Sherry Followup From A Fellow Tippler

Apropos of our recent sherry tasting, Humpday Tippler Craig passes along this field report . . .

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After indulging in seven sherries at the Humpday Tipplers club last week, I was inspired to break out a bottle of special sherry I had been saving — Alvear Fino Montilla:

I bought it a few months ago at Astor Wine after finally spending some time in their extensive sherry section. In Granada earlier this year we tasted a lot of sherries, but we were too busy enjoying the free tapas to take notes or pay too close attention to the details of the nose, taste, etc. It tasted good and went great with food, so that’s all we needed to know. Plus, at 1.20 Euro a glass it’s easy to get a little drunkypants, so who has time to keep track of how it feels on your palate? Here’s some tapas of tiny omelets with a couple of glasses of sherry at Bodegas Espadafor in Granada:

But after tasting the whole range of sherries from Fino to Amontillado to Oloroso at the Humpday survey, my palate is much more tuned in to the subtleties of this excellent drink. The Alvear Fino Montilla from Astor was crisp and extremely dry like most Finos with a very quick finish. It had a fruity aroma with a hint of funkiness. It was a little different than anything we tried with the club, it but still had that distinctive Fino essence. And as an aperitif, it was perfect with a few bites of Marcona almonds, olives, and cheese.

So I’m officially sold on sherry. From now on our bar will always be stocked with a bottle of top quality sherry at all times. You never know when that tapas craving will hit.

–CN

Humpday Sherry

Only vaguely familiar with Harvey’s Bristol Cream, I was skeptical of how our sherry tasting would turn out. My interest was piqued when Jen said that it was a wine that had a lot of enthusiastic fans and that restaurants have been adding sherry to wine lists, but I can’t say I was completely converted by the end of the evening. I probably had some preconceptions that it would all taste like raisins, but only one really had a raisin-y quality — the Lustau Pedro Ximénez, which was the sweetest sherry we tried. This Humpday definitely changed my general perception of sherry, so it was successful in that respect.

To me, tasting sherry is different than tasting wine. First off, swirling it in the glass doesn’t seem to do much beyond releasing the extra alcohol in the wine — after all, this is basically fortified hooch. In that sense it seemed like tasting spirits to me — you don’t swirl tequila because you’ll just get a big whiff of alcohol. The tasting part was strange, too — for me, each of the lighter sherries had a big almost grappa-like quality to them, followed by a finish of nuttiness and in one case (the Alvear Asuncion Oloroso Sherry) a distinct maple taste. It was fascinating, but so different than most wine, which to me tastes more balanced from beginning to end. Some of the sherries seemed to “settle down” on subsequent days, losing some of the grappa taste.

I spent a lot of time on the food, hoping that we’d get it right — sherry seemed like it would need more thought than, say, a steak and Cabernet required. The pairings were definitely interesting, and some of it was really good (not my doing — I just tried to follow different recommendations), but I still can’t see ordering a sherry with a main course. I’d of course try some more sherries — maybe we just didn’t get the right ones for me.

Humpday Cabernet Franc

The Cabernet Franc Humpday Tipple is up. As fans of New York wines — both in the Finger Lakes and on Long Island, we were looking forward to this Tipple and sorry to say, we had some disappointment. Jen writes: “Why were we less than enthusiastic? Are we just barbarians, or was there really something missing?”

After initially being really underwhelmed by Cabernet Franc, over the years we’ve noticed more and more good examples of the varietal. Jen, Michael and I went to WD-50 a few years ago and enjoyed a Finger Lakes Cabernet Franc from Miles Wine Cellars, which we were familiar with, having visited there in 2006. This past March we tried several really good Cabernet Francs from Napa — Trespass Vineyards stands out as one of the best I’ve ever tasted. It’s a cool wine when it’s done well.

When Cabernet Franc is not done well, however, it is kind of gross. One of the earliest lessons I learned about viticulture came in 2005 when we first visited Long Island and tried many examples of Cabernet Franc. Place after place we kept noticing this bell pepper taste (and sometimes a rubbery taste). I innocently kept saying, “oh, it tastes like bell pepper!” and it wasn’t until later that we learned that the taste of bell pepper comes out when grapes are underripe — usually the sign of a rainy growing season. We left Long Island thinking we didn’t like Cabernet Franc, then we tasted the good ones in the Finger Lakes and then Napa — since then it’s been a grape we’ve sought out.

I was definitely looking forward to trying the French Cabernet Francs and I have to say that I was really disappointed in the “thinness” (as Jen writes) of the Chinon. Elsewhere, the Schneider Cabernet Franc from Long Island just reeked of rubber. The one fantastic wine we tried was the Anjou Pur Breton Cousin-Leduc 2006 from the Loire Valley in France — the normally quiet clerk at Astor got really excited when I asked where to find this bottle and it was as advertised — really wonderful stuff (the “naturalness” of the wine is great, too).

Now I should add, to be fair, that some of these wines tasted a lot better the next day. Sometimes red wine leftovers don’t taste real great the next day, but some of the wines that didn’t taste real great on Humpday actually tasted OK on Thursday and Friday. Not sure why this would be, but I’m passing it along.

Until next time . . .

And Now A Word About Beekeeping . . .

Unlike the aforementioned falcon, the bee has no role to play in vineyard management. You see beehives in vineyards simply because people like honey and vineyards are a fine place for bees to make it. It makes sense when you consider that good honey and good wine both owe a lot to terroir.

This video I took during Cakebread Cellars‘ American Harvest Workshop takes you inside a hive on their Suscol Springs Ranch that belongs to Helene and Spencer Marshall of Marshall’s Farm Natural Honey. Fast forward to the five-minute mark if you just want to see what the queen bee looks like up close, but if you do watch the whole thing, notice that while Spencer takes apart the hive and bees begin flying around, Helene remains calmly uncovered. I went full body armor, pulling my hand out of a glove only to sample the honey straight from the comb, which was floral and herbaceous and delicious enough to make me risk a stinger.

Harvest — It’s That Time Of Year . . .

. . . when thieves steal grapes straight off the vines:

Thieves using a harvesting machine have stolen the entire crop of a Languedoc-Roussillon vineyard.

Grower Roland Cavaille his vineyards in Villeneuve-les-Beziers were targetted on Sunday night. Thieves took advantage of a full moon, and used a harvesting machine to steal 30 tonnes of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.

You might be wondering, as I was, how one steals an entire vineyard, but the folks at Château Bauduc in the Bordeaux region say that it’s not as difficult as you would think:

One feature of so many Châteaux, which most wine lovers are unaware of, is just how spread out the parcels can be. Although some Châteaux, like the 33 hectares of Troplong Mondot in St-Emilion, have vines that surround the Château as a single entity, this is surprisingly unusual. A few of the great Cru Classés of the Médoc have as many as 40 to 50 different plots, many of which are quite a trek from the Château itself.

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With a small amount of local knowledge, it wouldn’t be tricky to steal grapes under cover of darkness.

The sight and sound of harvesting machines, with tractors and trailers in tow, is very common right now. Around St-Emilion today, for example, I saw at least 20 machines in operation.

And it’s not just this one story — thieves also hit a Washington vineyard recently:

Sometime between Sept. 15 and Monday, someone slipped into Grand Reve Vineyard near Col Solare and took about 1.25 tons of Mourvedre, valued at about $4,000. Benton County sheriff’s officials have no suspects.

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It’s not the first time grapes have been stolen on Red Mountain. [Grand Reve vineyard manager and partner Ryan] Johnson, who also manages the world-renowned Ciel du Cheval vineyard across from Kiona Vineyards Winery on Sunset Road, remembers in 2001 when someone went into a Cabernet Sauvignon block and stole several hundred pounds of grapes.

Johnson’s operation is high profile, literally and figuratively. His vineyard is just above iconic Col Solare and is the highest on Red Mountain, making the vineyard easily visible from Interstate 82. His operation also has received a lot of press from wine publications. This vineyard was planted in 2008.

“It’s a bit isolated up there, especially when Col Solare is closed,” he said. “If I was going to be a jerk, I’d steal from Ciel du Cheval or Klipsun, but you’d be more likely to get caught. There are not a lot of lights up by Grand Reve.”

If the thieves came in the middle of the night, they would have had to use five-gallon buckets pick the grapes, then dump them into a pickup, which a ton of grapes likely would fill. Something like that would take more than an hour, he figured. Johnson said whoever stole that amount of grapes likely is making a commercial wine “or a whole lot of garage wine.”