European reforms yield offbeat regional wines
There are any number of winemakers throughout the world who choose to build eccentric wines, wines that are atypical of wines from their regions and countries.
The first Super Tuscans — wines made in Tuscany from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, designed to cater to the American market — were such wines. To accommodate such experimentation, wine countries around the world are creating specific classes of appellations to allow for improvement and the peculiarities of the winemakers.
The first country to do so was Italy, which brought in Goria’s Law in the ’90s. Signor Goria, Italy’s then-minister of agriculture, did something radical and created the Idicazione Geografica Tipica classification. He accepted that historically Italians had planted any number of varietals and made wine from them, albeit atypical for the DOC.
The freedom to experiment proved popular and other wineproducing countries, from Portugal to France and beyond, are adopting similar designations.
For example, try Brusco dei Barbi. Giovani Columbini began researching the production of “May Wines” back in the 1960s. Historically, these wines rested on the pomace for extended periods of time. Essentially, the method used today is a form of Carbonic Maceration, a technique most of us associate with Beaujolais. The wine is fermented under a blanket of CO2 for three months before racking.
The resulting wine is fascinating. On opening, the bouquet is more floral than a typical Sangiovese. The palate is fresh and lively, with notable tannins for a stainless-only wine. The curious combination of more visible tannins than one finds in, say, a Chianti with a softer flavour profile makes this quite a light wine. Although it is great with the usual spicy sauces, wild boar, etc., this really tastes like a wine for roast chicken.
Foral de Montoito is a wine from Portugal. Theoretically, all Portuguese wines are made from some of the 400-plus varieties found there, virtually none of them grown elsewhere except Touriga Roriz (AKA Tempranillo). But the winemaker is not from the Douro, a region already popular with the cognoscenti for both fine wines and great pricing, nor is it made from Tempranillo.
The vineyards are located in the Alentejo DOC, a large (and largely unknown) region in the southeast of the country. Roughly triangular, it runs from the Atlantic, and borders the Algarve to the south and Spain to the east. If you draw a line at 45 degrees from Setubal to the border with Spain you have the hypotenuse.
The grapes are typically Portuguese — Trincadeira, Aragonez, Alicante Bouchet and Touriga Nacional. The resulting wine is a lovely piece of luxury at a great price. The bouquet is heady — floral and fruity with great spice. The texture is medium- to heavybodied, a bit viscous, thicker than Italian wines, with a gentle sweetness to the palate. This is probably the perfect everyday red.
If you’re stuck on the New World palate, you need to start exploring Spain. While most of their wines are traditional, a bit lean, the wines from Jumilla tend to be those dark purple, thick-palated wines loaded with fruit. Goru Red is another everyday red wine made from Mourvedre, (AKA Monastrell) Petit Verdot and Syrah. The result is soft, fleshy wine, rather like biting into a ripe plum. There are tremendous tertiary flavours and aromas from the oak — vanilla, caramel, cinnamon — and a finish soft enough for everyone, but with enough tannins to take on a steak. You can’t go wrong with a bottle of this one for dinner. WINE OF THE WEEK: Foral de Montoito 2014 $15
OTHER CHOICES: Goru Red 2016 $17, Brusco dei Barbi 2014 $25 Italian whites next week. Twitter. com/drbooze