Boal/Bual/Gual/Malvasia Fina - Madeira, Portugal and Canary Islands, Spain

When I decided to try and write about each of the major Madeira grapes, I really wasn't anticipating any problems or confusion.  Everything I had read said that there were four major grapes that produced four different styles of Madeira.  Easy peasy.  I got through two of the four major grapes, Sercial and Verdelho, with little problem, but then I came up against Boal, and things started to get a little dicey.  It turns out that there are a handful of grapes that are called Boal or Bual and unless you are familiar with some of the recent legislation regarding grape names in Portugal, you may be misled in your search for information about the Boal of Madeira.  You might be inclined, as I was at first, to think that Boal Branco is the grape you're after...after all, it does list Boal de Madere as one of its synonyms.  It turns out that Boal Branco, which is sometimes used a synonym for Sémillon in the Douro Valley, is actually a very obscure grape that is hardly cultivated any more (at least according to Wine Grapes, the massive new grape book from Jancis Robinson & Co. that I hope to review very shortly).

If you're looking for Boal, you actually need to start looking in that tangled web of grapes that is the Malvasia "family."  I have "family" in scare quotes, because it turns out that many of the grapes called Malvasia Something are actually not related to one another at all.  The story goes that these grapes are ultimately named for the port of Monemvasia in Greece, which was at one time (many hundreds of years ago) a major hub for wine commerce.  There were many different sweet wines coming out of the port of Monemvasia, and it is thought that the place name became a kind of substitute for the grape name and many of the wines being shipped out of there just came to be called vinum de Malvasias or some variant of that.  Before the heyday of ampelography (and, more recently, DNA analysis), it was probably the case that any grape making wines similar in style to these wine were called Malvasia, regardless of whether they were related to any of the grapes making the wines coming out of Monemvasia or not.  Wines with "Malvasia" somewhere in their name are genetically and geographically diverse, which would seem to lend credence to a stylistic basis for the common root rather than a genetic one.  Malvasia grapes are especially common in Italy, Spain and Portugal and there have been numerous studies done to try and see how they are (or are not) related to one another.  Many of the Malvasias do have some kind of genetic connection, but there are others that are obvious outliers, so if we speak of Malvasia as a family, we really are only doing so in a linguistic sense.

All of which is wonderful, but what does any of this have to do with Boal, you may be asking.  Well, in the year 2000, the Portuguese authorities officially renamed the Boal/Bual grape Malvasia Fina (Boal is the Portuguese name while Bual is the Anglicization of it...remember that Madeira was a British dominated market for a very long time and the British apparently had a tough time with the "oa" diphthong  so they changed it to "ua"...go figure).  This wasn't done on a whim, but rather based on genetic and ampelographic information that showed that these two grapes were actually one and the same (and also showed that Malvasia Fina had a parent/offspring relationship with another grape known as Boal Ratinho).  Malvasia Fina is one of the Portuguese specialties of Malvasia and it is grown on about 2,200 hectares throughout that country.  It is mostly found in the Douro, where it is thought to have originated, and the Dão in the northern part of the country, but it is really grown throughout Portugal, as evidenced by its appearance on Madeira and the Azores islands.

Those familiar with the wines of Madeira may be starting to wonder about something right about now.  The four styles of quality Madeira are Sercial, Verdelho, Bual and Malmsey, and Malmsey is supposed to be made from Malvasia grapes.  Is the Malvasia used for Malmsey the same or different from the Malvasia Fina used for Bual?  This question was much more difficult to answer than I had thought as nearly all sources that I consulted simply say that Malmsey is made from Malvasia grapes with no further elaboration.  I actually put off even writing this post until my copy of Wine Grapes arrived, as I was hopeful that they could shed some light on it.  According to them, the grape used for Malmsey production on Madeira is a variety known as Malvasia Branca de São Jorge, which doesn't appear to be grown anywhere else or used for any other wines.  We'll get into more detail about it when I take a look at a Malmsey Madeira, but for now, suffice it to say that it is a distinct variety of Malvasia from Malvasia Fina, and wines labeled Bual and Malmsey are made from different grape varieties.

Having sorted all of that out, I still wasn't quite out of the woods.  I also had picked up a wine from the Canary Islands of Spain which was labeled as Gual and which I was told (and had no reason to disbelieve)  was made from the Bual grape of Madeira.  When I tried to search for Gual in the VIVC database, though, the only result that came back showed that Gual was a synonym of Albillo Mayor, the recently proven parent of Tempranillo that I'm not sure whether I tried or not.  After a bit of digging, I found this paper (in Spanish) which seems to confirm that the Gual of the Canary Islands is in fact the same as the Bual/Boal/Malvasia Fina of Madeira.

On the ascending sweetness scale for Madeira wines, Bual sits in third position, generally a little sweeter than Verdelho, but not as sweet as Malmsey.  I was able to try the NV Boston Bual from Vinhos Barbeito, which I picked up locally for around $40. In the glass the wine was a medium tawny brown with a kind of greenish-yellow tint at the rim.  The nose was intense with very nutty aromas of raisin and burnt sugar.  On the palate, the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  It was medium-sweet with flavors of burnt sugar, dark caramel, tart apple, crème brûlée, toasted nuts, maple syrup and raisins.  It was very well balanced wine, as many of these Historic Series Madeiras are, with a really lovely mix of acid and sugar that made it very easy to drink.  It was not as searingly acidic as the Sercial and was a bit richer than the Verdelho, and would be an easy slam dunk with nut or caramel based desserts.  I plan on serving the Malmsey from this same line with a pecan pie this coming Thanksgiving, and will report the results when I write about that grape and wine.

The second wine that I tried was the 2008 Vinatigo Gual from the Ycoden Daute Isadora region of Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands.  I picked this wine up from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $32.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of apricot, cantaloupe, honey and red grapefruit.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of leesy dried apricot and cantaloupe fruit along with a bit of honeysuckle flower as well.  It was difficult to find a good temperature to drink this at, as it was a bit too alcoholic at room temperature, but was also too austere and bitter at fridge temp.  Cellar temperature or a little bit cooler seemed to really be the sweet spot for the wine.  It's a nice, interesting wine, but is difficult to justify at the price point.  I'd much rather pay the little bit extra for the Madeira and enjoy Bual in its traditional incarnation.  Those interested in finding out what the wine might taste like before it finishes its journey to becoming Madeira may be better served tracking down a Malvasia Fina from mainland Portugal if price is a concern, but those interested in an island wine showing a different side of the grape should definitely give this a shot.

Incrocio Bruni 54 - Marche, Italy

Today I'm going to do something I don't typically do.  I usually try to make sure that for any grape that I write about, I either try a wine that is at least 50% from that grape (though 75% is even better), or I move the post to Weird Blend Wednesday and write about wines made from several different unusual grapes, none of which make up majority of a given bottling.  I really try not to write about grapes that make up a minority portion of a bottling, and I have been mostly successful in avoiding that, but today I'm going to make an exception.  The only wine I could find that contained today's grape, Incrocio Bruni 54, only had about 25% of it in the blend, while the other 75% was made from Pecorino.  I certainly could have included this wine in my post on the Pecorino grape, but chances are pretty good that I won't be coming across any wines with a higher percentage of Incrocio Bruni 54 any time soon (though there is at least one producer who makes a varietal wine from it).  As of the 2004 Italian agricultural census, there were only 13 hectares (about 32 acres) of Incrocio Bruni 54 under vine in Italy, which essentially means there are only 13 hectares being grown in the world.  It is cultivated basically only in the Marche and is allowed in the DOC wines of Colli Maceratesi, but can make up no more than 30% of the blend there.

Incrocio is an Italian word that means "crossing," and there are a handful of Incrocio grapes that are planted to varying degrees in Italy.  These are grapes that were created either by private Italian breeders or by people working at various research institutes throughout Italy.  The most common and perhaps best known is Incrocio Manzone, also known as Manzone Bianco, which I'll be writing about in a separate post very soon.  Pretty much all of the Incrocio grapes follow the same naming convention: they all usually start with Incrocio (though occasionally this word is dropped) and then the word after Incrocio is usually the name of the breeder who created the grape, who in this case was Bruno Bruni, and the number refers to the specific selection of grape.  Sometimes these grapes are given "regular" names, but most of them seem to be stuck with these cumbersome long-form names.  Bruni created hundreds of crossings in his lifetime, but like most grape breeders, only a handful of them proved to have much value as wine grape cultivars.  The VIVC database has a fairly extensive listing of grapes created by Bruni, but it seems as though only number 54 has had any kind of staying power (though many of his creations are table grapes, so they may be more widely grown and known, but I'm not even sure how to check something like that).

Bruni was working in the early part of the 20th Century in the Marche region of Italy and many of his crossings were created between 1930 and 1950.  There either isn't any biographical information on the man online, or I'm just unable to find it underneath all of the results for an Italian sculptor also named Bruno Bruni.  In any case, our man Bruni published a paper (titled "Nuove varieta' di uve da vino 'Incrocio Bruni 54'") announcing his new grape in 1964.  The given parentage was Sauvignon Blanc x Verdicchio, and virtually every resource currently in print lists gives this as the accepted pedigree for the grape.  In a massive study done in 2010 (citation 1), though, the grape's parentage was revealed to be Aleatico x Lacrima.  I haven't been able to find this result corroborated in any other studies (which isn't surprising given the grape's limited plantings and importance), but the VIVC database is sufficiently convinced to list this as the grape's official parentage.

The wine that I was able to try with Incrocio Bruni 54 in it was the 2010 Fontezoppa Marche Bianco which, as mentioned above, is about 25% Incrocio Bruni 54 and 75% Pecorino.  I picked this bottle up locally for around $12.  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was fairly intense with white pear, lemon, lime, green apple and pineapple aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white pear, ripe red apples, lemony citrus, orange pith and green melon along with a kind of chalky minerality on the back end.  It was similar in style and in flavor to the Colle Vecchio Pecorino I wrote about in my post on that grape, but this wine was a little broader, fatter and blander than that one.  This wine is certainly not a fair representation of what Incrocio Bruni 54 might taste like, but it does give a sense of how the grape is used when it is used at all.  If I ever run across one of those rare varietal bottlings of this grape, I'll be certain to try it and post about it here, but until then, this is probably the best I can do.

Citations:

Cipriani, G, et al (seriously, there are 14 authors on this paper).  2010.  The SSR-based molecular profile of 1005 grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) accessions uncovers new synonymy and parentages, and reveals a large admixture amongst varieties of different geographic origin.  Theoretical and Applied Genetics.  121, pp. 1569-1585.

Mavrodaphne - Patras, Greece

It isn't often that you can trace the emergence of a grape and a style of wine to a particular winery or even a particular year, but with Mavrodaphne, we can do just that.  In 1859, a Bavarian gentleman by the name of Gustav Clauss bought some land in Achaia, in the neighborhood of Riganokampos near the city of Patras.  Patras, as we learned when we took a look at the Roditis grape, is located at the very top of the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece (map).  Gustav was initially interested in growing blackcurrants, but he planted a few vines on his 60 acre spread as well.  In 1861, he founded the Achaia Clauss winery on his property and began making wines from the local Mavrodaphne grape.

There is a story that says that Gustav named his wines after a girlfriend or lover he had named Daphne, but there are indications that they grape was grown in this area prior to Clauss's arrival (some sources say he brought the grape from one of the many nearby islands, but that doesn't seem to be quite right either).  Prior to Clauss's arrival, most of the wines made from the grape in the area were regular table wines that were a little bit sweet, but Clauss decided to use some of the techniques used in Port production to create a different kind of wine.  He stopped fermentation short by introducing neutral grain spirits, which allowed the wine to retain more of its natural sugar while boosting the alcohol level.  He then put the sweet fortified wines in open oak barrels and aged them for several years.  Prior to the mid 20th Century, the wines were aged in casks outdoors for six years, but today they're aged indoors for around eight years (though some of the higher end bottlings are aged for many decades).  The Achaia Clauss winery pioneered this style of Mavrodaphne and they are still selling their version of it today, though they're not the only game in town anymore by any stretch of the imagination.  Mavrodaphne is increasingly made into still, dry table wines, but these are still in a distinct minority and are very difficult to find.

There are a handful of grapes throughout Greece either with the word mavro in their name (see Mavrotragano and Xinomavro for two we've covered here) or which are known simply as Mavro, and some have thought that these grapes may be related.  As far as I know, no relationship has been found between these grapes, which makes sense when you recall that mavro is just the Greek word for "black," and is used in much the same way as noir or nero in France or Italy (the daphne part of the name just means "laurel"*).  It is a thick-skinned grape that grows in fairly loose bunches and can suffer badly from overproduction, so yields must be kept in check to prevent thin, diluted wines.  The vine is highly susceptible to both drought conditions and some forms of mildew, so the water given to and around the vines must be carefully monitored.

There are at least two clonal variants of Mavrotragano discussed in Konstantinos Lazarakis' The Wines of Greece.  The more common one, which is grown mainly in the area of Achaia, is known as Regnio, and is distinguished by its tighter bunch formations and different leaf shape.  The other clone is known as Tsigelo and it is characterized by its smaller bunches and, some say, higher quality wines.  Mavrodaphne is grown mostly in the area around Patras, but there is also some grown on the island of Cephalonia where it is made into a similar style of wine.  The Cephalonians claim that they use a superior clone of Mavrodaphne, but it looks like their clone is very closely related to Tsigelo.  There is also a Cephalonian grape called Thiniatiko, which may be the same as the Tsigelo clone of Mavrodaphne, or which may only be closely related.

I was able to try two different Mavrodaphne wines.  Both of them were from Patras, both were in this sweet fortified style, and I picked up both of them from Wollaston Wine and Spirits.  The first wine was the NV Mavrodaphne from Cambas winery, which cost around $11.  In the glass, the wine was a fairly light tawny purple color.  The nose was moderately intense with raisin and prune fruits along with a bit of dusty leather.  On the palate, the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  It was pretty sweet with flavors of raisin, fig, chocolate, burnt sugar, molasses, dulche de leche, dried cranberries and prunes, which is an awful lot to have going on for only $11.  The wine is 15% alcohol, but it carries it well and doesn't come across hot at all.  I kept the bottle on my counter with only a cork on the top of it for a few weeks, and it was drinking consistently well throughout that time period.  It's kind of like a slightly oxidized ruby port, but at a much nicer price point.  I enjoyed it so much, I actually went back to the store so that I could try the other Mavrodaphne wine that they had in stock.

That wine was the NV Achaia Clauss "Imperial," which also had a retail price of $11.  For some reason, Achaia Clauss doesn't have this wine listed on their website, but I was surprised to see that in their higher end Mavrodaphne wines, there is actually a very high percentage of a grape called Black Corinthian.  Markus over at the always excellent Elloinos explains that the regulations for Mavrodaphne of Patras allow for up to 49% (!) of Black Corinthian.  Achaia Clauss actually does use the entire 49% in the wine that's one step up from this one (the "601") on their quality ladder, so I'm guessing the percentage is similarly high here.  In the glass, this wine was a fairly deep brownish-tawny color.  The nose was powerfully intense with aromas of raisin, prune, fig, baking spice, caramel and scorched brown sugar.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  Again, it was sweet with flavors of raisin, prune, fig, burnt sugar, smoke, brown sugar, caramel, baking spice and even some black pepper.  This wine was also 15% alcohol, but seemed to be wearing it a little more clumsily.  It was still a phenomenally deep and complex wine, though, that really over delivered on its meager price tag.  This also sat around on my counter top for a few weeks without suffering for it at all.  It threw a pretty heavy sediment, which surprised me a little, but isn't something that I have any kind of problem with.  I preferred it to the Cambas Mavrodaphne, but wouldn't hesitate to recommend either one of them

Much of the information in this post is from:

Lambert-Gocs, Miles.  1990.  The Wines of Greece.  Faber & Faber, London, UK.

Lazarakis, Konstantinos.  2005.  The Wines of Greece.  Mitchell-Beazley, London, UK.

*The myth goes that there was once a wood nymph named Daphne who never wanted to get married, like the goddess Diana.  One day, Apollo saw her and fell in love with her and began to pursue her through the forest for his own amorous ends.  Daphne called out to her father for help and, knowing that he could not stop Apollo directly, he turned her into a laurel bush.  Apollo was a freaky guy, but apparently not freaky enough to get it on with a bush, so he moved along and that's supposedly how the laurel bush got its name.

Early Muscat - Rogue Valley, Oregon, USA

As I've mentioned many times before (such as in my posts on Emerald Riesling and Symphony), I'm a big fan of Dr. Harold Olmo.  Olmo was perhaps the most prolific and successful grape breeder in the history of the United States, but he was also a leading figure in many other areas of viticulture as well.  He was an early proponent of clonal selection, and this lengthy obituary (he died in 2006) of him credits him with changing California's relationship with the Chardonnay grape.  For many years, Chardonnay was unpopular in California because it wasn't very productive and the wines made from it weren't that great.  Olmo tested several different clonal variants of the grape to try and find more productive and higher quality vines, and it is thought that his success in this endeavor is responsible for Chardonnay's extraordinary popularity today.  Whether that's a good thing or not from a taste perspective is a very different question from whether it's a good thing or not from an economic perspective   Regardless of what your own personal feelings are about the Chardonnay grape, the fact remains that it has become a significant cash crop for California winemakers because the quality and the quantity of the grapes being grown is higher.

Not all of Olmo's discoveries and projects were such unequivocal successes.  Many of the grapes that he created for wine production were intended to be high-cropping vines that had good disease resistance and which could be grown in some of the hotter and drier regions of California where traditional vinifera varieties were unsuccessful.  Many of the grapes that he created are still grown in California today, though you rarely see any of their names on bottles because much of their production ends up as bulk wine.  Some people may see this as a failure on Olmo's part or may wish to criticize him for breeding bulk wine grapes, but one must remember that this was really what he was trying to do, and he was remarkably successful at it.  One should also note that while most of the production from these grapes ends up as bulk wine, some producers do try to make quality wines from them by limiting yields and carefully managing the vines in the vineyard and the results of their care can be very good in their own right.

Harold Olmo created table grapes in addition to creating wine grapes, and many of his creations can still be found on your supermarket shelves.  The first few grapes that Olmo released (in 1946 and 1958) were actually table grapes, as there was a big push at this particular time to create more seedless table grapes to supplement the Thompson seedless, which, for quite some time, was actually the only seedless table grape available in the US.  Many of his creations used various Muscat grapes as one of the parents (or somewhere in the pedigree), as the intense aromas and high sugar contents that the Muscat family was able to pass along to its offspring were very popular with consumers.  Olmo's first grape release was the table grape Perlette in 1946 (one of whose parents was the aforementioned Thompson seedless).  There were a handful of others over the next few years and then in 1958, Early Muscat was released (the actual crossing was purportedly in 1940, but quality trials take a really long time...Symphony, for example, was also first crossed in 1940 but wasn't released until 1981).

Early Muscat was created by crossing Muscat de Hamburg with a grape called Reine des Vignes in France and Koenigin der Weingaerten in German, both of which translate to "Queen of the Vineyards" (and which was the other parent for Olmo's first grape, Perlette).  Reine des Vignes was created by Hungarian breeder János Mathiász in 1916 by crossing a grape called Queen Elizabeth with Pearl of Csaba (which, incidentally, is also one of the parents of Irsai Olivér).  Pearl of Csaba was itself created in 1904, and one of its parents was called Muscat Courtillier, which is also known as Muscat Précoce de Saumur.  The "précoce" in the name means early, and the grape is known for its early ripening and short growing season, which makes it a popular choice among grape breeders.  This early ripening quality was passed along through the family tree, and, together with the Muscat flavors from its great-grandfather and its father, created the grape we now know as Early Muscat.

Early Muscat, like many of its forebears and relatives, was initially created as a table grape variety.  As we discussed in my post on the Lakemont and Himrod grapes, the qualities that breeders are looking for in a table grape are rarely the same as the qualities you'd want in a wine grape.  For the most part, table grapes are bred to be prolific yielders without any seeds and with very thin, mostly flavor-neutral skins.  It is possible to make wine from these grapes, but it is generally inadvisable.  Some winemakers do occasionally try it, though, and occasionally it works out well.  A few years back, some winemakers in Oregon noticed that Early Muscat grew really well there and decided to experiment with it.  It wasn't exactly a phenomenon, but these days a handful of different producers do grow the grape and make wine from it (which is, apparently, sometimes difficult to buy as consumers snatch up the wines almost as soon as they hit the shelves).

One of those producers is Del Rio Vineyards, located in the Rogue Valley of southwestern Oregon.  Del Rio makes a wine called Rose Jolee, which I picked up from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $10.  The most recent information on the winery's website indicates that the current blend for this wine (listed as NV on the PDF, but 2011 on the actual website) was 63% Early Muscat, 17% Riesling and 20% "red blend."  The 2009, which is the wine that I tried, is actually labeled Early Muscat, which means that it must have at least 90% of the stated variety in it,*  though it's obvious that there's still some "red blend" in this wine because Early Muscat is a white grape and this is a fairly deep salmon pink wine with a very light fizz to it.  The nose was intensely aromatic with strawberry, peach and lychee fruit along with fresh flowers and orange blossoms.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  It was pretty sweet with just a faint prickle of CO2.  There were flavors of strawberry candy, peaches, mandarin oranges and something a bit grapey as well.  The flavor profile was very fruity and kind of candy-ish, with the wine tasting a bit like cotton candy at times as well.  It wasn't aggressively floral, as some Muscat-based wines can be.  It's a summer slammer wine, really, that is meant to be gulped and gulped quickly for maximum enjoyment, and if you approach it with that kind of mindset, you'll probably find a lot to like about it.  It's not complex or deep or profound, but it is tasty and easy to drink and I'm totally fine with that sometimes.

*Remember that the rules are a little different in Oregon.  In California and most of the rest of the US, if a variety is stated on the label, the wine only has to be composed of at least 75% of the stated variety.  Oregon's laws dictate that the stated variety must make up at least 90% of the wine, which explains why the bottle on the PDF shelftalker from their website does not have any varietal designation, if the most recent bottlings are only 63% Early Muscat.

Fetească Albă - Cotnari, Romania

It's been quite awhile since we visited the land of Romania.  Several years back I wrote a post about a blended white wine from Romania that I tried that contained three Romanian grapes heavy on the diacritical marks: Fetească Albă, Frâncuşă and Tămâiosă.  Romanian wine isn't that easy to find in my neck of the woods, so it has taken awhile for me to revisit this country, but I've recently found a few interesting Romanian wines and hope to be able to write about some of them over the next few weeks.  One of the wines that I was able to find was a varietal Fetească Albă, and that's the one I'd like to write about today.

I gave a brief capsule history of Romania and Romanian wine in my prior post, so interested readers are advised to skim that piece for more information on those topics.  In brief, Romanian wine is still struggling to recover after decades of rule by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was only overthrown in 1989.  Romania has a rich history of wine making and was considered for many years to be among the greatest wine producing nations in the world, but they found themselves on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain in the early to mid 20th Century and they have struggled to re-emerge onto the world wine market.  They are currently about 12th in total production in the world, but Romanian wines are still difficult to find on American shelves.

There are actually three different Fetească grapes.  Fetească Neagră is a black skinned grape that does not appear to actually be related to the other Fetească grapes at all.  The two white-berried forms are Fetească Albă and Fetească Regală, which are sometimes said to be subvarieties of the same grape, which isn't really accurate.  Some sources also indicate that Fetească Regală is the offspring of Fetească Albă and Grasă de Cotnari, but this was disproven by a Hungarian research team in 2009 (citation 1).  Many of the grapes grown in Romania are also grown in Hungary, but the names of the grapes are often very different.  The Hungarian study looked at a grape they called Királyleányka, which is the same as the Fetească Regală of Romania.  They reported that the given pedigree for this grape was Leányka and Kövérszölö, which are Fetească Albă and Grasă de Cotnari, respectively.  They were able to rule out Grasă de Cotnari as one of the parents, but they also showed that there was almost certainly a parent/offspring relationship between Leányka and Királyleányka (incidentally, it turns out that the other parent for Fetească Regală is actually Frâncuşă, which was in the blend I wrote about previously (citation 3)).

I've reverted to using the Hungarian names rather than the Romanian ones there because there is apparently some controversy over whether Leányka is actually the same grape as Fetească Albă.  They have long been thought to be identical not only because they look very similar, but also because their names roughly translate to the same thing in their respective languages ("maiden's grape" or "young girl's grape").  Though nearly every resource I've read indicates that they are the same grape, the Oxford Companion to Wine cryptically mentions in both their entries on Fetească Albă and Leányka that an Austrian research team has shown that the two grapes are actually genetically distinct.  It took several hours of intense searching to even find the abstract for the paper I believe that the OCW is referencing, but I believe that I finally found it (citation 2). Though I wasn't able to read the paper, I did read the abstract, and something struck me. The relevant portion of the abstract is copied below.

"The cv. Feteasca alba is not identical to Leanika (Mädchentraube), therefore the supposed definition as synonymous cultivars is obsolete. The cv. Kiraly Leanika could be evaluated as an individual cultivar. However, synonyms were detected by comparing Chasselas de Courtillier and Madleine Royale."

This seems pretty benign, unless you remember those last two grapes mentioned from my post on Müller-Thurgau.  One of the parents of Müller-Thurgau was misidentified for many years as Chasselas de Courtiller because of a labeling mix up at a holding institution in Austria where a Madeleine Royale vine was mislabeled as Chassleas de Courtiller (it's a cool story and I'd really encourage you to read the post).  This raises several issues with the reputability of this particular paper.  First, it appears that the samples taken for this particular study were taken from Klausterneuberg, which is the same institution responsible for the mislabeled vines in the Müller-Thurgau story.  Further, their finding that Chasselas de Courtiller and Madeleine Royale are the same grape have been disproved (because of the labeling mishap), meaning that there is good cause to doubt the rest of their findings as well.  A dubious source for the plant material coupled with findings that have been disproved elsewhere means that it's difficult to take this paper's findings as fact without further corroboration.

This paper was written in 2001, and as far as I can tell, there are no other papers published since then that corroborate the results that this team found regarding Fetească Albă and Leányka.  The VIVC database considers the grapes to be identical even though they list the paper above in their extensive bibliography on the grape.  Further, in a very recent study (published in September 2012, citation 3 below) which discovered hundreds of pedigrees for different grape varieties, the author's notation for Fetească Albă is literally "Fetească Albă = Leányka."  While I wasn't able to find any direct evidence that shows that the two grapes are identical*, that certainly seems to be the common consensus and has been for some time.  There may be airtight evidence that I've overlooked somewhere, but right now, the case for the grapes being identical seems much stronger than the case against it.**

All of which finally brings us to the bottle of 2008 Cotnari Fetească Albă, which I picked up at the Wine Gallery in Brookline (who has a very nice eastern European section these days) for around $12.  In the glass, the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with peach, apricot and pineapple fruits along with some honey and honeysuckle flower as well.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  As it states on the label, it was also medium sweet.  There were flavors of pineapple and mandarin oranges along with some peach and a touch of honey.  Pineapple was far and away the dominant flavor note.  It came off a bit syrupy and probably could have used more acidity to balance it out, but overall, I thought it was a pretty good wine for only $12.  Fans of slightly sweet German wines will probably find a lot to like here, as will fans of spicy food, as this would likely match well with a variety of spicy Asian dishes.

CITATIONS

1) Kiss, E., Kozma, P., Halász, G., Molnár, S., Galbács, Z.S., Hoffmann, S., Veres, A., Galli, Z.S., Szőkel, A. and Heszky, L. 2009. Pedigree of Carpathian basin and Hungarian grapevine cultivars based on microsatellite analysis. Acta Hortitculturae (ISHS) 827:221-224

2) Regner, F.; Eisenheld, C.; Kaserer, H.; Stadlbauer, A. 2001. Weitere Sortenanalysen bei Rebe mittels genetischer Marker. [Further analyses for identification of grapevine by means of genetic markers]. Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg, Rebe und Wein, Obstbau und Früchteverwertung. 51(1) pp. 3-14.

3) Lacombe, T., Boursiquot, J.M., Laucou, V., Di Vecchi-Staraz, M., Peros, J.P., & This, P.  2012.  Large scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.).  Theoretical and Applied Genetics.  In press.

*This paper builds on another paper published by many of the same authors which analyzed the DNA of 4,370 different cultivars.  I wasn't able to find the list of all the grapes that were studied so I don't know whether Fetească Albă and Leányka were both in the study, but the "Fetească Albă = Leányka" notation leads me to think that perhaps they were.

**Look, I've done this dance several times already, so I'll spare everyone the rant and skip right to the point: CITE YOUR RESEARCH.   Not only for the sake of your readers, but also for the sake of the people whose ideas you're passing along, whether they're right or not.  If you didn't do the study, you need to tell your readers who did.