I muster up the courage to try...

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Saina Nieminen

Saina Nieminen
Today, among other lovely wines, I tasted two from Sepp & Maria Muster from Sdsteiermark, Austria. The first was a fairly straightforward, un-freakish, but very well made Gelber Muskateller 2008. It was absolutely lovely, with strong mineral tones to the grapey, rosewater scents; dry, crisp, and even quite forceful for a Muskateller. Endless, pure, mineral aftertaste. Lovely, but I did wonder why the host of this tasting (of Funky Wine Imports) told me to expect something really weird even though he knows of my tolerance for the weirder end of the wine spectrum.

But the next second wine from Muster made it all clear. It is a really freaky, funky "orange" wine called Erde 2007, a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Morillon (the local name for Chardonnay). I loved it, but it was so extreme that it did take a while for me to adjust my thinking to it. But when I managed that, this was delightful and moreish (and the host kindly let me take the drop left over home).

It is aged for 12 months in an amphora (and sees skin contact, of course); then the skins are removed and it is aged a further 12 months in a neutral barrel. The packaging is quite unusual also, being not bottled but clayed.

Orange. Rustic, wild, earthy aroma - if it doesn't stretch the imagination too much, it smells like citrus marmalade without marmalade's sweetness. Fairly rich, nicely acidic, ferociously tannic for a "white" wine, yet it seems wonderfully drinkable and even moreish once I manage to wrap my head around everything unexpected.

4898500922_7616439923.jpg
 
Wow. That's no longer an orange wine, it's a...I dunno, bronze wine? Rust wine?

Love the bottle. Question, though: isn't clay oxygen-permeable? Or does it depend?
 
This,
I'll bet its finished on the inside in some way that prevents oxygen incoming (eg. glaze, slip, etc.).
But wouldn't it be something if it wasn't? Kind of looses the imagination.
Best, Jim
 
Well, the currently-being-pursued goal of adjustable-permeability screwcap liners makes this more than a purely academic question. Adjustable-permeability bottle material just ups the ante.
 
originally posted by Thor:
Well, the currently-being-pursued goal of adjustable-permeability screwcap liners makes this more than a purely academic question. Adjustable-permeability bottle material just ups the ante.
Click to expand...

Ah, you're ahead of me on the adjustable screwcap liners - I'd not heard of those.
Permeable bottle material I hadn't even thought of before your comment here - and it does have a certain appeal, particularly for orange wines that are made reductively. I just imagine what they could become over time.
Best, Jim
 
Well, if you can bear the fundamentalist demagogic din of the Paul White/John Gilman deluge that has absolutely ruined the thread, there's a discussion over on Berserkers in which one of the people designing this thing offers some info. The title is something about corks vs. screwcaps and it was started by Poppy Davis.
 
I did see some sort of lining in the clay vessel, so I guess that ensures no oxygen will get it. Though with this level of oxidation already present in the wine, I have to wonder if more would really do any harm? The producer told the importer to drink the wine after it's been open for six days...
 
Matteo, since Otto's in Finland, I'm guessing that's where he found it. Can't help you on the U.S. front, though.
 
originally posted by Thor:
Well, if you can bear the fundamentalist demagogic din of the Paul White/John Gilman deluge that has absolutely ruined the thread, there's a discussion over on Berserkers in which one of the people designing this thing offers some info. The title is something about corks vs. screwcaps and it was started by Poppy Davis.
Click to expand...

For those who wish to search for this post, the author is listed as P. Davis (I know that's Poppy but the search engine there can't figure that out).

I printed off a lot of that stuff and will look into Tim's company and maybe go talk to him. If I do, I'll try to post something about the new closures he's working on and a few of the comments I find interesting in that thread.
The thread itself gets too cumbersome for me so I'll try face-to-face if I can get away.

All things considered, very interesting and relevant stuff. Thanks for the tip.
Best, Jim
 
originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
I did see some sort of lining in the clay vessel, so I guess that ensures no oxygen will get it. Though with this level of oxidation already present in the wine, I have to wonder if more would really do any harm? The producer told the importer to drink the wine after it's been open for six days...
Click to expand...

I think Fla Jim was thinking about wines raised under flor/voile that are reductive rather than oxidised. For them, a very slow measure of oxygen ingress through the vessel liner might be helpful. For orange wines, that are sometimes, but not always, oxidative, that might not serve any purpose.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
For orange wines, that are sometimes, but not always, oxidative, that might not serve any purpose.
Click to expand...

If the theory is that table wines that are not made oxidatively develop with minute amounts of oxygen introduced over extended time periods, then I think it might also hold for orange wines that are made reductively.
Whereas, if a wine already as some measure of oxidation when it is bottled, I wonder if the results would be similar/predictable?
Anyway, I'm just bouncing ideas around here - little science involved, just dreams.
And BTW, Tim Keller, the principal in Vinperfect (the project that is trying to develop oxygen permeable liners for screw-caps) has already agreed to meet with me, so I am starting a list of questions - I'll make sure yours is on it, Joe.
If anyone else has questions they'd like me to ask, please either list them here or send them to me at jim@cowancellars.com
Best, Jim
 
Cool! The question I'd have is how can one calculate the ideal rate of oxygen ingress. i.e., how minute is minute? SFJoe thinks it may be close to nil.

It may also be impossible to calculate, since it must depend on how reductive the initial state is, as well as the amount of natural anti-oxidants, like tannin, SO2, etc. Brave new world.
 
It's exciting research because rather than having the same tired arguments about whether bottle aging is anaerobic or not, or whether X or Y amount of oxygen in the wine and in some percentage of the cork are all the wine needs, now there's a reason to 1) learn this, and 2) decide what we want to do with that information. Ideally, the choice will be different for every wine...Brian Loring, who likes his pinot noir primary, might choose liners to express this, while Kevin Harvey would choose liners that allowed the sort of aging he envisions. It's even possible that there could be custom bottlings for industrial-quantity wines...10-year Bordeaux vs. 40-year Bordeaux, which would not be the same wine at the end, but would satisfy both modernists' and traditionalists' taste preferences.

It is, of course, a third cousin of spoof. To my mind a harmless one, but it's most certainly meddling with natural deliverables.
 
Oswaldo,
Its worth reading Tim's comments in the thread on Berserkers; he does touch on that subject. And curiously, the ideas that Thor expresses here, as well.
Best, Jim
 
originally posted by Florida Jim:
Oswaldo,
Its worth reading Tim's comments in the thread on Berserkers; he does touch on that subject. And curiously, the ideas that Thor expresses here, as well.
Best, Jim
Click to expand...

I nearly died reading that, at a certain point I just couldn't take it anymore. Jeez, where's the executive summary?
 
I haven't even tried; I know what it's like over there.

Maybe we can loan them a Politburo member or two? Just long enough for a teensy, weensy purge?
 
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