Biancu Gentile - Corsica, France

I've covered some pretty rare grapes on this site over the past three years or so, but today's grape is definitely the scarcest one that I've ever written about.   I would guess that prior to today, my post on Amigne probably would have taken the prize for rarest grape, as it is planted on less than 50 hectares of land in the world, and nearly all of them are in a single valley in Switzerland.  It's possible that something like Tempranillo Blanco may be planted on less land, but I haven't been able to find any planting statistics that would say for sure.  Today's grape, though, is grown on a scant 6 hectares of land, which only comes to around 15 acres.  To put it another way, 15 acres is 0.023 square miles (0.060 square km for those of you on the metric system).  When I was growing up in Georgia (the US state, not the country), my family lived just outside of a very small town on about 13 acres of land.  You could stand anywhere in the yard and see every other part of it with little trouble and if you wanted to run a lap around it, it would probably take you about 10 minutes at a good jog.  Six hectares is practically nothing.

But it's not absolutely nothing, and the wine made from the grapes grown on those scant six acres of land does occasionally find its way to our shores.  Before we get to the wine, though, I'd like to take a few moments to take a closer look at the Biancu Gentile grape itself.  References to Biancu Gentile can be traced back to 1822, when the grape was said to be growing in Pila Canale in the southern part of the island of Corsica.  It is thought to be native to Corsica and examples of Biancu Gentile have not been discovered anywhere outside of the island (though UC Davis does have a small experimental plot growing in the San Joaquin Valley in California).  The grape's name means something like "noble white," but the word gentile can also mean something like "grafted," or, "cultivated," as opposed to "wild."  Biancu Gentile is prized for its aromatic profile and can reach very high sugar levels, but the acidity begins to drop precipitously as the sugars rise so growers must be especially vigilant in order to pick grapes that can make balanced rather than heavy, flabby wines.

The grape was thought to be extinct when Yves Leccia, whose varietal Biancu Gentile we'll be taking a look at below, discovered a small block of it growing somewhere on the island of Corsica.  He took some cuttings and began to cultivate it in his own vineyards.  Since Biancu Gentile was supposed to be extinct, it was not permitted in the AOC wines of Corsica and so anyone making a varietal wine from it had to resort to the vin de table classification level for their wines.  As of 2010, Biancu Gentile is allowed in the new IGP classification (which is basically the new EU-wide term for what used to be called vin de pays in France or IGT in Italy), so wines made from it can have the grape name listed on the bottle (this is forbidden at the vin de table level, as is vintage information or specific geographic information).  Biancu Gentile is often blended with the local variety of Vermentino, but a handful of producers such as Yves Lecchia, Antoine Arena and Yves Canarelli of Clos Canarelli make varietal wines from their scant plantings (around 1 ha each) of the grape.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2011 Yves Leccia Biancu Gentile as a special order from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $40.  All of Yves Leccia's white wines are pressed and cold soaked for 24 hours before allowing fermentation to begin.  Fermentation (2-3 weeks) and maturation (6 months) is done in temperature controlled stainless steel and there is no malolactic fermentation.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of ripe pear, lime, grapefruit, honeysuckle flower, lemon peel and chalk.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium to medium + acidity.  There were flavors of lime, grapefruit, pear, and honeysuckle with a bit of chalky minerality on the finish.  The nose was an absolutely delightful citrus fruit cocktail, but the intensity and just general loveliness didn't really follow through that much on the palate.  The price tag on this wine is pretty steep for what you're getting, but then again, with only 6 hectares under cultivation, you may not get many chances to try a Biancu Gentile based wine.

Sciacarello (Mammolo) - Ajaccio, Corsica, France

One of my favorite kinds of Fringe Wines are those made from grapes that are somewhat common in certain blended wines, but which are rarely found playing the star role.  As I mentioned in my post on Susumaniello, blending grapes usually get their reputation by having one or two very nice qualities, but by also being somewhat deficient in several other areas.  A grape may have a nice aroma and good color, but may be low in acid or excessively high in tannins so if you can find another grape with good acid and a soft body but which lacks perfume and is lightly colored, the two of them together can create a well-balanced wine.  Though I generally focus on varietal wines for this blog, that's mostly a decision made on the nature of the content that I write about and not a personal preference.  I enjoy varietal wines, but some of my favorite wines in the world are blends, and I try to represent that section of the wine world, when I can, in my erratic Weird Blend Wednesday feature.  Since the focus of this site has really shifted more to individual grape varieties, though, it stands to reason that the majority of my posts deal with varietal wines.

All of which kind of takes me away from what I really wanted to talk about today, which was varietal wines made from traditional blending grapes.  Sometimes blending grapes really are useful only for the handful of attributes that they can contribute to a blend, but sometimes they just need a little change of scenery in order to show their true colors.  Carmenere, for instance, was a very minor component in Bordeaux blends for many years, but when the grape was exported to Chile and growers figured out how to work with it there, it became a star grape in its new home.  Malbec has a similar story, though it was a star player in a little area called Cahors before hitting it big in Argentina.  Even Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, the two king red grapes of the New World, were originally blending components of the great wines of Bordeaux, though they certainly played a more prominent role in those wines than Carmenere or Malbec ever did.

Which brings us to today's grape, which is one that a lot of people may have had at some point or another, but very few have had in a starring role.  It is known in Tuscany as Mammolo and it was once a crucial part of the Chianti blend.  It has been known in Tuscany since the early 17th Century under a variety of names, all of which relate in some form or another to the many different morphological characteristics of the many clones that are out there.  There's Mammolo Piccolo, Mammolo Grosso, Mammolo Asciuto and Mammolo Tonda, among many others.  The Mammolo part of the name is thought to come from the Italian name for violets, Viola mammola, because of the perfumed quality that the grapes can impart to a finished wine.  It was once widely planted throughout Tuscany, but its numbers have been on the decline and as of the 2000 agricultural census, there were less than 150 hectares (360 acres) under vine in all of Italy.

Off the western coast of Italy is the island of Corsica which technically belongs to France, but which is closer geographically and culturally to Italy.  We paid a brief visit to Corsica a few months back to take a look at a blended wine made mostly from a grape they call Nieullccio, but which happens to be none other than Sangiovese.  That particular wine also had a dollop of something called Sciacarello in it, which recent DNA testing (citation 1) has shown to be none other than the Mammolo of Tuscany (there is another Corsican grape called Malvasia Montanaccio which is also identical to Sciacarello and Mammolo, but that name is far less common than the others).  Like Sangiovese, it is thought that Sciacarello was brought to Corsica from the Italian mainland, and the fact that it has parent-offspring relationships with several other Tuscan grapes (none of which are widely known today) seems to back this theory up.  The name Sciacarello means "crunchy," but I'm not really sure how that adjective fits in with the grape itself.  Sciacarello is currently grown on just under 800 hectares of land (just under 2,000 acres) throughout the island of Corsica, though much of it, including both wines I'll be taking a look at today, is around the area of Ajaccio on the western part of the island.

I was able to find two Corsican wines from the same producer, but in two very different styles.  The first was the 2011 rosé from the Domaine Comte Abbatucci, which is 100% Sciacarellu (the local spelling of the grape's name), and which I picked up for around $30 from my friends at the Wine Bottega.  In the glass the wine was a very pale salmon-pink color.  The nose was fairly intense and very leesy with aromas of cheese and strawberry and little else.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  The pronounced leesy, cheesy character followed through on the palate and was joined by some tart strawberry and cherry fruits with a bit of a stony mineral finish.  The fruits were strangled at room temperature, but as the wine approached cellar temp, they began to open up a little bit and the strong aroma and flavor of cheese began to fade into the background.  It's a well structured, but somewhat austere wine that I had a hard time falling in love with.  At $30 a bottle, it's probably not something I'll be reaching for on a regular basis.

The other wine that I was able to try was the 2010 Domaine Comte Abbatucci red wine, which is 70% Sciacarellu and 30% Nieulluccio, and which I picked up for around $37 from Marty's in Newton.  In the glass the wine was a fairly light purple ruby color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of wild, brambly red fruit like red cherry and raspberry along with some dried leaves, underbrush and leather.  I thought I may have picked up a hint of violet, but it could have been my imagination running away with me.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of red cherry, raspberry, sour plum, dusty leather, cigar tobacco and damp tea leaves.  The wine reminded me more of Pinot Noir than Chianti and while I found it enjoyable enough, I thought that the nearly $40 price tag was a bit too steep for what you get here.  If this wine's price were slashed in half, then I think you might be a bit closer, but it's always very difficult to assign an exact price to a wine's experience.  If money is no object, then this is a very lovely bottle from a grape that is becoming increasingly harder to find in a starring role.

CITATION

Di Vecchi Staraz, M, et al.  2007.  Genetic structuring and parentage analysis for evolutionary studies in grapevine: kingroup and origin of cv. Sangiovese revealed.  Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science, 132(4), pp. 514-24.

Weird Blend Wednesday - Araignan Blanc, Riveirenc Gris, Riveirenc Blanc & Grenache Gris, Cotes du Brian, France

Araignan Blanc grapes
(aka Picardan)

It has been several months since I last did a Weird Blend Wednesday post, which is entirely too long, so today I'd like to dust the old feature off and talk a bit about a really interesting white wine I tried a few months ago from the Cotes du Brian region of the Languedoc in southern France.  Back in August of last year, I wrote about a red wine from Clos Centeilles which was made from Picpoul Noir, Riveirenc Noir, Morastel Noir à Jus Blanc and Œillade grapes, all of which are pretty rare and very unusual.  Clos Centeilles also makes a white wine made from a handful of local heirloom varieties, and today I'd like to take a look at some of those grapes and the wine that is made from them.
The Clos Centeilles "C" blanc is made from 35% Araignan Blanc, 30% Riveirenc Blanc, 30% Riveirenc Gris and 5% Grenache Gris*.  Since we've already covered Grenache Gris, I'll mainly be focusing on the other three grapes that make up 95% of this particular wine.

Riveirenc Blanc

Araignan Blanc (pictured above) is perhaps the most well known of the bunch, but most people know it as Picardan, and it is one of the 18 approved varieties in the Chateauneuf-du-Pape AOC of the southern Rhone Valley.  It is a very old grape variety and the first mention of it in print can be traced back to 1544 AD.  It shares some synonyms with Bourboulenc and Clairette, though it doesn't appear that it is related to either of those grapes.  The name Picardan is thought to come from a combination of the French words piquer (to sting, as in Picpoul de Pinet) and ardent (burning) because of its high acid content.  The grape's primary synonym of Araignan was first mentioned in print in 1715, and is thought to come from the word araignée, or spider, because of the small hairs on the underside of the leaves which resemble spider's silk.  There are currently only about 1.2 acres (less than a hectare) of Picardan in all of France and though a little bit finds its way into some Chateauneuf-du-Pape blends (like Chateau Beaucastel), chances are pretty good that this particular bottling has the highest percentage of Picardan of any wine in the world.

Riveirenc Gris

Riveirenc Blanc and Gris are color mutations of Riveirenc Noir, which we took a brief look at in my post on the red wine from Clos Centeilles.  This group of grapes is more commonly known as Rivairenc or Aspiran, though very little acreage is devoted to any of the three varieties in France or elsewhere.  The Noir is the most common of the three and it is thought that the grape may be referenced as early as the 15th Century under the name Esperan, but it is difficult to say for certain.  The French registry of grape varieties spells the name of the grape Rivairenc and this is how it is listed in Wine Grapes, but the producer uses the Riveirenc spelling so that's what I've used as well.  The name Rivairenc is thought to come from from the word ribairenc, which in the Occitan dialect means "riparian," or having to do with river banks, possibly because the vines were discovered on a river bank or because they grow particularly well there.  Vouillamoz reports in Wine Grapes that his personal research indicates that there may be a parent/offspring relationship between Rivairenc and Cinsaut, but more markers need to be tested and since the third member of the family has not yet been identified, it is impossible to say what the precise nature of the relationship between the two grapes is.  I cannot find any planting statistics for Rivairenc Blanc or Gris, so there is also a really good chance that the 30% of each in this particular wine is the highest proportion you're likely to find anywhere.

I picked up the 2009* Close Centeilles "C" Blanc from my friends at Curtis Liquors for around $20.  This wine is a vin de pays from the Cotes du Brian, which I believe is in the area around Minervois in the Languedoc.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of green apple, apple cider, Meyer lemon, pastry dough, pineapple and melon.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity.  There were broad, creamy flavors of pear, red apple, Meyer lemon creme and a touch of apple cider.  This wine is fermented on its lees before being drawn off the heavier lees into a neutral container.  It is stirred weekly for several months before being bottled for release and this stirring and lees contact definitely gives it a rich, creamy mouth-feel, though it does sharpen up a bit as it approaches room temperature.  Rosemary George reviewed this wine on her website in 2010 and remarked that it is "not a wine to age," and I agree with her assessment, having tasted the wine about a year and a half after she did.  It was an enjoyable wine, but I thought it was probably more interesting than good and much preferred the red from this estate.  It is a rare opportunity to try grapes that you may otherwise never taste, though, and is good enough that I wouldn't consider it a mere curiosity.

*These figures are for the 2007 vintage.  The winery website does not offer any more up-to-date information than this.

Abouriou - Cotes du Marmandais, France

A few months ago, I went to a cellar clean-out sale at one of my favorite wine shops, The Wine Bottega.  While I usually find a lot of really amazing wines at the Bottega, I wasn't really expecting to find anything all that unusual this time around since most of their really weird stuff tends to move off the shelves pretty quickly and doesn't hang around long enough for clearance sales.  Some of the bottles were things that Matt, one of the co-owners, had socked away, though, so there was a chance that something really cool was there to be found.  I poked around for a few minutes and quickly found a bottle with an odd little orange label and the word "Abouriou" on the front.  Thinking that the word sounded vaguely familiar, I asked Matt what it was and he told me it was a really obscure grape from southwestern France.  It was the last bottle that they had in the shop and I eagerly took it off their hands.  I recently pulled the cork on it and today I'd like to tell you a little bit about the grape itself before getting into my impressions of the wine.

Abouriou was once rather widely grown in the Lot-et-Garonne region of southwestern France, but after phylloxera swept through Europe, Abouriou nearly became extinct.  It was rescued from oblivion by Numa Naugé, a grapevine breeder from Casseneuil in the Lot-et-Garonne department of France, and one of the local names for the grape, Précoce Naugé, is an homage to the person who preserved Abouriou for all of us.  Naugé's story was that the vine was a local seedling discovered growing on a local castle's walls by a farmer in the 1840's.  The other part of the name, Précoce, is a reference to the grape's early ripening, and in fact, Abouriou actually means "early" in  the local dialect.  For many years, there was a grape grown in California called Early Burgundy and it has recently been discovered that many of those vines were actually Abouriou (though some are actually Blauer Portuguesier).  Only a few acres remain there today, though, and OddBacchus has a really cool interview with Steven Washuta of Old World Winery who makes wine from some of those old Abouriou vines.

In some areas of France, Abouriou is also known as Beaujolais, Gamay Beaujolais and Gamay-Saint-Laurent, but it is not related to either Gamay Noir or Pinot Noir from Burgundy, and it is a little unclear where those synonyms came from.  Interestingly, Abouriou does seem to be related to both Merlot and Malbec, though the precise relationship is unclear.  In 2009, a French team (citation 1) set out to try and find the parents of Merlot.  They analyzed over 2300 different vines in the INRA grape repository and discovered that Merlot's parents were Cabernet Franc and an obscure grape that had no name.  This unknown grape was added to the repository in 1996 when someone took cuttings from an abandoned vine growing on the slopes of Mont Garrot  near Saint-Malo in Brittany.  In 2004, 2005 and 2007, four more vines were found growing on arbors in front of people's homes around the area of Charentes, nearly 400 km away from the original finding.  The local growers called the vine "Raisin de la Madeleine" or "Madeleina," because the vine ripened very early and was said to be ripe in time for Sainte-Madeleine's day, which is July 22.  Because there are many other grapes called Madeleine or which have Madeleine in the name, these researchers decided to name this particular grape Magdeleine Noire des Charentes, after a reference in an 1847 work to a grape known as Magdeleine that was known for ripening in July, and the Charentes region where so many of the vines were found.

It turned out that Magdeleine Noire des Charentes was the mother of both Merlot and Malbec (Malbec's father is Prunelard).  Furthermore, the authors discovered that Magdeleine Noire des Charentes had a parent-offspring relationship with Abouriou, though they were unable to find the other parent in the triad and so they are not sure which direction the relationship arrow points (see my post on Ciliegiolo for more details on parent/offspring relationships in grapevines).  If Abouriou is the parent of Magdeleine Noire, then that means it is a grandparent to both Merlot and Malbec.  If it is an offspring, then that means that Abouriou is a half sibling to those grapes (which are themselves half-siblings of one another).  Because of its early ripening and its ability to resist many fungal diseases, Abouriou has been used to breed some other grapes.  Most notably, it is one of the parents of Egiodola, which we'll cover shortly, and in the 1970's it was crossed with a grape called Castets in order to breed a handful of grapes in Slovakia.

Current plantings of Abouriou stand around 800 acres, which is about half of what the totals were 50 years ago.  Nearly all of those plantings can be found in the district of Marmande, which is apparently most famous for the tomatoes grown there.  Marmande is just up the Garonne river from Sauternes, Cadillac and Loupiac and up until the French revolution, this area was considered to be a part of Bordeaux and wines from here were sold with the Bordeaux name on them.  After the French revolution, a gentleman by the name of Monsieur Lakanal was sent to the area to remove all traces of the nobility there.  He also stuck his fingers in various aspects of the local wine trade and one of his decrees stated that only wines made in the department of the Gironde were permitted to use the name Bordeaux.  The vineyards of the Marmandais were just over the border in the Lot-et-Garonne, and so the wine makers here suddenly found that they no longer had access to the prestigious Bordeaux name and sales immediately suffered.  It wasn't until the 1950's that the region was granted VDQS status and an upgrade to AOC status has only recently been approved on the condition that one quarter of the vines in every vineyard should consist of the specific local grape varieties Syrah, Malbec, Tannat and/or Abouriou.

In his South-West France: The Wines and Winemakers (which much of the above is indebted to), Paul Strang describes Abouriou as "a rustic plant giving juice of an amazingly deep colour and big, heavy tannins, a sort of super-tannat."  I pulled the cork on my 2008 Elian da Ros Abouriou ($27 on sale) to see for myself.  In the glass the wine was a deep, opaque purple-ruby color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of blackberry, black cherry, bacon, smoke, charcoal and crushed wild berries.  On the palate the wine was full bodied with medium acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of smoke, blackberry, black raspberry, bacon, wild strawberry and a touch of sweaty funk.  The wine was dark and smoky with soft berryish fruits and some savory meaty flavors as well.  I found it very interesting and distinctive and thought it was a reasonable value for the money.  Fans of rustic French wines (those from Cahors or Madiran or made from the Fer Servadou or Duras grape variety) will definitely find a lot to like here.  I'd be very interested to try one of the few California examples being produced to see how it compares with a wine from the grape's home.

CITATION

Boursiquot, JM, Lacombe, T, Laucou, V, Julliard, S, Perrin, FX, Lanier, N, Legrand, D, Meredith, C, & This, P.  2009.  Parentage of Merlot and related winegrape cultivars of southwestern France: discovery of the missing link.  Australian Journal of Wine and Grape Research, 15(2), pp 144-155.

Odds and Ends - Sparkling Malbec, Botrytized Rkatsiteli, White Pinot Noir, Rufete Rosado and Pignoletto Redux

Today I'd like to introduce a new erratic feature where I provide a few tasting notes for some unusual wines that I've come across lately that I either don't want to write a whole post about or which feature grapes that I've already written a full post about and just don't want to fully revisit.  The former group mostly features wines made from common grapes but made in unusual styles and while I enjoy drinking these wines, I find that I don't have much to say about them, so when I go to write a new post, I tend to skip over those entries in my tasting notebook for those featuring novel grapes.  I'm starting to accumulate quite a few notes like that, though, so I decided to unload some of them here.  I also have a tendency to buy bottles made from unusual grapes I've already covered here so that I can compare them to the wines I've previously written about.  I used to just updat those prior posts with these new tasting notes, but since new posts get more readers than old ones, I thought that those notes may be missed by many readers, so I decided to include them in this little feature as well.

The first wine I'd like to write about is the NV Domaine Augis "La Rosée" sparkling Malbec from the Valency region of the Loire Valley in France.  Though Malbec is currently the superstar grape of Argentina, its original home is France and in many French areas, including this one, the grape is known as Côt.  This is a traditional method rosé sparkler that I picked up for around $17 from my friends at the Wine Bottega.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep violet pink color with vigorous bubbles.  The nose was somewhat reserved with aromas of fresh cut strawberries and crushed raspberries.  On the palate the wine was light bodied with fairly high acidity and smooth, creamy bubbles.  There were flavors of bitter cherry, fresh strawberry, red currant and crushed red berries.  I found the wine very clean and refreshing and enjoyed it with a pan seared swordfish steak.  I think it's a tremendous value for a traditional method sparkler at less than $20 a bottle and would recommend it unreservedly.

The next wine I'd like to talk about is the 2006 Satrapezo "Gviani," which is a dessert wine made from botrytized Rkatsiteli grapes (retail around $30 for 375 mL).  I've written about Rkatsiteli many times (here and here and here), but this is the first dessert wine made from the grape that I've been able to try.  The grapes for this wine were grown on the banks of the Alazanis river in Georgia where mists and morning dew from the river combined with warm afternoon sun provide the ideal conditions for the development of botrytis cinerea, which is perhaps better known as noble rot.  This fungus infects the berries by piercing the grape's skin, causing much of the water in the berry to evaporate, leaving a dense, sticky, sugary liquid behind.  This liquid is fermented as much as possible and, in this case, aged for a short time in oak barrels prior to bottling.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly reserved with aromas of apricot, mint, orange marmalade, vanilla and pineapple.  On the palate the wine was full bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was very sweet with flavors of apricot, orange marmalade, honey, red grapefruit and peach cobbler with a clean, minty finish.  I found this wine pretty shut down at fridge temp, but much more generous and open at cellar temp.  I enjoyed this wine and thought it was a reasonable value, but it really lacked the complexity of fine Sauternes or BA/TBA wines from Germany.  Fans of botrytized wines should probably check this out, but connoisseurs may want to skip it.

Next up is the 2008 Trenz Spätburgunder Blanc de Noir from the Rheingau region of Germany, which I picked up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for around $18.  Spätburgunder is the German word for Pinot Noir and while German Pinot Noir certainly isn't that unusual, white wines made from the grape are.  I took a look at a Cabernet Franc wine (and a Nebbiolo wine) made using this method a few months back so readers looking for technical information on how the wine is made are referred to the Cab Franc post.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with funky, leesy aromas of candied strawberry, watermelon and candied apple.  It smelled more like a rosé than a white wine, which is what I also found in that Blanc de Franc.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was off-dry with honey, peach, candied strawberry, candied green apple and lemon curd flavors.  It was bright and zippy and walked that line between sweet and tart that the Germans are so fond of exploring.  I've had a few other Blanc de Noir style Pinot Noir table wines before, but this is definitely the best that I've ever had.

Next up is the 2008 Vina Salamanca Rufete rosado, which I also picked up from Curtis Liquors for around $13.  I wrote about the Rufete grape a few years back, but at the time, the only wine I could find containing the grape was 50% Rufete and 50% Tempranillo.  This wine is from the same producer, but is made from 100% Rufete grapes.  In the glass the wine was a light salmon pink color.  The nose was moderately intense with funky, leesy aromas of strawberry and not much else.  On the palate this wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of red cherry, fresh cut strawberry, raspberry and a touch of leesy funk.  This wine was definitely in decline a bit as it was a few years old by the time I got my hands on it, but it was still crisp, fruity and refreshing, which is all I really ask of my pink wines.  I know that there are red wines made from the Rufete grape out there, but I have been unable to track any of them down thus far.  When I finally do, you can bet that tasting note will be up on the site somewhere.

The final wine that I'd like to write about was the 2008 Branchini Pignoletto from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy (which I picked up at Panzano Proviste for around $18).  I wrote about the Pignoletto grape a few months back and took a look at two wines from Alberto Tedeschi which were very good but were hardly what you might consider traditional.  When I came across this example from Branchini, I decided to try it out to see what a regular table wine made from the grape might be like.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was somewhat reserved with ripe apple, lemon and mint aromas along with something vaguely floral.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white peach, mint and Meyer lemon with a bit of nuttiness on the finish.  The citrusy lemon notes were dominant at fridge temp, but the peachy flavors woke up and became a bit more generous as the wine warmed up.  This wine was probably a little over the hill, but it still provided an interesting counter point to the more avant garde efforts from Tedeschi.  Overall, I thought it was OK, but probably not worth the price tag.  The Tedeschi wines were much more interesting and characterful and only a few dollars more than this example, thought they're also probably more of an acquired taste.

Clairette - Côtes du Rhône, France

Hello everyone and welcome to what will almost certainly my final post of 2012.  This is my 117th post of the year, just barely surpassing last year's total of 112 posts, and I hope that people have found them interesting and informative.  I'd like to send 2012 off by taking a look at the Clairette grape, which I thought would be relatively easy to find a bottle of, but which turned out to be more difficult to track down than I had thought.  There were about 6,000 acres of Clairette planted in France as of 2009, but this number has been declining dramatically over the past half century.  Plantings stood at almost 35,000 acres in 1958, but they were down to around 7,500 acres by the 1990's.  It is also grown to a limited extent in Italy (where, oddly enough, it is permitted in the blend for Nuragus di Cagliari), Australia and South Africa with a few hundred acres under vine in each of those countries..

The reason for Clairette's recent decline can mostly be chalked up to changing fashions.  Clairette is a very low-acid grape that has a tendency to oxidize very easily.  There was a time when white wines were expected to be a little (or a lot) oxidized, and when those characteristics were prized by consumers and connoisseurs, Clairette was a much more popular grape.  Furthermore, these characteristics also made Clairette popular for the production of Vermouth, but as the popularity of that particular drink has declined, so has the popularity of Clairette.  In today's world, Clairette is typically used as a blending grape and it is often paired with higher acid grapes like Picpoul de Pinet or with Grenache Blanc, Roussanne and/or Marsanne.  Clairette usually contributes aromatic elements and softness to the final blend when it is used.  There are a handful of appellations where Clairette is required to be the dominant or the sole grape in the blend and nearly all of them have the word "Clairette" right in them for convenience.  Clairette de Die, Clairette de Bellegarde and Clairette de Languedoc are probably the most common, but there's also Coteaux de Die and, somewhat surprisingly, Crémant de Die, which is a sparkling wine made predominantly from Clairette grapes.

References to a grape called Clairette can be traced back to the 16th Century, but it isn't clear whether this is the same grape that we know as Clairette today.  Clairette means something like "light white," and could conceivably have referred to many different grape varies through the years.  There's a bit of confusion even today, as Ugni Blanc is sometimes known as Clairette Ronde in some parts of the Languedoc (though the two grapes are not related to one another).  The Erbaluce grape in Italy has a similar etymology, and this study done in 2001 found that the two grapes shared 50% of their alleles at the microsatellite loci investigated, but further testing has not been done to see whether the two grapes are really related to one another genetically or merely linguistically.  There is also some evidence that suggests that Clairette may be related to Airén and/or Roditis, but further study needs to be done to determine just what the relationship might be.

I searched for well over year for a varietal Clairette wine, but was unable to find one.  I eventually picked up a bottle of the 2011 Jean-Luc Colombo "Les Abeilles," which is 80% Clairette and 20% Roussane, from my friends over at Brookline Liquor Mart for around $14.  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color.  The nose was intense with aromas of peach, grapefruit, melon, white flowers and lime.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly low acidity.  There were flavors of grapefruit and pear along with a touch of grassy herbaceousness and a stony mineral finish.  The flavor profile was broad and fat with a little bit of bitter citrus pith on the finish as well.  The nose was really lovely, but the lack of acid kind of sunk this for me.  The grassy flavor reminded me of Sauvignon Blanc, but it lacked the energy and vitality that really nice Sauvignon Blanc based wines have.  If you're not really into high-acid white wines, then this is probably right up your alley, but if you're an acid freak like me, then you won't find very much to like here.

Altesse/Roussette - Jongieux, Savoie & Montagnieu, Bugey, France

It's kind of hard to believe that it's been almost two years since I wrote about the Jacquère grape from Savoie and the Mondeuse grape from Bugey in the eastern Alpine regions of France, but it's true.  It is also true that I haven't written any other posts on wines from those two regions since those first two (though I did write the section on Savoie for the AG Wine iPhone/iPad app).  The reason is pretty simple: these are small regions in France that not only don't make very much wine, but also don't export very much either.  They're big skiing areas that attract a lot of tourists, and much of the local production is consumed within the region by the tourists and the locals.  Jacquère is getting a bit more common on US shelves, but it's not becoming a mainstream wine by any stretch of the imagination.  It's much more difficult to find wines made from some of the other grapes from these regions, but I was recently able to try three different wines featuring Altesse, which is also known as Roussette, so I'd like to talk a little bit about that grape today.

Though it is found almost exclusively in Savoie and Bugey in eastern France, Altesse has long been suspected of being an import from somewhere further east.  Its first mention in print is in 1774, and the story given at that time was that the vine was brought to the region from Cyprus by one of the local princes.  The name Altesse means "highness," and it was long thought that this name came from the fact that some royal or noble person brought the vine to the area from somewhere else.  I would have assumed that "highness" was a reference to the altitude of the Alpine vineyards in the area and not to the stature of its alleged importer, but that explanation seems to have been a bit too pedestrian for some early historians.  Wine Grapes gives at least four different explanations that have been scattered through the literature which purportedly give an account of how and when Altesse came to the vineyards of Savoie with dates varying between the 14th and 16th Centuries.  Some say the grape came from Cyprus, while others say it came from Turkey.  In the latter part of the 20th Century, the great French ampelographer Pierre Galet suggested that the vine actually came from Hungary, and, further, may actually be the same as Furmint, since he believed it did not appear to bear any relationship to any other French cultivars.

It looks like Galet, and most of the early historians, were probably wrong about Altesse, though.  While I can't find any specific paper directly comparing the two grapes, the VIVC database does have DNA profiles for both Altesse and Furmint, and it's pretty clear that they're not only different grapes, but also probably not even that closely related.  Wine Grapes says that Altesse is actually more closely related to Chasselas, and if you speak (or read) French, you can read a little bit about that here.  Chasselas is thought to be native to the area around Lake Geneva, which sits right on the border between France and Switzerland and which is just northeast of Savoie.  If Altesse is closely related to Chasselas, and Chasselas is essentially native to the region, then it stands to reason that Altesse is also likely native to the region, and is not an import from some exotic eastern land.

Altesse is also known as Roussette in many places because the grapes begin to take on a reddish hue as they ripen and the French word for reddish hue (or russet-colored) is rousse.  It is particularly susceptible to a variety of fungal infections (both downy and powdery mildews as well as botrytis).  Altesse is found most often in the Roussette de Savoie and the Roussette de Bugey AOCs, which are in Savoie and Bugey respectively, as you may have guessed.  There are a few village names that can be appended to either AOC, and it used to be the case that wines labeled with a village name needed to be made from 100% Altesse, while wines simply carrying the Roussette de Savoie/Bugey label could have up to 50% Chardonnay added in.  This practice is no longer allowed, and all wines labeled either Roussette de Bugey or Savoie must now be 100% Altesse.  As of 2008, there were almost 900 acres of Altesse in France and just a little bit in Switzerland (compared to the nearly 2500 acres of Jacquère in France).

I was able to try three different wines featuring the Altesse grape.  The first was the 2009 Famille Peillot Altesse from Bugey, which I picked up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $18.  The wine is from the village of Montagnieu, which is one of the villages allowed to append its name to its wines.  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color.  The nose was reserved with a little bit of pear and chalk, but not much else.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of lime peel and light lime citrus along with some white pear, green apple, a touch of pineapple and chalk.  It had the hallmark clean, fresh flavors, zippy acidity and solid minerality that I associate with Alpine wines and it had them in spades.  It was lithe and nervy and was a real pleasure to drink.  It represents an excellent value at only $18 and was still drinking very well after sitting in my cellar for over a year (I do sometimes lose things down there).  I found myself wondering how much different an Altesse wine might be closer to the vintage year, so when I came across a 2011 wine, I snapped it up.

I picked up the 2011 Domaine Eugene Carrel Roussette de Savoie from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for about $17.  This wine is from the village of Jongieux, which is a village that can add its name to Vin de Savoie wines, but not to Roussette de Savoie wines (there is a separate cru designation called Marestel that can be added to the label for Roussette de Savoie, but this wine doesn't appear to be from that particular area of the village).  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with fresh cut lemon, white pear, green apple, lime peel and chalk.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of banana, pear, lemon, green apple and a touch of lees with a strong, stony mineral finish. The banana is much more present as the wine warms up, though it does eventually blow off a little bit.  The nose was much more intense on this wine than on the previous one, but I thought it was a bit flabbier on the palate and wasn't quite as focused.  It's still a very nice wine for the money, but if I was forced to choose between the two, I'd reach for the wine from Bugey most of the time.

The final wine that I tried was a little bit different.  It was the 2010 Côtillon des Dames from Jean-Yves Péron in Bugey, and it was an orange wine made from a combination of Altesse and Jacquère grapes.  I picked this wine up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $25.  In the glass the wine was a medium orange/amber-bronze color and was a little cloudy.  The nose was fairly intense with honey, peach, honeysuckle flower, orange and pink grapefruit aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with high acidity and a light tannic grip and maybe just a slight tickle of CO2.  There were flavors of peach, grapefruit, honeysuckle and Meyer lemon along with a slight oxidative cidery tang.  The flavors were rich and intense, but also nicely fresh and citrusy.  The nose was just gorgeous and it was a little difficult to move past it and actually drink the wine.  Once I did, though, I found it lithe and electric as the citrus fruits really danced around the bright nervy acid core.  This was definitely my favorite of the three Altesse wines I tried, though it's not exactly a traditional bottling.  If you come across it, though, give it a shot as it's a really fantastic bottle.

Tressallier (Sacy) - Saint-Pourçain, France

A few months ago, in my post on Romorantin, I told the story of a landmark paper that was published in 1999 which showed that many of the grapes currently cultivated in France all shared the same parentage.  One of the parents was Pinot but the surprising finding was that the other parent was a little known and poorly regarded grape known as Gouais Blanc.  Subsequent research (briefly outlined in my post on Menu Pineau) has shown that Gouais Blanc is likely one of the progenitors of nearly 80 different grapes that we know about today, making it easily the most prolific parent that we know of in today's world of grapes.  I bring this up because today's grape, Sacy/Tressallier, is one of those Pinot x Gouais Blanc offspring, making it a full sibling of Chardonnay, Aligoté, Auxerrois, Melon/Muscadet, Gamay and Romorantin.

Because many of the grapes from the Pinot x Gouais Blanc crossing are so well known, there has been a bit of additional research done on the pair and their offspring.  Most notably, in 2009 a group discovered which grape was the father and which was the mother for all of the grapes known to be the offspring of Pinot and Gouais Blanc.  For most species of animals and plants, it is relatively obvious which of the progenitors is the father and which is the mother.  Most animals have clearly differentiated sexes and it is usually easy to tell which animal actually gives birth, making it very easy to spot the mother.  It can be a bit more difficult in plants since many plants are hermaphrodites, but typically, whichever plant produces the seed or the fruit is the mother while the plant that merely provided the pollen is the father.  This works for sexually propagated crops, but vines are clonally propagated and the actual cross that created a given vine likely happened hundreds of years ago in the wild.  Knowing which vine is the father and which is the mother is a much dicier proposition, but it can be done.

Knowing that an offspring receives 50% of its DNA from each of its parents, it may seem impossible to figure out which 50% is paternal and which 50% is maternal.  Furthermore, it may seem irrelevant, since grapevines are hermaphrodites and don't have sex chromosomes, the matter of maternity and paternity seems like a merely academic exercise at best.  This is not entirely true, though.  The DNA of some of the organelles in plant cells, like mitochondria and chloroplasts, are inherited 100% from the mother, which means that the processes that regulate the vine's metabolism are maternally inherited with no input from the father.  In short, this means that the offspring inherits more than 50% of its DNA from its mother, and so for some things, it absolutely matters which vine was the father and which was the mother.  By examining chloroplast DNA (which is maternally inherited), the study mentioned above was able to determine that Pinot was the father and Gouais Blanc was the mother for 9 of the 12 offspring, including Chardonnay, Aligoté, Romorantin, Gamay Noir, Melon and Tressallier (the 3 with Pinot as the mother are the relatively unknown Aubin Vert, Knipperlé and Roublot).

It was long thought that Tressallier actually came into France via Italy, but the discovery of its parentage makes that story very unlikely.  It is now thought that the vine was born somewhere in Burgundy or in northern France.  Its name "Sacy" comes from a village in Champagne, while the Tressallier name is thought to be a contraction of "trans Alligerim," which means "beyond Allier," because it was once planted on the Allier River.  Like its sibling Gamay, Tressallier was once banned, though this time by the mayor of Vermenton (rather than Philip the Bold), who, in 1782, decried it for producing "dull, poor-quality wine."  Though widespread several hundred years ago, its plantings have fallen precipitously lately to only around 12 hectares as of 2008, down from 655 in 1958.  It is authorized for use in the Saint-Pourçain region, which is right in the middle of France, where it is permitted to make up only 20-40% of the blend and is typically blended with Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc.  It is also permitted in the production of Cremant de Bourgogne, though it isn't widely used there.

The first wine that I was able to try was the 2009 Calnite Blanc from Famille Laurent a Saulcet, which is about 70% Chardonnay, 25% Tressallier and 5% Sauvignon Blanc.  This bottle was provided to me as a sample from the fine folks at Oz Wine Company.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of lemon, golden apples, white flowers, cantaloupe and bread dough.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of white pear, golden apple, green melon and a touch of lemony citrus leading to a clean, stony mineral finish.  There was a lot of mouth-watering acidity, but the flavor profile was pretty broad, lacking that zip and zing that I like in my white wines.  This bottle is mostly Chardonnay, and it definitely tastes like it, but it is still a very nice wine.  I'm not sure what this typically retails for, but I think it's in the $20 - $30 range, and it's definitely worth that.  Given the low percentage of Tressallier in the blend, it's not a great way to to get a real sense for the grape, though.

For that, I picked up the 2009 Domaine de l'Orme "Les Grands Vaux" Tressallier.  I picked up this vintage from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $15, though I've seen the newer vintage (2011) at the Wine Bottega as well.  In the glass, the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was reserved with some pear and a bit of lime peel, but little else.  On the palate, the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were delicate flavors of lemon-lime citrus and white peach along with a clean, stony minerality on the finish.  It wasn't terrifically complex, but the flavors were clean and very pure with a wonderfully fresh vibrancy.  It had more of the zip and zing to it that I like, but it was also very well balanced.  I don't have any idea what the grape breakdown is with this wine, because typically when a variety is stated on the label, it must be made from at least 85% of that grape, but it also has Saint-Pourçain on the label, and I thought that the Saint-Pourçain AOC only allowed up to 40% Tressallier.  I've been told that this wine is 100% Tressallier, so that's what I'm assuming, but I can't really find any verification of that online.  In any case, it's a very nice wine, especially for the price, and is the sort of thing you should definitely pick up if you ever run across it.  Tressallier is increasingly difficult to find, but it is capable of making very nice wines.

Menu Pineau (Arbois/Orbois) - Loire Valley, France

Menu Pineau was not a grape that I intentionally set out to try.  When I bought the bottle that I'll be reviewing below, I thought that it was made mostly from the Romorantin grape with a dash of something called Orbois tossed in for good measure.  It's a French wine that is bottled as a vin de table, which means that the producer is not allowed to mention any grape names, vintage information or regional information on the front or the back labels, so all I had to go on was the store owner's word.  When I got home later and looked the wine up online, the producer's website indicated that the grape mixture was actually the reverse of what the shop owner had told me (about 80% Menu Pineau and 20% Romorantin)*.  This actually turned out to be a great thing for me, since I had a few other examples of Romorantin to write about and had nothing from the Menu Pineau grape, so the result of the happy accident is today's post.

Menu Pineau is a very old grape that has been cultivated in the Loire Valley since at least the 16th Century, where it was first mentioned in print by François Rabelais.  When I went to tag today's entry, I was surprised to see that I already had an Arbois tag, since I didn't remember ever writing about this grape before, but it turns out that I have previously used the Arbois tag to refer to the Arbois sub-region of the Jura and not to the grape.  The two names are apparently completely unrelated, as Menu Pineau has not ever been cultivated in the Jura, according to Robinson & Co. in Wine Grapes.  They say that the Arbois/Orbois name is a corruption of the name Herbois, which is what the grape was called in the Loir-et-Cher region where it is most widely grown.  In the local dialect, Herbois was spelled/pronounced Orboé or Orboué, which ultimately became Orbois and then Arbois.  It is officially known as Orbois in France, as Arbois Blanc in the VIVC database, and as Menu Pineau in Wine Grapes.

The Menu Pineau name may lead you to believe that it is somehow related to Pinot Noir or to the Pinot family of grapes, but that doesn't appear to be the case.  It was named Menu Pineau to differentiate it from Gros Pineau, which is another name for Chenin Blanc, which is widely grown in many of the same areas as Menu Pineau.  Gros means large and menu means small, while Pineau (or Pineau de la Loire) has just historically been one of Chenin Blanc's many names.  Menu Pineau does seem to have a parent/offspring relationship with Gouais Blanc, the other half of the famous Pinot x Gouais duo (see my post on Romorantin for more details) that was responsible for so many of the grapes we enjoy today.  This means that Menu Pineau is a half-sibling of all the grapes from that crossing, but more amazingly, is also at least a half sibling of at least 78 other grapes.  This study (in French...the link is to the download page, which will allow you to DL the entire bulletin...the relevant paper is the first one in the bulletin) shows that Gouais Blanc shares 50% of its DNA markers with these 78 grapes, meaning that it is likely one of the parents for nearly all of them.  The list includes such luminaries as Riesling, Furmint, Jacquère, Frâncuşă,  Grolleau, Colombard, Folle Blanche, and Muscadelle, among many others.

Menu Pineau is authorized for use in a handful of AOC wines in the northern Loire Valley, but it is being phased out of at least one major one.  As of 2016, Menu Pineau will be forbidden in AOC wines from Touraine (as will all other white grapes not named Sauvignon...only Sauvignon Gris and Sauvignon Blanc will be permitted).  Sauvignon Blanc has actually supplanted Menu Pineau in most of the areas in which the grape was once widely cultivated, as plantings in France have fallen from almost 1500 hectares in 1968 to fewer than 300 hectares in 2004.  It is generally faulted for having low acidity, and when it shows up, it typically shows up as a minor blending component to cut the acid of its more popular running-mates Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc.  There are a handful of producers making varietal wines from the grape, but I haven't been able to track any of them down.

I was able to pick up the 2007 Julien Courtois "Originel" bottling, which, as mentioned above, is about 80% Menu Pineau and 20% Romorantin.  This wine is bottled as a vin de table, so the vintage information is buried in a lot number on the back of the bottle (and I may be misinterpreting it), while the grape breakdown comes from the producer's website.  I picked this bottle up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $35.  In the glass the wine was a medium golden bronze color and was a little bit hazy.  The nose was intense with apple cider, peach and honeysuckle aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of apple cider and fresh cut green apples along with apricot, honey and lemony citrus.  The acidity was surprisingly sharp here and was a bit too much to handle at room temperature.  Cellar temp or just slightly colder was the way to go, as the flavors became very muted at fridge temp.  I really liked the balance between the fresh fruits and the slight oxidation in the wine and found the wine enjoyable on the whole.  It is a bit pricey, but I don't think it's overpriced for what you get.  It's actually a great Fall wine that would probably provide a lot of interesting pairings at the Thanksgiving table, if you're looking for a nice oddball wine to serve your guests.

*I want to be clear that I think it's amazing how much most wine shop workers know and remember about their stock off the top of their heads, especially considering the crazy kinds of questions I sometimes throw at them.  Matt at the Wine Bottega is an unbelievable fount of knowledge and this anecdote isn't intended to cast any aspersions on him or his store.  The whole crew at the Bottega are insanely knowledgeable and just all around good people.  The anecdote is merely to explain a happy accident that resulted in me getting something more interesting than I bargained for (I had a similar experience with the Kanzler grape as well).  Not all mistakes are bad things...think about the discovery of penicillin or Champagne or possibly even wine itself for examples of mistakes or accidental discoveries leading to wonderful new things.

Folle Blanche (Gros Plant) - Nantais, Loire Valley, France

Folle Blanche was, at one point in time, a very important grape, but not for wine production.  Rather, it was the most important variety grown for the production of Armagnac and Cognac, the famous distilled spirits of western France.  It was the workhorse grape of these regions before phylloxera struck, but once those vineyards were decimated by the pest, the grape was never able to reclaim its former glory.  Plantings have declined throughout the 20th Century from nearly 30,000 acres in 1968 to fewer than 6,500 by 2000.  We'll take a look at some of the reasons for this decline and also take a look at a few table wines made from the grape below.

You might think that whatever grape makes a good wine would also make a great brandy, since brandies are essentially just distilled wines, but it turns out that isn't the case.  The qualities that distillers look for in a base wine for brandy are high acid and light flavor, as heavily flavored base wines apparently make for clumsy brandies while high acids amplify aromas and help balance the finished liquor.  Wines made from Folle Blanche grapes posses both of these characteristics, and for many years the vine was prized for the fine brandies that resulted from its distillation.  The vine was somewhat problematic to grow, though, as it tended to be very vegetatively vigorous and demanded a lot of pruning in order to avoid problems with botrytis bunch rot and black rot, two fungal diseases to which it is particularly prone.  This problem actually got worse after the phylloxera epidemic, as it turned out that Folle Blanche vines became much more vigorous after being grafted onto native American rootstocks.

As we've covered many times on this site, the war against phylloxera was fought on several different fronts.  Once people began to notice that native American grape varieties were largely unaffected by the louse, many people, like Albert Seibel and JF Ravat, tried to create new grape varieties by breeding vinifera vines with native American vines in order to try to retain the quality winemaking characteristics of vinifera with the phylloxera resistance of the other varieties.  One of those hybridizers was François Baco who, in 1898, crossed Folle Blanche with Noah (itself a riparia x labrusca hybrid that is definitely not the same as the Hondarrabi Zuri grape) to create Baco 22A, or Baco Blanc (he also created Baco Noir which also has Folle Blanche as one parent but a different riparia vine for the other).  Baco Blanc also made wines that were lightly flavored and high in acid, but the vines were also resistant to many of the diseases that plagued Folle Blanche vines, and many growers opted for Baco Blanc over Folle Blanche for these reasons.  It turns out that the EU ban on hybrid grapes only applies to quality wine production, so the use of a hybrid vine to make a distilled spirit was legally fine.  Plantings of Baco Blanc have been steadily declining, though (to about 5,000 acres as of 2000), as many Armagnac and Cognac growers have begun either making their own wines from their grapes or trying to sell some of their crop to table wine producers.  Since Baco Blanc is a hybrid, it cannot be used for this purpose, and many growers are opting to plant more Colombard and Ugni Blanc, the other great vinifera vines used in the production of Cognac and Armagnac, in order to have more options for the fruits of their vines.

Folle Blanche is thought to be a half-sibling to many of the great grapes of France. One of its parents has been identified as Gouais Blanc, which was also parent to Romorantin, Chardonnay, Gamay, Auxerrois, Aligoté, Melon de Bourgogne (aka Muscadet) and many others.  Pinot Noir was identified as the other parent for those grapes, but Folle Blanche's other parent is currently unknown.  Folle Blanche has many synonyms, many of which can be confusing.  It is known as Picpoul, or lip-stinger, though it doesn't seem to be related to Picpoul-de-Pinet.  It also has Dolcetto and Ugne Blanche as accepted synonyms, but is not related to the Italian Dolcetto or Ugni Blanc, as far as I know.  It is also known as Enrage, Enrageade and Enrageat, which I just find kind of funny.  The VIVC lists 62 accepted synonyms for Folle Blanche, which you can peruse at your leisure here.  The only one I happened across was Gros Plant, which is commonly used on the labels of wines made from Folle Blanche in the Nantais region at the far western end of the Loire Valley.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Domaine des Troit Toits Gros Plant from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $16.  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was moderately intense but delicate and subtle with white pear and golden apple fruits along with a touch of lees (the wine is aged sur lie, as you can see at right).  On the palate the wine was light bodied with searingly high acidity.  There were flavors of raw lemon-lime citrus and green apple, but it was difficult to get a bead on anything as the acid was just sky high.  I've had some wines before that people told me were high-acid, but I've never had anything quite like this.  It was just raw, tooth-stripping power that was frankly a little difficult to even drink.  I'm a fan of acidic wines and love sour candy, but this was a little bit too much for me.  If the ideal base wine for brandy is high acid and light flavor, this bottle would seem to be the Platonic ideal.

High acid wines are not only good for distillation, though.  The Champagne region of France has made many fortunes turning the high-acid, underripe juice of grapes into beautiful wines by forcing them through a second fermentation in bottle and trapping the resulting bubbles in the wine.  The second wine that I tried, the NV "Atmosphères" from Jo Landron ($18 from the Wine Bottega), was a traditional method sparkler made from 80% Folle Blanche and 20% Pinot Noir.  In the glass this wine was a medium lemon gold color with big, steady bubbles.  On the nose the wine was fairly intense with funky apple and lemon fruits wrapped up in a freshly baked yeast roll.  On the palate the wine was light bodied with high acidity.  There were flavors of toasted bread, golden apples, lemon juice and fresh yeast rolls again.  This wine was highly acidic, but it was much more manageable and better integrated into the wine.  It wasn't a deeply complex wine, but it was simple and clean and would make a nice aperitif.  It was certainly much more approachable and friendly than its still wine counterpart and, for only $2 more, is a much better value as well.

Len de l'El (Loin de l'Oeil) - Côtes de Tarn & Gaillac, France

Len de l'El is a grape that I fully expected to only be able to try in a blend.  When I first came across it, it was in a white wine from southwestern France and it made up about 40% of the blend.  I had never heard of it before and for the longest time I didn't see another bottle that contained any Len de l'El in it, so I figured that might be the best I could do.  One day, though, I walked in a local shop that I usually only have average luck finding unusual wines in, and right up by the cash registers was a display featuring wines that were 100% Len de l'El.  I naturally picked a bottle up and began to wonder if perhaps Len de l'El was more common than I thought.  The answer, apparently, is no, as those two bottles are still the only bottles that I've been able to find that use the Len de l'El grape at all.  It's kind of amazing the unusual things you can find in places you might not expect so long as you keep your eyes and your mind open to them.

So today's grape is, obviously, Len de l'El, though both bottles that I tried spelled the name of the grape Loin de l'Oeil, and some sources refer to the grape as Len de l'Elh.  Loin de l'Oeil is the "proper" French spelling, while Len de l'El(h) is the spelling in the local Occitan dialect.  No matter which spelling you prefer, the grape's name translates into English as "far from the eye."  In his Grapes and Wines, Oz Clarke says that the grape is so named because "the clusters have long stalks, and so are a long way (well, relatively) from the eye, or bud, from which they sprang."  Pretty much every source I've consulted seems to buy this explanation, so that's good enough for me.

The grape is thought to be native to the Gaillac region of France, which we visited when we took a look at the Fer Servadou grape.  It was at one time a major component of the white wines from Gaillac, but, like so many other grapes, its prevalence and prominence fell drastically after the phylloxera epidemic.  It is prone to a host of grape diseases and tends to yield less prolifically than its frequent blending partner Mauzac so many growers elected to plant more Mauzac following the phylloxera outbreak.  In order to preserve Len de l'El in the vineyards of Gaillac, growers in the area decided to make a small percentage of Len de l'El compulsory in the area's wines when the AOC was established for the region in 1938.  At the time, a minimum of 15% Len de l'El was required in all Gaillac Blanc wines.  This undoubtedly helped to save the grape from extinction, and it has rebounded nicely since then, with plantings increasing five-fold over the past 50 years to a total of just under 2,000 acres as of the year 2000.  In 2007, the AOC regulations for white Gaillac wines changed so that winemakers can now use either Len de l'El or Sauvignon Blanc for that 15% that had previously been reserved solely for Len de l'El.  It's difficult to say whether this change will have a negative effect on plantings of Len de l'El in the long run, but given the respect for tradition in Southwest France, it seems unlikely that Len de l'El will slip into oblivion anytime soon.

As mentioned above, I was able to find two different wines that were made at least in part from the Len de l'El grape.  The first wine that I was able to try was the 2009 Genouillac "Burgale Blanc," which is a blended wine from the Vin de Pays du Comte Toloson near the Gaillac region of France.  This wine was 40% Len de l'El, 35% Mauzac and 25% Sauvignon Blanc.  I picked this wine up locally for around $10.  In the glass the wine was a fairly light silvery lemon color.  The nose was reserved with aromas of white pear, green apple, lemon and something just a little cidery.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with high acidity.  The wine was pretty simple with a bit of lemony citrus and green apple and not much else.  There was a kind of prickly sensation on the tip of the tongue while drinking this and I wasn't 100% sure whether it was just really lively acidity or whether there might have been a touch of residual carbon dioxide kicking around in there.  This is a solid, refreshing summertime wine, but that's about it.  It represents a decent value at around $10 but isn't the kind of thing that's going to blow your mind.

The second wine that I tried was the 2010 Domaine de la Chanade "Les Rials," which is a 100% Len de l'El that is barrel fermented and aged for a brief time on its lees (though I can't find any specific information on types of wood or lengths of time in barrel and on the lees).  The wine is from the Côtes de Tarn, which is located just on the western edge of the Gaillac region.  I picked this bottle up locally for about $9.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with red apple, baked pear and apricot fruits along with a very distinctive leesy, cheesy kind of character. On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was just off-dry and had flavors of ripe red apple, apricot, pineapple, mango, and grapefruit along with a yeasty, cheesy kind of taste as well.  This wine really started to open up and get more tropical as it approached room temperature, showing best with just a slight chill to it.  I really enjoyed this wine and thought it was an excellent bargain at only $9 a bottle.  It was fruity, friendly and a little sweet, but there was a nice depth to it from the lees contact as well.