Wines of the Wind Surf, with a Shipboard Tasting

An Adriatic cruise beleaguered by rain, however disappointing in many respects, is certainly fine for exploring your vessel’s wines and bars. Diane and I undertook a lot of such investigations during our soggy week aboard the MSY Wind Surf.
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The ship’s basic wine list leaned heavily on young wines, many of them from California or the Pacific Northwest (the company, Windstar, is American-owned). We nevertheless managed to find a few bottles pleasing to our more Europe-oriented palates – a good Fèvre Chablis, for instance, and a really elegant Batasiolo Barolo, as well as a nicely maturing Pouilly Fuissé – so there was no danger of our dying of dehydration.

Wind Surf’s dining rooms were staffed by several wine stewards: Eleonora, the ship’s young senior sommelier; Noel, who served us our first evening on board; and Jaerve, who poured for us our last and talked to us passionately about wine.
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Tom and Jearve

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One particularly grey afternoon Eleonora organized a tasting of some of Wind Surf’s higher-shelf bottles, which my vinous curiosity prompted me to try, even though I have happily abandoned most large-scale tastings.
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Eleonora

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This tasting was a totally different creature. Professional tastings tend to be like marathons; this one was more like a stroll in the park. Professional tastings will confront you with anywhere from 10 to 30 wines, chosen to show an audience of journalists, importers, and buyers the spectrum of a producer, a region, a variety, or a consortium; and meant to be sampled and spat more or less in silence.

Eleonora’s tasting was quite appropriately aimed for those of the ship’s clientele who were interested in wine but not necessarily very knowledgeable about it, and it consisted of only five wines chosen from among the most exotic or most interesting or most expensive of Wind Surf’s stock.
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This audience was exactly the kind of consumer we journalists, back in the day, used to call civilians, and who – we constantly had to remind ourselves – were the people we were writing for, not for each other, as was an ever-present temptation. (I have long believed that the reason so much wine writing becomes so recherché is because writers keep trying to impress each other rather than enlighten a consumer.)

Another major difference between this tasting and the ones I had grown accustomed to: no spitting. You were encouraged not just to taste the wines but to drink them: instead of an austere plate of dry crackers or bread slices, an attractive little tray of snacks accompanied each set of glasses. Very appropriate to the audience and the occasion, I thought, although a bit of a shock to me: What’s sauce for many geese isn’t sauce for every gander.
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The five wines formed a nicely mixed group, well chosen for showing the range available on shipboard: two whites and three reds, Pouilly Fumé and Vouvray, a Supertuscan, a Châteauneuf du Pape, and a Spanish Supertuscan type.
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The Pouilly Fumé, a 2021 Les Deux Cailloux by Fournier Père et Fils, opened the tasting. It smelled quite classically of grass and smoke, with a distinct sub-aroma of wet leaves. Those elements were not as emphatic in the mouth: The wine was smoother and rounder than its nose. A little taste of dried apple came up as it opened in the glass. I found this a pleasant enough wine, even though Sauvignon blanc is probably my least favorite of the French noble varieties.
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The Vouvray, a 2021 by Alban de Saint-Pré, had a fine earthy, chalky nose and showed good body and balance. It tasted a little sweet in the finish – a bit of dried apricot – but, just opened, it was clean and refreshing. Unfortunately, from my point of view, the longer it sat in the glass the sweeter it got, but it was one of the favorite wines for many other tasters. In the Loire, Chenin Blanc yields everything from superb dry dinner wines (such as Savennières) to incredibly age-worthy sweet dessert wines, so this was a fair representative of the breed and a good introduction to it for this audience.
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Then Eleonora moved to red wines, starting with 2016 Lucente, a Supertuscan created on one of Frescobaldi’s Montalcino estates, in what was originally a joint project with Robert Mondavi. This was a wine of deep color and deep aroma, the latter still very grapey – lots of Sangiovese – because of the wine’s youth. The Sangiovese was also evident on the palate, along with other grape flavors (turned out to be Merlot) and plenty of tannin to restrain Sangiovese’s abundant acidity. This was a winemaker’s wine, not a grape farmer’s, and still very young. The blend, by the way, was 60% Merlot and 40% Sangiovese, but the Sangiovese made a fight of it.

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Then came a 2019 Châteauneuf du Pape from Maison Castel. That is about ten years younger than I like to drink Châteauneuf, but this was a good specimen, more forward and ready than I’d expected. It showed a great earthy, underbrushy nose, and on the palate dark cherry/berry fruit. It finished dark as well, with earthy, black fruit flavors persisting nicely  Despite being so young that it was almost purple, it drank quite pleasantly.
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The final wine was the oldest of the group, a 2012 Campo Eliseo Toro: Toro is the denomination, Campo Eliseo the estate. This was, in effect, a Spanish version of a Supertuscan wine: 100% Tinto de Toro, a variety of Tempranillo (a grape that is in Spain traditionally blended with others in wines like Rioja), and evidently aged long in abundant new oak. The palate was dominated by dark, dried cherry flavors and by forceful acidity and tannins. It’s a wine that needs beef and old cheeses. I thought it should have been showing better for its ten years of aging, but then I am not enamored of what all that wood does to and for a wine.
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This tasting was a very interesting experience for me. I was particularly curious to hear people’s reactions to the individual wines and to hear the questions they asked – some very shrewd, some quite naïve. As a wine journalist, I know how easy it is to get caught up with the shrewd questions and to forget that the naïve ones are just as worthy, and certainly more needing, of attention. Eleonora did a nice job of attending to both, with respect and enthusiasm. This was for Diane and me a very pleasant way to spend a rainy afternoon at sea.

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In Praise of White Châteauneuf

In my not very often very humble opinion, Châteauneuf du Pape blanc is one of the most consistently under-rated and under-celebrated wines in the whole often-over-rated French wine pantheon. At its least, white Châteauneuf makes an unusual, gutsy glassful of flavors uncommon in white wines. At its best, it can offer a remarkable experience of depth and complexity that, to my mind and palate, are far more profound than that provided by most Chardonnay-based wines.

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I’m not trying to be polemical here, I just call them as I see them. I really love these wines, and I really love many fine white Burgundies as well, but it seems to me that a lot of reflex genuflection before hallowed Burgundian idols has replaced actually tasting the wines and making your own comparisons. Be honest with yourself: when was the last time you – thoughtfully – drank a Châteauneuf du Pape blanc?  One with ten or more years of cellaring?  I’m willing to bet that for most readers of this post, and for most wine lovers generally, the answer is something on the order of “Gosh, I can’t remember.”

What prompted this outburst was a gorgeous bottle of Vieux Télégraphe blanc 2016 that Diane and I and two good friends recently enjoyed. It accompanied – flawlessly – a New Orleanian sausage and oyster gumbo, a tricky dish of complex flavors and assertive spicing that the Châteauneuf seemed to love as if it were a long-lost friend. The wine adapted to every nuance of the gumbo without losing any of its own strong character, without sacrificing any of its depth and complexity. We all loved it, and I wish I had more of it: That, alas, was my last bottle. I had only had a few, and I drank them all too soon: Lovely as they were, they had years of development still in front of them.

That is another characteristic of these great wines:  They are enjoyable and distinctive at almost any age. In their youth, multiple fresh fruit flavors will dominate the palate. As they age, those flavors will darken and deepen, surrendering some freshness and acquiring a battery of mature flavors, meaty, leathery, mushroomy flavors that will open more and more in the glass and alter with the food that accompanies them.

Make no mistake: at any age, white Châteauneuf is a food wine par excellence. It will match with anything from a simply grilled fish – I think it’s terrific with boned shad – to a spicy mélange like our gumbo to any imaginable white meat presentation, from Wiener schnitzel to poulet à l’ancienne and beyond. For the life of me, I can’t understand why a wine this versatile and enjoyable isn’t better known and more popular. Selfishly, I’m also happy about that: There isn’t a lot of white Châteauneuf, and it’s pricey enough already. Not Burgundy pricey, nor at all priced above the quality it delivers, but pricey enough that I don’t drink it every day – alas.

Almost every Châteauneuf estate of any merit produces a small quantity of white wine, and because of the large variety of grapes permitted by the AOC regulations, there can be many intriguing differences among them. Trying a few of them is interesting in itself, as well as is measuring their differing responses to the foods you pair with them. The principal white grape varieties used are Viognier, Marsanne, Roussanne, Clairette, Grenache blanc, Bourboulenc, and Counoise. Despite the prestige of Viognier, the most frequently used grapes are Roussanne and Marsanne, probably followed by Grenache blanc. All the growers have their own preferred blend, usually – not surprisingly – reflecting what grows most successfully in their own fields. It makes for a richly various range of wines that are always fun to explore.
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Just for the record: some of my favorite Châteauneuf du Pape whites come from Beaucastel, Mont Olivet, Mont Redon, La Nerthe, and of course my lovely Vieux Télégraphe.

 

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A Pot of Beans with the Popes

When, for a recent and rare-during-Covid dinner with friends, Diane cooked up a Rabelaisian cassoulet out of Julia Child, I decided the occasion required some good southern French wines. We’ve been drinking a preponderance of Italian wines lately, and a little change of pace was in order. The austerity of Bordeaux seemed to me just wrong for the dish, as did the delicacy of Burgundy. The Rhône definitely provided the place to go.

Châteauneuf du Pape was my wine of choice, supplemented by a Cornas, a wine from a little further up the Rhône than Avignon, city of the “new château” of the 14th Century popes. To start things off, alongside a light celery, date, and almond salad, I decided to open the drinking with a white Châteauneuf, a wine of real character that I’ve always enjoyed, but that I find few people are familiar with. That unfamiliarity, from my point of view, is a real advantage, because I love to surprise my friends with a wine new to them. In this case, that gambit really paid off: Our 2015 Domaine de Beaurenard Châteauneuf du Pape blanc may well have been the wine of the evening.
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This 32-hectare, 7th-generation estate cultivates all 13 of the traditional Châteauneuf grape varieties. It is biodynamically certified, and the vines average about 45 years of age. The white is blended from Clairette, Rousanne, Bourboulenc, Grenache blanc, Picardan, and Picpoul, none of which varieties are very common outside the Rhône valley, and several of which have become rarities even within the Châteauneuf zone.

This five-year-old showed remarkable composure and complexity, having already knit its grapes together to create a rich, generous white wine that matched deliciously with everything we tasted it with. (Several of us saved some to taste alongside the cassoulet and cheese courses, where it continued to show very well indeed.) I’m partial to older white Châteauneuf, and I would guess that this wine has years, perhaps decades, of life in front of it. I hope I do too, because I’d really like to taste it again somewhere down the line.

Then we moved on to the main course. Cassoulet can be a tricky dish to match a wine with. From one point of view, it’s nothing more than a gussied up pot of pork and beans. From another, it’s one of the elaborate glories of French cuisine. And depending on the ingredient choices you make and the cooking techniques you use, the final dish can range anywhere from rustic heavy to robust elegant. It’s never a lightweight, but it isn’t necessarily ponderous either.

Thus my choice of Rhône red wines, which in themselves span the same range. Actually, Châteauneuf du Pape by itself covers that spectrum, with the number of grape varieties grown in the zone, and the many different wine styles pursued by its many makers.

Diane’s cassoulet was what I would call succulent mid-range: Julia Child’s classic technique undergirding a mélange of lamb, duck, pork, smoked sausage, and old-fashionedly flavorful marrow beans.
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A dish like that needs wines that won’t back down but are complex enough and giving enough to match nuances with each varied mouthful of the food. So the legacy of the popes’ French exile came into play to accompany a dish that I’m sure those old popes and all their attendant courtiers would have happily devoured.

We modulated to our red Châteauneuf by way of a lovely Cornas, a 2010 Domaine de Saint Pierre from Jaboulet. This comes from an almost five-hectare site at the highest point of the Cornas appellation, which Jaboulet has owned since 1993. The vines are 30 to 40 years old, and the wine is 100% Syrah, a monovarietal wine that in my mind set up a nice contrast with the multi-faceted blend of Châteauneuf.
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Contrary to this vintage’s reputation when first bottled – several critics referred to the 2010 as “savage” or “wild” – this one was positively civilized. Mouth-filling, to be sure, but smooth and gentle on the palate, with its typical Syrah pepperiness nicely balanced with sweeter wild cherry flavors. We may have drunk this bottle a bit young, but we enjoyed it thoroughly, and it set our palates up for the more complex wine to follow.

That was a 2005 Châteauneuf du Pape Vieilles Vignes – red, of course – from Domaine La Millière.
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This estate lies in the northern part of the Châteauneuf zone and has been for some years certified biodynamic. The cellar works on very traditional lines, with long barrel rest for its Châteauneufs, which are blended from Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, Cinsault, and Counoise. The house’s stylistic emphasis is on finesse and longevity, both of which our bottle achieved. In fact, it may have a little overachieved: With that rich cassoulet, it seemed a little lacking in power – a delicious wine, but a touch overshadowed by the food, maybe even a bit of an anti-climax, following the impressive white Châteauneuf and the delightful Cornas. But it still showed plenty of freshness and depth, and it perked up considerably when confronted with an array of cheeses.

Those pre-Renaissance popes may not have been models of piety, but they certainly had a good eye for a vineyard.

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