February Wine and Food
Posted: 5th March 2023
Like des Esseintes in J K Huysman’s dystopian novel A Rebours (Against Nature), I travel largely in my head these days. In January I was enjoying some refreshing Hunter Semillon on a hot Bondi Beach, and in the first half of February at least, I was drinking luscious Ausbruch in Austria-Hungary. In reality I never left London. The big tasting of Austrian wines was back in the calendar at its new location above the Science Museum following a Covid break. You look out of the window at the neo-baroque finials of the Exhibition Quarter built on the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and realise just how badly the view has been desecrated by the slab blocks in the distance. It was sunny that day, and the tasting was also a social occasion meaning handshakes here and there and catching up with old friends.
It is now over thirty years since my first book on Austrian wines was published and most of the time I see the children and grandchildren of the people I met then. There are still a few veterans about whom I knew in the nineties, Thomas Klinger at Bründlmayer, is one. Thomas was full of the power and finesse of the 2021 vintage in Austria, which he said was up there with the greats, and proved it with a playful and promising Heiligenstein Riesling.
Alphart from Traiskirchen in the torrid Thermenregion is always one of my first ports of call. All the wines were stunning, but two 2021s outshone the others: a citrusy Zierfandler Ried Otzler and a spicy Rotgipfler from Ried Pressweingarten. I dropped in on Walter Skoff, who was a big man in Styria in the old days and enjoyed a lovely 2020 dry Gewürztraminer from Ried Kranach. Georg Prieler was flying the flag for Weißburgunder/Pinot Blanc in the Leitha Hills, of which the best was the 2020 Steinweingarten. For the reds he had brought three 2019 Blaufränkisch wines. The Johanneshöhe pleased me most. Prieler has always been a ‘class act’.
So too Roland Velich at Moric with his ancient Blaufränkisch vines on steep sites in the villages of Neckenmarkt and Lutzmannsburg. They are wines that repay study, the 2019s in particular: a Reserve ‘Moric’ and a Blaufränkisch Lutzmannsburg ‘Alte Reben’ with a whiff of raspberry fruit coupled with intense peppiness and a striking acidity.
It was a huge pleasure to see Pepi Umathum in London. Pepi was riding the new wave of Austrian wines on the Neusiedlersee even before the Wine Scandal broke out in 1985. As such he was pretty well everyone’s go-to winemaker in the later eighties and nineties. His wines have lost none of their edge particularly since he has added land in Jois at the top of the lake to his original collection in Frauenkirchen.
This was originally Hungary, of course, and Pepi has recently been vinifying Hárslevelű with great success. Everything is good here, starting with a simple Zweigelt (justifiably his bestseller) to his 2018 Kirschgarten Blaufränkisch and his Blaufränkisch and Cabernet Sauvignon ‘cuvée’ Haideboden.
I actually first met Kurt Feiler of Feiler-Artinger when he was a teenager. I well remember his lovely old house in Rust. Being where they are, Feiler-Artinger balance their portfolio between scrumptious sweet wines they make near the Neusiedlersee, and the Blaufränkisch they grow on the higher slopes above the lake. A simple 2021 Zweigelt was really lovely as was the 2018 Ausbruch Rust Pinot Cuvée.
Two weeks later I crossed the Leitha Hills and the Neusiedlersee again for a Tokaj tasting in the Vintners’ Hall. The Austrian terms ‘Ausbruch’ and the Hungarian ‘Aszu’ are, of course, related. They designate ‘nobly rotten’ grapes used to enrich a late picked wine. Originally there were three Hungarian sweet wines made this way. Rust is now in Austria and the other Ausbruch/Aszu is largely forgotten. It was in Transylvania. The Furmint grape was the mainstay. In the old days it was too acidic for dry wines, but now with climate change there are excellent dry Furmints, like the wine tasting of spiced apples I had from Breitenbach. Breitenbach also makes a delicious dry, late-picked Szamorodni (‘as we get it’). The 2009 was like a nutty amontillado; and then there was the 2018 Six Puttonyos Aszu: caramel, apples and that ‘rôti’ flavour the French attribute to nobly rotten wines.
Diznoko never disappoints: an exemplary dry wine, a sweet Szamorodni and two Aszus: 2013 five Puttonyos and six in 2016. The latter is clearly the better wine, but I’d have no objection to the 2013! The 2016 was less pear/peach and more orange/tangerine. Pajzos Megzer has lots of dry wines which come highly recommended. Their 2021 late harvest Hárslevelű is a delight. The grape character is very different to Furmint with lots of orange juice and Muscat aromas.
Until recently Royal Tokaj made no dry wines, that has changed and the new range can be quite uncompromising. The 2018 Nyulaszo has a sherry-like nuttiness and the 2016 Mezes Maly dry Szamorodni is like a proper amontillado. Of the Aszu wines, the 2017 Blue Label (5 Puttonyos) is all yellow peaches and oranges. The 2017 Nyulaszo 6 Puttonyos is a step up, with that prized ‘rôti’ character.
Istvan Szepsy was the man who revived Tokaj after 1990. His wines are worth tasting. ‘Hun’ is a dry Furmint made from young vines. Hungarians think Huns were a force for the good and they are clearly right in this instance. There are two other dry Furmints: the stark 2018 Estate wine and Urban 73, which is made in very small quantities and is much spicier. There was also a sweet Szamorodni, a blend of Furmint, Hárslevelű and Sargamuskotaly (177 grams of residual sugar) with a gorgeous pineapple flavour.
And then the next day I actually went somewhere. I left London for Paris and Paris for Provence. The forecast had told me to expect bad weather at the Domaine des Anges, but it was much better than expected. As we were such a small party we stopped at La Bergerie at the bottom of the hill for dinner. In the quarter of a century I have known this place it has gone from being a pleasantly crummy bar to a restaurant, but the quality fluctuates constantly. This Shrove Tuesday it was somewhere in the middle, but it was refreshingly busy for a Tuesday night. I liked my marrow bones on toast and pigs’ cheeks with mash well enough, but the others complained about their bavettes. It is certainly not the best region of France for steak.
On Friday we went to a largely empty Bédouin for dinner at L’Escapade. The St Germain des Prés of the Ventoux was empty, due to a combination of half-term and a cold beginning to the spring season. The restaurant still bore the scars of Covid: short menus and elevated prices. Again I liked my fish soup and chicken breast cooked with honey and spices, but it was nothing special.
For the rest of the time we ate at home enjoying the abundance in France’s shops and markets. On a sunny Friday morning we drove to the market in Carpentras to get a few things I needed. Half-term meant that only two-thirds of the stalls were operating. The only worry was a drought that had lasted most of the winter, and which was unlikely to have been alleviated by a few heavy showers on Friday. There was some good local meat provided by the Ventoux Pork Initiative and on the Thursday night we had had a ravishing little shoulder of spring lamb, so small that it was hardly big enough for three men.
There were tasting notes to be written on the current range. Florent Chave told me that 2022 had been just average, but he had succeeded in making fresh, fruity wines. With all its problems, 2021 impresses me more and more: the pure Viognier Chérubim was a triumph as indeed were the mostly Syrah Archanges from 2020 and 2021. Earlier that month, I had served up a magnum of the 2005 Archange that appeared to have lost nothing in eighteen years. We also enjoyed a tasting with the neighbours, but it was otherwise a very quiet time, if a welcome reprieve from bleak reality at home.
