Italy at the AC Wine Club November 2017

This month we looked at a range of Italian wines. The results were surprising!!

We began with a very unusual wine. It was a skin contact Pinot Grigio. This, in effect, makes it an 'orange wine' ie made as they do red wines where the grape skins are allowed into the fermentation. This extracts colour. The natural colour of the Pinot Grigio grape imparts a copper or tawny hue into a wine. 99.9% of all Pinot Grigio wines on sale have been made without any skin contact and so are white wines only.   

Attems Cupra Ramato Pinot Grigio 2012 

   

This is a fabulous wine that almost no-one liked at all!! It needs to be opened for a while longer than we gave it. It is monumental after a few hours ... recommend decanting. Intensely floral with fabulous structural integrity ie acid and fruit balance! Because it is an older vintage it came across as a bit stewed when it was first opened - my mistake. Sorry guys. It was astonishing later on .....

Lambrusco 2016 secco (Marks and Spencer)

A dry red Lambrusco! Sparkling. This was a surprise when it was poured as everyone was expecting a white wine. Liked by everyone on the night. I love this for its exuberant and yet dry fruit. Rich and delicious. Excellent wine.

              

Bosco Prosecco Frizzante (Spar and Eurospar €8.99 to end of Dec)
Great value. Loads of soft pear and honeysuckle elements. A crowd pleaser. Liked by everyone on the night. Frizzante Prosecco wines are Ireland's most popular sparkling wines. Low in alcohol good value fun!

Duca di Sasseta  Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Reserva  (Lidl €14.99)
                                              Top class style and great value wine.
Really liked by the Club even though it took a while to explain that this is a Sangiovese based wine from Montepulciano in Tuscany and not a Montepulciano grape from anywhere else!
Smooth, warm, rich, light tannins, touch of balsamic, lots of stewed tea in the background.

Tenuta San'tAntonio Valpolicella ( Classic Drinks)

I have always been a fan of Valpolicella and as it happens managed to visit this winery many years ago. (At the time no-one spoke any English. Awkward enough ...) It was run by four enterprising brothers and the wines they were making were absolutely fabulous. Judging by this Valpolicella they still are! (I can still remember that it was there that I tasted, for the first and only time, a Reciotio di Chardonnay!)

This is a 70/30 blend of Corvina and Rondinella grapes showing a typical deep cherry imbued ruby colour and an intensely aromatic bouquet. Palate has a great depth of rich cherry/red berries with moderate tannin and a finely sculpted acidity. Really liked by the Club members.

     Photos from way back in 2006 of Tenuta Sant'Antonio

Gianni Gagliardi Barbera d'Alba 2014 (Classic Drinks)

Gagliardi is pure genius stuff. Situated way up in Piedmont they make Barolo of the highest order where a ton of attractive fruit meets masses of structure. Anyhow that's Nebbiolo. We'll have to make that another night. I had none to show!!

This time around we had the Gagliardi Barbera d'Alba.  

I'm also, as it happens, a Barbera fan where softness and rich fruit combine so well. All of Gagliardi wines are exceptional and its great to see them well distributed here.  

Nicosia Etna Rosso (Marks and Spencer €15.50) 

Sicilian wine of the highest pedigree.(Grapes: 80/20 Nerello Mascalese/Nerello Cappucio). Oodles of red berry cranberry like fruit. Excellent softness and depth and a really fine length. Great 'teaching wine' for anyone who might be wary of Italian reds. Shows southern warmth to a tee!

The point was well made this month that Italy is treasure trove of unique grapes and wine styles. Its also a well that wine drinkers can visit again and again and not grow bored or jaded. It is always exciting!  

Next Month: December 3rd. It must be Sparkling.

Exploring Grapes in Ardclough contd.

The AC Wine Club at Ardclough           November 2016

Another great night where we explore grapes and their wine styles on the first Monday of every month.  

Essay South Africa 2014

Chenin Blanc  … with a touch of Viognier                                              O’Briens Wines

O’Brien’s Wines supply this label to their on-trade customers only ie restaurants and hotels. The name Essay is a play on the SA abbreviation for South Africa. It’s an excellent wine (as we would expect from O’Briens!) with the crisp Chenin balanced beautifully by a touch of peachy Viognier. We all ‘found’ distinct lanolin/wet wool at the edge of the bouquet – that’s good!

Paredes Crete 2015

Dafni                                                                              
Marks&Spencer        €15.00

     

This is from Greece and has a very obvious bouquet where ‘Torrontés rose petal’ meets ‘Gewürztraminer lychee’. Fabulous wine for those who like perfume! Beyond that it’s a credit to Greece (where white wines dominate local drinking patterns). Pity we don’t see more wines from Greece.

Silverleaf South Africa 2015                                                           

Dunnes Stores €8.99

Merlot  
Fabulous value. Soft and charming. Also, clean as a whistle fruit. Good to see.

  

Gianni Gagliardo Barbera d’Alba 2014                                        Independents  €26.00

Barbera

Brilliant winemaking from Gagliardo in Piedmont, NW Italy. Barbera is the grape and it’s a soft and concentrated wine with endless depth of flavours each of which threatens to be very serious but then pulls back and becomes charming instead.  

Gianni Gagliardo Barolo 2012                                                       Independents  €52.00
Nebbiolo

Barolo is the king of Italian wines. If they’re any good at all they don’t come cheap! They are however and experience in a bottle and Gagliardo’s is no exception. This wine is very modern with accessible fruit to the fore and lots of intense structure hidden well in the background. Bouquet is classic warmed asphalt and palate is rich fruit, acid, tannin and alcohol. The balance is excellent and it will keep from many, many years.

Inaugural AC Wine Club Tasting!

Thanks to everyone who turned out yesterday on a spectacularly warm and wonderful evening here in Co. Kildare. It was a great session. We are now up and running. Membership is open and we will meet on the first Thursday of each month at 8.00pm in the GAA at Ardclough.

I kept our first session confined to a populist range of wines that showed us a range of grape types, wine making style and country of origin  influences.

I then introduced my new, and fabulous:

ACWine Club Fact Sheet no 1: Tasting

and

ACWine Club Factsheet no. 2: Grapes.

You've just gotta join to get your hands on them!

Highlight of the night was when I brought up the concept of a Classics Tasting later in the year. Mind you a Champagne Tasting suggestion went down pretty good as well!!

The Wines last night:

Seifried Pinot Gris 2007 Nelson New Zealand Food friendly style with emphasis on savouriness. Perhaps a tad too old allowing acidity to mask the fruit. I have tasted more recent vintages of this and normally find it excellent. Really got our first discussion going well - everyone found their acid taste buds! I met, and interviewed, Chris Seifried in Dublin last year - genuine guy.

Les Jamelles Chardonnay  2009 Vin de Pays d'Oc France Soft and accessable wine with ample fruit for the price. This brought a great debate re chardonnay into focus. I'm still on a chardonnay roll and want everyone to try as many as possible. Bring Chardonnay back - I nearly said, 'in from the cold' ,but aren't cool vineyards giving a lot of Chardonnay's reputation back to it as a brilliant grape! les Jamelles is widely available.  

Gallo Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 California Last month I met, and interviewed, Stephanie Gallo. Really nice lady. Last year I was lucky to do likewise with Chief wine maker for Gallo, Cal Dennison. I say lucky because I have been fan of what Gallo has achieved for many years now. I understand their ideas behind wine styling and I have very little time for critics who dismiss their wines without even tasting them! This wine did not disappoint. As with all things Gallo it is very well made and appeals to a wide audience with a full, slightly fat fruit and a touch of residual sugar. Commercial and popular. Brilliant teaching wine. 

Marks and Spencer Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 Margaret River Western Australia I admit that most of the Club last night were not as familiar with Marks and Spencers' wines as I had expected. That should change with M&S's new initiative utilising the skills of the members of the Association of Wine Educators. I hope so because wines like this should not be left to a chance purchase. They should be sought out, nay hunted down! This was brilliant fruit aged to perfection in both oak and bottle.

Michel Torino Coleccion Malbec 2010 Colchagua Valley 1700 metres Argentina If any area of the world expresses its location through its wines it really must be these fabulous high altitude ones out of Argentina. The depth, smoothness and sheer enjoyability of this wine is exceptional.

   

Muriel Rioja Crianza 2007 Rioja Spain This was my first introduction to this wine and I wasn't dissapointed. This shows modern and inviting soft fruits galore and yet has a good traditional oaking and velvet smoothness. If the previous wine was supposed to show off provenance and this one, wine making then both were very much on top of their game.  

SEE http://www.kevinecock.ie/ FOR MORE INFO ON THE AC WINE CLUB