I love a good rosé and I love a good Rhône wine, so it’s a safe bet that a Rhône-style rosé would be right up my alley. Predominantly familiar with the California take on Rhône varietals, I was excited to receive the Gérard Bertrand 2016 Cote des Roses and taste the Languedoc AOC’s expression of these most familiar varietals.
Personally, I first learned about Picpoul from winemaker (and kindred spirit) Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyards. He told me that Picpoul literally translates “lip stinger” — and let’s just say that as a lover of lemons, limes, and all sour candies (remember Shockers?), I was immediately taken aback by the power and intensity of the light and lively wine this Santa Cruz winemaker had to offer. So I was more than delighted to dive right into a bottle from varietal’s namesake region, Picpoul-Pinet.
The Wairu Valley, another sub-region of New Zealand’s Marlborough wine country, is one the MacDonald family knows well, as their own little island of te Pa sits along the Wiaru Bar — where the Wairau River meets the sea. It’s a place the family has inhabited, land the family has cultivated, for the past 800 years.
Here, the land closest to the water is predominantly gravely riverbed soils, and the climate benefits from quite a bit of rainfall. Inland vineyards tend to be drier, and still cooler, and the soil quite stony, resulting in early-ripening grapes in some sites. The sub-region is known to produce fruit-forward wines. Of course that all depends on the vineyard and the vintner. te Pa Oke Sauvignon Blanc certainly takes a different approach.
The Maori have an expression for Marlborough: “Kei puta te Wairau,” or “The place with the hole in the cloud.” Indeed, it is one of the most sunny and warm-climates regions in New Zealand and, by no consequence, the country’s largest wine producing region with just about 5,000 acres planted to vines.
The larger Marlborough region is divided into three major sub-regions, and it is the Awatere Valley region, south of the Wairau Valley where te Pa has extended their vineyard property. This sub-region spans inland from the ocean and includes elevated areas as it reaches toward the Kaikoura mountain-scape. Here, with its cooler, drier climate and somewhat rocky terrain, the vines incur a lot of vigor, producing Pinot Noir with a noted strength of character. te Pa 2015 Pinot Noir is a beautiful expression of this New Zealand terroir.
This past weekend I attended the Rhone Ranger’s San Francisco event. Rhone Rangers is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote winemakers and wineries who focus on Rhône varietals and Rhône-style blends. Each year, the Rhone Rangers San Francisco Grand Tasting event gathers together a huge number of those wineries to help educate the public on these important grapes, winemaking methods, and of course the wines themselves. While not every year has a theme, it seemed that this year’s theme is the up-and-coming trend of “weird wine,” or “obscure” varietals.
As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I’ve been exploring a few of the lesser-known wine varietals lately (Tannat, Counoise, Cinsault…to name a few). And it’s not just because I have an insatiable, geeky interest in wine, it’s because more and more producers are bringing to light some of those varietals that have been hidden in the dark — as part of the lower percentages of classic and common blends.
