Blauer Portugieser - Weinland, Österreich (Austria)

Let's talk about the Blauer Portugieser grape.  Of the two words in the grape's name, Blauer may seem like the one that needs the most explanation.  Not true.  Blauer simply means "blue" and is a fairly common prefix for German/Austrian grape names (think Blaufränkish or Blauburgunder).  Of course, that may immediately lead to another question: why does a grape called "Portugieser" need a Germanic prefix?  Well, Austria and Germany are the most prolific growers of Portugieser, as it is the third most planted red variety in each of those two countries (it occupies between 4,000 and 5,000 hectares in each).  The vine is also widely spread throughout Eastern Europe and is grown in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, and Hungary, where it is one of the permitted grapes in the Bull's Blood blend.  It was even once widely grown in southwestern France, where it was known as Oporto or Portugais Bleu.  So where does it rank in Portuguese production?  Well, it doesn't.

As far as I can tell, Portugieser isn't actually grown in Portugal at all.  In fact, depending on what sources you use, Portugieser may not have any connection to Portugal whatsoever.  The Austrian Wine website maintains that the grape is native to Portugal and was taken to Austria by the Baron von Fries in 1770.  Most other sources, though, indicate that the grape is native to Austria with no apparent or proven link either to Portugal or to any other Portuguese grape.  The von Fries origin story must be persistent, though, as most of the synonyms for Portugieser incorporate some reference to Portugal: Kékoporto in Hungary, Modrý Portugal in the Czech Republic, Portugaljka in Croatia, etc. (those who are terribly interested can peruse the full list of synonyms here).  I suppose it's possible that wines made from the Portugieser grape reminded the drinkers of wines from Portugal, but that seems unlikely given the grape's reputation for producing pale, light bodied red wines, a far cry from the powerhouse Ports that were likely in circulation in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Whatever the true origin of the name is, the grape is now widely known as Portugieser and is relatively widely planted, though little of it gets exported.  Mostly this is because the wines made from the grape have a pretty lousy reputation.  The Oxford Companion to Wine writes that Portugieser is a "black grape variety common in both senses of that word in Austria and Germany" which "can taste disconcertingly inconsequential to non-natives."  They further write "such wines are rarely exported, with good reason, and are only rarely worthy of detailed study."  So why does the grape take up so much real estate in these countries?

Well, the main reason is that Blauer Portugieser is really easy to grow.  It is resistant to a wide range of vine diseases, most specifically coulure, or poor fruit set (when the berries are very young, many of them fall off, which is called coulure).  Because of its resistance to this particular affliction, Portugieser is an explosive yielder, sometimes producing as much as 120 hl/ha of juice, or around 7 tons of fruit per acre.  As you might expect, if the vine is allowed to produce to its full potential, the resulting wines are dilute and the grape's naturally low acidity is stretched even thinner.  There are some producers who are trying to produce fine wines from this unappreciated grape by restricting yields, using old vines and barrel-maturing their wine.

To be honest, I'm not at all sure if the maker of the bottle I bought is one of these producers or not.  I tried to go to the producer's website, and, after fighting off the pop-up ads for getting a green card, was unable to understand anything on the site, since the English translation button doesn't seem to work (I took Latin in school so these Germanic languages are pretty opaque to me).  So, we'll just have to go by what's in the bottle.  The wine I was able to find was from Pretterebner and it was from the 2004 vintage.  I picked it up for about $13.  In the glass, the wine was a medium ruby color with a fruity, grape juice kind of nose.  There were also some aromas of plum and red cherry.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with no tannins and acidity on the lower side of medium.  It tasted a bit like watered down grape juice with some cherry and raspberry fruit.  As the wine sat in my glass, it started to pick up a kind of rubbery aroma and taste that reminded me of when I was a kid and on really hot days, we would drink water from a garden hose.  The smell and taste of the water that had been sitting in the hose in the sun is kind of what this started to taste like.  Unfortunately, it didn't get a whole lot better as the rubbery smell and taste started to taste a little burnt.  It really started to remind me of some really lousy Pinotage wines that I've had.  My sum-it-up line in my notes reads "this was nice for the first 10 minutes it was open...then it tasted like an old tire."  This is certainly not my new favorite wine, but as with so many others on this site, I'm not willing to write it off wholesale because of one bottle.  I'll give it another shot, but I'd pass on this particular bottling unless you're really into drinking what a car accident smells like.

Trepat - Penedès, Catalonia, Spain

Let's talk about Cava for a little bit.  I know, I know, Cava is everywhere and hardly qualifies for a site like this, but hear me out.  Yes, a lot of Cava is made (about 31 million gallons per year or about 1/3 of the total output of Champagne), and yes, a lot of it is your standard, run of the mill stuff made from one, some, or all of the three primary white grapes: Macabeo (known as Viura in Rioja), Xarel-lo and Parellado.  Your typical bottle of Cava is probably made from a blend of these grapes with Macabeo generally accounting for about half of the final blend.  There are other grapes that are permitted in the Cava blend, though.  The ubiquitous Chardonnay has been permitted for the last 25 years or so, and Malvasia can also be found in some Cava blends.

But not all Cava is made from white grapes.  There are rosado Cavas available as well and the grapes permitted in those wines are Garnacha (Grenache), Monsatrell (Mourvedre), Pinot Noir and Trepat.  Three of those grapes should be pretty recognizable to the average, informed wine consumer, as they have homes elsewhere in the world where they get to be shining stars, but Trepat?  What the heck is Trepat?

My first line of attack in most of my research is the Oxford Companion to Wine, which is not particularly helpful when it comes to Trepat.  The book's entry reads in full: "indigenous red wine grape of north east Spain, particularly in Conca de Barberá and Costers del Segre. About 1,500 ha/3,700 acres are grown, used mainly for light rosés, but it has shown some intriguing potential for fine reds." A little extra digging shows that Trepat is picky about the soils it thrives in (it's not a fan of calcium-rich soils), though it does appear to be pretty resistant to most fungal diseases.  It buds early and is thus susceptible to frost damage, which is more of a problem in this region at some of the higher altitudes, but Trepat is generally planted on lower-altitude sites.  There are a few sources that say that there is as little as1,000 ha of Trepat planted, and I'm not aware of any plantings outside of Spain.  The overwhelming majority of the grapes grown are used in the production of rosado Cava, though there are a few producers who do make a still wines either as a full-blown red or as a rosado.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the German Gilabert NV rosado Cava from my friends at Curtis Liquors for around $15.  The blend for this wine was 85% Trepat and 15% Garnacha.   The wine was aged for 10 months on the lees before disgorgement, and it is a Brut Nature Cava, which means that there is no dosage (a measure of wine and sugar typically added to sparkling wines right before final corking) added prior to bottling so the wine is very dry.  The wine had a rich pink color in the glass with lively bubbles and aromas of light strawberry and raspberry fruit.  On the palate, the wine was very dry with high acid and toasty strawberry/raspberry fruit.  If you're looking for depth and complexity, keep looking because the name of the game here is clean, refreshing red-berry fruit with a few of the secondary aromas that you get with bottle fermented wines.  This is a big value wine, as most Cava is.  I'm not aware of any other kind of traditional-method sparkling wine in the $10-$20 range that is more consistently drinkable (if rarely great).  It can be enjoyed on its own but the intense dryness here makes me want to have this with food more than I want to sip it alone.  I had mine with a ham that I cooked for Easter dinner and it was a very nice match.  I could also see this with some sushi or with a nice cheese plate.

Kerner - Valle Isarco, Alto Adige, Italy

By all accounts, today's post should take us back into Germany.  After all, the Kerner grape was created in 1929 by August Herold in Lauffen, Germany, by crossing Riesling and Schiava (also known as Trollinger or Vernatsch).  In the mid-90's, Kerner was the third most planted white grape in Germany and occupied about 8,000 hectares of land, accounting for about 7.5% of total German vineyard land.  Plantings have fallen in recent years, though, and Kerner today accounts for about 4% of total German vineyard area, placing it eighth among German white grapes.  For comparison's sake, Scheurebe accounts for less than 2% of vineyard area, and German Scheurebe, while not exactly everywhere, is easier to find than German Kerner for some reason.  In fact, both of the wines I'll be writing about today are from Alto Adige in Italy and every Kerner that I've seen on the shelf has been from this same region.

Why might that be?  Well, I think it has something to do with the image of each country in the mind of the American consumer (it may be more widespread than that, but I'm not going to presume on behalf of other nationalities...I hesitate even here to generalize about the "American consumer").  As mentioned in the Scheurebe post, when you have a look at the German section of your local wine shop, I'm guessing that an overwhelming majority of the bottles on the shelf are Riesling even though Riesling itself only accounts for 22% of the vineyard area in Germany (most shops I frequent run between 90 - 100% Riesling in their German sections).  I suspect that American consumers have associated Germany with Riesling to such an extent that there just isn't a lot of interest over here for wines made from other grapes, even though Germany certainly has a wealth of them.  Italy, on the other hand, has kind of a reputation for wines made from all kinds of different grapes, so consumers are probably more willing to take a chance on a grape they've never heard of from Italy.  In fact, the Italian landscape of grapes almost forces consumers to be open to variety unless they want to drink only Chianti for the rest of their life.  I get a sense that for most people, Germany is practically equivalent to Riesling (or, worse, Liebfraumilch), so wine made from others grapes are a tougher sell.  I've actually had more luck finding Müller-Thurgau wines from Italy than I have from Germany, and Müller-Thurgau is Germany's second most planted white grape, accounting for nearly 14% of the total vineyard surface!

So even if we grant that my little theory has some merit, some may still be scratching their heads and wondering what German grapes like Kerner and Müller-Thurgau are doing in Italy in the first place.  Well, as mentioned in the post about Schiava, the Alto Adige region is on the northern border of Italy and, historically, has been under the control of the Austro-Hungarian empire (the territory was ceded to Italy only as recently as the end of World War I).  The culture here is very Germanic and many of the grape varieties grown here reflect that.  Kerner seems to have a special affinity for a sub-region in the north-central part of Alto Adige called Valle Isarco which sits directly on the border with Austria.  This is Alpine country, though the areas right around the Isarco river are a little lower as the river has carved out the valley over time.  Many of the vineyards here are at altitude, though, ranging from 500 - 1000 meters above sea level.  As you might expect, this is definitely white wine country and Kerner seems to grow particularly well on these elevated slopes.

Most crossings are created to deal with specific climatic conditions and Kerner is no exception.  It buds late so it misses most of the spring frosts, which is a big deal in the climates it inhabits.  It does not have any specific soil requirements and is not particularly susceptible to any of the major moisture-related diseases that prey on vines (molds, rots, etc.).  Like pretty much all successful crossings, Kerner can yield very large crops which, if left unchecked, can create thin, dilute wines.  If properly managed in the vineyard and if given enough time to ripen fully (it is often not fully ripe until well into October), it can create exotically perfumed wines that resemble Riesling.

The first wine I was able to try was from the Cantina Valle Isarco, a cooperative within the Valle Isarco with over 130 members.  The word "Eisacktaler" on the label is the Germanic term for the Valle Isarco region.  The vintage on my bottle was 2006 and I paid about $18 for it.  In the glass, the wine was a lemon yellow color with aromas of petrol, melon and honeysuckle.  "Oily flowers" was the sum-up phrase I used for the nose.  On the palate, the wine was dry with a rich, oily texture and medium acidity.  There were lean fruit flavors of white peaches with honey and a touch of leafy mint on the finish.  There was a nice, flinty kind of minerality running through the wine as well.  The petrol aromas and flavors were pretty strong here and I'd guess this wine probably didn't have a lot of time left before it fell apart completely.  If the acid level were a little higher here, this would be a fantastic wine, but the rich, oily texture didn't have much to support it.  The alcohol here is also sky high for a white wine, clocking in at a monstrous 14.5%.  This wine was certainly made from very ripe grapes and was pretty good, considering its age.  This had the body to stand up to a lot, but I'd avoid foods with acidity as they'd probably make this taste a little flabbier than it really is.  Thick sauces or chicken or pork are probably the ticket here.

The second wine I was able to try was from the Abbazia di Novacella winery.  The vintage was 2009 and the price was $22.  In the glass, this was a medium lemon green color with intense aromatics of grapefruit, lemon, melon and a touch of grassy herbs.  The body was on the fuller side of medium with the same thick, oily texture as the prior bottle.  The acid level was medium and there were flavors of ripe melon and grapefruit pith with a touch of lemony citrus.  Considering how aromatic the wine was, it was a bit of a letdown on the palate as that exuberance didn't really carry over.  The alcohol was very high here again (14%) and was much more obvious and in the way than on the previous bottle.  All in all, this reminded me more of a Sancerre style Sauvignon Blanc than a Riesling which makes me wonder whether these grapes were a little underripe or whether they may something else blended in here (the DOC regulations stipulate that if a varietal is stated, the wine only needs to be comprised of 85 - 100% of that varietal with the rest made up of "other local similar varietals").  My money's on slightly underripe grapes, for what it's worth, and I would consider pairing this the same way I would the wine above, really, as it still had the big body with the lackluster acidity.

All in all, Kerner probably isn't going to replace Riesling any time soon, but it is a refreshing change of pace.  I'd recommend drinking these wines young and pairing them with fairly hefty dishes that aren't particularly acidic.  Also, because of the body and the high alcohol content, these feel more like autumn or winter weather whites to me, as they're not all that refreshing to drink on their own.  Alto Adige has plenty of light zippy wines that will serve you better for the warm months ahead.

Monica - Sardinia, Italy

Insularity is an interesting phenomenon.  We usually consider a group to be insular when they're tightly-knit and close with one another while being suspicious and closed minded about people and ideas that come from outside of their group.  Generally speaking, insularity is a bad thing since, at its worst, it promotes intolerance and distrust (think of cults or hate groups like Westboro Baptist Church).  Insularity is typically a result of some kind of isolation and for most of the groups that we negatively associate insularity with, ideological isolation is the root cause.  Ideological isolation typically occurs when a group shares a set of beliefs that is radically out of step with the culture they share a geographical proximity with (or are located within).  This proximity is key as insularity becomes a kind of defense mechanism to keep the ideologies of the group intact against the constant threat of other nearby groups or prevalent ideas within the community at large that are threatening to that group's own ideological base.  These constant threats can create aggression as the group seeks to protect their own beliefs through attack.  When you believe that you are surrounded and under attack, it often seems like the best defense is to come out firing.

But insularity isn't necessarily all bad.  In its more benign forms, insularity can act as a preservative for unique and interesting ideas or ways of life.  For this type of insularity, geographical isolation is the driving force.  Geographically isolated communities become insular by virtue of their distance from other groups and cultures which allows them to carry on their own traditions without much threat from outside forces or influences.  Rather than aggression, provincialism or parochialism seem to be the biggest drawbacks to insular communities formed in geographical isolation.

All of which leads us to Sardinia, which is literally insular, as the primary meaning of insular is "of, pertaining to, or resembling an island or islands."  Sardinia is located a little over 100 miles off the western coast of Italy, though it is less than ten miles from the French island of Corsica to its north.  Though it is surrounded by water today, millions of years ago it was connected to the mainland of Italy by a series of isthmuses.  It has been occupied by a laundry list of foreign powers, but never really been conquered.  The interior of the island is very hilly and most locals are content to farm and shepherd there.  Most occupiers were almost certainly more interested in Sardinia as a naval base and since the coastline was never a big part of Sardinian life, for the most part, it seems, each side let the other be.

Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea behind Sicily.  Like Sicily, Sardinia has its own local dialect called Sardo that may as well be a language unto itself.  Unlike Sicily, though, wine production in Sardinia is not that high.  Sicily tends to be near the top of Italian regions in terms of production and is responsible for about one-sixth of Italy's total output.  Sardinia, on the other hand, only produces about two percent of Italy's total (which amounts to only about 10% of Sicily's total) even though it is its third largest region by area.  The dominant agricultural crop in Sardinia was grain for many years and the focus on viticulture has really come around only in the last 60 years or so.  Wine has been made here for a long time, but for many years it was sweet and fortified wine, since their location made it necessary for them to produce wine that could survive travel well.  The focus on table wines for external markets is a very new phenomenon here, taking off really around the late 1970's.

Sardinia has a wealth of native grape varieties that aren't grown anywhere else on earth (part of geographical insularity and isolation is an abundance of unique native species, as any student of Darwin can tell you).  We'll get around to some of them (like Nuragus and Torbato) in later posts, but the grape in question today is the Monica grape.  Monica is native to Spain though it is seldom grown there today.  Conquistadors from Spain arrived in Sardinia around the 13th Century and hung around for awhile.  During their occupation many grape varieties were brought over from mainland Spain including Carignano (Carignan in France), Cannonau (Garnacha in Spain and Grenache in France), Monica and Bovale which is primarily a blending grape.  Monica is widely grown on the southern half of the island, especially around the port town of Cagliari (pictured above) on the southern coast of Sardinia where it has its own small DOC area (there is a larger Monica di Sardegna DOC that covers the entire island as well).

If you are able to find Monica on American shelves, it is likely the bottling from Argiolas called Perdera.  I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2008 vintage of this for around $13.  This bottling is mostly Monica with some Bovale and Carignano making up the remaining portion.  I had thought that the blend was 90/5/5, but this is bottled as an IGT rather than a DOC, and the only explanation I can think of is that there is less than 85% Monica in the bottle, which is the minimum for the DOC classification.  If you go to the Argiolas website and read their factsheet, the wine is listed as a Monica di Sardegna DOC and a Google image search for the label seems to be split 50/50 between the two designations.  I would guess that depending on how their crops do, they have to adjust the blend from year to year and hope they can use at least 85% Monica.  The IGT listed is Isola dei Nuraghi which is a catch-all designation covering all of Sardinia.  The Nuraghi mentioned in the IGT name are ancient stone tower-fortresses that can be found all over Sardinia (there are over 7,000 of them).

In any case, the wine had a medium purplish-ruby color in the glass with aromas of stewed cherries and raspberries with a kind of musty, damp earth undertone.  It was on the lighter side of medium bodied with low tannins and medium plus acidity with tart cherry and stewed red fruit flavors.  It had some dusky chocolate and earth wet earth flavors and bit of a bitter cranberry tang to it on the finish.  This is definitely more on the Pinot Noir end of the spectrum than the Cabernet or Syrah end in terms of body and structure.  It's a simple, easy going light red wine that, like so many Italian wines, really seems to want some food to go with it.  Anything with tomatoes would be great here, as would some lighter meat dishes like turkey burgers or lean meatballs.

Nosiola - Vignetti Delle Dolomiti, Italy

I remember well my first encounter with Nosiola.  I was at one of those huge walk-around tastings at a local wine shop and was tasting through an importer's selection of Italian wines.  Some guy I didn't know was doing the flight concurrently with me and when the pourer gave us a splash of Nosiola, a grape neither of us had ever heard of at the time, we gave it a tentative sniff and sip and kind of looked at one another out of the corners of our eyes.  It smelled a little nutty and really didn't taste like much of anything.  We both had the same thought: is this what it's supposed to taste like or is this flawed?  After we politely queried the pourer about the soundness of the bottle, she poured herself a taste and told us that the bottle had just come off the ship the day before so it may be in a little shock, but for the most part, yes, this is really what this wine is like.  My temporary companion and I shrugged and walked away.  There weren't any bottles available for purchase at the tasting, and since the shop was pretty far from my home base, I didn't put in an order for any.  The wine didn't really captivate me and I was content to walk away and put off the chance to write about it for another time.  It was six months before I spotted any more Nosiola.  Remembering my prior experience, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the find, but I was determined to give Nosiola a chance to win me over so I bought two bottles and tasted them on back to back nights.

Nosiola is a tough grape to write about.  Oz Clarke calls it "unusually neutral," and that's a pretty good summation.  There's very little information about it available, I'd guess, because it's a pretty forgettable grape.  It's not the kind of thing you taste and get really excited about and rush out to tell the world.  It seems to be native to Trentino and was first described in detail in 1825 by an Italian naturalist named Giusseppe Acerbi.  The name derives from the Italian word for hazelnut, which is nocciola, and is so called because the wine can have some hazelnut characteristics in the nose (much of the info I have is from this site and while they say something about the color of the berries or stems or something, I can't quite parse what it is that they're getting at).  The grape does well in hilly regions, which is good because the Dolomiti in the region name in the title of this post references the Dolomite mountain range in northern Italy.  It buds early and so is susceptible to frost and is thin skinned and thus susceptible to grey rot (the bad Botrytis) and powdery mildew. 

Nosiola is perhaps best known as the base of the Trentino version of Vin Santo (not to be confused with the similarly named but somewhat different Vin Santos of Greece).  In Tuscany, most Vin Santo is blended from Trebbiano, Malvasia and a handful of other white grapes while in the Marche, the blend must be mostly from a grape called Passerina (which will be the subject of an upcoming post here).  In Trentino, Vin Santo must be made from 100% Nosiola grapes that are dried on small mats, crushed and fermented and stored in very small wooden vessels for at least three years (though typically for longer).  Wines made in this style are eligible to be bottled under the Trentino DOC appellation which, as far as I can tell, is one of only two DOCs in Italy that allow Nosiola to make up the majority or totality of the blend (the other is Sorni Bianco).  Most varietal Nosiolas that you are likely to come across will be IGT bottlings and all of the ones that I've seen are bottled under the Vignetti Delle Dolomiti IGT which stretches across both Trentino and the Veneto.

The first bottle that I was able to find was the 2004 Castel Noarna which I picked up for around $19.  I was curious to taste this wine to see if perhaps Nosiola would pick up some more interesting flavors from a little bottle age.  In the glass, this wine was a medium gold color, definitely showing its age a bit.  It had a distinctly nutty aroma like fresh hazelnuts or almonds and not much else.  On the palate it was medium bodied with a surprising vein of acidity.  There was a light lemony flavor along with slivered almonds and a clean minerality.  As it warmed up, it seemed to pick up a kind of buttery flavor but on the whole, it was pretty neutral.  I was surprised at how well it had held up since this isn't a grape that is typically known for its acidity and aging potential.  My suspicion is that there just isn't that much that can fade from Nosiola in the first place, so aging it really isn't much of a risky endeavor.  It reminded me a little of a Fino Sherry (though not nearly as overwhelmingly nutty) and the same kinds of pairings that work with that wine would probably work well here also.  I'm thinking aperitif or salted nuts or something in that vein.

The second wine that I tried was the 2008 Gino Pedrotti Nosiola which I picked up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for around $18.  If the label looks a little familiar it's because I've written about this producer's Schiava here before.  In the glass, the wine had a medium lemon color with aromas of green apple and lemon peel.  The nose was somewhat elusive as it was markedly present on a first whiff, but I found myself acclimating to it very quickly.  You kind of have to sniff it and then walk away for a minute and come back to it to really get at it.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  It had light minerally lemon and a kind of candied green apple flavor.  The nutty aromas and flavors that were the hallmark of the prior wine were largely absent here though the general sense of neutrality was not.  There was more primary fruit here (relatively speaking) so perhaps the nuttiness comes out a bit more with some time in the bottle.  This wine would be an adequate companion to a lot of foods, but I wouldn't expect that it would really heighten or intensify very many dishes.  Neutral wines do occasionally have their place at the table so if you're in the market for that kind of wine, Nosiola may be your new best friend.  At those price points, though, it's probably not a wine I'll be spending a lot of time with in the future.