Slovenia Part 1: “it moves towards the pee-pee”
Balcony view of Croatia from Hotel Kemplinski, Portorož
I’m in Slovenia for a whistlestop wine tour. It’s a lush and green country with less than 2 million residents (only around 200,00 residents in its capital, Ljubjlana), and a beautiful but short coastline in the West, complete with stunning views of the Alps in the distance on one side, and views of Croatia on the other.
The food is also under the spotlight so before we touched down on Ljubjlana’s tarmac yesterday I swotted up my food info pack on of the country’s favourite/best/most authentic dishes, all split by region.
All I’ll say is THANK GOD our group is swiftly passing through Natranjska in the South West….. I can definitely do without trying the dormouse stew. Curd cheese is big business here and I have to say, anytime we’ve had it so far has been pretty tasty. More on some of the food later.
Dormouse stew
Tiliia
So, the wine. A tasting with cheeky chappy Matjaž Lemut from Tilia gave us a snapshot of the SW region, Vipava Valley (a sub region of Primorska, one of Slovenia’s three main wine regions).
Matjaž Lemut
The Vipava Valley has so many stresses – Matjaž tells us with between toothy grins – that he can only guarantee up to 30% of his crop each year, and then after taking all these other factors into consideration, anything above that is a bonus!
So what are the stresses? It’s prone to spring frosts, the valley is right in the middle of a route of a particularly fierce wind, the Buria, which, at its worst can get up to 200km in speed. And the summer’s no picnic, with heavy bursts of rain, sometimes as much as 200mm in a day.
Despite all this, the wines are good, and in fact available in the UK through Naked Wines. They’re good, yes, but I also think Matjaž gets a very good price for what they are, over in the UK at least.
Pinot Gris 2011
Admittedly, a happy accident. “When we bought the land we were so impatient to plant vines, and this was all the nursery had left so that’s what we bought and planted,” he said, with yet another smile. It’s a richly textured wine with good pear and apricot fruit, quite broad, good acidity and it has a decent pretty glossy finish, but it’s not especially complex. £12.99, 85/100
Sauvignon Blanc 2011
A blend of 6 clones and a combination of earlier and later harvested grapes, this has a broad and quite creamy nose beneath the very floral flavours, and as Matjaž sweetly said “it moves towards the pee-pee” (my favourite Slovenian phrase so far) on the finish, and I agree. A good zesty and tight grapefruit Sauvignon. Although the UK price is again, generous. £12.99, 87/100
Nostra 2011
A blend of Slovenia’s only two official native white grapes, Pinela and Zelen. Aged in barrel. Pinela’s pretty neutral in flavour, Zelen, I am told, is grassy and herbal. Not that you’d necessarily know this as the wine’s dominated by oak ageing which dominates any of the character. SUCH a shame, I really wanted to like this wine more. 83/100, £16.99
Pinot Noir 2009
At first this nose seemed to have the lushness from NZ Pinot Noirs, and although 40% of it has had 18 months sloshing about in new Slavonian oak, it still has a lovely beetroot and raspberry fruit aromas. The palate is where it’s definitely not NZ, this is tighter and leaner, but not to its detriment, in fact it’s pretty refreshing and elegant with a nice bite on the finish. £16.99. 87/100
Dinner at Babič
Next stop, dinner at Damjan Babič’s restaurant, a Slovenian tv chef who hires a restaurant in the middle of the estuary that separates Slovenia from Croatia. The restaurant was chosen because of Babič’s respect of authenticity together with adopting a more modern approach. It went a bit like this…
Shrimp mousse with caviar on a bed of mushroom and polenta with shrimp salt, and Quartz Brut NV
Babič’s home grown pink sparkling wine from native red variety Refošk. Made by the Champagne method. It’s unusual to have a pink fizz from Refošk, I’m told. It had a curious nose of orange (and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t get the aromas of Tizer out of my head) and despite being a bit astringent and bitter for an aperitif, it seemed to work well with the shrimp mousse. 80/100.
Potato dumpling stuffed with radicchio and a truffle sauce, with Laura (an “ecological”) Malvazija 2008
Made by Babič’s girlfriend’s family, this was on the richer, barrel aged side of Malvazija with a rich, buttery, straw, honey-ish flavour that stood up to the depth of flavour of the truffle sauce. 83/100.
Seabass fillets on a bed of salt with roasted vegetables, and Prinčič Rebula 2008
Made from the grape known as Rioblla Gialla across the border in Ttaly’s Friuli. This came from the northern part of Slovenia. It was full-flavoured, nutty and slightly honeyed with an unusual (but quite appealing) olive oil nose. It was broad and rich on the palate too, dry, clean and salty, and was more than a match for the salty meal. 85/100.
The meal ended with a rather bland, slightly sweet Muškata alongside a Malvazija cake, and for those wanting to put a few extra hairs on their chests (i.e not me!) some had a snifter of the local spirit made from distilled juniper berry juice, Brinjevec.
Koper Winery
This morning we went to the the third largest Slovenian producer by volume. Koper (also the town name) buys in grapes, but has 10 vineyard sites of its own in the Slovenian Istria area. We visited its peninsula vineyard in the area of Debeli Crtič, where everything is grown from Malvazija to Syrah. It’s also a crafty little source of delicious wild asparagus, a smaller, thinner and much more intense in flavour version of the vegetable we know and love.
Koper’s shop and reception area had a fantastic little archive cellar, complete with a selection of Yugoslavian wines. I wanted to bring one back so much, but they came at the price. The Pinot Chardonnay I had my eye on was E180 a bottle. So I did the next best thing. I took a photo.
Yugoslavian Pinot Chardonnay
We’ve just done the 3 hour trek across nearly the entire width of the country, and now we’re with p&f wineries, in the Podravje region (one of the other three main regions), where white wines rule but Blaufränkisch, Pinot Noir and some Zweigelt are not unusual. More on Koper, p&f wineries, and other producers and wines very soon.
J
south west france
It’s the morning after the days before, and I still have pretty black teeth.
That’s because I’ve spent the last two days with my four fellow Wine Gang members above The Atlas pub in West London as we kicked off the South West France wines campaign for 2012.
R-L, Joanna Simon, Anthony Rose and David Williams on the Gaillacs
The selection process is the first step in our South West France wine work – we had to choose a range of wines that will represent the region over the next 12 months in the region’s various wine marketing initiatives.
So, after blind tasting well over 200 wines (several times) over these last couple of days, we’ve made a nifty selection of 93 wines that taste great and which people will love.
But it’s not just about the best the region has to offer, it’s about the diversity of this region too.
From the oomph and density of red wines from Madiran and Fronton to the prettiness and delicacy of the Côtes de Gascogne white wines, it’s still really clear that wines from the South West of France are under-appreciated and overlooked by wine drinkers (but it also means there’s some wicked value for money to be had too, so maybe we shouldn’t spread the word too much!).
Granted, there are a LOT of sub-region names to get to grips with, but as a starting point for now – Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh, Irouléguy and Jurançon are all worth a look as we found some exquisite dry white wines from these sub-regions this week.
Much, much more will follow very soon, both here and on The Wine Gang’s site, so be sure to watch these spaces if you want to find out more over the coming months.
J
Israel part II
Yesterday’s blog was a quick round-up of the state of play with Israeli wine, today I’m quickly going to go through our producer visits last week when I was in Israel to attend the IsraWineExpo exhibition.
We only saw four producers in person (although we saw many more at the exhibition itself).
On the first day we headed up to the very north of this country, very close to the border of Lebanon and Syria to Upper Galilee, the region that’s widely regarded as the best in terms of fruit quality for winemaking and where the soils are pretty volcanic.
Here we visited Galil Mountain, a relatively new producer (started in 2002) and whose wines were correct and clean, but the downside to their super clean style is that they lacked a little bit of a sense of place. That said, I actually thought their Pinot Noir was the most successful wine, which was interesting because the Pinot Noirs in general on this trip were both scarce and pretty average in quality. But there is definite potential, as Galil Mountain showed.
Still Galilee but much further south in Kiryat Tivon, Tulip winery is probably best known for its commitment to employing people from the local community who are mentally disabled, a community which was initially formed by holocaust survivors. The portfolio of wines was mixed for me here. There was one standout wine, but sadly for all the wrong reasons – an off-dry white wine made from Cabernet Franc (seriously, why bother?). A dry white of theirs was much more successful, a Gewurztraminer/Sauvignon Blanc blend, which is a decent aperitif wine. With the reds, many an American in our group cooed over the Black Tulip, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot and while it definitely has some richness, the very obvious oak on the palate didn’t make for a wholly balanced wine in my view.
The visit to the next producer Binyamina, which is in the region of the same name, started off really well with a very approachable, slightly spicy and nicely fruity Carignan which was served with our lunch. The winemaker used be a pastry chef before turning his hand to winemaking, and he also used to work in Bordeaux’s Chateau Pontet-Canet. I think this was just one example of why Carignan is a variety to watch in Israel. Although this variety used to be a big deal in Israel, it fell out of favour but is now back in fashion as producers start to understand how to get the most out of it, and it seems to be working if Binyamina is anything to go by.
On the second day we headed south towards the Negev desert to visit Yatir, a winery which is owned by Carmel, a huge (by Israeli standards) and historic winery, even if Yatir has its own team and operates under its own steam.
Of the four wineries we visited, this had the most successful overall portfolio. Not only did the wines have an authentic sense of Israeli rusticity to them but they also appeared modern at the same time, and luckily they have an agent in the UK – yay (Enotria, in case you’re wondering). Very few Israeli wineries do have an UK importer, but there are a few starting to make inroads, and a few which are ready to be snapped up by an importer over here.
It seems to me that one of the most obvious wineries waiting to be snapped up is Recanati. This small, slick and smooth project is the brainchild of ex-banker Lenny Recanati. All the fruit for Recanati’s wines comes from the Upper Galilee, Israel’s high altitude region, and the winemakers seem to be a couple of cheeky chappies who clearly have a great rapport and the same vision for their wines. Definitely one to watch.
A more in-depth piece on my trip will be in a forthcoming issue of Decanter so if you want to read more make sure you pick up a copy, I’ll confirm the month in which is will feature (here) as soon as I know.
J
