April Wines, Poles Apart.
Giles MacDonogh
April certainly lived up to its reputation for being the ‘cruellest month’ this year. We were endlessly putting the heating back on (and at a price!), or lighting log fires, while the rain pummelled the pavements outside, but there were plenty of tastings to distract me at least,…Such as an interesting evening of Polish wine and food at their stately embassy in Portland Place. The Polish city of Zielona Góra in Silesia has produced wine for centuries, particularly during the time it was Prussian Grünberg. It has to be said that Grünberg was never really a byword for quality. During the Seven Years War, Frederick the Great treated the woes of his winemakers with unconcealed sarcasm, and in the late nineteenth century Berliners dismissed any sour wine by saying ‘it tastes like a Grünberger from the dark side of the valley.’
I think Grünberger was chiefly a sparkling wine, which would make sense. It would have allowed winemakers to add sugar to their musts, which might have been low in potential alcohol.Grünberg reverted to the name Zielona Góra in 1945, and wine-making ceased.
The last parcel of ancient Sylvaner vines was pulled up to make way for a block of flats in the seventies.The revival came later, after the Fall of the Iron Curtain and the city now benefits from a nation-wide enthusiasm for wine. I am surprised they didn’t replant Sylvaner, but it is a tricky vine. Austria used to have huge plantations of Sylvaner until the Lenz Moser method of high-training was introduced in the sixties.This suited Grüner Veltliner much better. The Sylvaner was grubbed up and replaced by Veltliner. Nowadays, Sylvaner only makes good wine in German Franconia.Wine is now made all over Poland. Like England and Wales, much of it is produced from hybrid grapes.
There were one or two decent Rieslings on show, however, such as the 2022 from Ferdynand Wspaniała near Wroclaw as well as Kamil Barczentewich’s from Dobre.Some of the hybrids were successful: from Łukasz Winnica there was a Dryling Johanniter and Winnica Opera had a good Solaris Sol Sol and there was another from Sadyba. A Souvignier Gris from Dom Charbielin was pleasant and even better was a convincing muscat-like hybrid, but we are not given lists of the wines and I had to scrawl my notes on a napkin. From Korona there was a very drinkable 2023 pink Zweigelt. Austrian Burgenland is far better known for Zweigelt and has the advantage of being warmer than Poland. In the north, wine-making is heavily influenced by the large, shallow Neusiedler lake and the tasting concentrated on the role of the lake in lending character to the wines. The three Zweigelts that impressed me most were from Nestor in Halbturn, Georg Preisinger and Artisan Wines.
“They showed some excellent whites too, chiefly made from the ‘Burgunder’ varieties. I am not wholly convinced by Burgenland Grüner Veltliner. The best for me were the 2023 Grauburgunder from Seegut Lentsch, a 2022 Weissburgunder from Salzl Seewinkelhof, a 2021 Chardonnay Reserve from Allacher and the 2022 Splitterfasernackt from Markus Iro.”
Markus Iro produced one of the best wines in the tasting: the 2022 St Laurent Tradition – a lovely mouthful of rich black fruits with a sprinkling of toast and nuts. The 2021 St Laurent from Ried Kaiserberg was also good. I was also very impressed by the 2020 Merlot from Weingut Pöckl which had a judicious elegance about it. It was not looking for extra weight. The tasting ended with a couple of great sweet wines: a 2019 Welschriesling Beerenauslese from Artisan Wines and a simply delicious 2018 Sämling (Scheurebe) Trockenbeerenauslese from Münzenrieder in Apetlon. Sweet wines like these are often winners. In April every year now, there is a special event laid on called The Big Fortified Tasting which brings together port and sherry and a few other great fortified wines. Time was short so I tasted a few sensational sherries. Alvear had some 2017 3 Miradas de Rio Frio, not a fortified wine but a dry Pedro Ximenez from Montilla Moriles which is finished in old fino casks, and has a lovely peachiness.
Wonderfully intense were the fino Capataz sherry, the leathery, chocolatey amontillado Secular, the peachy oloroso Catón and the wonderful PL no7.Barbadillo had some super things too, such as its excellent, good value Solear manzanilla to its Pastera manzanilla en rama pasada; but the real fireworks begin with the Criadera amontillado en rama with all those tastes of butter and brown sugar, or the peachy Criadera oloroso; or indeed two very special sherries, the 15-year old palo cortado Obispo Gascon with its butterscotch character or its 30-year old incarnation, which tasted more of very concentrated fruit.All the sherry houses have a simple fino or manzanilla which is about the most perfect aperitif I can think of, with Hidalgo it is La Gitana – something I long for on a warm evening. The Pasada Pastrana manzanilla is more of a food wine, shouting for shellfish maybe? An altogether more serious drop is the oloroso Seco Faraón with its immense length.
The Bodegas Tradición have a pretty, olivey fino viejo en rama, but their best wine was the amontillado Tradición VORS: orange, peach, sugar and butter.
I had to hare across St James’s Park to fit in an hour at the Tejo tasting in the Mall. The Tagus (Tejo) was the source of much of the wine in the Portuguese colonial trade, as well as their commerce with Brazil and until quite recently many of the wines that came out of the region were brands with unfathomable names.
This tasting served to show that the Tejo has put this mass- production behind them and replaced it with whole ranges of excellent, well-conceived wines. There was a table of wines based on the Fernão Pires grape, lively whites often with a strong tinned fruit taste like Campo do Tejo from the Quinta de Lagoalva or the Casal de Colheira. The best was the nutty, rich Gutta Supera from the Quinta do Paral.
The red table showed even better wines, like the rich and buttery 2020 Conde Vimioso, or the 2019 Detalhe Reserva with a good dollop of Cabernet added to
Alicante Bouschet and the rest, or the slightly more astringent 2019 Casal da Colheira Carpe Vitae, or again, brimming with black fruits, the 2015 Desalmado.
I shall leap lastly from one great river to another, from the Tagus to the Loire.
I have said before that Vouvray has benefitted from climate change in that there are more full-bodied dry whites now than there were, and fewer semi-sweet wines where sweetness concealed very high acidity. The acidity is still there, thank God, but not so searing. Many of the best wines are those grown on flinty soils (‘silex’), like the nervous 2023 Domaine Vigneau- Chevreau, Cuvée Silex or the figgy 2023 Vignoble Denis Mounier, Expression de Silex. Among the sweet wines, my favourite was the rich 2020 Maison Peltier; and of the sparklers I liked the slightly earthy Domaine Damien Pinon brut de brut.
I doubt any Grünberger was ever this good, but I could be wrong!
Ends
