February seemed easier to get through this year, probably because our Lothian weather was strangely less wet and damp than that experienced in much of England, that following an unusually wet January. With no Dry January statement being made in our house, drinking (all of these wines accompanied meals) continued as usual, no binging and no famine. So, we have twelve wines, six of them here in Part 1.
We kick off with a wine from Japan, which I would like to be a less rare occurrence than it is in my drinking activities, few merchants going beyond an obvious Grace Koshu on their lists, even for the most adventurous…yet. Normal service is resumed with an Alsace Sylvaner before the usual eclectic mix of a Dão from Portugal, an unusual crossing from Czechia, a stunning wine from one of the smaller Canary Islands, La Palma, and a grand Australian Shiraz harking back to a former life.
Nagano Furusato Cabernet Sauvignon « Grande Polaire » 2017, Sapporo Breweries (Nagano, Japan)
There was a discussion on X/Twitter this week about wine scores, as crops up from time to time. I suggested that uninflated scores do have a place for many consumers, but some wines do defy scoring. This is surely one. I don’t need a score to validate my desire to try the first red wine I’ve drunk from Japan for several years. You just don’t see them.
Some readers will know I’ve visited Japan quite a few times. It’s a fascinating country, which I always enjoy very much, but I will say that I especially enjoyed a trip to the vineyards of Nagano (written about elsewhere on this site), which can very easily be combined with a trip to see the famous snow monkeys and to venture up into the Japan Alps, all of which we did (and more…add in a Hokusai museum, a couple of very special temples, among many, some cycling and some great food) from a ryokan base in Yudanaka Onsen. Whoever suggested on Google that apart from the hot springs (onsens) there isn’t a lot to do in and around Yudanaka obviously doesn’t use buses and trains in Japan. I digress…
This wine isn’t made by some artisan grower in the hills above Nagano, but by one of Japan’s best-known breweries, a large corporation to be sure. Don’t let that fool you, they are making a serious contribution to the Japanese wine revolution, which people like Jamie Goode and Anthony Rose are keeping an eye on. For readers who are interested, a lot is happening in Japan and at an artisan level it is far more dynamic (in my opinion) than the more often covered China.
I can thank Anthony Rose for some of the facts here, via his Sake and the Wines of Japan (Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library, 2018), a book which I recommend very highly. The Grande Polaire label was first established in 2003, and one of the vineyards the winery owns is Furusato in Nagano Prefecture. It lies in the Chikumagawa Valley, at around 340 masl, being the smallest they run at 3-ha. Grande Polaire’s winemaker, Masayoshi Kudo, trained at UC Davis in California.
The wine’s profile is pretty much classic Cabernet Sauvignon, with some dark, and some red, fruits. Vanilla suggests oak of some kind for ageing. The tannins are ripe but at this stage perhaps not completely integrated. It comes together nicely though. It’s not at all heavy (13% abv), tasting pretty lively, assisted no doubt by the refreshingly bright fruit acids. Apparently 2017 was a year with very low temperatures through much of the growing season, but the sun shone at the end of the season to ripen the grapes.
This wine, which I think won a Bronze Medal at the IWSC in 2018, would have retailed for only £17, although it appears sadly not to be available any longer. I mean, who wouldn’t want to try a decent red wine from Japan for under £20?
![](https://maharashtragrapes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Recent-Wines-February-2024-Part-1-theglouthatbindsus.jpg)
Sylvaner “Rutscherle” 2022, Vincent Stoeffler (Alsace, France)
This Sylvaner comes from old vines cultivated on a hillside facing the Grand Cru Kirchberg, between Mittelbergheim and Barr. The soil structure is mostly marls or chalk. The Stoeffler domaine consists 16-ha of vines, of which 13-ha are close to Barr, Mittelbergheim and Heiligenstein, from which in typical Alsace style they make around forty cuvées. The domaine is moving towards a zero additives approach with eleven bottlings currently seeing zero added sulphur, but others can be termed natural wines, with indigenous yeasts for fermentation, no syntheitic vineyard applications and low intervention in the winery. The domaine has been certified organic for 24 years.
“Rutscherle” is part of the zero-sulphur “Nature” range. Vinified and aged on lees (unfined and unfiltered), this is a very dry Sylvaner with a bouquet of white flowers and fresh citrus. The palate is more herbal, acidity being relatively high (although I see the domaine suggests ageing this for two-to-five years). That said, those acids are quite invigorating. I’d describe it as fresh and mineral right now without enormous complexity, but with the potential to develop in line with their web site’s recommendation. Or, for acid hounds, drink now.
I think this came from Spry Wines in Edinburgh, priced at around £18.
![](https://maharashtragrapes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1713121394_40_Recent-Wines-February-2024-Part-1-theglouthatbindsus.jpg)
Dão 2018, Álvaro Castro (Dão, Portugal)
When I first got interested in wine, which was a very long time ago, Dão was perhaps one of the most commonly seen Portuguese wines in Britain. Often, we saw wines with quite a bit of bottle age, made by larger companies, but as seems to have always been the case with Portuguese wine, sold fairly cheaply. Those wines were rarely ready to challenge the modern winemaking emerging from the rest of Europe, and equally, more often than not, failed to express the potential of Dão’s old-vine autochthonous grape varieties. Dão lies inland from that other well known red wine region, Bairrada, between Porto and Lisbon.
Two people have changed our perceptions of the region. One is the supremely talented António Madeira and the other is his older mentor, Álvaro Castro. Castro’s mission has been to shout to the world about Dão’s old vine stock, made up of a number of indigenous varieties. Castro began winemaking in 1989. He has been ably assisted by his daughter, Maria, for the past twenty-or-so years and together they have taken their Quinta da Pellada, and Quinta de Saes towards non-intervention viticulture and winemaking. But if you think of Castro as some sort of peasant farmer, he isn’t. He’s a former civil engineer who has collaborated with, among others, Dirk Niepoort.
The wine we have here is one of the entry level wines, most of which come from Saes. There is a combination here of the traditional and the modern. The blend is Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roríz (Aragonês in Spain) and Jaen (more famous further north, in Spain, as Mencia), all off granite at around 500 masl. Fermented in stainless steel (the modern bit) with yeasts from a pied de cuve, it sees eighteen months ageing, which is nothing compared to the Dão wines of the past, in a mix of old and new French oak.
You get vibrant fruits of the forest, both as part of the bouquet and on the palate. In fact, the nose is very aromatic and the fruit on the palate is beautifully concentrated. Fully organic fruit is used. Imported by Indigo Wines, this was purchased from Cork & Cask in Edinburgh, but is widely available. At £17 it really was a bargain. As you see, I’m trying to be true to my word to drink more Portuguese wines.
![](https://maharashtragrapes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1713121395_224_Recent-Wines-February-2024-Part-1-theglouthatbindsus.jpg)
Hibernal 2021, Petr Kočařík (Moravia, Czechia).
If you just read this blog, you’d be forgiven for thinking Moravia was only peopled by artisan natural winemakers. There is actually a big commercial wine industry in Moravia, and Čejkovice is one of Moravia’s largest wine villages. Thankfully this producer turns out very different fare to most of the commercial operations in and around the district.
Petr Kočařík started out with what he calls a “backyard vineyard”, which he got from his parents as a wedding gift in 1997 (nice if you can get it!). Today he still only farms two hectares but this allows him to apply a natural wine philosophy, avoiding herbicides etc. He also uses minimum intervention in the winery, but does allow some skin contact for most wines, before ageing his white wines on lees in old barrels. The regime continues with no fining/filtration and the addition of the minimum amount of sulphur felt necessary for each cuvée. In all, Petr makes between 7,000 and 10,000 bottles per year. He was one of the early signatories to the Moravian Authentist natural wine Charter.
Hibernal is a crossing of the hybrid variety, Seibel 7055 with Riesling, created in 1944 at Germany’s Giesenheim Institute. To me, the variety in this instance seems to combine qualities of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Riesling. The bouquet wafts citrus pink grapefruit aromas, whilst the palate has a little of the steeliness of Riesling with a little honeyed weight, like Chardonnay. A touch of lychee also comes in from somewhere. Its body is fullish (alcohol is up at 14.5%), but it seems to combine freshness and some complexity.
This is very good indeed. It will surprise many who give it a go. I’d not drunk this since my Brighton days and I will certainly buy it again. £30 at Basket Press Wines.
![](https://maharashtragrapes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1713121396_361_Recent-Wines-February-2024-Part-1-theglouthatbindsus.jpg)
Listán Negro “Las Rosas” 2018, Victoria Torres Pecis (La Palma, Canary Is, Spain)
For me, VTP is one of the best winemakers on any of the Canary Islands. She is one of the few winemakers on the small outlier of La Palma, a solitary volcanic cone which remains very much active, as we saw from the threatening lava flows during the eruption of Cumbre Vieja in December 2021. It was the first eruption here in fifty years and at 85 days, was the longest here on record. Destroying 3,000 buildings and cutting the coastal highway, it was estimated to have caused damage totalling 843 million Euros.
The volcano is, however, the reason for both the island’s fertility, and for the quality potential for its wines, classic volcanic wines from volcanic ash soils. Thankfully, Victoria makes wine out of her family’s old bodega at Fuencalliente (Bodega Matias I Torres) on the southern tip of La Palma, which was unaffected by the lava flows, but work on the vines here is always difficult due to the terrain.
Las Rosas comes from three plots of 80-year-old vines at between 550 to 650 masl. They are all “pie franco”, or ungrafted, on pre-phylloxera roots. They are also, as Victoria says, “rain fed”, but they are as much as possible protected from the buffeting westerly winds which cool the island at these altitudes.
This is a wine of great character, although those mere words underplay the originality (in several respects) of what we have in the glass before us. Fermented in concrete with just 2,346 bottles made in 2018, we have notes ranging from red cherry to coal, with plenty in between. Sometimes it’s pointless trying to describe such an enigmatic wine. On the one hand I suspect a collector of Château Lafite wouldn’t necessarily appreciate it, but it is subtle, translucent, shimmering, yet grounded with an earthiness tied to terroir. You can see I love these wines! Sadly, my last as well.
It is so often the case that a smaller importer gets to find stars overlooked by the bigger names. This is very much the case here, as Victoria’s wines are imported by Modal Wines, who have just hosted a dinner with Victoria at Kiln in London, to coincide with the Viñateros Spanish wine tasting, both of which I’d have sorely liked to go to. If you don’t explore these small importers, you really are missing out, but remember that such wines have a habit of appearing for only a short window. Equally, the word is finally spreading about Victoria Torres Pecis.
![](https://maharashtragrapes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1713121397_81_Recent-Wines-February-2024-Part-1-theglouthatbindsus.jpg)
Warner Vineyard Shiraz 2006, Giaconda (Victoria, Australia)
This is approximately #105 in the series “drinking the family silver”. Currently paying rent and two lots of Council Tax, I’m buying wine at less than a quarter of what we are drinking, and I think I’ve drunk two-thirds of the wine we brought up to Scotland. Maybe it’s a good thing. I know I have too much of a tendency to stick wine away, to occasionally look longingly at the bottle, but to put off drinking it.
If I bought wine by the case, it would be less of a problem, but I crave variety and so I’d rather have 170 different bottles that fourteen cases which all contain the same thing. What on earth would I write about?
Giaconda is in Beechworth, a region in the hills of Northeastern Victoria. It is crammed with top winemakers who, says Max Allen (The Future Makers, Hardie Grant, 2010) “have made it known they’re out to make the best wine in Australia. Some already are”. Beechworth has several things going for it. It’s cool (the weather, but perhaps some of the people as well). It’s actually a cool region surrounded by hot regions too (Milawa, Rutherglen). The hills here provide multi-aspect planting opportunities, all on a complex blend of granite, clay, sandstone, and sandy loam. Above all, in an Aussie context these vineyards are marginal.
Of those clever winemakers, I would list Giaconda, Castagna and Sorrenberg among my favourites, top-ten for sure, in all Australia. Not bad for one small region with around 130-hectares of vines (not dissimilar to the Rhône’s Hermitage).
Rick Kinzbrunner established Giaconda in 1982, after studying at UC Davis, followed by stints which included working for various top Californian estates, Moueix in Bordeaux, and then Brown Brothers in nearby Milawa. He has around 4-ha of estate vineyards at Giaconda (for Chardonnay, Roussanne, Shiraz and Pinot Noir plus a little (but growing in coverage) Nebbiolo at Red Hill near the town). Rick’s son, Nathan, has been on board full-time since the 2007 vintage, working with Rick’s nephew, Peter Graham.
Warner Shiraz is an exceptional wine, but in my experience it needs ageing. With a bouquet mixing mulberries with good old Shiraz bacon and a palate of spiced plums, this is no longer tannic as such, yet it does retain structure. For a wine labelled with 14% alcohol, it is exceptionally balanced. When I say it needs ageing, well this was my last of three bottles, the previous bottle having been drunk quite a few years ago at a London lunch. It is by far the best of the three, and on the day this was exceptional. It certainly warranted the family silver epithet.
My bottles came from Berry Brothers, in fact from their factory outlet near Basingstoke, some time in the late 2000s, perhaps 2010 at a guess. I can’t recall what I paid? Although Giaconda appears more famous for its Warner Vineyard Chardonnay, I think you’ll have to pay upwards of £70 a bottle for a current release of this Shiraz (still with Berry Brothers). If you can find one of the varietal Roussannes grab it. Arguably they make the finest outside of the Rhône Valley. I haven’t seen their Nebbiolo, though I suspect it would be priced beyond me now. But Australian Nebbiolo can be a dark horse if one can overcome a prejudice for only Piemontese examples. The Chardonnay may be one of not only Australia’s best, on the right day, the World’s.
![](https://maharashtragrapes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1713121398_939_Recent-Wines-February-2024-Part-1-theglouthatbindsus.jpg)