Wine writers and other folks in the trade go to a lot of tastings. Besides the attraction of free booze in daylight hours, for the people into ratings numerology, they're a handy way to keep score; for the rest of us, they're a handy way to keep current with trends, styles and producers. But every now and then, there's a tasting that's truly eye-opening, and I've been lucky enough to go to two of them recently, both involving sparkling wine.
It's one thing to taste finished, double-fermented, nicely-aged sparklers--and quite another to taste the raw wines they're made from. The base wines are made from grapes harvested early on purpose, high in acidity and relatively low in sugar--under 20%, as opposed to the 25% and up (maybe WAY up) in most California red wines. Once fermented totally dry, they deliver, among other things, searing acidity--not something you'd want a whole glass of, and not in the same sensory universe as the final sparkling product, which benefits fro not only age, but additional sugar added along the way and from the delight of bubbles.
I have tasted a lot of bubblies, but precious few base wines, and the chance to try six of them, four Chardonnays and two Pinots Noir, fresh from the fermenter, was a mind-expander. Hugh Davies, CEO and son of the founders of Schramsberg, and winemaker Keith Hook walked us through the potential components of 2009 Schramsberg cuvées that will only see consumer glassware several years down the road. Yes, they were quite different, one from another; yes, you might imagine how one might balance another in a harmonious way; and yes, you had to be in utter awe of the folks who put together the blends years before they take final shape.Young white and red still wines taste a lot like their grownup selves very early on. Not so bubblies, which go through way more transformation along the line. I'm not complaining about the chance to taste the well-aged 1997 and 1992 J. Schram wines -- they were delicious, and getting better by the year. But having a chanced to gauge the difference between the starting lien and the finish line was humbling. Hats off to all the folks at thousands of bubbly producers around the world who perform this feat of predictive magic.
And then, early in December, I had a chance to taste sparklers from Georgia--no, not the one with Atlanta, the one from the former Soviet Union. This is the part of the world where, as near as archaeological evidence can suggest, wine was invented, something like 7,000 years ago. Not sparkling wine, to be sure, but wine wine. How many wines from the Republic of Georgia have you tasted lately?
One by one, the separate shards of the former Soviet Bloc, many with multiple-millennium-old winemaking traditions, have come back onto the global wine marketplace: Hungary, fragments of the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, . . . ). And now the historically first--Georgia--is showing up last, finally making its way onto American shelves.The bubblies in question come from Bagrationi, founded in 1882 by members of the former Georgian royal dynasty, who unfortunately picked the wrong side in the Napoleonic Wars, and ended up annexed by the Russian Czars. They fared much better in the wine business, relying then as now on indigenous grapes--Tsitska, Chinebuli, Mtsvane, and other non-household names—grown in the best regions of Georgia—Kartli, Imereti, and Kakheti. (Yes, there will be a quiz.) Bagrationi makes some still wines from these grapes, but their attempt to penetrate the US market is based on their sparklers--which, after the recent hostilities between Russia and Georgia, aren't selling all that well in their former market.
Two of the four Bagrationi sparklers--the Classic Brut and Extra Dry--are made by the bulk method, and are further proof that bulk-fermented bubbly can be quite good indeed, especially at the bargain price point ($12 or so) they sell at. I thought both of these wines were ever so much more fun than comparably-priced (and comparably-bulk-made) Prosecos: excellent, crisp acidity and intriguing, novel flavors.
The two higher-end offerings--a multi-grape Reserve and the Chinebuli-only Royal Cuvée--are more "serious," méthode champenoise sparklers, the Reserve showing remarkable depth and complexity, the Royal Cuvée a brilliant, pristine focus.
To recap: in an hour, I managed to taste my first four ever wines from the Republic of Georgia, and swallow half a dozen new grape varieties. A lot of firsts for a Thursday afternoon.
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