Wine For Normal People Radio: Episode 44 -Spending time with the folks from Chateau Montelena

This week we take a departure from our normal format and MC Ice gets a break! I was so excited to have the chance to host the folks from Chateau Montelena, one of the wineries that helped put Napa on the world wine map as serious winemaking region, capable of rivaling Burgundy and Bordeaux.

This podcast isn't about free marketing for Chateau Montelena. It's about the historical significance of the place, and about how they do things so differently from a lot of other Napa wineries. We were lucky to have head winemaker Cameron Parry, assistant winemaker Matt Crafton, and marketing diva (and one of the coolest ladies in Napa) Jamie Rothberg around to break it all down for us.

If you want some more background on the winery (since we don't go into detail on some things) please read these two posts (2010, 2011) to learn more!

And here's a link to the podcast:
LINK

Full of funny, surprising (there is a HUGE wine celebrity cameo in the middle) and dorky moments, here's a quick rundown of what we talk about:

• The Judgement of Paris and why it put Chateau Montelena on the map
• How Montelena is able to make wines that taste different from everyone else
• The importance of terroir, a dork treatise on malo-lactic fermentation, and a little airing of dirty laundry about the big hulking wineries out there
• Why I hated Bottleshock, the movie
  
• A cameo for which I had to pull it together...you've got to listen to find out who it was!
• And a round up of some truly strange moments in the Chateau Montelena tasting room

Enjoy it and please let me know if you like this format and whether you think it would be fun to do others like it from time to time!

Thanks to Chateau Montelena! If you haven't had their wines, go and get them!

If you like the podcast, please review it on iTunes, drop a comment below, or join the awesome conversation on Facebook (Wine For Normal People page) and Twitter @normalwine!

If you've got a question you want us to answer, post it on any of those places and we'll include it on the show!

Thanks for listening! We can't wait to hear from you!

Podcast music: "Café connection" by morgantj / CC BY 3.0, ©2009 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)
Map: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

A Grilling of Grillo -- A Flavorless White From Sicily

There are grapes that are awesome alone and then there are grapes that are better when combined with some friends.

Good candidates for solo players: grapes that have a ton of flavor, color, aroma, and are generally delicious and don't need much help. Good candidates for blenders: grapes that have one great attribute but other not so great ones. It's like hard alcohol -- some things make terrific blending components but on their own they suck ass (olive juice, tonic, bitters, for me -- although I'm sure you have others).

It's possible that Grillo, native to Sicily and used mainly as a blending grape in Marsala, the fortified wine (kind of like Sherry) that's rarely made by quality producers and is mostly relegated to cooking wine these days, has redeeming qualities, but to me, it's the olive juice of the wine world.

And that's disappointing because it's not as if Sicilians are new to wine. They should be rocking it out. Apparently Dionysis, the god of wine himself, spent some time in Sicily. If you don't believe that, believe that we do have viticulture records in the area from around 1500 BC and the Greeks came in around the 8th century BC to solidify the wine culture there. Things clicked along for a few thousand years until the 1770s when Marsala was introduced by an Englishman, who was familiar with the process of making Sherry and introduced a similar version in Sicily. Grillo was a main grape in quality Marsala and it was grown in spades.

It's easy to see why. Good in heat and arid areas, Grillo grows well in the baking desert that is the island of Sicily. It can be a high alcohol grape, important for the Marsala blend but not of any consequence for a wine made by the variety alone. And like many blenders with limited flexibility, the grape almost went the way of the wooly mammoth (Carmenere is another great example of this). Marsala producers replaced this hard to grow grape with an easy grower, Catarratto (allegedly a parent of Grillo). In the 1990s Grillo was nearly extinct, but then a push for wines made only from the grape brought it back...although, I gotta say, from the example I had, I can't tell you why.

I've heard that Grillo can make decent wines, similar to full-flavored tropical Chardonnay but I can only judge based on the one I tried. It was outstanding in one way -- it was maybe the lamest, most boring wine I've had in months. And in my odyssey of exploring more Italian wines, this is a profound fail. Blech.

Here' s the deal:

2010 Feudo Arancio Stemmari Grillo

The Grape: 100% Grillo

Alcohol: 13%

Price: $12

Where it's from: Sicily, Italy

Color: What I'd call a Kermit wine, this was super green. Just picking it from the shelf you can see that it's pale with really strong green tones. Green sometimes indicates that the wine is young (the vintage is recent) and sometimes that it will be high in acid, but you never know -- color is our least reliable sense in wine sipping.

Smell: Wish I had something to say about this. There was a little waterfall smell, but not much was doing here. The alleged tropical fruit and jasmine flower smell proported by the producer must have been from another wine the marketer was writing about, since this dog didn't hunt.

Taste: WOW this wine was super hot from too much alcohol. There was an acid bite too but barely any flavor. The wine just ended on the swallow (except for the alcohol burn). It was a little bitter, but apart from that, nothing. Totally not worth the calories.

Drink or sink?: Sink. I'll have to try other Grillos to see if they are similar but this wine is exactly what I think is wrong with Italian whites -- it's like alcoholic lemon water with a slight bitterness. For the calories, I'd rather have club soda with lemon and bitters. This wine was SO not worth it.

If you've had a Grillo and it was good, please drop a note below so I can try to snag it!

Soave: An Italian White You Need in Your Rotation

If you follow the Facebook page, you know that I've been tasting a lot of Italian wines lately. Even though my retirement plan includes an apartment in Florence or in the little town of Montalcino, I have been very reluctant to buy Italian wine in the US (for the record, the stuff you can get on the ground there is, in fact, outstanding and reputation worthy).

I know I'm not the only one who has noticed a problem. On their return from Italian vacations, people always ask why the wines they had while there are so much better than the same Italian wines they buy here. Sadly, there's a good reason for it -- they are usually different wines.


Trust Your Mouth: Imported Italian Wines Are Often Not Real Italian Wines
I first discovered this when MC Ice and I went to Italy on a wine boondoggle with the big hulking winery I used to work for. The facility, which happened to be in Montalcino (where they make Brunello) put on a big dog and pony show about the wines they made for export. It was all very polished, but I knew this wasn't the whole story. So while the others were guzzling wine and taking pictures, we pulled aside one of the representatives and I asked him in my broken Italian (man, I'm rusty. Gotta get Rosetta Stone or something) if they used the same "formula" for stuff they sold locally. He laughed and said, very forcefully, "NO!" He confirmed what I already knew -- they "sanitize" the wines for the US market. So disappointing. I made him sell me three bottles of the wines they sold in Italy. We're still holding them to drink!

But I digress.

Stripping the earthiness, mouthdrying tannins, and flavor out of the grapes by letting them get over-ripe and then excessively filtering them, means the wines are often shadows of themselves. Also many producers, in their haste to make a buck and to meet demand, neglect the basics of agriculture and grow the grapes in crap places for winegrowing. The resulting wines are nothing but alcoholic lemon water in the case of whites or alcoholic cranberry juice in the case of reds. It's really a pity because it winds up giving people a poor view of what these wines should taste like.

The Soave Case Study: How To Ruin A Great Wine with the Help of the Italian Government
Probably no case is more stark than that of Soave (SWAH-vey).

Soave is a region and a municipality in northeastern Italy, mostly in and around the famed home of Romeo and Juliet -- Verona. Here, the native Garganega (gar-GAHN-ega) grape is the basis for all white wines, with a little Pinot Bianco (Pinot Blanc), Verdicchio (verd-IK-eeyo, here also known as Trebbiano di Soave), and Chardonnay. The wines of Soave are all white -- most are dry, some are sparkling, and a small quantity are made from sweet late harvest grapes and are called Recioto.

If you've heard of Soave, you may have a really bad impression of it, especially if you're in the US. Because in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, this wine was mass produced in such a scale that it surpassed Chianti in popularity. The producers, lead by Bolla, transformed this medium-bodied, Chardonnay-like wine into a flavorless white. They made seas of it and people bought it up.

The demand was high, so in true Italian fashion, the government decided to expand the borders of the region to areas that weren't suited to the Garganega grape. Here the plant could produce staggering quantities (fertile soils that did no favors for the flavor, but ensured there'd be plenty of grapes with which to make the crap wine). Instead of protecting the good stuff, the good old Italian government allowed the reputation of the area to get drowned in a sea of cheap swill.

The quality producers in the traditional areas of Soave and Monteforte d'Alpone, which are hilly and have less fertile soils, were ripped about this new development. Growing Garganega in good vineyards allows the grapes to develop slowly and gather more fruit, acid, and mineral tastes. This overgrown, flavorless ick completely devalued the quality product and the regions in which it was developed. Even after the Italian government offered to give Soave Classico, which included Soave and Monteforte d'Alpone, its own DOCG (a restrictive regional designation which can be indicative of quality, this one is Soave Superiore Classico), the damage was done. Like most products, once you devalue wine and charge a low, low price for it, most people aren't willing to spend a lot more for the good stuff. The reputational damage was nasty.

Things went from bad to worse. By the mid to late 1990s, cheap Pinot Grigio from Veneto had stolen the flavorless, cheap, alcoholic lemon water export market and Soave was left to pick up the pieces. No one wanted the cheap stuff and no one believed the "Classico" was worth the prices the producers needed to charge to cultivate their grapes for quality. What a cluster.



Soave Today: A (Limited) Return to Goodness
So fast forward two decades. Soave is still one of the most popular whites in Italy but demand elsewhere has slowed and even though it's refreshing, has great acid, and relatively low alcohol, it's not a wine one most people's radar.

Given all the stuff I've told you, you can understand why. But, I gotta give a vote for the underdog here -- Soave Superiore Classico is good. And it's a good alternative to Chardonnay. It's got kicking acidity, tastes like what a waterfall smells like, and has some light almond and lemon flavors. And it' s generally not put in oak so it doesn't have a heaviness to it. With summer coming in the Northern Hemisphere, this is a good one to have around for sipping with cheese and crackers outside.

Although I'm a fan, I'm issuing a pretty stern warning on this wine! You've got to be careful when shopping for Soave that you only buy the Superiore Classico (not the general DOC) and that you shop by producer. There are about 4 or 5 that are good, and the rest...blech.


Top Soave Producers: Caveat Emptor
Gini, Pieropan, and Inama (review below) are outstanding. And if you can get your hands on it, try the Anselmi Capitel Foscarino (this one isn't a Soave Classico because the producer refuses to associate himself with a region of such ill repute -- I'm not kidding about the producers being pissed at the Italian government for expanding the boundaries!) -- it's a Soave but doesn't say so on the label.


The Wine

2010 Inama Soave Classico
(A family operation, Inama has been around since the 1950s and has been focused on proving that Soave is awesome. They only use old vines, which creates more concentrated flavor. They monitor their vines really closely, making sure they aren't overgrown so each grape gets the most flavor. I did a mini-review of this wine a few years ago and I think this vintage was even better!).

The Grape: 100% Garganega

Alcohol: 12%

Price: $12

Where it's from: Soave, Veneto, Northeastern Italy

Color: The color of a brass horn, this wine was rich in color. It had a little spritzy bubble to it.

Smell: Ooo this was delicious. It smelled like a spa! Like mineral or hot springs, it was pungent in a good way. On second sniff it was like lemons, pineapple, and honey. I thought I caught a whiff of vanilla, which is normally from oak, but I can't seem to find any notes from Inama to confirm or deny that the wine saw the inside of a barrel. Either way, it was a good smelling wine.

Taste: With a light spritz and little bitterness, this wine had a perfect combo of minerals, lemons, limes, and ACID. It was so lively and interesting. Great texture and a nice, medium wine, it was lighter than a Chardonnay but so different in that it was kind of nutty and more floral (I don't eat flowers, but after the wine left my mouth the taste of what flowers smell like was hanging around. You get it.).

Pairing: The wine was great on its own but when I paired it with herbed chevre (goat cheese) on a baguette it rocked my world. The pairing created a totally new flavor for both the food and the wine, making everything taste creamy, herbal, and honeyed with mineral flavor (think waterfalls) that reminded me of why food and wine are best friends! SO fabulous.

Drink or sink?: Drink. With the exception of a few from southern Italy (Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo, incidentally, related to Gargenega) I'm not a big advocate for Italian whites, but this Soave is a must have. It's a delicious wine and should be in your rotation. For under $20, awesome. Inama is definitley doing its part to restore the reputation of Soave. Good on them!

Have you written off Soave or are you with me? What did you think? Please share your experience!

Wine For Normal People Radio: Episode 43 -France

This week we do a 10,000 foot overview of the motherland of winemaking: France. Here are the notes:

First we cover a little about the French wine industry and why it's so important (big $$ here!)

After covering major grapes grown in France, we talk about the history of the country and how it got its start as a wine juggernaut.

We re-address the concept of terroir and then get into the major regions and what you'll find in each. The regions we covered are:

• Alsace on the German border, which mainly makes whites of Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Muscat, and Silvaner.
• Then we hop to Champagne -- we all know what's there!
• We take a jog over to the Loire, covering the Sauvignon Blanc in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume, the Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc in Touraine and Anjou-Saumur, and then talk about Muscadet, the strange name that's neither a region nor a grape (more on that in this post).
• Next, we head to Burgundy and talk about three grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Gamay. Yup, that's it...you'll have to listen to figure out why the region is so complex!
• Then we're down to the Rhône Valley for Syrah, and the whites Viognier, Marsanne, and Roussanne in the northern part and red blends made of mostly Grenache/Syrah/Mourvedre in the south and Grenache blanc/Marasanne, and Roussanne for whites.
• We briefly talk about the MASS production of the Languedoc and Roussillon regions and then cap off the podcast with the big daddy of them all: Bordeaux, where we talk about red, white, and sweet blends.

It's a long one, but it will give you a good grounding in what you can find where. That way when we talk about each region on future podcasts, you'll have a reference point!

Here's a link: http://winefornormalpeople.podbean.com/2012/03/15/ep-043-france/

If you like the podcast, please review it on iTunes, drop a comment below, or join the awesome conversation on Facebook (Wine For Normal People page) and Twitter @normalwine!

If you've got a question you want us to answer, post it on any of those places and we'll include it on the show!

Thanks for listening! We can't wait to hear from you!

Podcast music: "Café connection" by morgantj / CC BY 3.0, ©2009 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)
Map: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Silvaner: Another White Grape of Germany

I guess you could call Sylvaner, or Silvaner as the Germans spell it, the Dracula wine since it's super old and we think it originated in Transylvania. Also, it's pale and if it gets too much light, it turns to ruin -- a watery, crappy wine results. That said, it survives off normal stuff (not blood) and would probably be a great pairing with garlic, so I'll drop the analogy here.

Silvaner is a white grape that used to be the darling of Germany. Migrating from the Austrian Empire (of which Transylvania was part) to Germany and then to Alsace, France, this old grape was recorded in Deutschland as early as 1659 by the Castell Estate,in Franken (more on the region below). That means Silvaner has been part of the winemaking tradition in Germany for over 350 years. The name means forest in Latin. Some people think it's because the grapes were wild-growing, but to quote the "X-Files," "the truth is out there" -- no one knows.

It's a weird grape. It's super neutral. At it's best it's light with some honeysuckle, honeydew, pear, and sometimes basil or fresh herb flavor and a good dose of salty mineral tang. Unlike the enamel busting acidity in Riesling, it's a pretty chill grape in terms of mouthwatering tartness. It's weak point: if it's allowed to grow out of control, it tastes like alcoholic lemon water...And grow out of control it did.

After World War II, it became the grape du jour of Germany, accounting for almost a third of all plantings there in the 1960s. It went into the worst bulk wine -- Liebfraumilch (Blue Nun) -- and lived up to its alcoholic lemon water reputation. That is, in everywhere except the Anbaugebiete (wine region, ahn-bah-gah-beet-ah) of Franken, in Bavaria in the southeastern part of Germany (in the map, left, it's the tan blob on the right). Here, viticulturists take great care of their Silvaner vines and as a result the wines are refreshing, flavorful, and great summer sippers.

And they better do Silvaner well, because they can't really grow Riesling here -- the cold winters and long dry summers don't work for grapes that ripen late, and that's Riesling (it needs a long, moderate growing season to do its thing).

Kind of an offbeat and not really exported wine, you can also find good Sylvaner from Alsace , France (different spelling, same grape), where it's considered a "noble" grape...at least in one small area called "Zotzenberg." Alsace Sylvaner is flavorful and more honey-like than the German stuff -- not surprising since that's a hallmark of Alsace wines. You may also see some from Northern Italy, where it kind of resembles more floral Pinot Grigio.

The one I tried was sent to me by Valckenberg (free, yes but I'll still be honest, as I always am). One other thing about wine from Franken -- it usually comes in this weird bottle called a bocksbeutel that's squat and fat and looks like a cheap bottle of crap wine from the 70s or like really cheap men's cologne. This one's in a normal bottle, but I just thought I'd give you a heads up in case you go shop for one of these suckers and see this freaky bottles and get scared. Here's the low down:

The Wine: 2010 Fürstlich Castell Castell Silvaner, Trocken (means dry)

The Grape: 100% Silvaner

Alcohol: 11.5%

Price: $16

Where it's from: Franken, Germany

Color: Like pear juice, this was a little golden and brassy. It looked like the wine was going to have some heft, which I was happy for -- other Silvaners I've had have been watery and gross. This looked promising.

Smell: To me, this wine was all about the earth or terroir. It was like salty, wet rocks (think of a waterfall), and even a little like a just-sharpened pencil. Kind of like lemons and honeysuckle, the wine seemed light but still interesting.

Taste: This tasted like what it smelled like but there was something a little puzzling about the wine too. Yeah, I got the minerals, salt, and lemon but the wine, which never saw oak, kind of tasted like oak. It had a slight caramel thing going on. Could be from the slight sweetness/the touch of sugar in it. I don't know, but it seemed strangely oaky.

Drink or sink?: Drink, sort of. This isn't a heavy hitter of a wine or anything that's going to rock your world, but with summer coming on in the northern hemisphere, this isn't a bad one to grab with light summer food -- salads or light fish or pasta with herbs and olive oil, that kind of stuff. It's unoffensive, interesting, and different. Would I got out of my way to find it? No, but if you come across it, it's a good entry into trying Silvaner. That said, you may want to spend another $5 when you have it for a better version to really see how this grape sings. That's what I plan to do.

Have you had Silvaner or Sylvaner? What did you think? Please share your experience!

**Photo of Silvaner grape attribution: Däisd at the German language Wikipedia.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

South African Wine Travel in Travel Belles Magazine...

And I'm on a big South African kick (if you missed the podcast... here's the link)! Here's my latest column for Travel Belles, where I talk about the three "don't miss" places in this amazing country!

It's no secret that I love South Africa and it's wines. I can't wait to make it back...hopefully sooner rather than later!

Here's the link...

Take a break from safari to visit one of these three amazing South African wine regions

Enjoy the fun read!

Wine For Normal People Radio: Episode 42 -Wine Country Travel

Based on two blog posts, this week we talk about how to travel in wine country and our grape of the week is one of the best stories in the wine world!

Here's a quick summary and the links to the posts:
1. Plan or plan to explore -- pick a discreet area so you're not wasting time driving around.
2. Hit the big names if it's your first time in the area -- the properties are worth the visit!
3. Research and make appointments if you have to. Don't miss out because you didn't make appointments ahead of time.
4. Plan no more than 5 wineries for your trip.
5. Eat!
6. Be nice to the tasting room staff!

Here's a link to the post on which the podcast is based: LINK

Also, for monthly tidbits on wine travel, check out my column on Travel Belles!

The grape of the week is Carménère -- one of the best stories in the wine world. Here's a link to the post on Carménère: LINK.

If you like the podcast, please review it on iTunes, drop a comment below, or join the awesome conversation on Facebook (Wine For Normal People page) and Twitter @normalwine! If you've got a question you want us to answer, post it below and we'll include it on the show! Thanks for listening! We can't wait to hear from you!

Podcast music: "Café connection" by morgantj / CC BY 3.0, ©2009 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)

Arneis: A Born Again Italian White

As I continue my quest for awesomeness and value in Italy, I dipped into the world of whites. I've traditionally shied away from Italian whites since, with the exception of a few from the south, I find most of them to have a bitterness and watery quality that are missing umph, for lack of a better description. I think of Italy as red wine country and with good reason.

But there are some interesting whites to be discovered. And Arneis (are-NAYS) is one of them. A pain in the arse to grow and known in the local dialect of the northwestern Piedmont region from which it hails as "little rascal" because of that, this grape has a solid comeback story. Since we all love the underdog, I think this one deserves a little love.

Arneis is a white grape. It's an oddball in that it grows right in the heart of red wine country. Expensive red wine country, at that. And it's for that reason that the grape almost went the way of the dinosaur. When you have to compete with Nebbiolo in northwest Italy from which the famed and esteemed wines of Barolo and Barbaresco are made, it's a hard roe to hoe to for a white wine to get some cred.

But then again, relative to how long they've been making wine, this area only just had its debutante ball, so reds didn't have much fame either. For most of its history the Piedmont, north of Tuscany, was completely isolated. People were born and died in the towns around the areas of the Langhe (said Lang-GAH, the heart of wine country here) without ever leaving. Tourism was non-existent and the wines, made of the elusive, difficult to grow red Nebbiolo, sometimes with a little of the Arneis thrown in to soften the tannic, acidic wine that resulted, weren't known the world around. The fog drenched mornings and cooler days made a nice place for the native grapes, but no one outside the region cared all that much.

Then things changed in the Piedmont. The wine producers of the area broke with tradition and started making more drinkable, commercially appealing red wines from the Nebbiolo grape, using modern methods. The results were amazing and brought interest, tourism (there are apparently wonderful restaurants in the area and lots of swanky places to stay, it's high on my list to visit since when I lived in Florence in college there was nothing to visit there!), and money to this once sleepy area...and edged out Arneis. The poor little rascally white wasn't made or needed as a blender since the wines became 100% red Nebbiolo. Since Arneis was hard to grow and had a tendency towards oxidation, which can make a wine taste like nail polish remover or rusty metal, not too many people were sad to see it go.

But a few folks kept tradition alive in a small area called Roero and in the larger area called the Langhe. The grape went from 2 producers in the 1970s to multiple producers making more than 1 million gallons of the stuff today.

Ceretto is a big producer in the Piedmont, making mostly reds and some white. Their Arneis is pretty huge -- its 600,000 bottles represent 10% of all whites from the region alone. Kind of a big player.

Here's the breakdown of the wine...

The Wine: 2009 Ceretto Blangé, Arneis Langhe

The Grape: 100% Arneis

Alcohol: 11.5%

Where it's from: Alba/Langhe, in the northeast Piedmont region of Italy.

Color: Brassy, almost like a trumpet color the wine had a tiny bit of orange in it too -- that's a sign of oxidation so I was on watch for some weird flavors. The wine had little bubbles because the winemakers keep carbon dioxide in the wine from fermentation to give it a little texture, compensating for the grape's low acid.

Smell: The wine smelled a little sharp -- like a fresh cut lemon. It was like tart apples, unripe pears, and then like rocks baking in the sun or gravel.

Taste: It tasted like a green apple Jolly Rancher. Against the candied thing though, there was a little bitter, unripe pear flavor and a nuttiness too. The wine was a little smokey -- like a campfire -- which I liked. It had some good acid and a slight bubbly thing from that carbon dioxide I mentioned before.

Drink or sink?: A toss up. It's not a bad wine, but it's not great either. It could be nice with a pea/veggie risotto or a light salad but this is a very typically Italian white -- a little bitter, and not super memorable. When there's so many amazing whites from France, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand, the US and more, I'm not going to be grabbing this on a regular basis. That said, for my porch in the summer, this could be a candidate.