.
Mencía? Bierzo? Luna? Just when I thought I knew everything ... wrong!
by PHILIP WHITE
He hit me on the right day. Screwy neurology had me off the ethanol for awhile so I was now fresh and thirsty. Charles Lawrence, my dangerous sports obsessed American friend from Japan who works at Karatta Wines at Robe, called by with a mind-blowing Spanish red Duane Coates had given him at Kuitpo.
Charles (below) is like that. Last cracker he brought me from Japan was a Shiraz from Canada. Blat!
But this new wine came from an upland part of north-west Spain called Bierzo. Its maker, Alejandro Luna was a lawyer who ran away to join the family wine business in 2001. He made this red in 2008. Now, at ten years of age, it's available through Rob Hill Smith's Negociants International.
The grape is Mencía, which had been suspected of being a relative of Cabernet franc - they share some attributes of flavour and aroma - but has since proven to be genetically identical to the Jaen of Portugal.
That first whiff still rings harmonics round my vaulted halls of smell. It was alarming. It reminded me of Eau-de-cologne mint, Mentha x piperita var citrata. This is not the sort of aroma one expects of a ten-year-old red.
After that first blast it mellowed but still oozed that vibrant minty citrus til the bottle coughed its last: lingering like bergamot, the powerful Citrus x limon oil used to flavour Earl Grey tea.
Challenging stuff. Methoxypyrazine country. What starts as tomato leaf ends up as dry burlap sacking, or hemp. I suspect this natural component of the Cabernet sauvignon family - Sauvignon blanc in particular - oxidises to produce that dusty hempy smell which reminds many of that sniff they once had of a superphosphate sack, way back in the days before the pricks replaced plant fibres with their own patented petroplastics.
Superphosphate is made from birdshit, which builds entire islands like Nauru, which Australia has stopped digging up for money and now uses to lock refugees, and refugee children, in cages.
I reckon the whiff of burlap methoxypyrazine subliminally brings guano to the minds of many tasters, which they politely call "minerality".
As a kid in the Strzelecki Ranges of south-west Gippsland, I'd love it when my grandfather took a super bag from beneath his giant arse on the little grey Fergie tractor, unfolded it, tucked one corner of it into another to make a peaked hood, and put it over my head and shoulders in the rain.
It was like a little private house to walk about in; the acrid guano and hemp combined so well I never once smelled Pop's bum there.
Having been completely entertained by that aroma for as long as it usually takes to drink a glass, I eventually drank some. I'd been reluctant to be disappointed. Never happened. Man, I was tantalised. It was tight and wiry, and shiny like a whip ærial until those nightshade/hempen tannins loomed up to surround it. After an hour of air, these were being overtaken by the sweeter pipe tobacco flavours: Plumcake, fresh from the tin via a good Stanwell Danish briar.
Which provided another link: when I scoured the cobweb for vids and pix of Bierzo, it seems there are revered older bushvines growing in a gibber rubble that looks all the world like Basket Range sandstone. Quartz (silica), schist, decomposed slate and calcrete are also common there.
Although the Bierzo soils are largely acidic rather than alkaline, these geologies seem quite close to the types offered by the Mount Lofty Ranges, and indeed their northern extension, the Flinders.
"It must have been a tough little bastard in its youth," I said, imagining haughty nazi red heads whingeing about it on the wine chat scrolls. Charles agreed. We couldn't believe the damn thing was ten years old. It seems about three. Today, I've checked those chat room reviews. Yep. For years they were full of whinging about the 2008 Bierzos. "Gritty and forceful." "Very little fruit." "Short and unremarkable." "A tannic mess." "Green wood smoke." "Stemminess on the nose."
Until somebody eventually gets it: "Liked this better on day 2 (after storage in fridge in 1/2 bottle) - more integrated, green note has faded. Some cellar time is warranted."
This tight style: ungiving; taut; narrow - the opposite of gloopy - is what a great deal of finer wine was like before Robert Parker made big alcohol jampots fashionable in the '90s. Some wise winemakers here are heading in a similar direction: right outa there; back to the future. Stephen Pannell and Peter Fraser come immediately to mind. Lower alcohols, less puppy fat, better focus, longer lives.
It remains to be seen whether the determination of our visionaries extends as far as to accommodate a variety like Mencía, which itself pushes that lithe, wiry, narrow, strapping to outright brittle form. Given the altitude of the Luna vineyards, whose 70 hectares extend to 900 chilly meters, it may be safe to presume that if the variety was tried in the sandstone of Basket Range and the central Hills, or even as far south as the silica deposits of Mount Compass, these would be lower, warmer sites, and should produce flavour profiles and cross-sections which would be ready to drink before the passage of an entire decade.
3 comments:
Post a Comment