New rock's "Hot Earth": Domaine des Roches Neuves Terres Chaudes 2005

I'm not sure why I went out to try and buy the entire Thierry Germain catalogue. Actually I do know why.

After admiring Joe's donation to our Cabernet Franc tasting -- La Marginale -- I realized that BrooklynGuy recommends other cuvées from Thierry Germain. Germain, the wine maker at Domaine des Roches Neuves, also produces L'Insolite, Terres Chaudes (the clickable bottle image shown above), as well as a self-titled domaine cuvée, their entry-level wine. I couldn't find L'Insolite, but managed to bag the other two.

I liked the Terres Chaudes 2005 quite a bit. (I preferred it to the cheaper Cuvée Thierry Germain 2004 -- coincidentally if you swap vintages you can get BrooklynGuy's take on these two, as he tasted the Terres Chaudes 04 and Cuvée Thierry Germain 05.)

Domaine des Roches Neuves Terres Chaudes 2005

Eyes: Dark purple hue with a fuschia rim. Exhibits tears and a lot of viscosity in the glass. Inky depth of colour. NOTE: Sediment is in this wine -- quite a bit -- so it needs a thorough decant.

Nose: Low intensity nose. I thought this would develop more but even on the next night is was subdued. Some licorice and, I think, alcohol.

Mouth: Sour cherry evolving to darker red berries. A rootiness suggestive of star anise takes over to make this Cabernet Franc an interesting specimen that is neither distinctly fruity nor vegetal. Some green pepper and mineral with a lovely creamy note. Drying, crispy and with a solid body and sound tannin. A fine finish with great length. Style very much similar to the 2003 La Marginale, yet I'd encourage people to treat it much more like a "drink now" wine despite the fact that it's in its youthful stage. It's good like this!

Stomach: I've read that you should grill food with this wine but my braised rôti de boeuf (a bas palette or bottom blade roast slow cooked with turnip or carrots and garlic was totally delicious as an accompaniment. Saumur-Champigny earns its title as the food-friendliest appellation of France so you could serve it with almost anything. Since this wine is more substantial fare than most bistro bottles, I would advise you try something richly textured, slightly fatty, somewhat rustic and intensely flavoured. Rôti de bas palette garni, it is!

BAS PALETTE ON PARADE



Varrains, France. 13%.

Cab Franc table talk: Château Gaillard Vieilles Vignes 2000, Charles Joguet Clos du Chêne Vert 2002, Thierry Germain La Marginale 2003, Steltzner 2004

It was a huge pleasure to partake is this substantial (and revealing) tasting of some fine Cabernet Franc wines.

By teaming up with fellow blogger Joe, I was able to stage a worthwhile look at this varietal in two New World and three Old World examples: from Napa Valley's Stags Leap District, from Niagara Peninsula's Glenlake Vineyard and three from Loire appellations, including Thierry Germain's Domaine des Roches Neuves cuvée La Marginale, which sadly is no longer available for sale in Quebec.

Thanks to Joe for extracting that bottle from his cellar. He also brought the Napa Cab produced by Steltzner Vineyards. I provided the Chinon and Niagara wines, plus a unique Loire red blend from Vincent Girault at Château Gaillard in Mesland, just to get our tasting hats on. Here's how I saw it all go down.

Château Gaillard Vieilles Vignes Touraine-Mesland 2000

This wine was not tasted blind. It was, as I mentioned, our warm-up wine. From the 2000 vintage, this has got to be the cheapest oldest wine you can buy at the SAQ. Adding to the intrigue was a percentage Gamay that the winemaker claimed to blend into this seven-year-old version of Cabernet Franc. How would this taste? A lot like Malbec actually, and that's of course because Côt was the third blending grape involved, perhaps the primary one. The Gamay provided a squelch of fruity tartness, the Cabernet seemed to add some rich cocoa notes. But it mostly seemed to be an expression most characteristic of Malbec or Gamay than Cabernet. (Several nights later this wine is still hanging on nicely with some zip). For $19, this bottle from 2000 is a rather odd delivery of an otherwise friendly and fun quaffer.

Château Gaillard: Certified organic and biodynamic. Vincent Girault, Mesland, Loir et Cher, France. 12%.

Charles Joguet Clos du Chêne Vert Chinon 2002

To me this was tell-tale Chinon, and the easiest to separate from the rest of the wines. It was decanted and definitely needs it. Even after a half-hour, it was still settling in. On the nose I first got cassis and cream. It seemed one-note on the palate, but that was still changing in the glass. On the palate it became less strict, offering luscious notes of tomato and green pepper. It is a typically vegetal wine with strong earthy/mineral elements so it's not surprising it goes so well with food. When I served beef tenderloin, seasoned potatoes wedges and garlic-steamed broccoli (which, perhaps unfortunately, only occurred after the wines were revealed), this Cabernet really showed its stuff. It ushered in the meal like none of the others, a perfect partner for steak and frites or for simmered beef and fresh vegetables. (I think that only food with really spicy or sweet elements would prevent this wine from shining as bright -- this wine definitely has a style shared with the ultimate dining wines.)

Clos du Chêne Vert: Charles Joguet, Sazilly, France. 12.5%.

Thierry Germain Domaine des Roches Neuves La Marginale Saumur Champigny 2003

This was the first wine we decanted and the first wine I tasted blind. By the time I stopped taking notes it was still baffling me, especially as to its true potential. This wine was so solid with so much depth that I felt the best reading on what this wine really amounts to could only come years down the road. It had a sharp nose rendering a complex bouquet. On the palate it was equally complex and powerful. The finish delivers admirably huge tannins -- definitely an aspect worth revisiting in the future. If it was a bit tight in the early stages, a palpable acidity was shown so I see no reason why it wouldn't last a decade or more. The fruit reminded me of Saumur fruit and terroir, though with many times the body and many times the lift. Ultimately, this convinced me that it was the other French wine, though clearly more New World-ish than the Chinon. A revelation -- but it manhandled my meal a bit. If only I could save my dinner and then reheat it with this wine ten years from now.

La Marginale: Thierry Germain, Varrains, France. 13%.

Steltzner Vineyards Stags Leap District Napa Valley 2004

Here is where I lost my way. The nose of this wine presented grenadine and spices and a somewhat understated aroma of leather. This was soft and alluring and was channeling the French wines I drink almost every night. On the palate, it was sweetish and offered less intrigue than the nose. It was more heavily oaked and yet much lighter than the Marginale -- which is a far from ideal combination. Especially with food, it ends up generating vanilla and so it comes off cloying. You might sense that it has peaked and is already receding. So my guess was that this was the 2000 Niagara wine rather than the Napa three-year-old. I was wrong. Surprise! I really could not tell at all that this was an over-alcoholized American wine of 15%. Credit to Steltzner, though as the night went on and I revisited it after dessert the alcohol was suddenly unmasked. The Napa zap! But too late -- I was fooled. To me this was the most demure and attractive nose of the bunch but it took me spiraling downhill from there. If I had it again, I wouldn't decant.

Steltzner: Napa, California, U.S.A. 15%.

Hillebrand Estates Glenlake Vineyards Showcase Niagara Peninsula 2000

Alcoholized and highly evolved in the glass, despite not decanting this bottle. This wine is oxidized and was rebottled for return.

This post mirrors what Joe already published over on Joe's Wine. But unlike Joe, I am not including my notes for the Niagara bottle (and I instead mentioned the Gaillard, even though it was not tasted blind). I'm taking the Niagara wine back. This is my decision. Joe wrote me that he "didn't find it to be something that needs returning," but he understood my feelings. The fact is I had tasted the Niagara wine earlier this year and wrote glowing notes on it here. But it showed up at our tasting showing seriously aged fruit and oxidation and this was merely a matter of weeks after purchase from the winery. How disappointing.

MY LESSONS LEARNED

But I think my real disappointment was that during our tasting's blind phase, I didn't guess correctly. I observed yet I let a favourable memory of the Niagara bottle and a distaste of American wine dictate my guesses. This was because I mistook the strength of oxidizing elements on the nose for the presence of high levels of alcohol. I was shocked to see this actually revealed as Niagara. It made prefect sense to the neutral bystander, and in hindsight. This wine was much older, and had my observations been interpreted correctly, I was there. But I was swayed despite -- perhaps paradoxically because of -- the fact that we were doing them blind.

Lesson 1: Blind tastings are best performed on bottles that you have not tasted before or you'll be tempted to outsmart your own blind observations with memory and personal response, which is quite disappointing because it defeats the whole purpose.

Or rather, in blind testings, it's best to forget the past. I think my tasting partner Joe had a firm handle on this aspect. He had tasted the Steltzner before. Experience is knowledge but it's synthesized knowledge -- be advised to leave out individual bottles experiences!

"No need to be disappointed," said Joe in the postmortem. "It shows that the blind worked, and you correctly separated the old world from the new." [It's true I did ID this and the other French wines correctly].

"The Canuck wine was a bit tired -- Cab Franc, probably from younger vines than all of the others, is not going to keep forever... note that the bottle to bottle variability probably increases over time. Your previous experience was eight months ago at the end of a wine's life -- perhaps not that much of a surprise they were quite different?" surmised Joe.

OTHER LESSON LEARNED

Lesson 2: Is it hard to keep track of wine consumption at a blind tasting while it is happening! I don't think I'll ever figure out a way to better keep track when there's so much set before me. Perhaps proper tasting glasses would help?

Lesson 3: Blind tastings with "table talk" can sway evaluation as much as "drinking the label" does in non-blind tastings. Joe and I had some table talk, but not much. We didn't discuss conclusions until the end. And besides, what little table talk there was had almost no effect since the wines were positioned blind as well as tasted blind. This prevented a shared order of wines between to the two of us so table talk comments could not be attributed to a particular wine and therefore sway tasting opinions.

Lesson 4: I did not assess colour in the tasting because I thought it would too easily reveal the wine, given the broad four-year gap in cuvée vintages. The lighting was also poor so I let Joe turn up the house lights while I put the final touches on dinner (see Joe's notes for proper scoring). But the fact is that the wines' colour didn't reveal much at all, no matter how hard I tried to read them.

Hallowe'en wine uncorked two months too early: Cave de Saumur Lieu-dit Les Vignoles 2004

Since I've been called up this weekend to taste in the big leagues with the Caveman, aka Bill Zacharkiw, newly installed Montreal Gazette wine columnist, I've decided it's time I do some red wine reviews and kick things up to high gear.

I'm not sure this post quite hits that gear. It's a tasting of polymerized spider gland secretion, with some Loire Cabernet wine mixed in.

Spiders? And caves? It's Hallowe'en all the sudden. If you're scratching your head at this point, check yesterday's post while I talk about Caveman Bill some more...

Bill writes The Caveman's Wine Blog, though between being the head sommelier at Relais-Château L'Eau à la Bouche and running Restaurant Fonduementale, it's his Gazette column that sees most of his wine writing these days.

Bill has so much knowledge of privately imported wine in Quebec, he's like his own version of the SAQ, the state-run agency in charge of selling all wine in the province.

Bill isn't fond of industrially produced international varietals; he's keen on organic, biodynamic wines from independent producers who have a real sense of place. My buddy Brooklynguy will especially appreciate his recent take on Beaujolais:

"I am a fanatic for Fleurie, and have yet to find one at the SAQ that cuts it. In the coming months, the Morgon and Fleurie from Domaine Vissoux will be available at the SAQ, and a couple of others."

Needless to say, I'm fully chuffed to meet this guy. And while Bill is an amazing supporter of fine whites and says that when given the chance he would choose to spend more money on a bottle of white wine rather than red, I wanted to get out of my summer rut of white wine reviews with this post.

The fact is that I haven't made any substantial tasting notes on red wine since the months of April and May when I was preparing to host WBW 33, and since then I haven't done much of anything.

Well, my intent was good but my execution was not. As I displayed yesterday, my tasting notes for today's bottle are potentially affected by tainted wine glasses that had near-invisible layers of cobweb across the top of the bowl.

I won't be surprised if I am turfed out of the Caveman tasting, however for sake of the exercise, I'm still publishing my notes in full! So here they are...

Cave de Saumur Lieu-dit Les Vignoles Saumur Champigny 2004

VENDOR'S PROFILE

Price: $15.95
Vintages #: 662585 (Joe will like to know that this is another Ontario-bought bottle)
Sugar Content: D (Who measures sugar content but the LCBO?)
Release Date: Mar 31, 2007

Description: Created in 2002, Alliance Loire includes seven Loire valley cooperatives like Cave de Saumur and comprise 700 vignerons and 3,600 hectares of vines. Of particular interest is their range of wines called Lieu-dit. Each wine in this category comes from a single vineyard, the characteristics of which are noted on the bottle label. Lieu-dit Les Vignoles Saumur Champigny, a red made from Cabernet Franc, is a particularly good example. [Paraphased excerpt from Jacqueline Friedrich's The Wines of France, 2006]

MY TASTING NOTES

Eyes: This unfiltered wine throws lots of sediment as my photo of the empty bottle demonstrates. The wine colour is a luscious dark ruby to purple.

Nose: An interesting animal nose (perhaps due to the spider) with plenty of grenadine. Gravelly tannins, vegetal green pepper profile typical to this genre.

Mouth: Leafy and dry. Nice weight on the palate though not complex. A surprising meatiness and fattiness makes this wine edgier than most Cabernet Franc I've tasted from Saumur.

Stomach: This is a really drying red dinner wine with a neat finish, perfect as a table wine. I had it with leg of lamb and vegetable couscous.

Online: www.vino2vino.com/wine/36871
On the bottle label: "Le terroir de calcaire sableux lui apporte rondeur et richesse."

St-Cyr en Bourg, Maine & Loire, France. 13%.

Anything But Sangiovese: Tomato sauce + a couple of savoury (and non-Italian) reds

Nothing against Chianti. I love those lusty Sangiovese-based wines, especially when it complements rich Italian sauces or other wonderful regional dishes that are centred around the tomato. It's just that no one ever seems to think it's desirable to serve other wines with tomato sauces. I'm here to say you can. In fact, sometimes you should.

Especially when you've got local superfresh tomatoes to work with -- like now, in September. Then you get the urge to make a cruda-inspired tomato sauce. Cruda style means minimal oil gets integrated into your farm-fresh vegetables. The veg cooks in its own natural juices and intensifies itself while it cooks (see my recipe at bottom). Naturally, cruda makes me think of a lighter-bodied, less opulent wine than the Sangiovese that a fine Chianti often features. Also, I think cruda sauces are less acidic than others. To be enjoyable, wine always has to have at least as much acid as your food. Since the acid in the sauce is going down, you can also scale down the acid content and choose a less acidic wine. Being low in acid is not something Chiantis are known for.

So I dropped the Chianti Classico and instead served my fresh tomato sauce with a Cabernet Franc varietal from Saumur-Champigny and the regional Dão grapes of Portugal's Casa de Santar, which in 2003 produced a surprisingly sauve and smooth cuvée, made to order for a tomato sauce topped on a fresh white fish like tilapia. In the end, that's exactly how I decided to serve my sauce.

THAT'S ITALIAN?

Here's how my homemade tomato sauce paired up with these two decidedly un-Italian wines. The 2003 Domaine du Ruault from the Loire was light but it still had very full flavour profile. I opened it first, so we drank it next to the appetizer course: homegrown orange cherry tomatoes (yes, more tomatoes!) on a garden salad. The Cabernet Franc lended the starter notes of licorice with vegetal and herbal underpinnings. It had some sharp edges, which made this wine coarser than the Chiantis I often drink. Nevertheless, with its tannic punch, it went on to measure up against the tomato sauce.

It was not long at that point until we opened the Dão. Casa de Santar Tinto 2003 had more body and was welcome as we continued on our main course. This Portuguese wine harmonized with the sauce well, supplying rounder fruit than the first and a lot more spice too. To me, this wine approximated a Chianti in an interesting way. Nice acidity. Definitely showing the rustic charm of Portugal yet conveying an Italian savouriness and an earthiness. Stewed prune notes harmonized with the tomato-bathed fish, which I served with a side of leeks and long-grain rice medley.

These two wines were prezzies from Ontario. The LCBO stocks them both and you cannot get either one in Quebec. Neither is in the general repertory section of the LCBO so you may need to research their availability a bit before you come across one. Locate Casa de Santar Tinto 2003 or Domaine du Ruault Saumur-Champigny 2003 before they sell out.

If you are successful, why not try them, especially the Dão, with my sauce. Here's the recipe, as promised.

Fresh tomato sauce

a half dozen large locally-grown tomatoes, the more bumps and surface blemishes the better
several sprigs of fresh garden basil, roughly chopped
an onion, in fine dice
three bay leaves
one tablespoon olive oil
sea salt and fresh pepper to taste
capers (optional)
chopped kalamata olives (optional)

Fill a very large sauce pan, deep pot or dutch oven two-thirds full with salted water and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and immediately blanch the tomatoes: Over a period of no longer than thirty seconds, submerge the tomatoes one-by-one and then fish each back out again.

Set aside the tomatoes, green stem side down while you discard the water from your pot and return it to the stove. Add the tablespoon of olive oil to the pot and then begin to soften the diced onion. Sprinkle with some salt and pepper. Reduce temperature further and stir if onions start to brown.

Using a sharp blade, score a small cross at the blossom dimple. Peel back the skin at each of the four corners you've created (While your tomatoes will already be in position to do this easily, you will find they are not too hot when handled carefully -- many cookbooks instruct that a bowl of ice cubes and water are necessary but I do not do this. As a result, you may get a bit more of the tomatoes on your fingers in peeling off the skins. This is because the internal cooking of the tomato was not halted by dunking it in cold water; however maintaining internal tomato structure is not important since we're making a sauce. And you'll love licking the delicious -- magenta, you'll notice -- and suddenly heightened-in-colour tomato goo off your fingers once you're done peeling anyway.)

Over a bowl or the pot, halve or quarter your peeled tomatoes so that they are easier to hold. Then pick up and thinly slice each tomato directly into the pot. Add any juices you've accumulated in your bowl to the pot. Bring it to a low boil and simmer for about 30 minutes.

After simmering the sauce, taste it to see how naturally sweet it is. Add the chopped basil, along with salt and pepper to taste. Optionally, add capers or kalamata olives to inject some savour and enhance the complexity of your sauce. Stir. (At this point, many cooks taste the sauce and then add more oil or red wine vinegar to give greater balance to a sweet sauce. Since fresh tomatoes we used give out more liquid -- and since we have plainly refused to waste the jelly, seeds and ribs that are often scooped out from the tomato and discarded...why? -- adding more liquid ingredients at this stage will create the need for further reduction and dull the fresh basil flavour. As a result, I opt here for olives, instead of olive oil and capers instead of wine vinegar.)

Pour the sauce atop pasta, fish filets (tilapia, halibut, cod, wall-eye, etc), or grilled eggplant slices and serve.

QUICK FIX: If ever the sauce is still too liquid.
Sometimes presentation is important to the dish you are serving your tomato sauce with. Sometimes you just can't wait for thickened sauce. Don't use a slotted spoon to let the runny juices behind. Strain the entire pot through a fine mesh. Then use the remaining bright rust-coloured juice instead of a water bath to cook your fish filets. Or reserve it for boiling pasta on another night when don't feel like making a sauce but still would like a treat.

Goodbye to a great wine (and hello to another): René-Noël Legrand Les Terrages 2001 (and Renzo Masi Erta e China 2003)

René-Noël Legrand makes a Cabernet in the Loire Valley called Les Terrages. If you can find it, especially the 2001 or 2002 vintages, don't hesitate to purchase as many bottles as you can. If you like to eat when you drink wine you are guaranteed to fall in love with it.

I first fell under its spell over a year ago. Now all I've got is a memory and this post since I now have no bottles left. At one point, I stocked more of this wine that any other. I once rode a bus 75 minutes each way to haul away nine bottles of the stuff from distant liquor outposts. I was likely listening to PJ Harvey while doing it.

After five years, the René-Noël Legrand Saumur-Champigny Les Terrages 2001 is beginning to reveal hints of earth and wet slate that I didn't pick up before. In fact, in 2006, this bottle is showing a perfect balance between what I call fruit and 'shrooms.

It has a violet nose which comes across on the palate as well. The wine is a classic expression of Cabernet Franc: slightly vegetal but spicy, making it less austere than a comparable Bordeaux interpretation.

Locally, this wine has disappeared. For a while only the hotter and less appealing 2003 vintage remained. Presently nothing at all is available from René-Noël Legrand at the SAQ. Which is too bad because I think it is a strong candidate for most food-friendly wine that I've ever had.

Varrains, France. 12.5%

TASTY MORSELS

Don't go starving when you can't find a wonderful bistro-designed wine like Les Terrages. Go for the Renzo Masi Erta e China, which in its 2003 version is a stunningly full-bodied Tuscan red. Like the above hard-to-find wine, this Sangiovese-Cabernet Sauvignon blend is not available in Ontario or Quebec. But you can taste this private import by the glass or by the bottle at Brunoise. That's what we did last night during a fantastic evening of food and wine surprises.

I have not been a fan of The New York Times's Frank Bruni since he glorified the drive-thru window on his blog, so I was happy to find out that Brunoise does not mean possessing Frank Bruni qualities. Rather the term is a method of food preparation, usually for soups, involving diced carrots, celery and sometimes zucchini.

And it's a really great name for this restaurant since, like its culinary namesake, Brunoise seasons its food with other food. What I mean is that instead of the usual herbs and spices (the only herb I identified over four courses was a smattering of chives in the amuse-gueules), you get highly flavoured and brilliantly prepared savoury bits: fruit, nuts, cheese, vegetable purées and reductions, all knowingly integrated into each dish. This amplifies the mostly French fare in a really nice way. Check out their menu.

It's not quite Asian but Brunoise style certainly packs a lot of umami.