1 Wine Dude » Carmenere

Finding the Lost Grape of Bordeaux (Tasting With Chile’s Top Carmenere Winemakers)

1WineDude — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:18:00 +0000

Last week, I attended an on-line video conference / wine tasting that involved a handful of wine bloggers from around the U.S., as well as eight of Chile’s most talented young winemakers (congregated in Santiago), moderated by Wines of Chile in N.Y. While I’m used to this kind of cross-time-zone, cross-cultural meeting (as well as utilizing video and conference call across the same) from working in IT, I had no idea how this would transpire in the context of wine.

And I’ve never tasted eight samples of Chilean Carmenere wines on an IT conference call.

So… how did it go?

I’m happy to report that I found the event to be great fun and quite well executed. The technology worked well and I only found minor cavils – like wanting the in-conference chat to work like twitter, preferably integrated with twitter – which I think speaks to the professionalism and quality of the event overall if those are my only complaints.

Last week, I’d written that this event could prove to be a seminal moment in my wine-lovin’ days, as it focused almost exclusively on Carmenere, a grape with which I’ve had a troubled history. In summary, I’ve been critical of Chile’s ability to deliver on the potential of the grape as (in my experience) they’d yet to get pyrazine (which imparts ‘green’ aromas of bell pepper and pine) truly under control and balanced with the dark fruit flavors of the grape.

I was placing (perhaps unjustifiably) a lot of pressure on this event, as I was expecting (perhaps justifiably) that Wines of Chile would ‘go big’ and bring some heavy hitters to the party – i.e., really show what Chile was capable of when it comes to Carmenere.

So… how were the wines?

In summary: a mixed bag…

Taking part in the event were the following winemakers – this was a (predominantly young and) lively group, who were happy to discuss their wines, and were able to shift gears easily from jovial puns to waxing philosophically about the virtues of Carmenere:

The wines (representing primarily the Colchagua Valley, with Maipo, Central and Rapel valleys also in the mix):

2008 Santa Carolina Reserva Carmenere
2007 Odjfell Armador Carmenere
2007 Via Manent Carmenere Reserva
2007 Cono Sur Vision Carmenere (85% Carmenere / 9%^ Cab Sauv / 6% Syrah)
2008 Vina La Rosa ‘La Capitana’ Carmenere
2007 Ventisquero Grey Carmenere
2007 Terra Andina Altos Carmenere / Carignan (60/40)
2005 Carmen Wine Maker’s Reserve Red (50% Cab Sauv / 20% Carmenere / 20% Petit Syrah / 10% Merlot)

The standouts for me:

The Carmen was easily the best wine of the event, and provided everything you’d expect from a wine in $44 price range. Plum, fig, sweet spices – sexy, refined, elegant (and expensive). If this is any indication, both Vina Carmen and the Maipo Valley are key to watch for the future of Chilean Carmenere.
Vina La Rosa’s La Capitana – cocoa powder, plum, a little boozy but… wow. It had the faintest hint of green pepper, which made the wine more complex rather than competing with the fruit for the most nose-filling power from the glass. At $18, it’s a crazy good value.
Honorable Mention goes to the Santa Carolina Reserva, which certainly had bell pepper going on but in a balanced way; a touch woody but the spiciness more than made up for that. For $10, the QPR is just off the charts.

As for the rest, there were definitely some interesting wines (the Cono Sur was intriguing, going from barnyard aromas to green garden veggies to dark berry fruit), and others that, while they didn’t exactly put the “eewwww” in “New World,” didn’t exactly float my boat, either.

My verdict: Carmenere is capable of making very good wine, and blended can help make excellent fine wine, but there is still a lot of work to be done to get pyrazines in check if Chile wants to be seen as the world leader in providing the most balanced Carmenere wines possible.

Cheers!

Carmenere: The Great Lost Grape of Bordeaux Gets A Troubled Chilean Makeover

1WineDude — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

This week just might mark a seminal event in my personal wine journey. Either that, or a huge, disappointing wine bust served up on a bed of bell pepper and pine needles.

On November 4th, I’ll be taking part with a small group of bloggers in an on-line tasting event with Wines of Chile, the theme of which is “Discover Carmenere: The Lost Grape.” Why is this a boom-or-bust wine moment for me? Because I have what I would call a troubled relationship with Carmenere.

Of course, I love the idea of this grape, the story of Carmenere – it’s the stuff of which wine legends are made.

Carmenere was born in Bordeaux, and thought to be extinct after outbreaks of oidium and then the Phylloxera epidemic in the 1800s, which wiped out a good portion of the wine grape vineyards of Europe. Though widely thought to be able to help produce high quality wines, Carmenere was pretty much abandoned in France in favor of varieties that were less susceptible to disease, ripened more consistently and produced better yields. But, Carmenere was not dead – plantings were transported, from France to South America, along with vineyard workers looking for more gainful employment at the time (just prior to the Phylloxera outbreak). For almost one hundred years, the vine thrived in Chile and was thought to be Merlot; it was discovered to in the mid 1990s to actually be the ‘lost grape’ – Carmenere.

So now we have a legendary Bordeaux grape long considered extinct, thriving in the New Wine World and growing on its own, ungrafted rootstock. The modern wine Coelacanth. The Grape from The Land of The Lost (Sleestaks sold separately).

So what’s the trouble? Well, in my experience, the tale spun about the lost grape Carmenere is a lot more compelling than the wine that Carmenere is actually producing…

France’s reaction to Chile’s success with Carmenere seems to be “So what – they can have it.” At least, they don’t seem to be joining the Carmenere new renaissance taking place in Chile and California. One reason for France’s lack of involvement in the Carmenere love-fest might be the dearth of current examples in the current marketplace of the excellent wines that the cultivar is supposed to be capable of producing.

It’s not that I haven’t had very good Carmenere. I have – case in point being a recent sample I received from Errazuriz (2007 Don Maximiano Single Vineyard Carmenere from the Aconcagua Valley, whose picture graces this post). At its best, I’ve found Carmenere to produce dark-cherry, cassis-filled lush wines with heavy fruit, interesting spice, and a sizeable booze backbone to go with it all. The big trouble for me is that all of that goodness can be overwhelmed by the green pepper and pine needle aromas that are the hallmark of the compound pyrazine, to which South American Carmenere seems particularly susceptible.

Pyrazine is potent stuff. Think bell pepper – it doesn’t take a lot to go a long, looooooong way. I love when there are extremely small amounts of the stuff in red wine – just enough to make things interesting. The big trouble is that the line between “interesting” and “ruined” is a fine, fine one indeed when it comes to pyrazine in wine – and when it competes head-to-head with opulent dark fruit flavors and aromas, it becomes at best an acquired taste (and at worst makes you feel as though someone shoved a pine cone into your glass of Cabernet).

The flavor combination can be intrusive. Look at it this way – if you were having a business lunch with someone you didn’t know, and that person showed up well-groomed and prepared but decked-out in a bright green suit with pine needles sticking out of it, you’d be totally distracted. It wouldn’t matter how well this guy had his sh*t together, you probably wouldn’t catch half of what he was trying to tell you. The entire you’d be thinking, “WTF is up with this guy’s suit?!??” That’s how modern Carmenere presents itself to me.

I’m considering this week’s Wines of Chile event to be significant for me personally – if some of the best QPR Carmenere wines of Chile will be on display, then I’m gong to be judging just how much ground is being won in the South American battle to control pyrazine. Will it be a victory for dark, cassis goodness? Or will we get KO’d by a giant Bell Pepper?

Stay tuned…

Cheers!