Showing posts with label lustau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lustau. Show all posts

Friday, 6 June 2014

Sherry Twitter Tasting

I'm wary of the twitter hashtag, which seems a lazy way of promoting a trend you haven't much thought about, but on Tuesday I found myself following the progress of, and contributing dozens of tweets to, #sherryTT. This was a live twitter tasting involving tweeters from all over the world contributing over 400 tweets, as part of International Sherry Week.

I don't know if there's a greater drink in the world than sherry - for its history, quality, variety, value for money, and its food-pairing potential - but it's one that suffers a severe image problem, so I was game to take part in the evening's tasting, hoping to spread the love and awareness of this much misunderstood drink. Some tweeters knew all about sherry, others were new to it but enthusiastic to take part, a combination which led to an engaging online conversation.

I've never been involved in a twitter tasting before and found it great fun. In many ways, it corresponded to a real tasting - the Andalucian crowd turned up late, some tweeters described the wines imaginatively, others engaged in contextual information. What I enjoyed about it most, though, was that it was a conversation many people were involved in yet which you could conduct at your own pace. If I wanted to, I could tweet constantly and breathlessly, or I could take my time and come up with a considered opinion of the drink - I did a bit of both, and felt more confident contributing to the online conversation and also felt I learnt more from the different observations of those involved than if we'd all been sat round a table discussing the drinks.

For it to work, though, it needs an organiser. In this case, it was Ruben from SherryNotes. He created the event, provided the samples of all the sherries, and made sure everyone was on board and understood the different styles of sherries. Many thanks!


I didn't expect the samples to look like actual samples



 

Gonzalez Byass Tío Pepe En Rama (April 2014)

For the last five years, Gonzalez Byass, the largest producer in Jerez, has been releasing its classic fino "En Rama". This means straight from the cask, unfiltered, and unclarified - you're drinking just what you would if you were in Jerez and stood in front of a barrel drawing the wine from it. Gonzalez Byass promote it further by saying the wine is from the very best casks ultimately destined to be part of Tío Pepe. It's a great marketing idea, which the sherry industry needs - it points to its distinctiveness (the solera system), its different styles (in this case, fino), and its different tastes (how decisions by the winemaker alter the appearance and taste of the drink).




tasting mat courtesty of @guillermomdv

 

Barbadillo Manzanilla Solear En Rama (Primavera 2014)

Manzanilla is, more or less, the same style of wine as fino, but it has to be made in the seaside town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda giving it more noticeable saline qualities. Many of the tweeters found the previous fino to have a definite saltiness as well, but I did think it was much more apparent in this classic manzanilla, which is also taken straight from the barrel (like the Tío Pepe En Rama during spring, when the flor is at its most active and the wine at its saltiest). It's a very different drink - more complex but less immediate; the Tío Pepe, whether in its classic form or from the barrel, is for a summer's day, while this is for a summer's day by the sea.


 

Fernando de Castilla Palo Cortado Antique

The difference between the fino and manzanilla were nuanced, delicate, and intriguing. The first sniff of this wine declared in an instant the astounding differences between styles of sherry. Palo Cortado is a complex style that's not always easily understood or explained - it's kind of like a cross between an amontillado and an oloroso. It's also the one that sherry connoisseurs rate as the most complex and involving, and this example had to be the wine of the night - in this line up that's quite a compliment.

 

Oloroso "Pata de Gallina" Almacenista Juan García Jarana (Lustau)

Lustau are another of sherry's top producers, and one of the best and most interesting lines they do is the "Almacenista" (referring to a maker of sherry who sells it on to another company), a range which showcases Lustau's best suppliers. I think this is a wonderful way of supporting and promoting the sherry community; during the evening I discovered that Juan García Jarana runs a motorbike dealership in his other life. Having said which, the nose was a little lacking but it did have a long, lasting, leathery finish.

 

Gutiérrez Colosía PX Colosía

Pedro Ximénez is the name of the grape, as well as the style of the wine; essentially, the grapes are dried to such an extent that they become raisins, resulting in one of the sweetest wines in the world. It can be a hard drink to take on its own, with layers and layers of complex sweet flavours. There are lots of sweet foods it can be paired with, but the classic match is pouring it over vanilla ice cream. Gutiérrez Colosía are based in the town of El Puerto, along with Jerez and Sanlúcar de Barrameda one of the three towns that make up the "sherry triangle." This was a great example of the PX style, with lots of appealingly chewy dried fruits.


There's not a lot much better than tasting five high-quality sherries with other wine enthusiasts, whether on- or offline. These two tweets sum up the tasting's best wine and the evening as a whole.

Follow the whole tasting on Storify
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Thursday, 20 February 2014

Brandy

The word brandy comes from brandewijn, the Dutch for "burnt wine," which is pretty much what brandy is: a wine distilled into a high-alcohol spirit. Brandy can be made anywhere in the world, but as ever it's France which has the most famous examples. I've written about Cognac before, so here I'll focus on the other famous French brandy, Armagnac, as well as Spanish brandy.

Armagnac

One of the central reasons for the success of Cognac over the centuries is trade. Cognac is just north of Bordeaux, with easy access to the international trade routes that the port has historically provided, particularly to important spirits markets such as England/UK and the Netherlands. Although also in the south west of France, Armagnac is located further inland with no easy access to a major port and has therefore never had the commercial success of Cognac - though it hasn't suffered the boom and bust cycles of that region either. 

Besides location and reputation, there are other significant differences between the two styles of brandy:
grapes as with Cognac, the most important grape is Ugni Blanc (Trebbiano in Italy), which produces a wine with neutral aromas and high acidity. In Cognac, it accounts for 98% of plantings, but in Armagnac it's lower, at 55%. 32% of plantings are of Baco, the only hybrid grape allowed in the production of quality wine in the EU (a hybrid grape is a cross between a variety of the European vitis vinifera, in this case Folle Blanche, and a North American vine species, in this case vitis riparia), which gives rich, earthy, dried fruit characteristics to the spirit. Ten grape varieties are permitted, but the other two important ones are Colombard and Folle Blanche, an aromatic variety which was badly hit by phylloxera in the nineteenth century.

taste Armagnac is a much more rustic, earthy drink than Cognac. A unique still, called the alambic Armagnaçais, is used, a type of column still which produces a relatively low alcohol spirit (often less than 60%). Distilling to such a low volume of alcohol, as well as using more aromatic grape varieties, means that the aromas and flavours of Armagnac are much more powerful and aggressive than Cognac. I prefer the robust, agricultural taste of Armagnac, but it all depends on personal preference, as well as the time and occasion.

ageing the terms are very close to Cognac, but with slightly different definitions. Although this provides a point of difference between the two, I don't think it's very helpful, leading to confusion as well as abuse by lesser brandies not subject to regional regulation. The ages refer to the youngest wine in the blend. 
Blanche unaged (a category introduced in 2005)
VS/*** one year
VSOP four years
Napoléon six years
hors d'age/XO ten years 
age indicated the youngest spirit is the age stated on the label (e.g. twelve years)
vintage this is a huge difference from Cognac, which (more or less) doesn't allow vintages. For a market that likes to see a year on the label, this is a huge advantage Armagnac has over Cognac. 

Diploma tasting

At the end of the spirits tasting, we all got a number on a piece of paper, which denoted which spirit we'd get to take home. I was 19 out of 26, so I was delighted to walk away with this Armagnac.

Bas Armagnac Dartigalongue VSOP 
A lovely soft toffee fudge nose, floral and fruity too, like chocolate strawberry sweets; on the palate, the alcohol is warming at first but smooth, with a minty, caramel, chocolate mouthfeel, with coffee and toffee and a peppery spiciness to it from the well-integrated oak. A very good, complex, but accessible brandy.

if you buy Armagnac, make sure it's from Bas Armagnac

"French brandy": warning!

During the brandy tasting, we sampled ASDA's French Brandy, a dreadful, barely drinkable spirit. Not only that, its labelling was extremely disingenuous, using Cognac and Armagnac terms to its advantage. On their website, below the product listing, ASDA claim that they "do everything we can to make sure the information about the products we sell is always as accurate as possible," but that "we recommend that you always read the label carefully before using or consuming any products." Well, quite. The label has VSOP in large letters, *** at the bottom, and the word Napoléon at the top: three entirely different ageing terms to impress the unsuspecting customer. It's easy to get frustrated by the French appellation system, but it's there for a reason: to protect quality wine areas. In this instance, though, only Cognac and Armagnac are subject to appellation regulations, meaning that unscrupulous producers in the rest of France (or British supermarkets) can use the terms however they want.

Spanish brandy

Spanish brandy is a widely-produced drink without any great reputation, yet its slight sweetness and sherry flavours can make it a very flavoursome and surprisingly complex brandy. The main grape is Airén, which until recently was the most planted grape in the world, grown in La Mancha in the heart of Spain where the wine is usually distilled too. The grape is lower in acidity and higher in alcohol than the French brandy grapes. The two main areas for actual brandy production are Penedès in Catalunya and Jerez in Andalucia; the latter is the only Spanish brandy controlled by law.

Brandy de Jerez is aged in the same way as sherry, using the solera system, which means that spirits of different ages are continually being blended together to create a consistent taste year after year. This ageing system, together with the blending of high- and low-alcohol spirits from distillation, gives a Spanish producer a variety of options for the style of brandy. Further complexity comes from ageing in old sherry barrels, the previous sherry contents imparting flavour rather than the oak: grilled nuts from a fino barrel, walnut, plum, and figs from an oloroso barrel, and raisins from Pedro Ximénez.

Diploma tasting

Sobreano Solera Reserva Brandy de Jerez
The one Spanish brandy we tasted was very good and represented excellent value, especially compared to ASDA's own French Brandy. For a price little different, this had all the complexity of a brandy one should expect, with figs, raisins, sultanas, hazelnuts, and coconuts.

At the higher ender of the scale, I'd recommend Lepanto, also from Gonzalez Byass, or Lustau, another brandy from a great sherry company.

 

Pisco

I've never tasted pisco and it wasn't touched on during our Diploma tasting, but it's something we need to know about. There are two types of pisco, Chilean and Peruvian, both claiming to be the more authentic. The major differences are the grape varieties allowed, the distilled level of alcohol (much lower in Peruvian), and ageing in oak (none for Peruvian, at least 60 days for Chilean). I've never heard good things about pisco, but I'm open-minded about all these drinks...
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