WTN: Under the European sun

M

MarkS

Mark Svereika
Domaine de Cambis, Saint Chinian, 'Caudomato', 2005
Why do wines taste better at store tastings than when you bring the wine home? Hmmm... The nose is not particularly attractive, with swamp water and a bit of creosote. Neither does this blossom in the mouth, or with air: has the creosote and commercial hot roof tar that many cheap Southern Rhones possess and I find unattractive. Dark fruits, with alcohol showing. Drink now, although, to it's credit, it drinks well for the next 3 days, with falloff on the 4th. Still, B/B- [carignan 40%, grenache 40%, syrah 20%]

(Salvo Foti) I Vigneri, Etna Rosso, 2005
I'm just blessed by nastiness this week. The aromas are pleasant: strawberry and bitter orange. Very tart on the palate, with pomegranate, redcurrant, a chalky finish, but then it becomes medicinal, almost chemical, and the alcohol (13.5%) works against the lightness in this wine. For $30+, this simple wine is a disappointment. B+/B I'm hoping Foti's other bottling under his name is better than this.

Clerico, Barolo, 'Ciabot Mentin Ginestra', 1989
Ahh, now we're talking! 20-year old nebbiolo, even if it is from a modernist. Fairly youthful color, with only some lightening of the rim. Nice nose of cherry, orange peel, balsam. Very smooth and ripe, with morello cherry-plum, dried floral arrangements, balsam. Not etheral, but well-built with superb balance. A- [this wine had the most sediment of any recent wine I've had, with flakes of sediment flapping from even high up on the sides of the bottle near the neck. Glad this came in a Bordeaux bottle instead of the traditional Albesi one since it would have been harder to draw off the solids]

L'Oustal Blanc, Vin de Table Francais, 'Naick 6' (2006)
A white, for white's sake! Medium brownish gold. A dullish nose of walnut shell and crumpled autumn leafs. Very nutty wine, with pecan meat, nut oils, orange oil, and a warming fragrant heat (almost like a spirit) on the bitter end. 14% An interesting wine that seems like it wants to aspire to a unique place, but just doesn't quite attain. There is another white that has the Minervois La Liviniere appelation and I'm not clear how they differ, or what the constituent grape varieties may be, but at the prices charged (around $30 and up), probably won't investigate. B+
 
I tasted what I assume is the other '05 Salvo Foti wine you referred to a few months ago.

I found it impressively concentrated, but perhaps a bit heavy and sweet. Although this was somewhere in the middle of tasting 25+ wines, so I did not have the opportunity to spend any real time with it.

2005 I Vigneri di Salvo Foti 'Vinupetra' Etna Rosso
Fine nerello nose of high toned blue and red cherry fruits. Deliciously fruity, concentrated palate with clean blue and sweet cherry fruit and firm acidity, very layered, with an intensely extracted figgy sweetness that for me is a bit much. Other folks were swooning over this though.
 
originally posted by slaton:
I tasted what I assume is the other '05 Salvo Foti wine you referred to a few months ago.

I found it impressively concentrated, but perhaps a bit heavy and sweet. Although this was somewhere in the middle of tasting 25+ wines, so I did not have the opportunity to spend any real time with it.

2005 I Vigneri di Salvo Foti 'Vinupetra' Etna Rosso
Fine nerello nose of high toned blue and red cherry fruits. Deliciously fruity, concentrated palate with clean blue and sweet cherry fruit and firm acidity, very layered, with an intensely extracted figgy sweetness that for me is a bit much. Other folks were swooning over this though.
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Right, I think you have it down pretty good. It is the sweetness that is a bit unsettling. Some people, including at least two importers I know who aren't LDM, have really dug on this at the table, though. Like thanked me the next day kind of dug it. I think they found what some people would call the "purity of fruit" appealing. Sometimes I wonder if there is a bit of Grenache in there. There are plantings in Sicilia.

I have also found with the Vinupetra 2005 that decanting is not really helpful, and also that it is not a good next-day-drinking-from-the-open-bottle candidate.

The 2005 "I Vigneri" Etna Rosso is reductive. Decanting helps, I think.

There is something wonderfully flawed about the Foti wines under his own label. Really, I mean that. Wonderful and flawed at the same time. It is like the paintings of Eugene Delacroix. Let's be honest, he wasn't the best at drawing. But the power of those pieces: really something else.

Someone I used to know would say to me, "always keep a little rust on the blade. Just a bit. And never try to be too perfect. If you are perfect you are just tempting the gods to fuck with you."

Foti is not tempting the gods.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by MarkS:
Clerico, Barolo, 'Ciabot Mentin Ginestra', 1989
...balsam ...balsam.
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Balsam is a kind of pine tree, right?
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Yep.

"balsam : fragrant resin resin, any of a class of amorphous solids or semisolids. Resins are found in nature and are chiefly of vegetable origin. They are typically light yellow to dark brown in color; tasteless; odorless or faintly aromatic; translucent or transparent; brittle, fracturing
. obtained from various trees. The true balsams are semisolid and insoluble in water, but they are soluble in alcohol and partly so in hydrocarbons. They contain benzoic or cinnamic acid; these include Peru balsam and tolu balsam (both obtained from varieties of the South American tree Myroxylon balsamum of the pulse pulse, in botany, common name for members of the Fabaceae (Leguminosae), a large plant family, called also the pea, or legume, family. Numbering about 650 genera and 17,000 species, the family is third largest, after the asters and the orchids family), benzoin benzoin (bĕn`zoin, zōĭn) or benzoinum , and storax. Other resins called balsams include Mecca balsam (balm of Gilead balm of Gilead , name for several plants belonging to different taxonomic families.
Canada balsam Canada balsam, yellow, oily, resinous exudation obtained from the balsam fir . It is an oleoresin (see resin ) with a pleasant odor but a biting taste. It is a turpentine rather than a true balsam, and copaiba.
. Balsams are often used in medical preparations and perfumes.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright 2007, Columbia University Press"
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
"If you are perfect you are just tempting the gods to fuck with you."
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You remind me: The Youmei-mon Gate, at the Toshogu Shrine at Nikko, was held to be so beautiful and so perfect that the builders purposely installed one of its columns upside-down. For the very reason you give.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by MarkS:
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Balsam is a kind of pine tree, right?
Click to expand...

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright 2007, Columbia University Press"
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I am not persuaded that I often taste pine in older barolo wine.
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It's not really pine, but has a fragrance all it's own.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

I am not persuaded that I often taste pine in older barolo wine.
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I pine for older Barolos, especially when consuming wild boar or truffles. Does that count?

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

I am not persuaded that I often taste pine in older barolo wine.
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I pine for older Barolos, especially when consuming wild boar or truffles. Does that count?

Mark Lipton
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I pine for older Barolos, wild boar, or truffles.

I'll take any of the above.

as long as they're not Balsamic.

Cheers,

Kevin
 
Last night at Les Papilles, which was probably majority-American for the first half of the dining hours (I understand they were written up in the Post or something? not that they were unknown before), we enjoyed listening to the very helpful waiter explaining the menu in English. The blanquette de veau was, for English speakers, served with a side of what he called, on every occasion, "balsamic rice." We wanted to stop him and explain that it was basmati, but he was very busy and we let it slide.

Pretty fun place, though the food quantity is astounding.
 
Sheesh, it's like you city folk have never gone camping in the North Woods before and smelt the Balm of Gilead. You gotta get out more.
 
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