Question: What is a “long finish”?

Answer: Easy. A long finish is just what it says – lingering flavours of food or especially wine that you can still savour for some time after tasting. That distinct aftertaste stays with you. I know people who like eating garlic and tuna but don’t like the strong or fishy lingering aftertaste of those foods. For wine this is usually an admirable thing because it indicates that there is some special intensity and depth there. A long finish is a particularly important factor in assessing the potential for aging of a young fine wine before all the elements are matured together. Generally this is a good characteristic to appreciate and admire but can also be overrated sometimes. For example if you are wanting a light elegant refreshing wine the overall balance will be a more important factor than a long finish. However, for quality more expensive wines from lower yields a long finish is something you are paying extra dollars for so be sure to take the time to enjoy it.

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Fond memories of those old style elegant Rioja from back in the twenties and thirties – particularly from Riscal & Murrieta. Now there are so many more wine regions in Spain competing with Rioja for world recognition. Changes started slowly in the seventies with the Torres family in Penedes (looking forward on July 15 to a four decade retrospective of their flagship wine the single vineyard Mas de Plana cabernet sauvignon) and about the same time the first use of French oak (instead of American oak) by de Caceres, emerging super region Ribera del Duero led by Vega Sicilia & Pingus, Palacios family in Priorat & Bierzo, value priced Toro and others. Now Rioja finds itself trying to reach out to the younger consumer with a more modern wine and is becoming somewhat an older wine region in transition.

This change was brought home strongly to me last week with a vertical tasting of Valenciso (www.valenciso.com) wines from Rioja Alta. The whole Rioja region has 128 kilometres (80 miles) length into 3 regions totalling 63,000 hectares: 27,000 Rioja Alta (cooler nights at higher elevation), 13,000 Rioja Alvesa (fuller) & 23,000 Rioja Baja (hotter). Valenciso is producing a high quality only Reserva wine from 100% tempranillo grapes (excluding garnacha, graciano, mazuelo etc.) using 100% medium toast French oak (new and used) for 16 months. Their 2006 and current release 2007 show impressive lovely fruit with elegance from lower yields of 3-4 tons/hectare fermented in underground modern concrete vats. They also make a highly acclaimed 15 barrels of a creamy white from 70% viura & 30% white garnacha using Russian oak from the Caucasus and a bright Rosado (14 hour saigne) 2013 from tempranillo. As well as older vintages back to 2000 & 2001 their 2007 estate red was shown against bottled 2007 samples of that year aged in 100% new American, Russian & French oak.  The results were dramatic: American big open vanilla and in your face coconut, Russian lighter subdued more neutral – doesn’t stand up to robust red, and new French classy balanced subtle with finesse & lift.

Interesting to note that the use of America oak in Rioja from about 90% recently is now down to 85% and dropping. A problem is developing within the classifications in that a growing number of wineries such as Valenciso don’t fit within their restrictive categories (same in Toro and other regions): Generic with 46% of the sales requires less than 1 year in barrel; Crianza with 36% at least 1 year barrel; Reserva 16% at least 3 years in barrel and bottle with at least 1 year in barrel & Gran Reserva 2% at least 2 years in barrel and at least 3 years in bottle. These classifications are not really a true indication of what premium quality wine may or may not be in the bottle you are opening. Times they are a changing in Rioja.

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By Joseph Temple

The year is 1889 and you are strolling down the streets of Paris for the historic Exposition Universelle.   Looking up, you see the Eiffel Tower, the largest man-made structure on the planet making its grand debut at the fair.  Further down the Champ de Mars, you enter the magnificent Galerie des Machines, the world’s largest vaulted building.  You’re thinking that nothing could top this…

Then suddenly, a massive 20-ton champagne barrel is being hauled through the streets by 24 bulls and 18 horses.  It’s so big that five nearby buildings had to be demolished just so it could get through.  A gigantic crowd has gathered around this barrel that contains the equivalent of 200,000 bottles of bubbly.  And plastered across this entire event is the name: Champagne Mercier.

In an era before cell phone cameras and YouTube, it is a spectacle that truly goes viral.  Across the globe, newspaper after newspaper covers the event, giving Eugene Mercier, the mastermind behind it all millions of dollars in free publicity.  With approximately thirty million potential customers attending the exposition and some stiff competition from the other champagne houses, both his name and his brand stands out from the crowd.

Little do people know that this marvel has been in the works for nearly twenty years.  Beginning in 1870, Mercier conducts studies on the feasibility of this mammoth project with the first of 150 oak trees needed to make the barrel being cut down in 1872.  Adding to its visual appeal, it is decorated with customized sculptures by Gustave Navlet, a famous French artist. And finally, 1,600 hectoliters of champagne fills the barrel in 1887, marking the end of its construction.

Moving it from Mercier’s headquarters in the Champagne region of France to the streets of Paris takes an exhausting three weeks but the payoff is enormous.  Historian Kolleen M. Guy writes, “the transportation of this barrel … received coverage in newspaper from Hungary to San Francisco.  For three weeks, press reports focused on the progress of the barrel, keeping “champagne” and “Mercier” in the public eye.  Even those who could not afford champagne could delight in these stories and participate through name identification and popular imagery.”

And for its grand arrival, the streets are crowded with factory employees leaving work early and Parisian children given an hour off school to watch this historic event.  With the whole world mesmerized by this daunting structure, Eugene Mercier succeeds in pulling off perhaps the greatest publicity stunt in the history of advertising.

Question: Why are high acidity wines so good with food?

Answer: Not all high acid wines are everyone’s piece of cake especially if you enjoy a softer style to one that is quite tart and vibrant. However, you are correct in my opinion that they generally work very well when matched with food. Probably the most important reason is that they cleanse the palate brilliantly and refresh it every time before your next bite. This is particularly so when paired with heavier, oily or fatty foods. Compare lemon with fish. They also seem to work better with more acidic items like tomato, asparagus, or even artichoke, vinegar and salad dressings. Less acidic wines can be overwhelmed by highly acidic foods. Oysters with Chablis or Muscadet please! Sparkling wines including Champagne usually have good acidity and therefore work well with many food dishes. So do sauvignon blanc or chenin blanc especially from the Loire or German riesling but all those varieties work from other regions too. Barbera with high acidity is a lovely food wine as are many other lighter reds. As a general rule of thumb a wine produced in a cooler climate is likely to have more natural acidity than one from a hotter climate.

Photo credit: feltonroad.com

I was recently at an exciting Paulee dinner in Vancouver with many wine producers in attendance represented by Trialto (“Wines of People, Place and Time”) www.trialto.com. I was fortunate to be seated with winemaker Blair Walter of Felton Road Wines www.feltonroad.com in Central Otago New Zealand and Olive & Anthony Hamilton Russell of Hamilton Russell Vineyards in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley (close to the sea some 75 miles SE of Cape Town, South Africa) www.hamiltonrussellvineyards.co.za. For a Burgundy lover I always feel strongly that these two wineries closely approach the top quality of chardonnay & pinot noir you find there but at much more reasonable prices. I have followed both of these wineries intensively for over 10 years. I continue to be amazed at how balanced and how classy all their wines show every time I try them.

Felton Road was bought in 2000 by an English pinot noir aficionado Nigel Greening who has farmed organically and is biodynamic since 2002. They own Elms Bannockburn Vineyard with northern exposure to maximize the ripeness of the grapes by the sun through that hole in the ozone. Three main vineyards are Calvert, Cornish Point and Elms. They also have their top pinot fruit from Block 3 & Block 5 that definitely should be checked out. Impressive quality control measures from gravity flow rather than pumping, wild fermentation rather than inoculation, subtle oak, natural malo, unfined and unfiltered. Blair brought along some current wines (liked his unfined & unfiltered 2012 chardonnay with that lovely subtle fresh fruit combined with neutral oak in a Chablis-like style) plus a memorable magnum of his concentrated 2007 Block 5 pinot noir that was brilliantly elegant – so pinot! – so fresh! – so complex!

Hamilton Russell brought back our old friends Olive & Anthony who also travelled a long way to Vancouver for this event. Again pinot noir is a star and the magnums served show that typical earthy spicy cherries savoury character from low yields (2Tons/acre) grown at cooler maritime temperatures (averaging 25C) and aged 10 months in French oak (mainly Francois Freres). 2012 produced only 3676 cases of 12 plus some magnums. I am a big fan and frequent consumer of their well priced for the quality chardonnay. Really admire the minerals with wonderful lime-pear of 2012 (here still very tight and youthful in magnum) 93% barrel fermented with 4% stainless and 3% in clay amphorae. So rich and yet stylish with the inherent balance to improve more by aging in the bottle – without resulting premox. Olive has a cookbook out called Entertaining at Hamilton Russell Vineyards. An interesting conversation with Anthony last month reported on the Travel Curious Often site you can reference here: http://travelcuriousoften.com/may14-curious-thirsty-extra.php

A glowing endorsement from me for both these wineries. Have you tried the chardonnay or pinot noir from either one?

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