Yesterday, I stopped by Biondivino for my first experience with their popular wine tastings. The tiny wine merchant eventually became crammed full of tasters, yet it offered a good vibe with tasty snacks and an intimate experience with the winemaker. Last night featured the 19th generation family winemaker Alberto Cordero di Montezemolo of the eponymous estate, Cordero di Montezemolo, located in the rolling hills of the Langhe and at the center of the famous Barolo region. Last night they were all Nebbiolo based wines and all great quality:
Cordero di Montezemolo ‘05 Barolo “Monfalletto” $45
Cordero di Montezemolo ‘04 Barolo “Monfalletto” $45
Cordero di Montezemolo ‘04 Barolo “Bricco Gattera” $78
Cordero di Montezemolo ‘04 Barolo “Enrico VI” $78
The Monfalletto is a blend of several vineyards around the Cordero di Montezemolo estate. I was shocked at how much softer, and way more approachable the ‘05 was to the ‘04. The fruit was much more velvety and plush and it lacked the big black tea tannins that the ’04s were packing. Surely it won’t be as long lived as the fantastic ‘04 vintage, but if you were to pick one for the dinner table tonight (Barolo + food = bliss), the ‘05 Monfalletto would be it. The Bricco Gattera and the Enrico VI are both smaller offerings from single vineyards.
For me, the Enrico VI sang, and instantly put a smile on my face. It had the expected light red fruits - very clean wild strawberries and fine tannins but it also packed a chalky clay character that the others were missing. When I asked Alberto about it, he said that the Enrico VI vineyard is off the estate, well away from the other vineyards, and is grown in soil that contains 3 times the calcareous content. Three times more chalk in the soil!
Now I’m aware that nearly every geologist will tell me that I’m crazy that I think I can taste minerality from the soil in the wine (especially the Geological Society of America which dispelled any delusions at a Portland conference last week), but there must be some connection there which isn’t fully understood. Geologist Alex Maltman goes on to say:
“I am not saying that chemistry and geology have no effect on the wine. It may have effects that we don’t understand,” Maltman said. “But whatever ‘minerality’ in wine is, it is not the taste of vineyard minerals.”
Thoughts?
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses:
October 25th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Well, I trust the scientists when it comes to answering scientific questions. However, what is more interesting is how we use metaphors to think about sensual experiences. As much as wine is a pleasure-based commodity, it also seems to have a unique ability to conjure up in many the desire to be metaphorical and to experience the aesthetic beyond just deciding what is ‘good’.
Thinking about the relation of the taste of minerals to the content of the soil to me is more about how we use wine as a vessel through which to explore our relation to the objects around us. This can be based on many philosophies. The biodynamic philosophy has a very particular sense of a human’s relationship to external objects, and tends to prioritize a certain concept of the ‘natural’ above others. This, to me, is one approach that gives rise to the desire to express the nature of the ’soil’ in our thoughts about a wine.
We all know the hedonist philosophy that drives many of the big publications - this approach cares less about idolizing a certain concept of nature and more about a certain notion of pleasure. The metaphors such people use to describe wine thus move more towards the opulent and excessive use of flavour descriptors and superlatives.
Some others may see wine as an enigmatic expression of natural processes. Such a philosophy might see the ‘minerality’ question somewhat like a fascinating puzzle about how complex natural processes are. Others might care more about the human capacity for technology, for augmenting natural processes and creating products that derive from that interaction. Such people may care more about ‘minerality’ as an end-point in a process of augmentation and manipulation.
So, I suppose for me the whole ‘minerality’ debate hinges more on philosophy and aesthetics than on science.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Yes,
I have also always thought I was tasting the minerals and elements of the soil, but learned when Jake & I did the UC Davis Winemaking course, that - no - that taste of the minerals does not translate DIRECTLY into the wine, which was again re-iterated in Portland.
HOWEVER, my understanding is that the minerals can affect the flavour of a wine in other ways. As in, the limestone in the soil doesn’t necessarily immediately offer limestone flavour in the wine, rather it effects the chemical composition of the wine enough as to alter and introduce other elements and flavours, which could include a note that might be similar to something limestone-ish.
I don’t know how else to explain being able to correctly name the soil type when blind tasting, unless it does indeed offer some sort of semblance.
(Believe it or not, what I just wrote makes sense in my head : )
October 27th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Good points. And if you can identify soil types in a blind taste, then my hat off to you. That’s pretty impressive. 
I still like to think of things philosophically, mainly because the science only goes so far to explain why we are so obsessed with this stuff.