Many of you will doubtless already have heard of, or perhaps even sampled, Brunello di Montalcino. Made from 100% Sangiovese, this powerful red wine from southern Tuscany has made quite a name for itself, and, let’s be honest, it could hardly be considered obscure. But since this wine costs anywhere from $40 to $150 per bottle (or more), it’s certainly unusual for me to be drinking it.

So let’s have a little fun and talk about a more exclusive wine for a change. After all, it’s important to splurge every now and then, and a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino is a worthy splurge. I had the opportunity to try some Brunellos when I was invited to dinner by the engaging Alessandro Bindocci of Tenuta Il Poggione, along with the vivacious Liz Barrett of Terlato Wines, a major Chicago importer. The wines were delightful.

Although wine has been produced in the area around Montalcino for centuries, it wasn’t until 1888 that Ferruccio Biondi-Santi bottled a wine called Brunello di Montalcino. The success of this wine is often attributed to superior Sangiovese clones, but according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, “Climate is perhaps a more significant factor than specific clones in creating the characteristics of the wine.”

And indeed, Montalcino is blessed with excellent terroir. The World Atlas of Wine notes that “Montalcino has the double advantage of the warm, dry climate of the Tuscan coast with, in the best vineyards, the rockier, less fertile soils of the cooler Chianti Classico zone.” Around the time Biondi-Santi was bottling the first true Brunello, Lavinio Franceschi recognized the potential of the region and bought some land himself, founding what would become Il Poggione.

These Brunello pioneers established the tradition of long cask aging, a practice codified in 1960. The law at that time required a minimum of 42 months of cask aging, reduced to 36 months in 1990 and 24 months in 1998 (aging in cask and bottle must still total at least 48 months, however). Less concentrated fruit won’t stand up well to all that aging, however, hence the creation of the Rosso di Montalcino classification, which allows wine to be released after only one year. And, as the Atlas notes, this classification allows producers to use only the most age-worthy fruit in their Brunellos, keeping the quality level high.

This doesn’t mean that Rosso di Montalcino isn’t worth drinking. Bindocci shared the 2011 Il Poggione Rosso di Montalcino with me, and it tasted delicious, with ripe red fruit, powerful but carefully controlled black-pepper spice, and a surprisingly long finish. It was big, but by no means overblown. Sipped with some prosciutto, it felt mellower, and some vanilla notes became clearer. At $20 per bottle, it’s an excellent value, and a fine wine to bring to a dinner party.

The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia asserts that the best Brunellos require at least 10 years of maturation in the bottle, but the younger Brunellos we sampled next worked for me. We started with a 2008 Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino, which is aged three years (not just the minimum two) in large casks and one year in the bottle. The fruit comes from vines at least 20 years old. It had a tightly wound aroma which opened over time, big fruit, a beautiful structure and a finish that went on and on. I wrote in my notebook, “Can simply taste the quality.” This powerful wine costs about $65 a bottle — no small sum — but it lives up to the price tag.

And then there was the 2007 Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino “Vigna Paganelli” Riserva, which comes from the oldest vineyard on the Poggione estate, planted in 1964. According to Il Poggione’s website, the vines there are “used for sourcing the Sangiovese clones when new vineyards are planted.” This is a wine, therefore, with a significant pedigree, and it lived up to my considerable expectations. Aged four years in casks and one year in the bottle, this Brunello had an enticing aroma of vanilla and oak. It sounds crazy, but there was a note of cognac in the nose —  it was that big. The flavor started with juicy, cherry fruit, and it grew and grew. This wine was huge, with gorgeous structure, beefy tannins and a long, raisiny finish. I can see why some people are moved to spend $90 or so on a bottle.

I was particularly impressed that these wines weren’t simply fruit and oak bombs. Both Brunellos blossomed when paired with some lamb, their ample acids keeping things balanced and food-friendly.

It’s not often I have the pleasure of drinking wines in this price range — most of what I write about costs well under $20. I love these wines, and I love writing about them, but it is great fun to step out of my budget from time to time. When you taste wines like this, it’s easy to understand why they’re expensive, and it’s easy to taste why they’re worth it.

Note: These wines were provided to me free of charge, as was the dinner that accompanied them.

We tasted some other well-crafted wines at this dinner as well. Read about an unusual Pinot Grigio here, and about an exciting unoaked Barbera here. To learn more about the wines of Montalcino, have a look at Bindocci’s blog, the Montalcino Report.

While perusing the surprisingly extensive cocktail list of a hotel bar in southern Bavaria, an unusual Rusty Nail caught my eye. This classic cocktail traditionally combines Scotch whisky and Drambuie, but for this “Bavarian Rusty Nail,” the bartender utilized locally distilled single-malt whiskey and whiskey liqueur. (I use “whisky” to refer to the Scottish beverage, and “whiskey” if it’s distilled elsewhere.)

Now, I have encountered all manner of unusual German spirits, ranging from pleasant fruit brandies to noxious herbal concoctions originally intended to be medicinal. But a Bavarian single malt? I asked the bartender about it, and he had actually visited the Slyrs distillery, set in a small town on the Schliersee (Schlier Lake). This venture, conceived by Florian Stetter after a visit to Scotland’s Speyside region, began producing whiskey in earnest only recently, in 2007. But the spirit, aged in new American oak barrels, left the bartender impressed.

Intrigued, I ordered a glass of the Slyrs whiskey neat — I wanted to see what this spirit could do on its own. Because the distillery is so new, you won’t see any Slyrs whiskey older than three years, and indeed, the whiskey tasted young and brash. A light bronze color, it had a fresh, herbaceous nose with notes of vanilla. On the palate, herbs and racy spice quickly supplanted the initial caramel richness, leading into a surprisingly long finish of new wood.

Unfortunately, this fun, zesty whiskey has yet to cross the Atlantic — I couldn’t find anyone selling it in the United States. But should you happen to find yourself in Bavaria, don’t hesitate to slap on some Lederhosen and ask for a glass of Slyrs.

One of the best times of my life was the year I spent studying in Freiburg, Germany’s “sunniest” city, according to the slogan. I drank a lot of wine there, and I must say little of it was any good. But then what can you expect for $4 a bottle?

It was thus with intrigue and delight that I received the news from the sommelier at Residenz Heinz Winkler that they had a 2011 Weingut Landmann Sauvignon Blanc from Freiburg by the glass. A German Sauvignon Blanc? From my own little Freiburg?

I’ve been seeing a surprising number of Sauvignon Blanc-based wines here in Germany on this trip. They’re becoming quite the fashion, according to one winemaker I spoke with, especially after the hot vintage of 2003. It also helps that German wine law now allows Sauvignon Blanc to receive a Qualitätswein classification.

Sunny Freiburg certainly came through with this Sauvignon Blanc. It had a soft, green aroma with some stone, soft fruit, and subtle but pointy acids. It wasn’t especially big, but it was focused and it held my interest from start to finish.

So many interesting things I’ve tasted so far, and I haven’t even made it to a wine region yet!

I’m winding my way through Bavaria at the moment, and what a lovely place! Mountains, forests, charming little towns… It’s idyllic.

And of course, I’ve already found all sorts of exciting things to drink. I’ll post postcards of my favorites whenever I get the chance. Here is Postcard #1:

Munich isn’t all about beer. At the Pfalzer Residenz Weinstube, a wine bar dedicated to the renowned Pfalz region, I sampled this memorable 2008 Erpolzheimer Kieselberg Grauburgunder (Pinot Grigio/Pinot Gris) Auslese, made by the Winzergenossenschaft Kallstadt. What a mouthful, both in terms of pronunciation and flavor.

This remarkable wine from Kallstadt (just north of Bad Dürkheim) had a rich gold color and an aroma of green apples and spicy pineapple. It tasted even better than it smelled, with rich, sweet fruit and a lush, caramelly texture, balanced by incredibly lively, gingery spice. Zow.

I asked the waiter if he’d sampled the wine. He replied, with some apprehension, that he had. “Ah good — it’s really delicious,” I exclaimed.

“Do you think so? It’s not really to my taste…”

Leave it to a German waiter to rain on my parade. Yes, I do think so. The wine is wonderful. Punkt.

Me and Alessandro Bindocci

If you discover that wine from a certain nearby region is generally not to your liking, you can take a number of courses of action. A normal oenophile would probably just drink wine from another region. A more obsessive/compulsive oenophile might doggedly keep trying wines from that region until she found one that agreed with her palate. But these solutions, in the end, are for amateurs.

If you’re a professional, like Alessandro Bindocci, you go to that region, rent a vineyard, and make the wine yourself.

Traditionally, wine made from Barbera, a respected variety from Italy’s Piemonte (Piedmont) region, did not see a lot of time in oak. In fact, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, it wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that “a small number of Barberas underwent a significant metamorphosis” as producers undertook barrel maturation. And originally, the Companion continues, the notion of aging Barbera in barriques (small casks holding approx. 59 gallons) was greeted with “local bewilderment.” But nowadays, many of the Barberas you’ll find are aged in barriques of new French oak.

According to The World Atlas of Wine, these barrique-aged Barberas “conform more closely to the modern red wine stereotype: big, bold, deep purple, and easy to appreciate in youth.” But if you like your red wine with food, acids are the most important thing. Bindocci finds many of these new Barberas over-oaked, with not enough acid to balance things out (a complaint commonly expressed about many California wines).

As a fourth-generation winemaker, Bindocci was uniquely positioned to change things. Under the Mazzoni label, he rents Piemonte vineyards and vinifies the wine himself in stainless steel. The wine is then transported to Montalcino’s Il Poggione winery, which his family has managed since the 19th century. There, it is bottled and bottle-aged in Il Poggione’s cellars.

It seems like a lot of trouble. I suspect I would have been satisfied to give up Barbera altogether and simply drink the local Brunello di Montalcino! But then Bindocci shared a glass of his 2009 Mazzoni Barbera with me, and I could understand his passion for it. It had a tightly wound, earthy aroma. I took a sip and was greeted by a burst of fruit, some controlled black-pepper spice and an almost raisiny finish. It had a velvety texture, and though it tasted rich, it was quite light on its feet (thanks to those important balancing acids). The Mazzoni tasted even bigger and fruitier paired with some roasted red peppers, capers and burrata. And sampled with some prosciutto, notes of iron came to the fore.

I wonder if Bindocci’s decision to age the wine in stainless steel instead of the now-ubiquitous oak once again caused “local bewilderment”? Cheers to him for having the courage to buck tradition.

When I think of a “Super Tuscan,” I think of Cabernet or Merlot (or, to be honest, a Superman-like winemaker clad in an Armani cape). But certainly not a white wine. The Super Tuscan phenomenon started with Sassicaia, a wine wholly outside the DOC classification system. It was made with Cabernet, not the typical Sangiovese, and the vines were planted near the coast, miles away from any DOC-recognized vineyards. Thus, Sassicaia had to be labeled as a lowly Vino da Tavola, along with the most basic Italian plonk, despite the fact that it was one of Tuscany’s best wines.

The classification system has since been rethought, and wineries working with “international” varieties such as Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah can now label their wines IGT (Indicazioni Geografiche Tipiche), which can at least indicate a region of origin, instead of simply “Italy.” Reds dominate this category of wine, but that may be changing, as I discovered over dinner earlier this week.

The engaging Alessandro Bindocci of Tenuta Il Poggione, along with the vivacious Liz Barrett of Terlato Wines, a major Chicago importer, invited me to dinner to try some of Il Poggione’s renowned Brunello di Montalcino. I was surprised and delighted when we started the evening not with a Brunello, but a Pinot Grigio.

I had never sampled, to my knowledge, a Tuscan Pinot Grigio — all the quality Italian Pinot Grigios I knew of came from the mountainous north, from Alto Adige or Friuli. According to The Oxford Companion to Wine, “Pinot Grigio is planted as far south as Emilia-Romagna,” the province on Tuscany’s northern border. A Tuscan Pinot Grigio varietal — a white Super Tuscan — is extremely unusual, and it had my Odd Bacchus antennae tingling.

The hand-harvested fruit for the 2011 Mazzoni Pinot Grigio comes from vineyards in Tuscany’s Maremma region, a formerly marshy and malarial strip along Italy’s west coast (described in more detail in this post). I wouldn’t have guessed this environment would be well-suited to Pinot Grigio, which I associate with cooler, high-altitude terroir, but that’s why I make a better blogger than winemaker. This Pinot Grigio tasted delicious.

Many of us associate Pinot Grigio with light, inoffensive and bland flavors; it’s a wine for a hot summer pool party or a beach picnic. But this golden-hued beauty had some oomph. After pressing, the juice sits for 24 hours on the skins, giving the wine additional body, followed by 25 days of cold fermentation, increasing the wine’s acidity. The craftsmanship is readily apparent in both the aroma and flavor.

The wine smelled fresh and lively, like a green whiff of spring. On the palate, it exhibited focused and controlled fruit, prickly acids, some aromatic qualities, and a surprisingly lush finish. It was light but complex, and a fine value for the price. Sampled with a white pizza topped with arugula and parmesan, the food-friendly acids kicked into high gear, and the wine became juicier and rounder. A delight.

White Super Tuscan wines may not have captured the public’s imagination just yet, but after tasting this Pinot Grigio, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the near future.

SUMMARY

2011 Mazzoni Pinot Grigio: Light, lively and complex, with food-friendly acids and unusually lush fruit. A very good value for the price, especially compared to the most famous mass-market Pinot Grigios.

Grade: A-

Find It: A number of Whole Foods stores carry the wine, or you can buy it online for $17 from Uncorked.com.

Note: The wines described in this post were provided free of charge, as was the dinner that accompanied them.

One of the eco-lodges where I stayed in Costa Rica veered much more towards “resort” than “lodge,” with a swim-up bar, wine bar and even a small sushi restaurant. I felt, I must admit, a little silly supping on sushi in the middle of Central America, but then I suppose it’s no more ridiculous in Costa Rica than it is in Chicago.

In any event, this sushi restaurant had two cases dispensing some surprisingly unusual wines by the glass, and I sampled several small pours along with my fish. The wines of Viña Chocalán turned out to be something of a revelation.

This winery dedicated to “sustainable and socially responsible” production methods is located in Chile’s famous Maipo Valley, near the town of Melipilla just south of the capital, Santiago. Phylloxera-free Maipo is well-known for its Cabernet, Chardonnay and, to a lesser extent, its Carménère. But the sushi restaurant’s wine case boasted some true Maipo oddballs: Viña Chocalán Gewürztraminer, Viognier and Riesling in the sushi restaurant’s wine case.

I was initially confused to see these three varieties coming from one winery — Viognier traditionally thrives in France’s warm Rhône Valley, far from much chillier Alsace and Germany, where Gewürztraminer and Riesling are happiest. But a closer inspection of the labels revealed that Viña Chocalán’s Riesling and Gewürztraminer come from San Antonio, not Maipo. San Antonio, which Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia calls “the fastest-rising new wine district in [the coastal viticultural] region,” is closer to the Pacific Ocean than Maipo, making it more susceptible to the cooling influence of the Humboldt Current.

None of these grape varieties is grown in any significant amount in Maipo or San Antonio. None of my reference books mentions any of them, and even the Viña Chocalán website omits Riesling and Gewürztraminer from its roster of wines. These are pioneer varietals, and if these examples are any indication, I’d say they have a serious future:

Viña Chocalán Gewürztraminer (San Antonio): I loved the sweet, floral aroma, which reminded me of jasmine and honey. On the palate, this wine started with some slightly watery fruit, but it tightened up into some white pepper spice and a finish of tart acids.

Viña Chocalán Viognier Reserve (Maipo): A fine example of Viognier — dry, tight, focused, minerally and floral at the end.

Viña Chocalán Riesling (San Antonio): This was the one that really blew me away. Its dry, tart and woodsy flavors totally took me by surprise. This isn’t a Riesling that will please everyone, but I found it racy, exciting and wonderfully unusual.

You may not see any of these specific wines in your local shop, but keep your eye out for Chilean varietals besides the usual Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet, Chardonnay and Carménère. Winemakers are engaging in some fascinating experiments down there, and you might just stumble across a real gem.

Fin del Mundo Pinot Noir in the Hotel Grano de Oro

Costa Rica isn’t exactly a major wine producer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find fascinating things to drink there. Restaurant wine lists tend to focus heavily on South American wines, as you might expect, but it wasn’t an unending sea of Malbec (Argentina’s most famous variety). Menu after menu included at least one Argentinean Pinot Noir, a notoriously fickle grape I associate with the Côte d’Or much more than the Pampas.

And there’s a reason for that — Argentinean Pinots can be quite difficult to come by in the U.S. I searched for Argentinean Pinot Noir on the website of Binny’s, one of the country’s largest wine stores, and I came up with just one solitary option (a 2011 Bodega NQN Finca La Papay for $12). I seemed I had some odd Pinot Noir on my hands, a prospect I found rather exciting. It’s Pinot Noir, after all, that elicits such passion in the film Sideways, and it’s Pinot Noir that is responsible for the greatest reds of Burgundy and Oregon. I had never sampled one from Argentina, however, and I couldn’t wait to see how this “capricious and extremely variably vine” (The Oxford Companion to Wine) would perform in that terroir.

According to the sources I consulted, Argentinean Pinot Noir has yet to fully develop. The Oxford Companion to Wine was dismissive, asserting that Pinot “has yet to find a suitable home in Argentina.” The World Atlas of Wine takes a more optimistic tone, however, noting that in Patagonia and Mendoza’s high-altitude vineyards, “some promising examples are beginning to emerge.” Although it didn’t mention Pinot specifically, The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia took a dim view of Argentina as a whole, chiding most of the country’s wineries for allowing excessively high yields and doing too little to “alter Argentina’s image as a bottomless vat.” Ouch.

I didn’t taste any particularly expensive Argentinean Pinot Noirs, but the ones I did sample ranged from simple and charming to quite exciting:

2011 Saurus Patagonia Pinot Noir: Patagonia is Argentina’s coolest wine region, making it most suitable to growing Pinot Noir. This wine comes from San Patricio del Chañar, a “new winemaking area,” according to the winery’s website, along the border with Chile. It had a very aromatic nose of red fruit, a beautifully creamy texture and prickly black-pepper spice, held in check with impressive focus and control.

2010 Bodega del Fin del Mundo Reserva Pinot Noir: Also produced in Patagonia, this winery’s Pinot Noir doesn’t seem to appear on its website, though it’s in Spanish, so what do I know? In any case, I liked its aroma of black cherries, its tightly wound red fruit, subtle white-pepper spice and earthy finish. A touch medicinal, but tasty nevertheless.

2011 Luigi Bosca Pinot Noir: This wine comes from 45-year-old vineyards in Mendoza, a warmer region to the north of Patagonia. It lacked the sharp focus of the Saurus, but I very much enjoyed its fresh, easy fruit and earthy finish. It was an ideal warm-weather wine, perfect for an al fresco dinner overlooking the rainforest.

You will likely have trouble finding one of these specific labels in your local wine shop, but should you run across an Argentinean Pinot Noir, I recommend giving it a try. It may not reach the heights of Burgundy, but it will likely be a perfectly tasty wine at a perfectly reasonable price.

Guapiriña

Olga, it turns out, isn’t the only one in Costa Rica making moonshine. In fact, in an effort to curb the production of homemade sugarcane liquor, also known as guaro, the Costa Rican government began manufacturing the stuff itself, according to Wikipedia. Now, bottles of Cacique guaro, produced by the Fabrica Nacional de Licores-Fanal, appear behind nearly every bar in the country.

Of course, I took the opportunity to try Cacique both in cocktails and straight up. Sipped neat, this clear spirit (30% alcohol) reminded some of my fellow tasters at the bar of a smooth vodka. I didn’t disagree, but to my Odd Bacchus mind, it resembled a good-quality soju (a Korean spirit distilled from rice or sweet potatoes). The Cacique had a bare hint of sweetness and fruit at the beginning, followed by some white pepper spice.

Because of its basic lack of flavor, Cacique (translated as “chief,” as in the head of a tribe) makes for very versatile cocktail ingredient. I sampled it in a number of different concoctions during my stay in Costa Rica, each one more delicious than the last.

At a swim-up bar — a ridiculously fun addition to any pool — I sampled a wonderfully refreshing Mojito made with Cacique, fresh limes and fresh mint. Another evening, lacking electricity in my accommodations, I decamped to the bar for a delicious “Guapiriña,” a Caipirinha which substituted Cacique for the usual cachaça (a Brazilian sugarcane-based spirit). The simplicity of fresh limes muddled with sugar and mixed with guaro was pure delight. And at the very fancy Grano de Oro Hotel in San Jose, I indulged in a Tico Sour, a light and perfectly balanced mix of Cacique shaken with lemon and egg white.

As a matter of fact, as I go through the list of cocktails I sipped while in Costa Rica, I can’t think of a single stinker. The cocktail menus may not include the most innovative concoctions, but the bartenders I met excelled at mixing the classics. Fresh ingredients were the norm, not the exception, which made coming back from a day of steamy jungle hiking all the sweeter.