier made a big splash among American oenophiles with his debut vintage ′99 Côte-Rôtie. (Curiously, 95 percent of his wine is exported.) A native of the Bordeaux region and a former nuclear engineer, Texier first traveled to Oregon and California to get a New World perspective. He became fascinated with the Rhône region, and started studying the nineteenth-century literature in order to determine the best vineyard sites. Texier uses 40 percent new oak in his lush, elegant Côte-Rôtie, which always showcases the signature Côte-Rôtie taste of raspberry.
The father-and-son team of Michel and Stephane Ogier is similarly pragmatic. Until 1980, Michel sold his grapes to negotiants, including Guigal. Now, he and twenty-four-year-old Stephane, who towers over his wiry, balding father and looks a lot like Brendan Fraser, produce several seductive estate-bottled Côte-Rôties using a combination of traditional and new techniques. Another rising star of the appellation is Texier’s former friend Pierre Gaillard, a gregarious, good-natured man whose fingernails are as dirty as any of the local farmers’, although he is a well-traveled cosmopolitan who likes to debate the merits of Opus One versus Margaux. (He prefers the former.) Gaillard worked as vineyard manager at the old firm Vidal-Fleury, where he planted the famed La Turque vineyard. He worked for Guigal after it bought Vidal-Fleury, and eventually began to purchase his own vineyard parcels, the most prized of which, Côte Rozier, produced one of the best wines of the 2000 vintage. Other makers to look for are Burgaud, Clusel-Roch, Jamet, Bernard Levet, and— my desert-island Côte-Rôtie—-Jasmin.
Côte-Rôtie typically takes five to ten years to show its potential (and shed that nasty young Syrah burnt-rubber smell). As for recent vintages, 2001 was classic, while the superhot 2003 wines are more massive and voluptuous and roasted. The 2005 may prove superior to both. Côte-Rôtie is one of the smallest appellations in France, and the output is minuscule. Guigal’s Côte-Rôtie Brune et Blonde is the only wine made in enough quantity to appear at retail outlets throughout the country. Most other Côte-Rôties take work to find and are best reserved in advance. The following importer-retailers are among the best sources. You should be on their mailing lists.
North Berkeley Imports, 1601 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA 94709; 800-266-6585; northberkeley imports.com. (Texier and Gaillard)
Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, 1605 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702; 510-524-1524; kermitlynch.com; fax: 510-528-7026. (Jasmin, Rostaing)
Sam’s Wines & Spirits, 1720 N. Marcey St., Chicago, IL 60614; 800-777-9137; samswine.com. (Chapoutier, Gerin, Burgaud, others)
Rosenthal Wine Merchant, 318 E. 84th St., New York, NY 10028; 212-249-6650. (Cuilleron, Bernard Levet)
THE HOUSE RED OF THE MONTAGUES AND THE CAPULETS
When über-restaurateur Danny Meyer entertained his childhood idol, St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Bob Gibson, he thought long and hard about what wine to serve to the pitcher, whom he knew to be a serious oenophile. Gibson had arrived at Meyer’s Gramercy Park apartment with a bottle of Turley Cellars Hayne Vineyard Zinfandel, a big purple Hummer of a wine that’s always a hard act to follow. Meyer, whose restaurants, such as Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe, are known for having some of the best wine lists in the country, finally decided on a 1990 Quintarelli Recioto della Valpolicella. Gibson must have been pleased. I know I was ecstatic when Meyer brought the second of his three cherished bottles to my apartment recently for dinner; it was probably the best wine I’ve had this year.
Okay, I can hear some of you snickering out there. It’s true that Valpolicella has pretty much the same image problem in this country as Soave, which is no coincidence, since the two regions adjoin each other and the same giant corporation has been shipping vast quantities of bland Valpolicella and Soave to this country since the 1970s. For some of us, the wine is a part of our history that we’d rather forget, a name associated with dim memories of embarrassing dates—like certain hair-styles from the era of Foreigner and Leo Sayer. But anybody who has recently tasted a Valpolicella from Quintarelli or dal Forno has a different impression.
Quintarelli and dal Forno are the Plato and Aristotle of Valpolicella, and the legitimate question is whether they are superfreaks who happen to make great wine here or whether they are pioneers in a region that is catching up to them. Romano dal Forno’s father and grandfather made Valpolicella on their small family estate, but dal Forno says that he knew virtually nothing about wine until he met Giuseppe Quintarelli, the genial genius who lived a couple of valleys away near the town of Negrar, back in 1981. “He basically adopted me,” the stocky and intense dal Forno told me when I visited him last year. Dal Forno speaks about wine as if it were a matter of life and death: “I tried to absorb everything.” He seems to have succeeded. His Valpolicellas are more intense than most Amarones, and his Amarones should be opened only in the presence of gods and stinky cheeses.
The Valpolicella region encompasses a series of picturesque north-south ridges that are often described as resembling the fingers of an open hand. The dominant red grape here is Corvina, which shares the hillsides with cherry trees. Valpolicella is the hometown red in Verona, the ancient city that Romeo and Juliet made famous, which has lately become the setting for Vinitaly, a gigantic trade fair that fills the hotels and ties up the streets every March. The two-story “booth” of the Valpolicella-based Allegrini winery is literally and figuratively the biggest thing at the fair. But just as Valpolicella is starting to get sexy, it’s also getting a little complicated. We’re starting to hear the phrase “super-Valpolicellas,” and some of the most interesting wines from the region don’t even carry the V-word on their label. The Recioto della Valpolicella mentioned above is a sweet version, made from dried grapes. And some dry Valpolicellas are turbocharged with dried grape skins left over from the production of Recioto, a method known as ripasso. Got that?
Probably the easiest way to understand the wines of Valpolicella is to think of a continuum between the lightest and the richest. On the lightest end of the scale are wines labeled simply Valpolicella, like the notorious Bolla (which is improving under American ownership). At the other end of the scale are Recioto della Valpolicella, produced from grapes that are dried on mats for three or four months after the harvest in order to concentrate the sugars before fermenting, and Amarone, its dry cousin, made by the same process, except that the grapes are allowed to ferment until the sugar is gone.
Amarone—or, to use its full name, Amarone della Valpolicella—was the first wine from the Valpolicella appellation to get respect. But in recent years the quality and the reputation of ordinary Valpolicella have improved as well. “The wines used to stink,” says Sergio Esposito of New York’s Italian Wine Merchants. “Literally—they smelled like feet.” Esposito suggests that just as Barolo producers started to pay attention to the quality of their Barberas and Dolcettos in the 1990s, the top Amarone producers are boosting the quality of their dry reds with lower yields and improved cellar work. Allegrini has all but abandoned the appellation name, turning out some brilliant Corvina-based wines under the names La Grola, Palazzo della Torre, and La Poja.
Valpolicellas that have been turbocharged by the ripasso method (usually indicated on the label) can taste like junior Amarones, with hints of tar, leather, dates, and figs, and can stand up to a grilled rib eye or lamb chops. The Reciotos make a tremendous accompaniment to a cheese plate. But don’t overlook the simpler pleasures of a good Valpolicella Superiore—with an obligatory 12 percent alcohol and at least a year of aging—from makers like Brigaldara, Nicolis, Tedeschi, and Zenato, which typically sells for about fifteen dollars. Any one of these might become your new house red.
“AN EXTREME, EMOTIONAL WINE”
Amarone
“Amarone is an extreme wine,” Romano dal Forno warns, pausing as we descend the spiral staircase of his villa to the chilly depths of the wine cellar, where I’m suddenly struck by how much he looks like a weather-beaten
version of James Gandolfini. “It’s an emotional wine,” he continues. For a moment, I wonder if he’s implying that I may not be man enough for the job ahead. After sampling several vintages from the barrel, I’m indeed a little emotional—exhilarated and also saddened by the knowledge that, rare and expensive as it is, I will seldom taste dal Forno’s radical juice again.
Amarone is an anomaly: a dry wine that mimics sweetness; a relatively modern creation that seems deeply primitive and rustic, like some kind of rich pagan nectar or the blood of a mythological beast. While Italians consider food and wine to be inseparable, Amarone overwhelms most dishes. “With Amarone, you don’t think about food,” dal Forno says. “Cheese, maybe.”
Dal Forno is the most extreme proponent of this extreme red, made from dried grapes—mostly Corvina—in the Valpolicella hills outside Verona. His turbocharged Amarones, produced only in the better vintages, tip the scales above 15 percent alcohol and make most cult Cabernets seem dainty by comparison. In the past decade, thanks to Robert Parker, dal Forno’s wines have become as revered as those of his mentor, Giuseppe Quintarelli, with whom he worked before assuming responsibility for his father’s vineyards.
Quintarelli’s estate sits in the hills of the Valpolicella Classico region, at the end of a long driveway lined with meticulously pruned olive trees—holy ground for the wine geek. Sticking his head out the window in answer to my repeated ringing of his doorbell, the resident saint sports a large bib across his green herringbone jacket and a smear of tomato sauce on his chin. A genial baldie in his seventies, Quintarelli seems to have no recollection of our appointment but cheerfully agrees to show me around after he has finished lunch and, presumably, the game show that is blaring in the background.
Quintarelli’s cellar is pleasingly cluttered and medieval-looking, full of giant old Slovenian casks. I don’t see any steel tanks. Nor any of the new oak barriques that dominate dal Forno’s pristine cellar. Although the family resemblance is unmistakable, Quintarelli’s Amarones are more earthy than dal Forno’s, and even more complex, suggestive of figs and dates, bittersweet cherry and black licorice. They inspire contemplation and wonder. To my mind, they are the ultimate expression of this extreme concept. My visit overlaps with that of two French wine writers whose initial irritation at sharing the cellar with an American is eventually overridden by their pleasure in the wine, which they acknowledge is unlike anything produced in la belle France.
The courtly, tweedy Stefano Cesari, proprietor of the nearby Brigaldara estate, shows me the real secret of Amarone, leading me up a flight of stairs to a loft in the barn behind his fourteenth-century villa, where thousands of wooden trays are suspended, one atop another. If most wines are made in the cellar, Amarone is made in the attic.
Every fall, the choicest grapes of the vintage are set out in racks to dry for a period of months. This process, which dates back at least to the time of Pliny, who commended it, concentrates the sugar—and often induces botrytis, the noble rot responsible for the flavor of the great whites of Sauternes. (Botrytis is not welcomed by all makers; some, like Allegrini, have installed humidity-controlled drying chambers to prevent its formation.) Drying does for the grapes what a turbo-charger does for a V-8 engine. Traditionally, a sweet wine resulted, because the grapes stopped fermenting before the sugar was consumed. Called Recioto della Valpolicella, this sweet red is still produced. Cesari tells me the first cask of Amarone was a mistake—a barrel that fermented all the way to dryness sometime in the early part of the century (other sources point to much earlier origins). This style became known as amaro (bitter) recioto and was eventually produced in commercial quantities in the 1950s.
Just as its exact origins are obscure, Amarone remains a mysterious, almost schizophrenic wine. As Bastianich and Lynch suggest in Vino Italiano, “It behaves like a sweet wine without technically being sweet.” The bouquet of dried fruits and the syrupy texture suggest port; it tends to trick the palate by seeming sweet in the beginning and finishing dry, even slightly bitter, like unsweetened chocolate.
When I get in the Amarone mood, I often look for Allegrini, one of the most innovative and exciting estates in Valpolicella, or Brigaldara, which excelled not only in the stellar ′97 vintage but also in the less opulent ′98 and ′99 vintages. Bussola, Masi, and Tedeschi make powerhouse Amarones in the dal Forno mold, while Accordini, Bertani, Bolla (yup, that Bolla), and Speri produce slightly lighter, more approachable versions.
As complex as it is, I like to think of Amarone as the perfect primer wine for those who are suspicious of the cornucopia of flavor analogies that wine critics come up with. I’m often baffled myself when I read wine notes full of huckleberries and hawthorn blossoms. But give me a glass of Amarone and I’m the man! Step back, Bob Parker! Even the beginning taster can feel like a professional as he effortlessly identifies the intense flavors and aromas of the most extreme red wine on the planet. Cherries! Dates! Figs! Black licorice! Leather! Coffee! Bittersweet chocolate! Tobacco! Et cetera, et cetera.
CAPE CRUSADERS
South African Reds
Nelson Mandela, Charlize Theron, and Pinotage are among South Africa’s distinctive contributions to global culture. The last is an unlikely hybrid of two French grape varietals: finicky, noble Pinot Noir and mulish Cinsault—imagine the love child of Jean Seberg and Congressman Bob Barr. Who knows what Professor Abraham Perold was drinking when he came up with this idea. While Pinotage can sometimes smell like nail polish remover au poivre, at its best it improves with age and is actually capable of provoking contemplative enjoyment.
The best way to see if you’re fond of Pinotage is to look for a bottle from Kanonkop, a winery located in Stellenbosch. (I assume the name has something to do with the seventeenth-century cannon that greets you at the end of the driveway of this beautiful estate.) Kanonkop is to Pinotage what Petrarch is to the sonnet, although the winery also makes a very good Bordeaux-style blend, which has twice won France’s Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande trophy. These victories suggest that South African reds have arrived on the international scene, but the news has been slow to reach these shores.
For several years now my favorite South African red has been the Pinot Noir from Hamilton Russell Vineyards, a hill-side estate in the Walker Bay region, less than two miles from the Indian Ocean. A relative newcomer in a country whose wine history spans almost four hundred years, the property was established in 1976 by Tim Hamilton Russell, who struggled tirelessly against restrictive and irrational regulations; it’s now run by his son Anthony, an Oxford-educated whirling dervish who likes to say he’s just a farmer, although I’ve observed firsthand that he cuts a very stylish figure on dance floors from Cape Town to Manhattan.
The cool microclimate of this area, with its marauding baboons and its clay soil studded with prehistoric hand axes, produces the most Burgundian New World Pinot I’ve ever tasted, with the kind of earthiness, complexity, and age-worthiness rarely found outside Burgundy. The neighboring estate of Bouchard Finlayson, started by Hamilton Russell’s former winemaker, is also producing fine Pinot, as is newcomer Flagstone, a winery to watch for its Pinotage and blends as well.
Cabernet and Bordeaux blends are currently attracting the lion’s share of capital and energy, and the warmer region of Stellenbosch is probably the top appellation for these wines. It’s also among the most dramatic landscapes I’ve ever seen, where green valleys with white stucco Cape Dutch farmhouses could almost pass for Flemish landscapes, except that they are framed by jagged, vertiginous gray mountain ridges. The pioneer of Bordeaux-style wines in the Cape is Meerlust, an estate more than three hundred years old that makes earthy, slow-maturing reds, including a Merlot, and its standard-bearer, Rubicon (not to be confused with Francis Coppola’s wine of the same name). Another historic Stellenbosch estate, a few kilometers up the road, Rustenburg is producing serious, curranty Cabernet blends that are drawing international interest. Nearby, Rust en Vrede makes rich, powerful Cabernet, Shiraz, a
nd Merlot, and, finally, an estate wine that is a blend of all three—which seems to be the new Cape trend. None of these wines will cost as much as a good cru bourgeois Bordeaux from the 2003 vintage.
Rupert & Rothschild, in the adjacent Paarl appellation, is a joint venture between one of South Africa’s wealthiest families and the Baron Edmond branch of the Rothschilds from France. Until his death in a car accident, it was run by Anthonij Rupert, the gruff, Charles Barkley–sized black sheep of the family. This historic estate is producing very good Cab blends, with the help of Pomerol’s ubiquitous Michel Rolland. Rupert sometimes took longer than his wines to show his charming side, but I spent a hugely entertaining day with him, talking about wine, Italian tailoring, and African wildlife after turning into his driveway unannounced, and I was saddened to hear of his death. The winemaking continues to be in the capable hands of Schalk-Willem Joubert and Rolland. Another deep-pocketed venture producing Bordeaux-style blends is Vergelegen, owned by hydra-headed Anglo-American Industries. Winemaker André van Rensburg, hired a few years back, comes with a reputation as a serious Shiraz specialist, and is planting plenty of this varietal, which is gaining ground in South Africa, as everywhere else. In fact, I suspect that Cabernet-Shiraz blends may have a big and delicious future in the Cape.
Of the many hours I have spent lost on back roads of wine regions around the world, I doubt if I ever felt more lost in the wilderness than I did looking for the property of pro golfer David Frost in the remote foothills of Paarl. Frost gives lousy directions, but his Cabernet is a big currant bomb, and he is what the South Africans call a rugger bugger and what we would call a good old boy—a generous and gregarious host despite the fact that he was feeling the effects of a long night with his good friend Anthonij Rupert the night before. After the long hangover from apartheid-era isolation, South Africa’s red wines, like its actresses and golfers, are ready to compete internationally.
A Hedonist in the Cellar Page 5