Call in the Smoked Lancashire: Zinfandel, Primitivo, Malbec

A final blind tasting before starting the Diploma, featuring three varieties I don't drink that often. This lack of familiarity made distinguishing the wines hard - an equally unfamiliar @bleuettextiles was much more successful than I was. After tasting the wines, we tried them with three different cheeses; being Lancashire siblings, there was only going to be one winner there...

that's me in the corner

Pérez Cruz Cot 2011, Maipo Valley (hangingditch, £17.50)

Malbec is a French grape which was almost forgotten about until its fortunes were revived in Argentina. It's a grape suspectible to frost, which wiped out plantings in Bordeaux in 1956. Winemakers there gave up on the grape, but around the Dordogne town of Cahors winemakers continued to stand by it, making it the only Malbec-focused appellation in France. Since the 1500s, Cahors has been known as "the black wine" due to the dark colour and intense black fruit flavours (particularly damson) that come from the grape. 

In Cahors, and the Loire where it's also grown, it's not traditionally called Malbec, but Cot, which is what this Chilean Malbec has called itself, perhaps to distinguish it from its neighbours across the Andes, perhaps to make it seem more French, but certainly not for any discernible commercial reasons.

I mistook the wine for Zinfandel, because its upfront, jammy fruit flavours seemed more characteristic of that grape than Malbec. @bleuettextiles called it right, though, as she did all the wines; looking at my notes - "damson and mulberry" - I should have been able to work it out for myself. 

behind the tears sits a taster

Peachy Canyon Zinfandel 2011, Paso Robles (hangingditch, £18.50)

The signature grape of California, it came as a shock to their proud wine industry when in the 1990s it was discovered it was actually the same grape as an obscure variety called Primitivo, from unfashionable, arid, low-quality Puglia, in the heel of Italy. Despite that connection, Zinfandel remains archetypal California: big, fruity, with lots of alcohol. 

This one was more complex than that stereotype, though. Lots of ripe black fruits, but well integrated with the toasty oak to create a wine of real depth and structure - but still weighing in at a huge 15% ABV.

It's let down, though, by one of the worst wine labels I've ever seen (see photo below): "Peachy Canyon Incredible Red" on a pinky-crimson label with a poorly drawn winery. It really shouldn't be that difficult to create a more appropriate label for a quality wine. 

Pazzia Primitivo di Manduria 2010 (hangingditch, £30)

This was a serious wine from a region with a less than serious reputation: seriously austere label, seriously heavy bottle, and serious, restrained flavours. Such severity took a while to open up and reveal the best wine of the evening: dry, grainy, oaky tannins, black fruits, and dried and baked fruits, with mint and cloves. It's a wine that proves that Puglia is now capable of producing complex, high-quality wines.

It also felt very "Old World", while the Peachy Canyon was identifiably "New World". I really don't like those terms - any tradition of high-quality wines in Puglia is far younger than in California - but here these distinctions do make sense. The Californian Zinfandel was complex and involved, but its fruits were still up-front, whereas the fruits of the Puglia Primitivo were far more restrained, hidden behind the wine's oakiness. That certainly doesn't make one wine better than the other, but it does highlight the different approaches to making wine in different regions - and wineries - around the world.

congratulating herself on correctly identifying the wines

cheeses

I grabbed a packet of Grana Padano when in Sainsbury's just because it was Italian - would it work better with the Primitivo than the Zinfandel? Only when I got home did I discover that it's from the north of Italy, far from Puglia, making that question redundant. Hard and salty - not dissimilar to ungrated Parmesan - it didn't work with any of the wines, competing against the flavours (and it wasn't that great a cheese anyway). The Spanish Manchego, always a favourite wine cheese of mine, was creamier and sweeter than I'd had before and it didn't quite balance with the black fruits of the wines. Predictably, I started eulogising about testing it against a flight of sherries. I got that cheese at the Cheese Hamlet in Didsbury, as I did the Smoked Lancashire. Here, the smokiness and creamy crumbliness worked beautifully. The Malbec was a little smothered by the cheese, but the tannins and fruits of the Zinfandel and Primitivo were a great match. The Primitivo pairing worked especially well: the smoke and tannins wrapping themselves around each other, the fruits crumbling into the cheese. A taste of Lancashire and a flavour of Southern Italy: regional pairings aren't always the way to go. 

look at the Lancashire gently crumble under the Puglia...