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Essex County Wine Society
October 16, 2011
Dear Fellow Wine Society
Members and Friends,
Congratulate yourselves!
I am pretty sure we have set an Essex County Wine Society record for
attendance at a white wine tasting. The 2009 Meursault wines drew a big
crowd and were big wines as expected. Of course they were young having
just started arriving for sale in the United States. Howard Menaker
presented a full range of wines starting with the crisp Bourgogne Blanc
aperitif from Albert Grivault and ending with two vintages of the superb
Grivault Meursault 1 er Cru Clos des Perrierres. We had a total of 10
Meursault wines to evaluate starting with two superb village wines
produced by Fichet followed by eight 1 er cru wines from Faiveley,
Thierry & Pascale Matrot, Boyer-Martenot, Girardin and Grivault. The final
wine was the 2003 vintage Grivault Meursault 1 er cru Clos des Perrieres
used to illustrate a Meursault with age however most of our members
preferred the younger wines on this evening. Overall the overwhelming
favorite of the night was the 2009 Grivault Meursault 1 er cru Clos des
Perrieres with second place going to the Girardin Meursault 1 er cru Les
Perrieres. It was grand to begin our tasting season with the fantastic
white burgundy wines of Meursault. Remember that we will finish this
tasting season with the 2009 red burgundies on April 5 next year. Mark
your calendars.
Our next tasting, on
November 3, 2011, will feature red wines from Austria. Back by
popular demand, Henrietta Moore-Roland has targeted the top level red
wines of Austria . She has travelled back to Austria to seek out wines to
help us understand Austria's efforts to produce world class red wines. In
the process she was also able to secure an Austrian wine expert to come to
Montclair from Burgenland, Austria to guide us in the tasting. Henrietta's
comments follow (you will have to imagine her lovely Oxford accent):
"
For Austrian red wine we move away from the Wachau by the River
Danube and
east over to Burgenland, the part of the
country to the south and east of
Vienna, where the Hungarian plains start
and Pannonian warmth spreads in.
Many of the wines we'll be tasting come from villages next to the large
lake
called Neusiedlersee which is also home to the gorgeous TBA dessert wines
(Trockenbeerenauslese = dry berry harvest). Austrian red wine is
comprised
of mainly three grape types which you will be learning all about: Zweigelt,
Blaufränkisch and St. Laurent. Pinot Noir is also grown with incredible
success but in boutique amounts. In August 2010, a blind tasting in
Singapore placed 12 Austrian pinots in the
top 20 with 6 Burgundies, one
Oregon and one New Zealander (http://www.austrianwine.com/news-media/news-from-us/news-from-us-2010/news/browse/1/news/sensationeller-erfolg-fuer-oesterreichische-pinot-noirs-in-singapur-593/79/).
Austria
seems determined to be the best.
For our presentation in
November we are lucky to have a real expert in
Austrian wines coming over to truly educate us. Christian Zechmeister is
head of the Burgenland Wine Office, Eisenstadt. He knows the land, all
the
wine growers, and was able to bring us a wonderful gift from a top grower,
Prieler, of two magnums from their library of their best vineyard. This
will
allow us to taste a more mature example of this highly intriguing grape.
Indeed, Eric Asimov wrote an article recently for the New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/dining/reviews/blaufrankisch-a-complex-austrian-red-wine-review.html?ref=ericasimov)
to beat us to it and waxed lyrical about the Blaufränkisch grape. You
will
be able to judge for yourselves as we have four different examples to
test.
One of which is made by a real character of the Austrian wine scene,
Roland
Velich of the Moric estate. He has made an intense study of French
Burgundy
to discover "that thing", as he puts it, that a wine must possess in order
to achieve greatness. This varietal is known for its ability to reflect
the
taste of the soil it grows in. This makes it difficult to pinpoint
characteristics as, similarly to Burgundy, varying microclimates bring
forth
many different characters. Velich grows his grapes on old vines, 55 to
110
years old, very close together. These tight vines result in lower yields
per
vine but an overall higher per hectare yield than more modern growing
techniques.
Another cult character has his wine in our tasting. Hans Schwarz is a
butcher as well as a vintner who collaborates with Manfred Krankl
(California) and Alois Kracher. We are lucky he has chosen to export to
the
USA as his wines are usually sold out
before they reach the bottle. He cuts
the number of grapes on a vine down to only 6 to 10 to increase the
concentration of fruit. Everything is processed by hand and kept
refrigerated once picked. Drunk blinded you may think you are in Rhone or
Beaujolais rather than Seewinkel, Burgenland.
In addition to these we have wines from the best estates including Josef
Umathum's "vom Stein" St. Laurent, a velvety juice from a hot and dry
knoll
of gravelly quartz rich soil. Gernot Heinrich, Paul Achs, Juris, Tinhof,
Gesellmann and Nittnaus.
We will finish the evening with two very different blends, both will
surprise you in taste and may even transport you over to Bordeaux."
The cost for the tasting will be $73 for members and $88 for
guests. Please send your reservation form with payment to our Treasurer,
Peter Ballance by Friday, October 28, 2011.
Date: Thursday, November 3, 2011
Place: Montclair Women's Club, 82 Union St., Montclair, NJ 07042
Time: 7:30pm Aperitif, 8:00pm tasting
Hope to see you all there!
Dennis Roland
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