 |
| Wednesday, March 13th 6-8 pm no reservations required $15 + 10% off any wine tasted Julien Pineau “Pork Soda” Vin de France pét-nat NV This week’s tasting focuses on grape varieties that are native to France’s Loire valley but are not made from the typical triumvirate of chenin blanc, cabernet franc, and sauvignon blanc: menu pineau, pineau d’aunis, grolleau, and romorantin. These grapes were all hammered hard by a biological disaster that nearly felled the entirely of European wine production in the mid-19th century when growers unwittingly introduced an invasive louse (phylloxera) from the new world. The decline in grape biodiversity in the wake of phylloxera is impossible to oversell, with some old varieties lost forever while others dwindled to nearly nothing, rendering them increasingly marginal, regional oddities. At the same time tastes in wine change, as they always do (I know very few people who pine for the olden days of treacly sweet Champagne, especially after it’s been whisked to remove the bubbles, yet this is how folks of yore craved and consumed it) and the shifting sands of consumer preference have also had a hand in making these marginal grapes ever more marginal. Grolleau is a grape that was once widely planted to produce Rosé d ‘Anjou, a style of sweet rosé that to my lips, at least, tastes like a visit to grandma’s house, replete with plastic coverings on the furniture that have never once been removed, a plate of cookies resting on a dusty doily, and a console color TV that wants to play reruns of Bonanza, but never finds them. But maybe that’s just me. I don’t think very many folks in France crave this sort of wine today, and the area dedicated to growing grolleau has, consequently, declined precipitously. Grolleau has been given a new life, thanks to a new generation of vigneron who see it in a new light (never sweet) as a grape variety that was seemingly waiting for us: vinified as a dry red wine, it produces light, mineral, and fresh wines of the sort many of us want to drink today. Julie and Tony Bainbridge have become grolleau specialists, making four wines from it, and we’re tasting their light, dry, herbal “Cuvée Crush,” which is, as the name telegraphs, glou glou. Menu pineau was a widely planted fellow traveler with chenin blanc in the Loire, but today there’s only a few hundred acres of it under cultivation. Although it is not genetically related to chenin, it shares some of chenin’s characteristics, e.g., crunchy acidity and tart granny smith apple, but it always tastes more savory, like you’ve peeled a tart but bruised green apple and decided to eat just the peelings. We’re tasting Bonhomme’s “La Tesnière” from vines that were once cultivated by his mentor, OG natural wine grower Thierry Puzelat. We’re also tasting a pét-nat made from menu pineau. I will not bore you with my unceasing yammering regarding pineau d’aunis— if you know me, you know that it is a grape with which I am smitten. If you do not know me, please come to the tasting so you can be bored by in person by what I have to say about it (it’s a lot). Oh, and we’re tasting a tremendous Cour-Cheverny from the brilliant Phillipe Tessier, made from romorantin. I can’t quite understand why romorantin is not better known and appreciated but can only see it as a function of this grape’s mouth-watering acidity. If you have trouble with acidity, I can offer you a Prilosec before the tasting, |