Chateauneuf du Pape

Last week, my American Wine Society Chapter held a tasting of Chateauneuf du Pape wines.
The meeting was held at a member's home in Napa. (If you ever read this, thanks Marc and nancy!)

Each participant brought a bottle of CNDP and an appetizer to pass and our host gave a short talk on Chateauneuf du pape wines in general. I think we had 13 wines but 2 were duplicates so there were 11 different tastes. The wines ranged from a 1992 (orange rim, slight tannin, all fruit gone) to a a couple of 2003 wines that were pretty good to a few newer 2009 vintages that were still slightly tannic.

In general I can't say that I am a fan of CNDP. I like the main grapes of the blend, Grenache, Syrah, Mouvedre, but i still find the blend to be a little rustic and course. Syrah of course has high tannins - supposedly one of the 4 highest tannin grapes in the world along with Cabernet sauvignon, Tannat and Nebbiolo. Maybe the CNDP producers haven't figured out how to mellow them out without losing flavor in the process. In reading about these wines it seems that the winemakers throw the stems into the tanks as well adding more tannins. This may be part of the problem.

By the way, I took a chance and decided that one COULD serve fish with red wine so I took a tray of California roll sushi and my claim is that it goes well with the not-too-thick CNDP wines. Plus easy to get and a good finger food.

It was surprisingly hard to find a bottle of Chateauneuf wine. I wen to 2 different grocery stores, and 1 liquor store , that usually have pretty good selections. I wasn't finding anything. I finally found 1 bottle and bought it, hoping that it was a decent wine. It wasn't. It was a 2009, still too young and had kind of harsh tannins.

Did you ever wonder HOW Chateauneuf got its name ( The pope's new house/castle/palace )?
These things intrigue me so I am posting some research that i did below.

========== the following is mostly taken from Wikipedia with some rewording ==============

During the dark ages a conflict rose between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor over who held power over temporal life. the HRE was the protector of society and the Church, but the Pope usually was responsible for acknowledging and crowning him. After the arrest of a French Bishop by Phillip IV in 1301, the Pope issued the bull Salvator Mundi, retracting all privileges granted to the French king by previous popes, and a few weeks later another one with charges against the king, summoning him before a council to Rome. In a bold assertion of Papal sovereignty, Boniface declared that "God has placed us over the Kings and Kingdoms."

In response, Philippe wrote "Your venerable conceitedness may know, that we are nobody's vassal in temporal matters," and called for a meeting of the council of the lords of France, who had supported his position. The King of France issued charges of sodomy, simony (selling indulgences), sorcery, and heresy against the Pope and in turn, summoned him before the French council.

The Pope was preparing a bull that would excommunicate the King of France and put the interdict over the country, and to depose the entire clergy of France, when in September of 1303, William Norgaret the strongest critic of the Papacy in the French inner circle, led a delegation to Rome, with intentionally loose orders by the king to bring the pope, if necessary by force, before a council to rule on the charges brought against him.

Nogaret coordinated with the cardinals of the Colonna family, long standing rivals against whom the pope had even preached a crusade earlier in his Papacy. (Think of a Hatfield / McCoy feud with the papacy as being the prize. Or even better, Capulet and Montague only without the love story). In 1303 French and Italian troops attacked the pope in his home town, and arrested him. He was freed three days later by the population of Anagni. However, Boniface VIII, then 68 years of age, was deeply shattered by this attack on his own person and died a few weeks later.

Following the impasse during the resulting conclave to elect a new pope and to escape from the infighting of the powerful families that had produced earlier Popes, the Roman Church looked for a safer place and found it in Avignon, which was surrounded by the lands that had been donated to the church years earlier. (Historical note: Southern France wasn't really part of France at this time. parts belonged to Spain and Parts to Italy). During the conflict between the Italian rivals, French Cardinals were able to elect one of their own as Pope.

Clement V (1305–1314) became the next pope. He was born in Gascony in southern France, but not directly connected to the French court. He decided not to move to Rome but instead took up residence in Avignon. For the next 72 years this became the home of the popes. They drank Burgundy wine. (Note, the vineyards on the slopes of Burgundy's famous escarpment the Cotes d'Or, developed and maintained by the Clergy, also had a hierarchy. The bishops at received the less prestigious wines from the shallow soils at the top of the slopes, The cardinals' wine came from the sometimes too rich soils at bottom, the Pope's came from the best vineyards in mid slopes). However the rest of the clergy drank and promoted the local wine around the Popes summer home near Avignon. And thus it began.

john

Unit 6 - redo

Having finished my WSET Unit 1 paper, and having caught up on most of the blogging that I couldn't find the energy to do while working on the paper, I am now turning my focus back onto Unit 6 - Fortified Wines.

Actually part of my focus has been there for several weeks. I bought another set of wines and we have been tasting them for the last month and taking notes so that i can learn the characteristics of the wines and the differences between them. Susan and i also do backyard blind tastings where we taste the wines and try to guess what they are.

Last time I had tasted 15 wines in preparation. (See the picture at bottom).This time I added 11 more - with a couple of duplicates.

This batch of wines include:

• A dry amontillado sherry : higher quality than last time. Less caramel, more character. Sherry nose.
  
• A medium dry Amontillado : not a lot of aroma, but good in the mouth. good quality.
• 10 y/o Bual Madeira : Rich, 'baked' but still a lot of acidity. This is how you tell a Madeira.
  
• 'Rainwater' Madeira :
  
• 10 y/o Tawny port : Rich, slightly sweet. We killed this bottle right away. Yum.
• Harveys Bristol Cream : generally complex with a long finish.
  
• Reserve Port : slightly better character than Ruby.
• Pedro Ximenez : Very rich, sweet but not too syrupy. Liquid golden raisins, figs. Brown in color.
• LBV Port : Rich, slightly sweet, complex, one of my favorites.
  
• Muscat of Rutherglen. Amber to tawny. Flavorful but not a lot of Muscat fruit.
• Muscat - Rivesalte. Golden, fresh, fruity Muscat flavors.
  
• Rasteau - aged fortified Grenache. Dried fruit flavors. Rich. Complex.

Generally it is a little tricky to tell the Amontillados, from the Madeiras, from the Tawnys in terms of color. They are all clear and amber to tawny in color, another reason for 'blind' tasting, but the aromas and the mouth are what differentiate them.

Madeiras have a baked sugar aroma / taste. Like peanut brittle. Also high acidity.
Amontillados have a light body, the dry amontillado has a Sherry nose. Caramel is less baked.
Tawny Port is sweeter, more body than either of the above.
Harveys Bristol is generally quite complex with a slight Sherry taste and a long finish.
PX is brown and awesome. You can't mistake that flavor.
Rutherglen is trickier. Tawny color like a 10 y/o Tawny port, but just different flavor profie.
Rasteau is also tawny, but with little more vegetal flavors than the Rutherglen.

Anyhow - another month of tasting and going over the notes on the 150 topics on fortified wine from the Oxford Companion that will form the core of the test material.

The other thing that I do as part of my studying is check the web sites for the big producers. I can generally get some additional history on them, or notes about current activities. I think ( hope ) that having some current knowledge shows extra study and can help raise a grade.

john

IMW - Annual Champagne Tasting

On Sept 26, the Institute of Masters of Wine, North America presented their annual Champagne tasting.
This was a paid event, $50 per person, and the fees go back to the IMW in order to build up their treasury and offer other events throughout the year. Last spring they offered a class on the Terroirs of Bordeaux with 6 Bordeaux vignerons presenting and discussing their properties and their wines. I had thought that this class may be the same.

Earlier this year, I had also attended another Champagne tasting sponsored by the Champagne producers of France, and I was looking forward to tasting them again, no matter what the format. I have no doubts. I like Champagne.

The IMW event was held in San Francisco's Ferry building, in a relatively small room, but the attendance was limited to just 100 people in order to prevent over-crowding, so while tight, it wasn't painful.

There were about 76 wines, most you would pour yourself, though several big name wines were poured for us to prevent hogging. I had it in my mind to taste as many as possible. This was made possible because the organizers had placed a number of spit buckets on a table in the middle of the room and I made constant use of them. By the way, I have to make this comment here. Some tasting events put the dump buckets on the serving tables and I think this is a horrible idea. Not only have I mistaken water pitchers for dump buckets ( Everybody has done this at least once, haven't they ?), but when the buckets are on the table some tasters tend to plant themselves at the table and make it hard for the rest to get a chance to either pour their wine out or get a new one. Having the buckets away from the tables generally keeps the crowds from congregating.

But not always. As soon as the doors opened, a subset of tasters went immediately to the "Vintage" Champagne tables and I swear never moved from there for the rest of the event. This was sad because they missed a lot of great tasting wines including a couple of Grand Cru non-vintage Champagnes. Also some of the vintage wines were spread out among the Blanc de blanc.

Another area that I think didn't get the attention that they deserved were the "Dose'" or slightly sweet Champagnes. There were only a couple of examples which may be why people missed them, but the two that i tasted were exquisite.

My wife, Susan, is a Champagne fan. She always regrets that we don't drink it enough. So I was happy that she went to the event with me, because I was hoping to give her a treat and I always value her insights.
Unlike the Vintage snobs, we just started on one wall of the room and worked our way counter-clockwise around the room from wine to wine. First the Non Vintage, then Blanc de blancs, then the Vintage wines, then the Rose / Blancs de Noir, then finally the Dose' off dry wines.

Here are my thoughts.

Susan noticed it first, but some Champagnes just disappear in your mouth! You take a sip and as you are evaluating it, poof! it's gone. You haven't swallowed, you didn't drool, the bubbles just sort of disappear and you forget that you even have wine in your mouth. It is actually kind of fun.

On the other hand, sometimes I would take a big sip and the wine would just fill up my mouth. It is like the CO2 just puffed my cheeks out. Also fun.

I was thinking that I could never be a Champagne connoisseur, that I couldn't tell the differences between several of the wines. That they all tasted the same. However, looking back over my notes, I am kind of surprised because few of my comments are identical. Considering that I was holding a glass in one hand, and my tasting notes in the other, and trying to write something about each wine, I am pleased that I got as much written as I did. This was actually another advantage of having the spit buckets in the middle of the room. There was always a chance to write after I poured out my glass.

OK, I need another note here: Some people carry around red plastic cups to spit into and then at a strategic time they pour them out. I think this is great, BUT ... there is no way you can carry a red plastic cup, and your glass, and your tasting notes, and a pen at the same time. If there is someone of you out there that can accomplish this, then my hat is off to you, you are way more coordinated than I.

Here are some of my comments about the wines in general: Ripe apple, medium ripe apple, over ripe apple, rotten apple, Ripe but neutral, No bubbles (common for an old vintage), mellow / toast, vanilla, yeasty / biscuit, chocolate (!), big fruit, slight spice, rich, nutty, creamy, low acid, high acid, melon aromas, mouth filling, very mouth filling, disappears in mouth, nice.

The vintage wines tended to be not as bubbly and they tended to have more of a ripe apple aroma and taste.

There were only a couple of Grand Cru wines in the tasting. I tried to keep my eyes out for them. But a comment about that. In Champagne, we have Grand Cru villages, not GC vineyards as in Burgundy and not GC producers as in Bordeaux. So, a producer in Champagne can actually have poor grapes and make poor wines but still call his wine Grand Cru as long as all the grapes came from vineyards in a GC village. The expectation, in general, however, is that these wines ought to show a little more quality, and so far, I think they do. So i was a little disappointed that there weren't more GC wines represented.

I think I would do this again, at least one more time, to hone what I have learned so far. Maybe, however, I can get what I want by presenting a Champagne tasting to my AWS group, where there could be more of an opportunity to sit and discuss the wines as well. need to look into that.

john

Tasting the Norton Grape

I was fortunate earlier last month to be invited to taste 28 wines made from the Norton grape, one of the truly American grapes and wines. And one that few people on the West Coast have probably never heard about.

The tasting was conducted by Barbara Trigg, the "Best of Appellation" coordinator for Appellation America, a wine journal that includes editorials from some of the best known and interesting wine writers, as well as formal tastings that can alert the reader where to find some of the best wines around.

Barbara had heard of the Norton grape several months earlier, became intrigued with its history, and determined that she should find some great examples and then let her readers know about them. She wrote to all the wineries that she could find that advertised Nortons, got a bottle from each of them, and then called together her tasting panel.

Now, I can't just taste the wine without knowing something about the grape, so I did some research beforehand. The Norton grape, also known as Cynthiana, was bred by a Dr. Norton living near Richmond Virginia in 1820. The good doctor is not totally sure how the grape came about except that he recounts that he had a "Bland" (another grape variety that has rarely been heard of, and may no longer exist) growing in his vineyard near a "Millers Pinot" (we know it has Pinot Muniere). They may have fortuitously cross pollinated and Dr. Norton's genius was that he actually recognized that a new grape had formed. He planted the seeds and selected out the offspring for propagation.

The Norton doesn't have the 'foxy' taste that some native American Labrusca vines impart to their wines. This may be because the "Bland" parent of the grape might not have been a V. labrusca but instead a hybrid between a Vitis aestivalis and a Chasselas, a very old and popular grape in eastern France and Switzerland. (Some think it started in ancient Egypt). In any event, the Norton made wines good enough to win "Best of Show" in an international tasting in Vienna Austria in 1873. It is also the state grape of Missouri.

Armed with this background knowledge, I was ready to taste. the tasting itself took a little over 2 hours. There were 7 of us, independently making our own notes and then we came together at the end to come up with some general characteristics of Norton and our opinions on the best wines we had tasted that day.

I am not going to name the "best of" wines because I am not really sure how others rated them, you should be able to find that out at the Appellation America website (link above). I can say this, however.

The Norton is a red wine that has a characteristic taste that most of the wines we tasted exhibited. Several also showed some red fruit / raspberry flavors. But like any group of wines, while the characteristic core taste was generally apparent, there were variations on the amount of oak and levels of intensity. The grape seems to make a wine that is generally acidic, I believe that it is high in Malic acid (think green apple tartness) and some of that tends to carry over. The tannins are soft and relatively low for such a deeply pigmented wine. Most of our wines came in around 13% alcohol which since I am used to California high-alcohol reds, was quite pleasant to notice, or in this case, not to notice.

One wine that I think is probably immensely popular is Chrysalis Vineyards "Sarah's Patio Red". this is a $15 light ruby red, almost a rose', it has great fruit flavors, raspberry highlights, and a slight cranberry finish. It is an off-dry / semi sweet summer favorite. As Chrysalis suggests: a great patio wine.

Chrysalis stands out because it claims to be and probably is, the largest producer of Norton wines in the world. They consider Norton to be the "Real American Grape". Some of us Left Coasties, of course, think that should be Zinfandel or perhaps Petite Sirah / Durif. But who is to quibble. America is a big country and should have several real grapes. Norton can be one of them.

john

WSET Unit 1 - Update

I have not been writing, at least not in this blog, for the last month. I have, however, spent several hours a day on my WSET Unit 1 Course work Assignment.

The CWA is a 3000 word research paper on some aspect of winemaking. The topics change each year, there is 1 topic in the spring and 1 in the fall. You submit either the November paper or the April paper. You only need to submit 1 but you must submit the appropriate one for its due date.

This year's topics were "How advances in science and Technology have affected Winemaking" ( due November ) or "The Presentation and Packaging of Wine" ( due April ). WSET posts the topics for the year in late May so if one were to choose the April paper, they would have almost a year to prepare for it.

In my case, I knew i wanted to write the November paper. I also knew that with my French Wine Scholar studies and test in mid August, that I wouldn't start this paper until then. I also knew that I needed to retake my Unit 6 Fortified Wines exam in November, as well as my studies and exam for Wine Judge Certification - also in November.

So I gave myself just the month of September to write my Unit 1 paper. I took a week longer than planned, but I finished it and packaged it for submission just this morning after my wife read it and corrected my punctuation. (I think I had the correct number of commas in the paper, but according to her, they were all in the wrong places. I needed to add some here and remove some elsewhere.)

The paper is in 4 parts. An introduction that included general advances in technology and winemaking and how they affected the final bottle of wine. Two specific advances with documented and referenced research on each, and then finally, a conclusion that also suggests what advances might occur in the next 20 years.

Picking the topics was easy. I knew what I wanted to talk about, but getting relevant, up-to-date research on the topics was a lot harder. Originally I was going to write about advances in refrigeration and temperature control. We all agree it has been one of the key advances of the last 50 years and improved wines greatly, but try to find and research on the topic !! I headed down that dead end for about two weeks before I gave up and picked a new topic instead.

The other and probably most difficult part of this project was that when I had finished writing my preliminary draft, it was 5600 words long. About 2x longer than WSET would allow. I had to go back in an rip my baby apart. And, when it was done, all my carefully balanced paragraphs, all my nuanced continuity, all of my enlightening examples still needed to hang together and make sense. It was a painful operation and took me a week alone just to perform that operation. Getting rid of the last 500 words was hell. the last 100 even harder.

I finally submitted with 3029 words. I am hoping they only mark me down a point or two for the extra words, but I couldn't cut any more and keep the narrative together. I am hoping that the quality of those extra words will make up for being over on the quantity.

Note: This paper is only 1/2 of the Unit 1 grade. Some time next spring I will take the 2nd part which entails another research paper, but one that we write in a test environment and in 1 hour rather than getting a month to write and edit it. We get the generic brief on the topic for the test paper about 1 month in advance. We get to study all aspects the topic, since we don't know what the actual question will be. Then we walk into the exam with nothing but our pencils and erasers, see what the actual questions is, and then write everything that we can about it.

Each paper counts 50% toward passing Unit 1. Figuring that the exam will be a bear, I spent a lot of time on this paper. I hope I did well.

john

Saturdays at Jackson's

One of the things that I have to do is to taste different wines. I need to understand what makes a wine "good". I also need to get experience with a lot of wines that might not normally appear on my dinner table, which in truth is a relatively small set of wines that I know and enjoy.

Since I am retired and living on a fixed income, I also need to be able to do this without spending a lot of money on wines. Fat chance on that! But I have to try.

So one of things that give my life hope is Saturdays at Jacksons. Every Saturday ( they have been doing this for years - more than 12, maybe as many as 20 ) at Jackson's Wine and Spirits in Lafayette, Ca. there is a back-room wine tasting.

You pay $20, pick up a glass, go through the "Employees Only" swinging doors and you now get the chance to meet with other wine lovers and taste 12 wines from around the world, generally 1-2 beers, and nibble on some bree and crackers, if you are so inclined.

The event 'starts' at 1PM and goes until 4PM although people can come and go as they please and taste at their own pace. One time I got there at 2:30 and was the first taster of the day. Other times there will be 7 or 8 tasting and commenting at any one time. When this happens, it is great because you get to hear what others think about a certain wine and you get to pick up aromas, flavors and faults that you might have missed.

Jackson's is great about coming up with a good assortment of wines. Maybe 7 will be from Napa or Sonoma and 5 will be from Europe. The menu for 1 week included: A sparkling Brut, a Bourgogne Blanc, a Chablis, a Chardonnay, a Chianti Classico, Moulin a Vent (Cru Beaujolais), Pinot Noir, a Saint-Emilion (Bordeaux), 2 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, a Chilean Syrah, and Zinfandel.

Plus beer, plus cheese, plus interesting opinions and conversation. How can you go wrong ?
It is a great deal, and I expect they lose money each week. They might pull in $140-$200 in tasting fees, but they probably spend an extra $60 over that in the wine selections.

For a wine student, who preparing for his WSET Diploma Unit 3 - wines of the world exam, probably the toughest one that they offer, next to being an Advanced Sommelier, an afternoon at Jacksons is not only fun, which it is, but it is homework as well.

I would recommend any wine student find a place like this, or if you can't fine one, get together with an active American Wine Society Chapter, and if there is not one in your area then start one. Or just find a group of friends that are willing to taste and bring a bottle to each tasting. It will make a big difference in your studies.

john

WSET Unit 1 - The Business of Wine

So I passed the French Wine Scholar exam "with distinction" and met the requirements to apply to teach it. So stay tuned to these pages, as I may have a new topic to write about.

Until that time however, I am turning back to my Wine and Spirits Education Trust certification. As noted before there are 6 Units or modules to the WSET Diploma course.  I don't think I ever mentioned what they were, so here they are now:

1. The Business of Wine
2. Viticulture and Winemaking
3. Light Wines of the World
4. Spirits
5. Champagne and Sparkling Wines
6. Fortified Wines

You are required to take Unit 2 before starting any other module. Other modules can be taken in any order.  The timing of my studies and when courses were offered meant that after Unit 2 I self studied for the Unit 6 course. I took that test last June and failed, not because it is especially hard, there is a lot to learn, but it is not a hard test. I failed it because of a cup of coffee. I got hyper, my hands shook, and I couldn't write.  Then my hand cramped up and it was all down hill.

So I am restudying for Unit 6.   I will retake the exam in November.   Meanwhile I will be practicing my writing.  Another thing that I am working on is to make sure that I don't take  more than 5-6 minutes to evaluate a wine and write my notes. On the last test I took 10 minutes a piece for 3 wines and in the end only had 30 minutes to think about and write my 3 essays.  I need to build that up so I get 45 minutes of the allotted hour to write essays and only 15 minutes to actually evaluate wines.

So I am back to tasting fortified wines !! :-)   I also have extensive notes - 2 or 3 versions of them from the first time I took this test.  I have time lines of events within various properties / organizations.  I have notes about each property / organization and its history.  I will probably review the source material once more ( Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion to Wine ) but my notes have the material refined to the important facts and they are all on one document so I don't need to thumb through the OCW to find the topics all over again.

The next thing that is going on is that I am writing the "Course Work Assignment" for Unit 1.  The course work assignment is a ~2500 word research paper on a topic that WSET assigns each 6 months. The current assignment ( due in November ) is to write about "How Advances in Science and Technology have affected Winemaking over the Last 50 Years".  A sub requirement is to pick an advancement in both Viticulture and Winery Technology and write about how each of these affects the resulting wine.   The final requirement is to pick a topic that you think will affect winemaking 20 years from now and describe what its effects will be. Footnotes and Bibliography are required. Even though they don't say ( write ) it out loud, you ARE expected to have a business slant to your theme. So the advances should probably have some aspect of efficiency, quality or economics of wine making behind them.

The Course Work Assignment is one half of the Unit 1 grade.   The other half of the exam is a closed book paper that will be written under exam conditions and lasting 1 hour.  A generic brief about the topic will be posted 1 month in advance, and you have that time to research the topic.  The actual question that will be on the exam is NOT known until you actually sit for the exam. So hopefully your research is comprehensive and you can think on your feet. In this case you are not expected to cite your sources of information.

The Unit 1 exam is offered 2-3 times a year, so even though I am writing the course work assignment for this November I will not take the written exam until later because I want to finish Unit 6 and not sure if I can write for 2 hours in one afternoon without my hand cramping again.  Plus I am also studying for my American Wine Society Wine Judge Certification (Year 1) exam that is also being held in November. This is a day long exam with a written test and several tasting tests. 

So I am trying to balance my time between these 3 exercises all of which are due in the first 10 days of November.   Because of this I decided not to attempt Certified Wine Educator ( CWE ) from the Society of Wine Educators. This exam is offered in Napa several times a year, so I am comfortable putting it off for another 6 months or so. I have already passed their Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) exam and the CWE builds on the Wines of the World aspect of that, plus adds in some of the Wine Components and Wine Faults exercises that I am studying for Wine Judging.  So many of these different programs build upon a common knowledge base. Study for one and you become partially prepared for another.

I have a new goal !  I picked this one up from taking the French Wine Scholar course with several Sommeliers.  I now want to pass the Certified Sommelier exam from the Court of Master Sommeliers and I will add a new post-nominal ('CS') to my professional titles.  I think I have the information required regarding the wines, I just need to learn and practice the proper procedures for opening sparkling wine and serving a table using all the proper procedures.

More fun !!

     john