Spring is in the Air and Rosé is on the Table

Drinking in the pink

We are actually having a spring in New York City this year, a real, bonified spring. Café outdoor seating is set up; the great city parks are the places to be; and I am pretty sure I saw a guy wearing sandals. This much needed change in weather means many great things are to come. One very important one is that a whole new crop of pink wine is showing up stateside. For many years the US has been behind the rest of the world in their attitude towards Rosé. Mainly this lapse stems from a very famous and not-so-high-quality product called White Zinfandel. I am not hating on those who enjoy the WZ, but there are far too many fantastic salmon colored wines to dismiss this genre as merely a quaffable summer drink.

We can look to France’s Loire Valley, or Provence, as well as the great regions of Navarra and Rioja in Spain, and find areas that take their pink wine seriously, so much so that most of it is consumed locally because demand is just that high. We also can’t forget about Italy, which produces Rosé in nearly every one of its almost 200 government recognized regions, not to mention the regions that aren’t government recognized. With all this Rosé out there, we have much to choose from. Recently, we tasted a buch from two opposite sides of Italy–Alto Adige and Sicilia. The Rosés from the North had a strong acidic core balanced with gorgeous floral aromatics, while the ones from Sicilia showed Etna’s telltale minerality and heat.

Luckily for us, IWM is on the ball and we have been bringing in many great Rosés from around the globe. Our office has been sampling some of these wines and they are all fantastic. I think the biggest misconception is that these wines are meant just as an apertif or something to just pop and drink. Rosés are incredible food wines because their acidity and freshness make them pair well with many seafood and light meat dishes–and the weightier ones work with duck or pork, creating a match made in sanguine heaven.

I challenge you to make this year the summer of Rosé. Who knows, it may just stretch into the fall and winter of Rosé as well.

An Evening with Montevertine’s Martino Manetti

When nice guys make great wine

Martino Manetti is a really nice guy. He also produces some of the most graceful and pure Sangiovese I’ve ever had.

At first, winemaking was just a lark for the Manetti family, but then in the 1970, Sergio Manetti founded the Montevertine estate. After withdrawing from the Chianti consortium in the 1980s, Sergio was the first to produce a single-vineyard, 100% Sangiovese wine, the first Super Tuscan that was only Sangiovese. Since Sergio’s death, his son Martino has worked to reinforce his father’s philosophy and to produce Sangiovese in a most unadulterated fashion. To this day, Montevertine produces its flagship wine, Le Pergole Torte, from the same vineyard in the same style, and it remains one of the most highly sought-after Italian wines.

I had the great pleasure to sit down with Martino and several of my colleagues earlier this week and enjoy several of the historic Montevertine wines. I savored each sip while Martino spoke about his ceaseless goals to uphold his father’s standards in the vineyards and to maintain the wine’s classic expression. He refered to his wines as “table wines.” I loved it. All of our nerdy questions about vineyard aspect, soil composition, maturation and vintage differential were swept away with these two words. Wine is nothing to Martino without food on the table and family to share with. These wholesome words spoke directly to me, but the wines spoke even more eloquently.

In Hong Kong, Wine is the New Black

Or how good taste is always in fashion

Since 2006, when Hong Kong’s government abolished taxes on wine and beer, the wine scene in this city has exploded. The government decided to make this change t from 80% tax to zero tax after posting a record surplus, and it boosted efforts to turn the city into a wine-trading hub. Recently, Sotheby’s head of wine for Asia acknowledged, “We will sell more wine in Hong Kong this year than we will in New York and London combined.” In just five short years, Hong Kong has transformed into one of the world’s largest wine playgrounds, and everyone is invited.

Wine is more fashionable than it has ever been before. Just as one chooses shoes to accompany an outfit, young wine drinkers must have a glass that makes them look beautiful and feel sophisticated. I see more and more enomatic machines in restaurants and bars, Christofle and Versace glassware in department stores, and Swarovski crystal wine charms in retail shops–I’ve even met purebred dogs named after their owner’s favorite first growth. As fashion labels are important to socialites, so are wine labels important to Hong Kong’s fashionable elite. It shows not only your level of sophistication but also displays your rank in society. While Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton are the coveted fashion brands here, top French labels have also stolen the hearts (and wallets) of the locals here.

In a society where money is power, more and more people are investing in wine courses to increase their level of knowledge. It is remarkable to see so many new companies offering WSET courses, Court of Master Sommelier certifications and awards for outstanding wine service. Young men and women who once spent hours mastering chess and playing piano or the violin are now spending their study hours in wine classes, some of them are even studying to become Masters of Wine. Young entrepreneurs are taking up wine collecting as a hobby along with golf and sailing, feeding the thousands of hungry wine suppliers that occupy this city.

To be a part of the wine industry in Hong Kong is very exciting. The amount of money is invested yearly in wine here is mind-boggling. Although there is greater competition among suppliers and distributors than just about any other city, there is plenty of cake to go around. Here’s to spreading the Italian wine gospel throughout Hong Kong. Fashion is best when it’s not just tasteful, but when it tastes good.

Go-To-Wine Tuesday

Monastero Suore Cistercensi “Coenobium Rusticum” 2008

Working at Italian Wine Merchants has opened my palate to a number of producers and blends that I could never have imagine existed and yet now cannot live without. One of these producers is Paolo Bea. Paolo Bea believes in the essence of nature and the importance of balancing the work of man and nature. I have tasted several of Bea’s wines including the Sagrantino Pagliaro, San Valentino, and Santa Chiara – they are breathtaking. Thus, when I heard we would be carrying the Coenobium wines that are made by the nuns of the Cistercian order in Lazio, yet overseen by Giampiero Bea, Paolo Bea’s son, I could not wait to get my hands on a bottle.

I had tasted the Coenobium wine once before, not knowing the producer or the story behind the wine, and I remember thinking it was like nothing I had ever tasted. Now, after learning about the producer and the relation to the Bea wines I was delighted to have the opportunity to taste it again with context.

“Coenobium” is a colony of a fixed number of cells with little or no specialization, often found in certain types of algae. While it may seem strange for the name of a wine, it actually describes the essence of the nuns whom work to produce the wine and the way in which the wine is produced beautifully. The whole process is very organic, as is the way in which the nuns work together and live off the land.

Because I had tasted the Coenobium wine once before, I decided to start with the “Coenubium Rusticum.” The “Rusticum” is considered an orange wine, as it is made more like red wine, but from white grapes. The wine goes through extended soaking on the macerated skins, thus leaving a copper-orange color in the glass. As I uncorked the bottle last night I could smell hints of orange, saffron, and apples. The wine went down like silk and left a warming sensation. It was indeed a true expression of the earth and the nuns that tend to the vineyards. This wine can be compared to the Santa Chiara in terms of style and expression, and yet at under $30, it is half the price – a great wine for a simpler occasion.

(For a review of the regular Coenubium, please see this earlier blog post.)

Biodynamic Growth, Magic and Belief

Finding the magic in a glass of wine

Are biodynamic growing methods a necessary—or if not necessary, then a delicious—fiction? Decanter expert Andrew Jefford seems to be answering that question with a big, solid yes in his column today called “From Steiner to Márquez.” Jefford, while on a tour of the Rhône valley, found himself staring the science of biodynamic growing in the face, and he blinked. He says:

Those with a scientific background often find it irritating, and bite their lips when producers rhapsodise about the memory of stones, about planetary forces streaming earthwards, or about the virtues of ‘dynamisation’.

I have some sympathy with their scepticism, since the theoretical assertions of biodynamics (including those of Rudolf Steiner himself in the Koberwitz lectures published as Agriculture) strain credulity beyond breaking point.

Efforts to find some kind of scientific validation for the genuine improvements brought by biodynamic practices…have all the intellectual rigour of an episode of Teletubbies. The recipes for the Steinerist preparations seem aleatory, and the biodynamic calendar itself as picturesque as any tabloid horoscope.

Farmers who use biodynamic growing methods choose to plant, weed, treat, harvest and, if they’re winemakers, vinify in concert with the movement of the planets. The point of biodynamic growing, an agricultural movement that looks at organic farmers as folks who do something right if somewhat incompletely, is to look at the growth cycle of the entire field as one holistic unit. To those of us who bear an empirical mind and like to see cold, calculating and clear evidence to support assertions (and I do count myself among that number), biodynamic practices with their airy-fairy reliance on manure-filled and cow-horns that are buried and exhumed, water’s circular memory, and a vague tie between planetary movements and “energy” can make us roll our eyes.

And yet, as Jefford points out, “Great wines are produced in this way.” Jefford explains the tie between quality and method by suggesting that the greater effort that biodynamic farmers have to make on the vines, the greater engagement, in essence all the hard work is why the wines are better. It’s not the “energy” that the method encapsulates; it’s the work. Ultimately, Jefford likens the narrative of biodynamic methods to magical realism, the school of literature that allows for a convergence of ordinary quotidian life and the extraordinary, if supernatural. If Gabriel García Márquez, Angela Carter or even J.K. Rowland made wine, it might be biodynamic.

I’m on board with a good literary analogy as much as the next girl who spent decades in school. And I’m as given to great skepticism as anyone who also reads science nonfiction for fun. I also have to say that I very much would have ascribed to Jefford’s argument had I not spent an afternoon with Luca di Napoli Rampolla at his biodynamically managed Castello dei Rampolla a few weeks ago. It was an afternoon that changed my thinking about biodynamic methods, and even if I don’t understand them, I became a believer.

It might have been spending a couple of hours walking around the estate as Luca pulled up tufts of grass and named each plant in his hand. It might have been his patient explanation of the ways that his vines interact with the trees that surround them, with the soils that support them, and with the weather that touches them. It might have been the clear, unremitting commitment that Luca makes in every choice for his estate—from the solar panels on top of the vinification area to the placement of his chicken coop. It might be all of that talking, walking and looking helped me grasp that choosing to prune according to how the alignment of the planets will affect the plants. Or it might be sitting on Luca’s terrace, drinking the wine that he made helped me believe. But on that Thursday afternoon, I became a biodynamic convert. I don’t really care how the science works. It’s clear to me that there’s something very special, very alive and very unique about this wine.

Italy, unlike the United States, is a place where people continue to believe in magic. I’ve never lived long enough in other areas of the world to make further comparisons, but while Americans might wistfully wish for magic, Italians feel it. It’s in the mountains and in the sea. It’s in the cities, like Venice and Rome, that shouldn’t exist, not as they do, not after all these centuries. It’s in the food and in the wine. And sometimes, I think, you just have to put science on hold, sit back, exhale, and enjoy the magic. It’s ephemeral, beautiful and vital. If it’s biodynamic, then it’s simply all the better.

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