Smooth or barnyard...What are you in to?

This weekend offered a great wine tasting, including a French traditionlist to explore, a rarity from Portugal to collect, and fruitful discussions on wine rating. The latter issue on rating will be dealt with in a separate post to follow soon, but main aim is to create a new scale, which embrace both the subjective with the objective in wine rating. The scale is proposed to combine a linear and a catagoric scale.

As any great dinner with wine tasting, the set was started out with a bottle of champagne. Here with a fresh nose of rye bread and a good palate.

Geyerhoff Kirschensteig 2008

Notes: Deep amber yellow color with velcoming nose of exotic fruits, elderflowers, and hints of botrytis. The taste evolves elegantly from being sweet, then dry and ultimately slight acidic, which prolong the finish. Although the wine only contains 12.5%, the mouthfeel is sensed as a somewhat more full bodied white.

Domaine de Escaravailles 2006

This wine is an attempt to produce ”New world” taste of Pinot-Noir or Cote rotie based on old world methods. The big question here is, whether this french producer should better stick to their regional traditions or seek out this kind of new avenues?

Notes: Mature cherries and marcipan, hints of raspberries. The wine appears medium bodied, some may say mineralistic style. However, the alcohol volume is pushed to a maximum wth 15%.

Domaine Leon Barral Jardis 2002

Conforme wine drinkers and weak souls keep out! A bottle of Domaine Leon Barral is simply a journey back at the roots of wine making. Placed in Langue doc, the grape material here is grenache, mouvedre, carignan and syrah. It is 100% natural wine; non filtered, no additives, supposedly no micro agents or sulphites. Hence bottles of Leon Barral Jardis have to stored under the right circumstances to avoid effects from cork or fluctuations in the quality.

The danish retailer told anecdotally, that buying directly from Barral is only possible, if visitors bring their own cooling facilities. Anything else is considered a crime at the Chateau.

Notes: Clear brettanomyces style with a complex nose of curry, commin, young leather, menthol, green elements, on a solid base of barn yard. A panelist said: ”it is like opening a rabbit”, but meant positively (if possible?:)). The wine is a bit cloudy and not cleared. This wine, is for me, unforgettable, and it did indeed appeal to most of the panel members. Even some of the women liked it too!

Niepoort Projectos Colheita Tardia 2003

We ended the tasting with a little rarity from Northern Portugal. We have had several wines from Dirk Niepoorts hands at Grapejuices before, but this late harvest (Pt: Colheita tardia) is from the ”Projectos series”, a series of experimental wines from the Douro and Tras os Montes regions. The wines are primarily available here.

So far only some hundreds of this 500ml bottle late harvest has been produced, and seemingly only from the 2003 vintage. It is definitively not typical Portuguese style, but from my side, it is a little catastrophe, if Niepoort does not add this wine in their official repertoire. It does not read from the label which grapes that are used in this little gem, but some tasting notes are simliar to late harvested Riesling (petroleum).

Notes: Nose of petroleum and mango. Great balance of sweetness with honey finish. Advice: collect if possible!

Tasted by Laurent, MadsE, and Drud. Posted by Drud