The magistrate of Siena, an appointed judicial authority, has questioned the controls exercised by the consortium of Brunello di Montalcino, which governs the stipulations of how the wine is made in both the vineyard^? and the cellar^?.
 
Authorities are scanning thousands of documents, including winemaker^? notes, harvest and bottling records, Consorzio^? registrations and DOCG^? stamps.
 
If the slightest discrepancy is found, even if subject to interpretation and explanation, the existing stocks of the 2003 vintage^? Brunello, the year in question, will be sequestered from distribution, the company said in a statement.
 
Stocks already on store shelves and restaurant cellars will not be affected.
 
"The situation has quickly become political and threatens the commerce of innumerable small businesses and the pleasure of millions of consumers around the world,? Marc^? Goodrich, chief operating officer of Banfi Vintners, a US importer of the wines, said.
 
?The promise of Brunello to the consumer remains valid and unquestioned, but has been caught in crossfire between warring factions in what amounts to a political disgrace.?
 
Goodrich claims the majority of Brunello producers are likely to come under scrutiny. This could lead to the sale^? of the 2003 vintage suspended, potentially for several months if not longer.
 
?We will not know what really happened until all the political dust settles and the authorities retreat,? he said. "But in the meantime, they have put at risk the commercial, social and governmental reputation of all Italy.?

» Full Story (via wine.co.za)

... good thing we've already received our '03 shipment. *phew* Let's hope they sort this out by the time we need to reorder.

Tags: melgab, wine, controversy, brunello, italian, south-africa, South Africa

A hastily organised farewell dinner at Milsons in Sydney for a friend. My first time at this restaurant and both the service and food was excellent. I had the following;

Scallop and prawn filled zucchini flowers in prawn bisque with green asparagus, grape tomatoes and seeded mustard crustacean oil

Cherry wood smoked, 200 day grain fed beef tenderloin with fondant potato, baby green beans, aioli and red wine sauce with truffle oil

MV Krug (August 1989 Disgorgement):
Light gold colour with very fine bead. Citrus, ginger and cocoa on the nose. Rich flavour to the palate, but also some very youthful, fresh characters. Not as advanced or complex as a couple of the other late 80s MVs I’ve recently had, but lovely all the same.
94/100

1995 Jacquesson Signature Brut (May 2003 Disgorgement):
Very active bead. Lemon, toast, floral and some cookie dough aromas. Fluffy, creamy palate.Quite approachable, good length and very nice drinking but lacking in depth.
91/100

1981 Loosen Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese Riesling:
Smoke, rose petals and peaches on the nose. Medium sweetness present on the palate, slightly rounded mouthfeel and the acid isn’t quite there to lift it up entirely. Still, fairly nice to drink but not very complex.
87/100

1998 William Fevre Le Clos Chablis:
Straw coloured. Sesame seed oil, lemon, toast and grapefruit. The palate has some piercing acidity but also shows some malty oak influence and heat. Very good, but I don’t know what is going to happen with further aging.
89/100

1998 Olivier Leflaive Montrachet:
Muesli, vanilla, minerals and chalk to the nose. The palate doesn’t show the same restraint as the nose, it is intensely rich with a creamy mouthfeel. Great length of flavour. My first taste of the famed Montrachet vineyard, thank you Alex.
90/100

1999 Robert Chevillon Nuits St Georges Les Vaucrains:
Smoked meat, oak and charcoal aromas. Linear, dry and alarmingly short on the palate. I thought something was wrong here but I don’t know what - no sign of TCA, someone thought it may be brett, but half the table quite liked it!
81/100

1981 Chateau Trotanoy Pomerol:
Briar/bramble, blackberry and cherry aromas to the nose. Nicely weighted, medium bodied palate with tannins pretty much resolved and drinking close to its peak. Very nice, it needs to be consumed in the near future.
88/100

1982 Chateau Beychevelle St Julien:
Cassis, blackberries, cedar and spice form the nose. The palate is rich and expressive, though it retains good balance across the length. Still very youthful, it is a lovely wine now with the potential to be even better.
93/100

1995 Ornellaia:
On the nose there are aromas of raspberry, earth, tobacco and dark chocolate. Shows a very classy palate, it is long and has detailed texture. Still feels as though some promise is being held back, I think the next 10 years will prove very interesting for this wine.
92/100

1995 Chateau Pichon Lalande Pauillac:
Chlorine on the nose. Metallic palate. Undrinkable. A shame.
NR/100

1981 Ernst Bretz Bechtolsheimer Klosterberg Scheurebe Eiswein Auslese:
Toffee, honey and brown sugar nose. Hasn’t got the acid structure needed. Finishes short and simple. May have seen better days.
84/100

1980 J. Baumer Hochheimer Rotenpfel Silvaner Eiswein Auslese:
Toffee, spice, honey and peaches. Spicy on the palate, quite dense flavours but some acid remaining to lift the palate slightly. Decent length.
87/100

At any rate, the MAN 2005 Pinotage, sourced from Perdeberg Hills (Coastal), is a very pleasant surprise. I remember being in London last year, trying many of the paltry £4,99 South African wines available in major supermarkets. Small clarification?I?ve had very nice supermarket selections there, though I wasn?t lucky enough to stumble upon wines like these?unexpectedly balanced and satisfying for the price-point ($5.99). If you must buy a wine this inexpensive, you?d always hope for a comparable standard. Unlike some of the other cheaper reds which gratuitously used terms such as ?barrel-aged? on the back-labels, MAN openly discloses their use of oak staves for maturing part of the wine, in addition to fining and filtering. As I mentioned before, you can read the technical sheets on their website. Now, for the sake of consistency, if I can just get my hands on the other wines in their line?wouldn?t it be something if the other varieties were quaffable at $5.99?

Visual/Aromatic Profile: Medium ruby with translucent edges in the glass. The nose is clean, with pronounced intensity of the predominant red fruit (red cherry & plum), soft earth, spice and minerality.

Texture and Finish: Dry, with medium acidity, medium tannin and high body. Bold plum and red cherry sweetness are accompanied by pepper, spice and stony minerality. The spices, minerality and soft earth lead into the interesting medium finish.

The danger of a post such as this will be the fact that some of you, and perhaps the people concerned, will believe that I am simply whining. But let me assure you, though I am slightly disappointed, I am far more astonished at what seems to me to be a level of rudeness and arrogance that is thankfully rare in the wine world.

Monday afternoon, April 28th, the Oakville Winegrowers Association put on a tasting of wines grown and made in Napa's Oakville AVA (American Viticultural Area) for the trade and the media. Such tastings are quite rare for many reasons, but perhaps among them is the fact that many of the wineries in Oakville are quite simply the top wineries in Napa. These folks don't have any problem selling their wines out every year for hundreds of dollars per bottle. Needless to say, they don't have a lot of extra wine laying around for tasting. Many do not have public tasting rooms at all for this very reason.

However, most of these wineries, like the vast majority of their peers in Napa understand that their relationship with the trade (retailers, restaurateurs, distributors, the press) is important both for their own livelihood as well as the livelihood of the wine region as a whole. Which means that every once in a while they get together and throw a big tasting to allow members of the trade and media access to their hard-to-find wines in a comparative and easily accessible setting.

The Oakville tasting this week represented a fabulous opportunity to taste some legendary wines from some of Napa's best producers. Among them was Screaming Eagle, the cult wine of cult wines. This small producer is widely known for making some of the highest rated, most expensive, and hardest to get wine in America.

Frankly when I saw that Screaming Eagle would be pouring at the tasting, my first reaction was surprise, since I had never heard of them pouring their wines at such a large trade event. My second reaction was a warm feeling of approval. I was proud that they were going to support their appellation and their fellow winegrowers, and I was personally looking forward to tasting the wine for the first time.

But I never got to. And neither did hundreds of other members of the trade and media.

After about 20 minutes of pouring at the tasting, having only brought a few bottles, Screaming Eagle was out of wine. So when I arrived to the tasting about 30 minutes late, I found this:

An empty table, surrounded by stunned members of the wine community -- winemakers, wine buyers, sommeliers, marketing consultants, and other winery owners, all of whom were nonplussed at the blank table. Actually, not all of them were nonplussed. Some of them were pissed.

Now you might be thinking, well, they ARE the ultimate cult winery. They don't make a lot of wine, and their wine is so expensive, they can't really afford to just stand around and pour their wine all day long at this tasting.

To which I say: tell that to the following wineries, all of whom poured their wines for nearly three hours to everyone who wanted it at the tasting:

Harlan Estate. Production: 2100 cases. Release price: ~$700
Bond. Production: not sure, but low. Release price: ~$400
Futo Wines. Production: 200 cases. Release price: $250+
Dalla Valle. Production 2000 cases. Release price: $250+

The first people I ran into when I got to the tasting were a couple of winemakers I know who make wine elsewhere in the valley. They were leaving the tasting and told me that they had gotten to the tasting right when it started, and they still hadn't gotten a chance to taste the Screaming Eagle. They were shaking their heads in amazement.

So what is the point of all this?

The point is that there are wineries who understand that they're part of a community, and behave as such. And then there are those who don't.

I can't tell you how many tastings for both the trade and the public I have been to where Bill Harlan and Bob Levy are pouring the Harlan and Bond wines for all comers. There is no economic reason for such wineries to appear at these events. Most of the people who taste their wines in these settings will never be able to get their hands on a bottle anyway. Yet they are there, because they are supporting their industry, their appellation, and the trade itself.

For Screaming Eagle to agree to participate in this tasting and then to show up with only enough wine to last 20 minutes is just downright rude to the point of being offensive. It says very clearly that they pretty much don't give a damn about anyone.

That's fine, of course. It's their prerogative. But I find it quite ironic that for two hours after they abandoned their table, the two folks who came to pour Screaming Eagle were still wandering around, tasting everyone else's wines, almost none of which ran out until nearly three hours into the event.

Shame. I'm sure I'll taste Screaming Eagle someday, but I wonder if it will ever be able to overcome this bad taste I have in my mouth?

I'd like to point you readers to an interesting post by Clark Smith, at his GrapeCrafter blog, about Natural Winemaking (yes, capitalized) and the role of yeasts in the winemaking process.

Clark spent some time recently at a wine industry event where panelists and the audience discussed the definition of what Natural Winemaking actually is. It comes as no surprise to me that the group couldn't achieve consensus around a concept that remains, as far as I am concerned, a broken metaphor (vinegar is natural, wine requires technological intervention).

One particular sticking point arose out of a discussion surrounding the use of commercial yeasts. Many proponents of Natural Winemaking, including those that practice Biodynamic winemaking eschew commercial yeasts in favor of the yeasts that are found on and around the grapes, citing their role in the concept of terroir. Some do not.

Smith, in particular, seems to favor commercial yeasts for all the reasons that winemakers usually do: they prevent stuck fermentations, they allow the winemaker more choices in how, where, and at what temperature the fermentation process takes place, and finally they avoid the sometimes nasty odors and flavors that can be byproducts of some natural yeasts.

Smith goes on to make quite an interesting argument, however. He alleges that those concerned with the expression of terroir are actually better served by commercial yeasts than by so called "wild yeast" or "native yeast" fermentations. By virtue of eliminating or reducing the aromas and flavors that are merely byproducts of the yeast itself, Smith argues, the terroir is more likely to shine through. The implication being that native yeasts actually obscure terroir more than they create it.

I'm entirely ambivalent about commercial yeasts in winemaking. I've had phenomenal wines made both ways. Frankly, most of the time I (and I would venture, most wine lovers) don't know what kind of yeasts were used in the wine I'm drinking. I recognize that 50 years ago, there were no commercial yeasts on the market, but I also accept that there were an awful lot of wines full of Brettanomyces and other uglies that made for unpleasant drinking.

What do you think? Yeast as terroir or yeast as tool?

Read Clark's post.

Port, Just of Old Men? - 19 December 2006

Cooking with Wine - 21 March 2007

Salad Dressing Wine - 25 April 2007

Wine Origins: Truth in Wine Labeling - 17 April 2008