Blanc de Noir

Here’s something from the dark corner of the wine cellar, Blanc de Noir.  What the hell kind of grape is that?  Not a variety of grape.  It means white from black and refers to using dark grapes to produce white wine.  Most of the time you see it on the labels of sparkling wines, many notably from the Champagne region of France.

But there are also lots of still wines that feature Blanc de Noir.  In Germany, much of the time the B de N’s come from the Spätburgunder grape, the German word for Pinot Noir.  How in the living swamp of Mesopotamia does Pinot Noir get translated to Spätburgunder?  You’re about to find out.  Spätburgunder means late Burgundy and refers to the first vines of Pinot planted in Germany coming from Burgundy.  Also, Pinot matures late.

But, lots of other dark grapes can do the job.  In this case, my favorite German weingut (wine grower and seller) Karl Dennhardt, used Cabernet Sauvignon and Lemberger for his 2010 Blanc de Noir.  Pretty much everyone is familiar with Cab, but Lemberger? 

Although not widely known by wine swilling Americans, Lemberger vineyards stretch from Austria to Hungary to Germany.  It’s also grown in Washington State.  It’s a late maturing, dark grape, usually sturdy and rich in tannins, but there is also a softer side to Lemberger and that’s what Dennhardt has tapped into.

But, let’s back up a sec.  Black grapes, white wine?  How does that happen?  Most grape juice is white, but when you squeeze the grapes and leave the juice to soak in the skins, gradually the juice turns dark, absorbing not only the color, but also the tannin.  So, guess what?  If you want a white wine from dark grapes, you juice the grapes and separate the juice from the skins immediately.

In the case of Karl Dennhardt’s Blanc de Noir, you end up with an amazingly sturdy and flavorful dry white wine.  A fragrant, almost yeasty nose kicks in, and your first sip offers notes of pear and plum.  When I say notes, I don’t mean the whole damn song.  Slow sip this dry white a moment and let the nectar float to the back of the throat.  You’ll see what I mean.  It’s full, yet crisp, and lacks that heavily acidic finish you find with many dry whites.

A note on temperature.  Lots of folks think if a white doesn’t have frost on the bottle it’s not cold enough.  Don’t believe it.  Try it cool, but not cold, somewhere north of 60 ºF.  If you don’t like it immediately, give your taste buds a little more time to adjust.  You’ll start to pick up flavors you didn’t know were there.  Another hint:  If it’s not a sparkling wine and the bottle says ‘Serve Chilled,’ I advise you to put it back on the shelf.  There’s something the vintner doesn’t want you to know and he’s using the cold temp to cover up the wine’s shortcomings.

Blanc de Noir pairs perfectly with avocados, salads light on vinegar, shrimp cocktail, fish, ripe fruit, and light desserts.  Don’t despair if you can’t find the Dennhardt label.  It doesn’t travel far.  Find another German Blanc de Noir and enjoy the last days of summer, in a bottle.  You’re gonna be sorry if you didn’t buy a couple of bottles.  Nobody drinks just one.

Up A Lazy River - Down by the Mosel

View from Grevenburg Castle, looking down on the Mosel and Trauben-Traubach

All those half-timbered buildings

Part of the weinfest parade

Reisling Grapes

A touch of heaven, with a ray of sunshine

Lots of wonderful cities on the Mosel River, most of them with a nearby castle or two.  Nothing wrong with any of them.  Great towns.  Great fun.    But for my money, time, stomach, and wine-guzzling capacity, there’s no beating Bernkastel-Kues.  Bernkastel has it all.  Delightful restaurants, weinguts (wine sellers) galore, cobbled streets, and half-timbered buildings that date way back to when they really built half-timbered buildings. Which is to say, before developers built half-assed, half-timbered imitations in every new subdivision  in America, with names like Chop Down the Maples Estates, and Vermin Village.  Bernkastel also has a fabulous weinfest every autumn.  The streets bulge with people, their stomachs packed with wine and food from the hundreds of vendors lining the streets. Lively, ever smiling, good-tempered crowd.

But, the real star in the Mosel Valley is the river itself.  Meandering nicely from France’s Vosges Mountains, past Metz and onward, northeast, past Luxembourg on the left, and through Germany for 300 odd miles, it meets the Rhine at Koblentz.  The river has two names, Mosel (in German), and Moselle (in French). This river has more pleasing curves than Marilyn M in a mini-skirt. Graceful and ever flowing.   Cut stone castles rising from green caped crests.

Enough about the Mosel!  Enough about the half-timbered city that you’ll never ever forget for the rest of your life.  Let’s go after the good stuff and I mean wine!  Well, the truth is, everything is connected.  The Mosel Region (one of 13 German wine districts) has steep sides, in some areas approaching a 65 degree incline.   Wherever humanly possible, the valley walls are lined with battalions of grape vines.  The first time you get a glimpse, the great expanse of vineyards almost takes your breath away.  Not only do farmers and helpers drag large baskets of grapes down these slopes every year, but to combat erosion, they also haul baskets of soil up.  Sweaty work.  Calls for a drink.

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know there are two words I use repeatedly, Celts and Romans.  The Mosel Valley is no exception, but this time we’ll leave out the Celts. 

Wine has been grown here for thousands of years.  The sandy, loam, packed with shale, the blend of mild winters and mild summers, the perfect amount of sunshine, make this one of the premier wine growing regions on earth.  The heavy concentration of slate holds the heat and provides excellent drainage.  I’m told it also flavors the wine.

Take another look at the vineyards and you’ll notice they seem to be broken into little plots.  Nothing wrong with your eyes.  Most of them are family owned and have been for generations.   Several varieties of grape are grown, but the staple, by far, is Riesling, accounting for more than half the wine production. Only two percent of the wine from the Mosel is red; the rest is liquid sunshine.  It’s said experts can sip a Mosel wine and identify which part of the valley it came from.  Something about the shale in the soil and the flinty taste of the wine.  To tell the truth, except for rock salt, rocks pretty much taste the same to me.  But, the Mosel wine is delicious, no matter which patch of land it came from. 

So, a question I’m always asked:  Is all Mosel wine sweet?  No.  It runs the gamut from sugar sweet to as dry as any French or Italian offering. Generally, Mosel Wine has a little bit lower alcohol level, and I find it smooth, with little aftertaste.   Next question:  Must you actually run the gamut?  Only during gamut season. Other times of the year, you must run amuck.

If you’ve read German wine labels, you may be wondering, what words like Qualitätswein and Spätlese mean.  On the other hand, you may be too drunk to focus. Here’s a thumbnail sketch, but I warn you, this is not in any sense the end of the story.  Germany and the European Union have many, many specific rules for wines.

Kabinett - light wines from the main harvest, semi-sweet to dry.

Spätlese - means late harvest.  Späts are semi-sweet, generally sweeter and fruitier than Kabinett. There are also some full-bodied, dry Spätleses, labeled trocken..

Auslese - means select harvest, and is made from selected, very ripe bunches. Semi-sweet to sweet. There are some dry (trocken) ausleses. It’s versatile and can also be a sugar-sweet dessert wine.

Beerenauslese – Made from hand selected berries.  Very sweet dessert wine.

Eiswein (ice wine) – made from hand-selected grapes that have frozen on the vine.  Has the same level of sugar content as a Beerenauslese, but unlike Beerenauslese,  Eiswein uses grapes that are not affected by noble rot.

Trockenbeerenauslese - is made from berries shriveled on the vine, virtual raisins.

Here are a few more terms, that are essentially bureaucratic labels having to do with ensuring wines come from certain regions, with certain sugar and alcohol levels:

Deutscher Tafelwein – Table wine.

Deutscher Landwein – German country wine..

Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete (QbA)- quality wine from a specific region.

Prädikatswein – the highest quality of wine.

           Now, Mr, Miss, Mrs, or Ms Phelps, your assignment, if you should decide to do something really wonderful, is to visit the Mosel Valley and report back with a full belly and a smile on your face.  Go ahead!  Face the challenge like a man, a woman, or a non-gender specific.

Three Beauties From Alsace

The Three Beauties

A Vineyard Overlooking the medieval village Riquewihr

            Germany is known for it’s white wines and rightly so.  Some are glorious and the varieties endless.  However, just across the border in France, in a region known as Alsace, you’ll find white wines that will inhabit your dreams forever.  Hundreds of vintners it’s true.  But, by luck of a wrong turn and a wicked thirst, I found a special one in the small, but noble town of Rodern.  Metz Bleger bottles a large array of whites and Pinot Noirs, which are also superbly delicious, but today we’re going to meet three beautiful, not to mention luscious, whites: Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Gewurztraminer.

            The wine cellar isn’t always open.  You have to ring a buzzer at the entrance, and listen for a stout woman to bellow at you from a second story window of the attached house.  “One moment, Monsieur,” she calls with the delicately balanced tones of a framer’s wife who’s just dispatched three chickens with her bare hands.

            We wait and soon a heavy set man, younger than the woman and whom I assume to be her son, opens the heavy oak door of the wine cellar and welcomes us.  At first he seems a little edgy, but as we drink and drink some more and order case after case, he becomes more jovial and starts drinking himself.  Soon all of us are absolutely elated with each other’s company.  We croak in German, French, and English, managing to be misunderstood in the variety of languages.  We laugh, slap each other on the back, promising never to part. After slugging down a half dozen bottles of his wine, and with the assurance that we are all good friends for life, he gives us a wink and brings out bottles of the really good stuff.  We stand and applaud.  Champagne flows, before we go back to white.  The trunk of the car is beginning to sag like a nag’s back as the cases stack up.  No matter.  Back to the business of tasting.

            Besides falling in love with a couple of Pinot Noirs, I select a 2009 Riesling, with a particularly bright and cheerful nose and a medium dry body.  Rieslings can be all over the scale, from dry as a Texas draught to sweet as….. fill in your own suitable metaphor. 

            Another Alsatian delight is the Pinot Gris, this one also the Class of 2009. What, you may well ask, is the difference between Pinot Gris from France and the more familiar Pinot Grigio, a popular Italian wine.  Apparently, both wines are from the same variety of grape, but to my simple palate Pinot Gris is creamier and fruitier, probably because of the difference in soil and climate, or it may be because by this time I have a full bottle of it under my belt and am praying that this glorious day never end.  

At home, I drink both the Riesling and the Pinot Gris anytime, either for just sitting and sipping, or with light meals, or because I’m desperately lonely.

            The Gewurztraminer, (Gur-verts-tramer) (low and behold another graduate of 2009) on the other hand, calls for food.  A bit drier and with the bite of fresh herbs, it stands up well to fish, pork, or chicken dishes, if by this time anyone is still standing.

            The next time you head to your favorite wine shop, look for these three great varieties of white wines.  Mine cost about $9 a bottle.  Tell the wine steward the woman who chokes chickens sent you.