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Le Pianore, Montecucco DOC (Tuscany, Italy) “Tiniatus” 2019 ($40, VinWine Imports)
 This family owned and run estate is tucked into the scenic wooded slopes of Tuscany’s Monte Amiata, where it produces a handful of different organic wines including this savory Sangiovese/Merlot blend.  The wine was fermented in stainless steel and aged for 6 months in French tonneaux.  It is savory, reasonably complex and very food friendly.  Le Pianore’s wines are all certified organic.   In the estate’s shop you may also purchase various goodies such as local olive oil, grappa and honey as well as a row of vines growing in the Le Pianore’s vineyard.  If you decide to sign up for the vineyard option you will be sent a certificate of adoption plus regular updates on the progress of “your” vines.  You will also receive a box of wine made from those vines, although I imagine you probably would have to go to Italy to retrieve it.        
92 Marguerite Thomas

WRO WINE BLOG

Posted by Roger Morris on May 11, 2023 at 10:56 AM

Graham’s Bicentenary: Evolution of Tradition

It was a little over 20 years ago that I first visited Port producers in the Duoro Valley, and, after having talked with so many winegrowers elsewhere who stressed authenticity and going back to the Garden, at least symbolically, I was surprised by how readily Port owners and winemakers discussed the changes they were in the midst of making in vineyards and in wineries – and not just minor changes of a tweak here and a twist there.  These were historic changes to the substance, history and image of what it was like to make vintage and tawny Ports in the Douro.  

Neither were the changes being made reluctantly or timidly.  In fact, I had the feeling they were embracing these changes, but not change for change’s sake or because there was a gun to their head or because their product was bad.  They were making changes because they accepted that the culture and economy along the Douro were in a period of historic transformation.  They didn’t want to alter their classic product; instead, they wanted to ensure it would have more consistency and reliability vintage after vintage.  

These memories returned shortly ago during a vertical tasting and dinner for the trade in New York, a delayed bicentennary celebration for Graham’s, founded in 1820, and now the centerpiece of the Symington family’s Port brands.  The setting was equally momentous – the Manhatta restaurant, 60 floors above the Financial District with views of the city and the harbor as dusk turned into evening.

The tasting, not surprisingly, was spectacular.  Beginning with the current 2020 vintage, we tasted our way back 100 years, through the 2011, 2003, 1994, 1985, 1983, 1977, 1970, 1963, 1955, 1948 and 1924 vintages, the last of these now being a bit wan in color but very flavorful with lots of dried herbal notes, almost like a liqueur crafted among the garrigue in the South of France.  Noting the 1924 date, Rupert mused, “It’s almost irresponsible, drinking a 99-year-old wine when we could have waited another year.”  During dinner, we also had a blend of Symington’s portfolio, old and new – a 1966 Graham’s vintage and a 1976 single-harvest Graham’s tawny as well as two Douro table reds – a Vesuvio and a Chryseia – plus a branco from the family’s new Quinta Da Fonte Souto in Alentejo.

But what caught my attention was the presentation made by Charles Symington, head winemaker and master blender for the family, during the tasting of the 2020 vintage it not only succinctly summarized the changes those of us who have regularly visited the Douro have been seeing during our adult lifetimes, but also putting them into context.  “We’ve had an evolution over the past 30 to 40 years,” Charles began, “and the trade has changed enormously” during that time.  Then he and his cousin Rupert, who now heads the family enterprise, outlined three major shifts.

First, they noted the trade had until the latter part of the previous century depended on getting some of their base wines from small farmers who tended their own vineyards and made raw wines on their properties and then sold them to Port houses.  In fact, I remember a few years ago how this or that Port house would announce special cuvées that had come on the market when a farmer’s family would discover a cache hidden away for a rainy day.  Today, Port producers rely primarily on their own historic farms or quintas though still buying some grapes.

The second change was shifting from field blends to varietal plantings.  Field blends brought with them a romantic image – vineyards planted in a hodgepodge of varieties of those 80 approved to help ensure a crop even if one variety fell prey to frost or some other damage.  And, when a vine died or was no longer productive, a new one could be planted in its place with little thought given to what variety it was.  “At Symington’s, when we started planting mono-varietal [plots] a few years ago, we learned a lot about the individual varieties,” Charles said.  “Today we concentrate on only five varieties for our blends.”

The final change was in the lagars that once were centerpieces at every quinta.  Traditionally, after the workers finished a day’s picking they returned in the evening to stomp – more properly tread – the grapes in gigantic, rectangular stone tanks filled up to their knees with raw grapes.  At first, treading began like a military parade to ensure everything was turned into a purple sludge, then music began, and the treading would turn into a communal dance.  Picturesque?  Yes.  Effective?  Yes.  Efficient and sustainable with dwindling labor forces?  Hardly.  

Wine producers love to have writers try their hands – or feet – at duplicating what they do for a living, from picking grapes to making blends of almost-finished wines.  I have usually resisted because I feel more comfortable observing and recording than trying on someone else’s shoes.  But one night at Symington’s famous Vesuvio quinta, after a Port-tentous dinner, Rupert shamed me into donning the traditional plaid shirt (the Grahams and Symingtons are of Scottish descent, and a pair of borrowed gym trunks, climbing into the lagar and dancing knee-high in grapes with the locals like an outsider on a Saturday night in a townie bar.  I’m told photos still exist.

I’ve also watched over the past decades as Symington’s and other houses have grappled with inventing Rube Goldberg mechanical treading machines, now located at central wineries and not at individual estates, that have increasingly become not only more efficient but also more effective than doing it by foot.  “With the use of modern lagars,” Charles says, “we can ferment at lower temperatures, and the wines have become much more aromatic.”  Once, raw wines came down the Douro in small boats to the lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia for blending, aging and, more recently, bottling.  Later, this was done by truck – another tradition gone with the times.

The tasting proved another thing – as is the case with Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Napa Valley and elsewhere, that producers back in the bad old days when there were few technical amenities could still make fabulous wines that lasted for decades on a vintage-by-vintage basis.  The difference is, with the Douro and all the other regions, modern technology and winemaker education means that more producers are making good to great wines and that weather-related vintages that were devastating back then can in most cases be successfully worked out with today’s well-equipped, well-financed winemakers.

Tradition is not something that happened only a long time ago.  Tradition is being made now, evolving before our eyes and within our glasses as we become a part of it.

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This Issue's Reviews
 
Saint-Émilion Excellence in 2022
Panos Kakaviatos

May 24, 2023: This spring, many came to Bordeaux with trepidation: 2022 is (so far) the hottest, driest year on record. Was it to be another 2003? Actually, 'worse' because alcohol levels in 2003 were not as high as in 2022. Like others, I was expecting heavy wines, with too much alcohol and too little acidity. Record levels of alcohol were recorded: Part of the final blend of Château Margaux, for example, includes Cabernet Sauvignon that reached - no joke - 16% alcohol. 'How will these wines age?' is a question often heard from insiders. The honest reply: 'Who knows?' But one thing is certain, the barrel samples of 2022 were far better than expected, and certainly far more fun to taste than the mediocre 2021 vintage. And while heterogenous in quality, with cold clay and limestone doing better than hot soils (for example the appellation Pessac-Léognan was on average not as consistent as northern Médoc appellations like Saint-Julien or Pauillac), nowhere was my pleasure more pronounced than in Saint-Émilion.
Reconnecting with Two California Wine Quality Exemplars
Rich Cook

May 24, 2023: After a couple of years of what have come to be known as 'zoom tasting' thanks to the pandemic, it certainly feels good to get out and experience wine on a more intimate level. The more wine I taste, the more it becomes obvious to me that the fullest appreciation of fine wine arises from the foundation of a backstory that includes the people, places, and times from which the wine originated. Knowledge of those backstory elements plays a critical role in the appreciation of wine, both in general and in the enjoyment of a specific wine. Recent encounters with Pisoni Family Vineyards and Chimney Rock Winery served to continue to drive these points home.
Wine With
WINE WITH…Spaghetti Pure & Simple


March 8, 2023: I find myself gravitating towards simpler food, fewer meat-oriented menus, and in general focusing more on simplicity rather than complexity. Simple pasta, for example, is something I've been craving recently. What my palate longs for instead is simple, spaghetti-type pasta, but I want the noodles to be sauced with nothing more, really, than a drizzle of olive oil. Perhaps I'll garnish this simple dish with something raw, and green, and crunchy.
On My Table
Exceeding Expectations for Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet
Mary Ewing-Mulligan

Sometimes before tasting a wine, assuming that I am not tasting it blind, I glance at the technical sheet for that wine and imagine how the wine will taste. For a mid- to high-end Sauvignon Blanc from California, these days I expect to read about various clones that produce the wine, and maybe some portion of Semillon. I expect to read about stainless steel fermentation at a range of temperatures, possibly oak aging and perhaps a mix of vineyards from different altitudes. These comments will support findings of aroma complexity, fruitiness, freshness and crispness in differing degrees. But the tech sheet for the 2020 Turnbull 'Josephine' Sauvignon Blanc from the Oakville district of Napa Valley told me that the wine is entirely Sauvignon Blanc (nothing about clones) and that it is aged in concrete (52 percent) with French oak for 38 percent and Italian terracotta amphorae for 10 percent (not stainless steel). Likewise, the tech sheet for the 2018 Turnbull Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve reveals no blending of Merlot or Petit Verdot, but simply 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 100 percent French oak aging. And yet both wines express nuance and complexity, seemingly born that way. The good genes behind these wines, the press material explains, is the richness of the estate's vineyard holdings, 110 acres in Oakville divided among three vineyards, one of which carries vines from the pre-Prohibition era.