Aligoté - Burgundy, France and California & Washington, USA

Burgundy is a land of favored sons and ugly step children, of superstars and also-rans.  There are four grapes that are grown within this area, but two of them get all of the acclaim.  For the red grapes, Pinot Noir is the unquestionable star to Gamay's second fiddle, while for the white grapes, Chardonnay is the golden boy to Aligoté's red-headed step-child.  Acclaim for Burgundian wines made from Pinot Noir or Chardonnay is widespread and the prices for the best of these wines often reach stratospheric levels.  The best wines made from Gamay or Aligoté, by contrast, are little commented on and generally will cost you less than $20.  The class distinction between the two groups is clear and almost universally recognized by critics and connoisseurs alike.

Of the two outcasts, Aligoté has it much worse than Gamay, though.  Wines made from the Gamay grape are much more widely available to consumers than wines made from Aligoté, and you are likely to find a bottle of Gamay everywhere from your local grocery store to your favorite specialty wine shop.  Furthermore, Gamay has been given its own sub-section within Burgundy, the Beaujolais region, where it is allowed to be king.  Aligoté is given only a single village, Bouzeron (in the Côte Chalonnaise), to be a star in and wines made anywhere else within the Burgundy region can carry the general Bourgogne Aligoté label only.  Since wines made from the Aligoté grape are not entitled to any AOC classification above the general Bourgogne Aligoté, those who do grow it tend to grow it on poorer sites, such as the valley floors or the tops of the hills, where the grapes are not able to ripen properly.  Since the AOC laws allow for so much more specificity in labeling wines made from Chardonnay grapes, and since specificity in Burgundy generally means  higher prices, it makes much more fiscal sense for the growers to give Chardonnay the prime spots and relegate Aligoté to the fringes.  As a result, the wines made from those Aligoté grapes can be good, but are rarely world-class, so the growers and officials feel justified in their assessment of Aligoté as a second class grape and nobody clamors to elevate its status within the region.  The Oxford Companion to Wine offers the opinion that if it were planted on the choicest sites in Burgundy, "Aligoté could produce fine dry whites with more nerve than most Chardonnays," but concludes that this isn't practical not only for the reason outlined above, but also because these days Chardonnay has more commercial clout than any other white grape by virtue of its name alone.

It's kind of interesting that Aligoté is primarily known for its second-class citizen status in Burgundy because its plantings within Burgundy account for only a tiny fraction of its plantings worldwide.  There are about 1700 hectares of Aligoté in Burgundy (compared to nearly 13,000 for Chardonnay), but worldwide there are over 45,000 hectares of land planted to the grape, making it the 22nd most planted grape in the world.  The overwhelming majority of this land is in eastern Europe, though, in places like Romania (which has over 6000 ha of land planted to Aligoté), Ukraine, Russia and Moldova.  Since we almost never see these wines on our shelves here in the States, we still tend to view Aligoté in the context of its role in Burgundy, where it is more prized as an ingredient in a Kir cocktail (together with creme de cassis) than as a white wine.

I used a couple of family metaphors above when describing how the four Burgundian grapes relate to one another, and there's a very good reason for that.  It turns out that all four grapes are related to one another in a very interesting way.  In 1999, a UC Davis research team published a paper that showed that Pinot and another grape called Gouais Blanc were the parents of an astonishing number of French grapes (Bowers, J., Boursiquot, J., This, P., Chu, K., Johansson, H., & Meredith, C. (1999). Historical Genetics: The Parentage of Chardonnay, Gamay, and Other Wine Grapes of Northeastern France. Science, 285(5433), 1562).  Among those offspring were Chardonnay, Gamay Noir and Aligoté, among a slew of others.  Meaning that those three grapes are essentially "siblings" with Pinot as the father (this study did the research to prove the mother-father relationship between the grapes).  Eagle eyed readers may note that I've only indicated Pinot as the father, rather than Pinot Noir, Blanc or Gris.  The reason is that the techniques used for these pedigree studies is unable to differentiate between clonal variants of a given cultivar.  When samples of Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris are analyzed using this technique, they all come back as identical since the lighter berried grapes are merely skin color mutations of Pinot Noir.  These studies, then, cannot say conclusively that Pinot Noir was the father of these grapes, but since it has had the longest history within the region, there's every reason to think that it is.

I was able to find and try three different wines made from the Aligoté grape.  The first was the 2009 René Cacheux et Fils Bourgogne Aligoté which I picked up for about $14.  In the glass the wine had a pale silvery lemon color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with green apple and lemon-lime citrus fruits with a kind of biscuitty, pie-dough sort of element to it.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were citrusy fruits (leaning slightly more towards lime than lemon) with creamy pear and that same biscuitty kind of flavor.  The wine finished with a nice clean, steely kind of minerality.  Of the three I tried, this was the most balanced.  Aligoté is a high-acid grape which can be difficult to tame if the fruit isn't entirely ripe.  This wine reigned the acid in nicely and had a nice core of simple fruit that was tasty and refreshing.  It's not the kind of wine that will change your life, but it is a very nice value wine at less than $15 per bottle.  I spotted this wine on the shelf at several different shops within the Boston area so it should be easily findable for those interested.

The second wine that I tried was the 2008 Jed Steele "Shooting Star" Aligoté, which is vinified in California from fruit grown in Washington state.  Retail on this bottle was also about $14.  In the glass the wine was a silvery lemon color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with lemon citrus and grapefruit along with a leesy, cheesy, buttermilk kind of aroma.  Oz Clarke, in his Grapes and Vines, does say that Aligoté can have a kind of buttermilk tang to it, and once you read that sentence, you'll swear you smell and taste it in almost every Aligoté you ever come across.  On the palate the wine was light bodied with screamingly high acidity.  There were lemon, green apple and under-ripe pineapple fruits with a touch of coconut with a sour, really funky cheesy aspect to it.  I have in my notes that this was "like battery acid and bad cheese," and even sitting here writing this note I'm wincing from the memory of this wine.  I do love high acid whites, but this was tooth-strippingly acidic with a bit too much funk for my tastes.  It was a struggle not only to finish the bottle, but even to finish each glass and is not the kind of thing I'd recommend to anyone.

The third wine that I tried was from one of my favorite producers, Calera, located on Mt. Harlan in California.  Ever since I read the book The Heartbreak Grape, which profiles owner and winemaker Josh Jensen, I've been following this estate with great interest.  Their Pinot Noirs are fantastic and are among some of my all time favorite wines.  This Aligoté is made from estate fruit that is grown on only 3 acres of land.  The wine is aged for six months in older oak barrels and undergoes 100% malolactic fermentation.   They made only 116 cases of this wine in 2009, and I picked this bottle up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $23.  In the glass the wine had a lemon gold color with some greenish tints.  The nose was reserved with ripe apple and pineapple fruit and subtle leesy kind of aroma that smelled a little like buttermilk.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of ripe baked apples and creamy pear with some pastry dough and dairy-ish (buttermilk again?) notes as well.  This was a very good wine that I really enjoyed, but I would have liked to see a bit more acid in it.  In reviewing the 2010 batch of wines, Robert Parker remarked "Calera has once again made the finest Aligoté in America."  It's certainly the best American Aligoté that I've tasted, but for my money, the Burgundian example was the real winner, especially at almost $10 less than this example.  I did really like this wine, though, and have actually turned the label into a coaster for my end table at home.

Terret (Gris or Blanc) - Vin de Pays d'Oc (Languedoc), France

Weird Blend Wednesday is only a few weeks old but I am already in a position where I need to put it off for a week or two.  The post I was planning to write actually will rely on two other posts that I haven't written yet so rather than jump the gun, I'm calling an audible and will be talking about an unusual, inexpensive little wine that I found while I was visiting my mother in South Carolina over the Christmas holidays.

While scouring the shelves in the local wine shop, I found this bottle that said it was made from the Terret grape.  Sounds simple enough, but things are never quite that easy around here.  Terret is actually a small family grapes, much like the Pinot family, with (at least) three members.  The Terret family has been around southern France for a long time and is marked by the frequency and ease with which it mutates.  The three main members of the family are differentiated by the color of the skin of the berries, but some authorities have reported that the grape is so genetically unstable, there are some vines that have all three berry colors within the same cluster.

There is the red-skinned Terret Noir, which is perhaps best known as one of the official Chateauneuf-du-Pape grapes.  In the early 19th Century it was very widely planted in southern France, but by 2007 total plantings throughout the country stood at under 200 hectares total.  There is also Terret Gris which, as you might expect, is the pink-skinned version of the grape.  Terret Gris is grown primarily in the Languedoc region of France and is officially allowed in the Corbières, Minervois and Coteaux du Languedoc AOCs.  By the numbers, Terret Gris is the most commonly planted member of the family, covering about 2,500 hectares, but those numbers (and most official registers and statistics), for whatever reason, lump both Terret Gris and Terret Blanc together.  Terret Blanc is the most unusual of the three and most sources indicate that it is a white-skinned mutation, meaning it is probably the newest member of the Terret family, though it isn't clear whether it mutated from the Noir or the Gris version.  The heyday for the light-berried members of the Terret family was the 1980's when, taken together, Terret Gris and Terret Blanc were the ninth most planted grape in France, covering almost 5,000 hectares of land.

We would all like to believe that quality revolutions are inherently good things, but they can leave some innocent bystanders in their wake.  The quality revolution going on now in the Languedoc has been very good for many of the winemakers and for many consumers as wines from this region are increasingly sought after both for their high quality and their relatively affordable prices.  This revolution started to happen when producers in the Languedoc began to pull up high-volume, low-quality vines and replace them with the international varieties that are well known to virtually all wine consumers.  Vines like Terret, which are capable of making very interesting wines, are now also being pulled up and replaced with the recognizable international varieties to meet the new demand for wines from this region.  The problem with Terret isn't that it makes bad wines.  No, the problem with Terret is that it is called Terret and, like it not, most consumers are only interested in buying wines made from grapes that they have heard of.  Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay based wines will almost always outsell wines made from grapes like Terret, but, hopefully, there will also be some producers who are dedicated to preserving these unusual little vinous outposts for the more adventurous among us as well.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2010 Marc Roman Terret for the paltry sum of $7.  As this post from another blog tells us, this wine was bottled by the Cellier Jean d’Alibert, a cooperative located in the Minervois region of the Languedoc.  There is no indication given as to whether the wine itself is made from Terret Gris or Terret Blanc, though if I were a gambling man, I'd put money on Terret Gris.  Given the large amount of space dedicated to his name on the label for this wine, you might be inclined to wonder just who Marc Roman is.  Frankly, I have no idea.  The importer's website says: "Marc Roman is the 'nickname' of our winemaker who lives among the vineyards of Southern France near Montpellier. 'Roman' hails to the Roman history of the vineyards in this part of France, still evident today in the many frescoes and ruins that can be found in the vineyards."  The Marc Roman "winery" or whatever it is only makes two wines: this white Terret and a red made from Malbec grapes.

In the glass, this wine was a pale silvery gold color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with ripe pear and melon fruits.  It was pretty one-dimensional with the pear stealing the show, but that's somewhat understandable at this price point.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of ripe pear, ripe apple, green melon and a touch of lemony citrus.  In my notebook I wrote "pears, pears & more pears," which lines up pretty well with my memory of the wine as well.  It represents a tremendous value at only $7 a bottle and will probably appeal most to fans of Pinot Grigio or other light, refreshing wines with a lot of up-front fruits.

Weird Blend Wednesday - Nielluccio, Sciacarello, Syrah and Grenache - Corse Calvi, Corsica, France

Nielluccio Grapes

Hello and welcome to the third installment of the Weird Blend Wednesday series!  Things have been a little tame around here lately as many of the grapes and wines that I've written about have been pretty straightforward, lacking any real mystery or controversy.  I hope to shake things up a little bit today and talk about one uncontroversial grape, Sciacarello, and one that's a little more interesting, Nielluccio.

For many years, there was controversy and disagreement surrounding the Nielluccio grape, with the main point of contention centered around questions concerning its origins.  One camp held that the grape was indigenous to the island of Corsica, while the other held that the grape was imported there from the Italian mainland during the time that it was under the control of the Genoese.  Oz Clarke is purportedly a proponent of the former position (in his Grapes and Wines which was published several years back, so his position may have changed) while Jancis Robinson is a proponent of the latter, having recently switched over from the indigenous camp.  In the beginning, both camps were arguing under the assumption that Nielluccio was a distinct grape variety that could not be found anywhere else.  Later on, it was determined that Nielluccio was ampelographically identical to the Sangiovese grape, and many began to speculate that the grapes were either very closely related or, possibly, even identical (or clonally variant at least).  To read the Wikipedia entry on Nielluccio, one would think that the debate is still raging and the answer is still to be determined.  It is not.

A research group from Bologna, Italy, published a study in 2005 which compared the DNA of 39 registered Sangiovese clones as well as 34 "biotypes" of Sangiovese to the acknowledged "reference standard" of Sangiovese to see if there were any differences.  The 39 clones all came back as identical both to one another and to the reference standard, while of the 34 biotypes, all but six were identical as well.  Nielluccio was not one of the six, meaning that it is genetically identical to Sangiovese.  Of the preceding argumentative positions regarding Niellucio, this finding really only completely discredits the one that holds that Nielluccio is indigenous to Corsica, since we know Sangiovese is not ultimately a Corsican grape.  The theory that the Genoans brought it over at some point during their rule of the island is still a possibility, though, and is currently the most widely accepted explanation of Nielluccio's presence on Corsica, where, as of the year 2000, it was planted on about 1600 hectares of land, representing about 14% of the total plantings within Corsica.

Sciacarello Grapes

Sciacarello is a bit more straightforward.  It is thought to be the same grape as the Mammolo that is grown in Tuscany and used as a minor player in both the Chianti and the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano blends.  The Italian name Mammolo comes from the grape's purported aromatic similarity to violets, called mammole in Italian.  It is generally regarded as the more interesting red Corsican specialty grape, but is only planted on a few hundred hectares of land throughout Corsica.  There are a handful of varietal examples, but I haven't been able to find any to date.

I was unsure whether I would write about this wine or not since it is mostly comprised of relatively common grapes, but the fact that the wine was from Corsica was what finally swayed me.  Corsican wine isn't incredibly rare, but it isn't exactly common either.  Corsica itself is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean, which, while it belongs politically to the French, is much closer to Italy both geographically and culturally.  It is less than 7 miles north of Sardinia and 56 miles west of Tuscany, but is about 105 miles away from the Provençal coast of France.  It was controlled by the Republic of Genoa for over 500 years, from the mid-13th Century until well into the 18th Century.  The Genoans enacted strict rules on viticulture and viniculture and would not allow the Corsicans to ship their wine to any port outside of Genoa.  The Corsicans struggled for their independence, and in 1755 proclaimed themselves sovereign as The Corsican Republic with the publication of the Corsican Constitution.  The Genoans didn't really want to deal with this kind of trouble so in 1764 they secretly sold the island to France.  The French slowly began to build up their presence on the island until 1768 when the Genoans openly announced that they were ceding the island to the French in perpetuity with no possibility of retraction.  The Corsicans revolted at the news but were ultimately defeated and the island was officially annexed onto France in 1770.  Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, in August of 1769, and one wonders how much differently history may have played out if Napoleon's home had not been transferred to France when it was.

The wine history of Corsica goes back thousands of years.  It is thought that there may have been some indigenous vines on Corsica, but when the Phoenicians settled the island, they certainly brought many of their own vines from their other territories.  Corsica came under Islamic rule around the 7th and 8th Centuries AD, and since the Islamic religion forbids the consumption of alcohol, the winemaking industry on the island suffered badly.  It rebounded significantly under Genoan rule, becoming famous throughout the European world, but was still limited by the Genoans strict control over the entire industry.  The Genoans definitely had the largest impact on the wine culture of the island, as can be seen in the wealth of Italian grapes that are still cultivated all over Corsica today.  The government sought to expand the Corsican economy in the 19th Century by focusing on winemaking, but the plan was derailed severely with the onset of Phylloxera.  When vines were finally replanted, many of them were planted to productive but bland French grapes like Carignan and Cinsaut and Corsica became a significant contributor to the European wine lake.  The EU vine-pull subsidies of the 1980's were very successful in Corsica, eliminating about 7000 hectares of low-quality vines and putting the focus more on higher quality grapes like Nielluccio, Sciacarello, Vermentino and some of the international varieties.

The wine that I picked up was from the Calvi sub-region of the island, located in the extreme northwest corner near the town of Calvi (just north of Ajaccio, where Napoleon's family made wine).  The soils here are predominantly schist with some granite.  The island is generally warm and sunny with regular rainfall, but very little rain during August and September, which usually creates ideal conditions for harvest.  The AOC rules stipulate that to qualify for the Corse Calvi designation, the finished wine must be made up of at least 50% Nielluccio, Sciacarello and/or Grenache together, while Barbarossa, Carignan, Cinsaut, Mourvedre, Syrah and Vermentino combined cannot account for more than 50% of the total blend with the further restriction that Vermentino and Carignan cannot make up more than 20% of the blend.

I picked up a bottle of the 2007 Domaine Maestracci "E Prove" Corse Calvi wine from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for about $17.  The wine manager there told me the wine was about 1/3 Nielluccio, 1/3 Grenache, 1/6 Syrah and 1/6 Sciacarello.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep purple-ruby color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with dusky black cherry and black plum fruits with some wet leather and cocoa powder.  It was a very nice and appealing mixture of fruit and earth.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acid and some fairly serious tannins.  There were flavors of bright red and black cherry fruit with some blackberry, smoke, leather and tobacco.  Right after opening the fruits are predominantly red, but as the wine opens up they shift over to a darker, more brooding kind of character.  The whole way through, though, the wine is marked by an excellent balance between its vibrant fruit and duskier earthy flavors all held together with a solid vein of acidity and tannic skeleton.  The wine is enjoyable enough to drink on its own but it really does need food to truly show its stuff.  Any red meat would be fine, while the acid means that it could stand up to fattier meats or sauces as well as tomato-based sauces.  The wine is versatile enough where you really don't have to over-think the pairing and at only $17, you can buy a few bottles to have on hand anytime.

Counoise - Vin de Pays du Gard, France and Lake County, California

Counoise is one of those grapes that you may have already had, though  you might not be aware of it.  It finds its way into wines in such small proportions that not only would the winemaker probably not bother to mention its inclusion on the wine's label, but even if they did, it would have been nearly impossible to really  get a sense for what the grape tastes like.  It is perhaps best known in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region of France, where it is one of the thirteen varieties allowed in the region's red wines.  Many Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers don't give any indication on their bottles what grapes and proportions are used in their wines, though, so it may be hard for one to say definitively whether there's any Counoise in a given bottle.  Château Beaucastel is a famous exception as they are well known for using all thirteen varieties in their wine and, according to their website, their final blend typically contains about 10% Counoise.  On the whole, though, the chances of a little Counoise ending up in your average Châteauneuf-du-Pape bottle aren't all that good.  Less than 1% of the total vineyard area of Châteauneuf-du-Pape is planted to the Counoise grape.  Counoise can also be found throughout some of the other regions of Southern France like Languedoc-Roussillon, but not in any significant numbers.  In 2000, there were only about 1500 acres (about 640 hectares) planted to the grape in all of France.

Exactly where the grape ultimately came from isn't known, but there is a story that the grape may have come come into France via Spain.  The story goes that a papal office made an offering of the grape to Pope Urban V during the period of time (the 14th Century) that the papacy was located in Avignon (whence Châteuneuf-du-Pape, or "the Pope's new castle," gets its name).  The grape was spread throughout the region and used primarily as a blending grape until the late 19th Century when the Château la Nerthe estate began to use it more heavily.  Their example wasn't followed by other producers, though, until Beaucastel decided to increase its presence in their blend.

It has never been a star in Châteauneuf-du-Pape (or anywhere, really), for a variety of reasons.  The main reason is that it is only an average yielder so it never really caught on in the more productive regions of southern France in the way that Carignan did.  Further, wine made from the grape oxidizes easily and lacks tannic structure, so it isn't really well suited to lengthy bottle aging.  Since many Chateauneuf-du-Pape bottlings are made to undergo serious cellar time, extensive reliance on high doses of Counoise isn't really feasible.  It does, however, provide nice acidity and a peppery kind of flavor that blends well with Grenache and Syrah, which has probably helped to keep it around in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape vineyards.

I was able to try two wines made predominantly from the Counoise grape.  The first was the Domaine Monpertuis "Vignoble de la Ramiere" which I picked up locally for about $12.  This estate is located within Châteauneuf-du-Pape, though the vineyard that these grapes come from must not be.  It would be legal to bottle a 100% Counoise under the Châteuneuf-du-Pape AOC, but this wine is labeled as a vin de pays, which makes me think that it must fall somewhere outside the boundary.  In the glass the winew as a medium purple-ruby color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with wild strawberry and raspberry fruit along with some tea leaves and a kind of damp leafiness.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of wild strawberry and stewed red berries along with some leather, wet leaves and chocolate.  The wine was very berryish with an interesting leafy earthiness to it.  It actually reminded me quite a bit of the Mencia grape from Spain.  To go a little more mainstream, it was somewhere between a Loire Valley Cabernet Franc and a light Oregon Pinot Noir.  Those looking for solid, red-berry fruit dominant red wines would be well-served checking this out as it represents a very nice value for only $12.

The second wine that I tried was the 2007 Jed Steele "Writer's Block" Counoise from Lake County, California.  I picked this up over the Christmas holidays near my mother's home in South Carolina for about $17.  There are a handful of California winemakers messing around with the Counoise grape and Jed Steele is one of them.  This wine is about 90% Counoise with the remaining 10% coming from Grenache and Syrah grapes.  The grapes come from a small parcel within the Jacobsen Vineyard owned by the Jed Steele estate.  Those interested in the finer details of the wine-making process for this bottle are directed to the winery's website here.  In the glass the wine was a fairly light ruby color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with briary, brambly raspberry and blackberry fruit fruits with some black cherry and leather.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and fairly low tannins.  There were flavors of black cherry and blackberry fruit with some charcoal, smoke, baking chocolate and cola.  There was a bit of wild strawberry and spicy black pepper, but overall, the flavor profile on this wine was a bit darker than the French version, though it still had a wild, berryish kind of appeal.  I found this version much more deep and interesting and felt that it definitely was worth the extra $5.

Pineau d'Aunis - Coteaux du Vendômois, Loire Valley, France

Pineau d'Aunis is a grape whose many names can give the illusion of familiarity.  Its most common name, Pineau d'Aunis, puts one in mind of the Pinot family of grapes, which it is related to only linguistically, as there is no genetic relationship between the Pinot family and Pineau d'Aunis that I am aware of.  Both Pinot and Pineau come from the French word for "pine" because the bunches of grapes supposedly looked like pine cones to those who were naming them (think of Pignolo or Pignoletto in Italy).  The d'Aunis part of the grape's name comes from the Prieure d'Aunis, a monastery located near the Saumur region of the Loire Valley.  It is thought that the grape was first "discovered," or, more accurately, selected for by the monks there.

Many local growers throughout the Loire Valley also refer to the grape as Chenin Noir, suggesting some kind of relationship to the Chenin Blanc grape that has made so many areas of the Loire Valley famous.  Confusingly enough, one of the alternate names for Chenin Blanc is Pineau de la Loire, which certainly might make one wonder about the relationship between the two grapes.  Wikipedia has it that Chenin Blanc is a mutation of Pineau d'Aunis, but if you follow the source cited for that bit of information, you can see that there is no such claim made in the original material and, further, that the source material makes no reference to the Pineau d'Aunis grape at all.  The common consensus seems to be that Chenin Blanc and Pineau d'Aunis are, in fact, completely unrelated, and the Chenin name common to the two of them comes from a site known as Mont Chenin in the Loire Valley where the Chenin Blanc grape was planted by the Lord of Chenonceaux in the 15th Century.  The Chenin name most likely got moved over to the Pineau d'Aunis grape at a time when its plantings were as significant as those of Chenin Blanc in some areas of the Loire Valley and many farmers began to refer to the grapes as Chenin Blanc and Chenin Noir for convenience's sake.

DNA analysis would clear the whole matter up, but it would seem that no one has bothered to give it a try.  Which is too bad, really, because the grape is old enough and has been in the region for long enough that there may be some interesting discoveries to be had.  It's said that Henry III of England was a fan of the wine and had it imported in from France in the mid 13th Century.  Apparently the English ruled over Anjou, located in the Loire Valley, for a few decades before Henry III came into power and Henry tried, in vain, to bring the region back under English rule throughout his reign.  I doubt that Pineau d'Aunis wine had too much to do with Henry's motivations, given the extraordinarily complex web of political intrigue throughout Western Europe at the time, but it certainly could have played some role.  Wars have been waged for far less important reasons than a barrel or two of wine.

Today, it would be a wild exaggeration to call Pineau d'Aunis a "wine for Kings."  I'm not entirely sure what the reason for the grape's ultimate decline was, but my guess is that the white wines of the Loire Valley began to gain in popularity and profitability at some point and many growers pulled up their red grapes in favor of the twin darlings of the Loire Valley, Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc.  As of the year 2000, there were fewer than 1000 acres (about 430 hectares) planted to Pineau d'Aunis, most of which ends up as an anonymous minority component in some Loire Valley red or rosé wine.  You're most likely to find it as a varietal wine in the Coteaux du Vendômois, which is around the center of the Loire Valley (from east to west), just north of Vouvray.  Most wine made under this appellation is rosé, and I was able to find two examples in this particular style.  There are also a handful of producers who make red wines that are all or nearly all from the Pineau d'Aunis grape, and I was able to try one of those bottlings as well.  Finally, there are some people who are just doing crazy things with the grape, and from one of those producers I was able to find a fully sparkling white wine made from Pineau d'Aunis grapes.

The first bottle that I was able to find was the Domaine Brazilier Pineau d'Aunis rosé from the Coteaux du Vendômois AOC which I picked up for about $17.  If my bottle had a vintage, I wasn't able to locate it.  In the glass, the wine was a very pale salmon pink color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with aromas of fresh cut watermelon and strawberry fruit.  On the palate, the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There were light, delicate flavors of strawberry, raspberry and watermelon fruit with a touch of herbaceousness to it.  Given the price tag on this wine, I was a little disappointed in how straightforward and simple the aroma and flavor profiles were.  I don't generally buy rosé wines with the expectation that they are going to be much more than fruity and refreshing, but once I pass a certain price threshold, I do begin to expect a little more out of a wine.  At nearly $20 per bottle, I feel that this probably should have been more complex and interesting than it was.  It's entirely possible that this wine was past its prime, but without a vintage date, it's hard to say.  Since there are other examples of this grape in this style for much less money, I'd advise caution with this particular bottling at this price point.

The second rosé that I was able to try was the Cave Cooperative du Vendômois bottling from the Coteaux du Vendômois AOC which I picked up for about $10.  As you can see on the label, the wine is labeled as "Lieu-dit Cocagne," which I believe means that the grapes came from a specific parcel of land referred to as Cocagne, though I don't have any idea what or where that is.  The wine is made by a cooperative comprised of 25 growers and about a dozen different winemakers who, together, farm about 160 hectares of land, about 50 of which are devoted to the Pineau d'Aunis grape.  In the glass, the wine was a pale pink color.  The nose was very aromatic, dominated by pink grapefruit and fresh strawberry fruits.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with high acidity.  There were flavors of watermelon, pink grapefruit and grapefruit peel with a touch of grassy herbaceousness that put me in mind of Sauvignon Blanc.  The wine had the kind of wonderfully clean, minerally finish to it that makes you keep reaching for the glass..  This wine was beautifully perfumed with deep, pure fruit flavors and an electric nerve of acid that kept it bright and refreshing.  THIS is the kind of rosé that I love to drink and at only $10 a bottle, it's really an incredible value.

The next wine that I tried was the 2010 Olivier Lemasson "Poivre et Sel" bottling from Touraine in the Loire Valley.  I picked this bottle up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $20.  I've read online that this wine is 50/50 Pineau d'Aunis and Gamay, but the bottle says"Pineau d'Aunis...un peu de Gamay," which my high school French tells me means there's just a little bit of Gamay in it (the importer website says it is 90/10, which is probably the more accurate figure).  The Poivre and Sel ("pepper and salt") is a reference to the fact that many people find a peppery aroma and flavor in the Pineau d'Aunis grape which the winemaker believes is perfectly complemented by a little Gamay as the salt to Pineau's pepper.  In the glass, this wine was a fairly light purple-ruby color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with plummy, cherryish fruits and a bit of that natural wine funk.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of juicy, tart red cherry and red berry fruit and, yes, a hint of pepper. There was also a touch of tart cranberry and horsey funk on the finish.  This wine had a nice balance of bright and juicy fruit with just enough earthy funk to keep it interesting. I found it somewhat similar to the Grolleau that I wrote about a few months back.  Is it worth $20 a bottle?  If you're looking for an upscale alternative to Beaujolais or are looking for a conversation piece to have at a dinner with friends, then yes, I think the price is fair.

I've saved the most interesting bottle for last.  The final Pineau d'Aunis that I tried was the NV Jean-Pierre Robinot "Les Annes Folle" sparkling Pineau d'Aunis that I picked up from the Wine Bottega for about $30.  Robinot has two lines of wine that he makes: the "Domaine de L'Ange Vin," which are made from his own grapes, and the "L'Opéra des Vins" which are made from grapes he buys from other local growers.  This bottle is in the latter category.  The wine about 80% Pineau d'Aunis and 20% Chenin Blanc.  In the glass, the wine was a bronze-gold, almost russet kind of color that was very fizzy and slightly cloudy (the method used here is méthode ancestrale, like in our old friend Mauzac).  The nose was fairly reserved with some green and baked apple aromas with a bready, yeasty kind of undercurrent.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with high acid and a lot of bubbles.  I was expecting this to be closer to frizzante, but the bubbles were pretty serious and vigorous.  The flavor profile was yeasty and bready with some tart apple fruit that was almost a little cidery and just a touch of pastry dough.  The secondary flavors and aromas were much more noticeable than the fruits here, so if you're looking for something like Prosecco or Moscato d'Asti, keep looking.  I'm conflicted about this wine because on the one hand, it's a really cool and interesting wine, but on the other, it's hard to say if it's tasty enough to really warrant the $30 price tag.  I personally enjoyed it, but it's not going to be for everyone.  I would guess if you've read this far, you probably already know whether this is something you'd be really into or really afraid of, so I guess you should just follow your gut.

Tibouren - Côtes de Provence, France

Today's wine should be a fun one since not only is the grape somewhat unusual, but the style of the wine is as well.  My friend Matt over at the Wine Bottega was so excited when he got this in their shop that he emailed me right away.  At the time, I was on a real Jura kick and was drinking a lot of Vin Jaune and other slightly oxidized white wines from the region that Matt was helping me to track down, so when this popped up, he let me know right away.  And I'm glad that he did, because this wine was not only right up my alley in terms of how unusual it was, but it was also really tasty to boot.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's start with the grape itself, Tibouren.

Jancis Robinson, in her Oxford Companion to Wine, calls Tibouren "the Provençal grape variety" because of its long history within the region and the typically Provençal character that wines made from the grape tend to possess.  Despite this kind of critical praise, Tibouren isn't all that widely planted.  As of 2000, it covered about 450 hectares, or just over 1,100 acres, nearly all of which are located in the Var region of Provence.  The reason for its unpopularity with most growers will sound familiar to those of you who've been reading along with me for awhile: it's a pain to grow in the vineyard.  Mainly, the problem is that the vine is very susceptible to a condition known as coulure, which is an affliction that causes the tiny berries that form just after flowering to fall off of the cluster, and when coulure hits hard, as you might expect, yields from the vine drop dramatically.  From year to year, it's difficult to try to predict what kinds of yields the Tibouren vine will provide since coulure is influenced by a number of factors that are out of the grower's hands, meaning that some years coulure isn't much of a problem and yields are good, but other years coulure is a menace and yields are way down.  You only find out how much of a problem coulure is going to be when it hits, and by then there's nothing to be done.  When you grow grapes for a living, it's very inconvenient to have no idea what your crop size will be so many growers moved away from Tibouren to more reliable and consistently yielding vines.

I mentioned above that Tibouren had a long history in Provence.  As with most issues regarding the provenance of a specific grape, that particular fact is in some dispute.  The noted ampelographer Pierre Galet believes that the grape's origins are Middle Eastern because of the unique shape of the vine's leaves.  The leaves of grapevines are made up of individual lobes and the curved area between these lobes are called sinuses.  Many vines are easily identifiable because of the relative depth or shallowness of the sinuses.  Riesling, as you can see in this picture, has kind of fat looking lobes with shallow, narrow sinuses.  Tibouren, as you can see on the right, has deep, very well defined sinuses, which apparently are more common in vines from the Middle East.  Galet's theory is that the vine's ancestors were brought over to Greece and then imported into Marseilles at some point in the fairly distant past.  The competing theory is that the grape was only brought into Provence via Saint-Tropez on the Riviera in the late 18th Century by a Navy captain named Antiboul, for whom the grape is named (kind of...if you try really hard you can probably get to Tibouren from Antiboul, but the synonyms Antibois, Antiboulen, Antiboulène, Antibouren, and Antibourin are definitely more directly named for him).

Wherever it is ultimately from, Tibouren is now almost exclusively a product of Provence.  It is used mostly in the production of rosé wines, though it is occasionally used as a blending ingredient in some of the local red wines.  Jancis Robinson has famously proclaimed that wines made from the grape have an aroma of garrigue.  Others have followed her example, though few of them take the time to explain to their readers just what the heck garrigue is.  Garrigue is basically the name of the underbrush or the wild scrub that grows in the limestone rich soils of the regions around the European coast of the Mediterranean Sea, particularly in the region of Provence.  The garrigue is made up of many different kinds of plants, but most notably there are a lot of wild herbs like lavender, sage, rosemary and thyme.  It's an evocative term to be sure but it's also kind of exclusionary because if you've not been to the region (and I haven't), it's a little difficult to get a real sense of just what garrigue might be.  It must be more than wild herbs or she'd just say wild herbs (you'd hope), but filling in the blanks is difficult.  The precision of tasting note terms is an argument for a different time, though, so let's try to soldier on.

Provence is interesting because it is the only region in France other than Bordeaux to develop a classification system based on noted estates (other French classification systems classify vineyards, not producers).  In 1955, eighteen estates were given the ranking Crus Classés, and as far as I know, the classification hasn't been altered since then.  One of the estates ranked is Clos Cibonne, who makes the wine that I'll be reviewing below.  The estate was purchased by the Roux family in 1797 from a guy named Jean Baptiste de Cibon.  The Roux family made wines from grapes grown on the property for many years.  In the 1930's, André Roux completely modernized the winery and began to really focus on quality production, making a real name for the estate as a serious producer.  He also uprooted all of the Mourvedre vines on the property and replanted them over to Tibouren, a grape that he had great belief in.  Clos Cibonne was even given special permission from the AOC to use the word Tibouren on their labels, a practice which, until very recently, was really only allowed in Alsace.

The Tibouren vines, covering about 15 hectares, are mostly located about 800 meters from the Mediterranean in a kind of natural bowl that faces south to the sea.  The warm air and southern exposure helps to ensure that the grapes ripen properly.  The grapes are harvested and then vinified in stainless steel before the real fun begins.  The tank-fermented wine is pumped into 100 year old neutral wood barrels called foudres which hold 5,000L each (about 1,320 gallons) where it is aged for one year under a thin veil of yeast known as fleurette.  The yeast actually protects the wine from oxidation, to some extent, while imparting its own unique kind of flavor to the finished wine.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2009 Close Cibonne Tibouren rosé from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $27.  I also spotted the wine over at the Spirited Gourmet, but I don't have a price on it and would be surprised if they had much left at this point anyway, though if you're interested I'm sure either shop could track a bottle down for you.  In the glass, the wine was a medium salmon pink color.  The nose was fairly aromatic with juicy watermelon, strawberry and maraschino cherry fruits with a hint of dried herbs (or something slightly herbal in any case).  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  The fruit flavors were a bit more subdued than they were on the nose with some watermelon and strawberry fruits backed by a kind of saline tang and a clean, minerally finish.  Overall the wine was bright, vibrant and clean with a really interesting mix of fruit and salinity that kept me reaching for the glass.  It was kind of like someone took a really fresh rosé wine and spiked it with a little bit of Fino Sherry.  It is on the expensive side for a rosé, but it's just so interesting and unique and, yes, tasty that I really didn't mind paying it.  Fans of wines aged under a yeast film like Sherry or Jura wines should definitely check this out.  People who aren't such fans of those kinds of wines might also find themselves pleasantly surprised by this wine, as the salinity and nuttiness aren't nearly as prevalent as they are for those kinds of wines.