Baby Bandito: Keep On Punching

I’m considering the merit of natural wines as both a style and marketing theme or approach to developing a wine business.  This wine is an interesting example of natural wine to consider…..

Baby Bandito: Keep On Punching
Chenin Blanc by Testalonga winery, Swartland. 2020

The label and the branding are indeed very engaging, and the winemaker, Craig Hawkins, has built a formidable reputation for making great wines using low intervention, low / no sulphur natural winemaking techniques.  This gives the wines a particular character, with skin extraction and colder longer fermentation techniques being used alongside ambient yeasts found in the vineyard. The less steps and processes that are used to make a wine, will perhaps give a truer expression of the grape and where it was grown.  It can also lead to some extremes that another winemaker may try to avoid such as an imbalance of acidity or particular primary flavours in the wine appearing to dominate the palate.

Whilst the wine may be interesting to try, it wasn’t a style that I particularly enjoyed.  I found the “rawness” of the wine difficult to handle.  Perhaps, when we think back to the Romans making wine, this would have been exceptional.  In the modern era of winemaking we have become too reliant on chemical intervention either in the vineyard or in the wine itself, particularly in lower cost bulk wines made to suit a particular customer that has no vintage variation or flavours that can be polarising.

So, here’s my tasting note on this wine.

On the eye, pale lemon and slightly cloudy.

On the nose, medium, with aromas of lemon, yellow unripe apple, pear, grape, hint of peach.

On the palate, the wine is dry with a little petillance, high acidity, medium alcohol, body and flavour intensity with flavours matching aromas found on the nose.  The finish is medium plus.

This wine is good quality.  The balance between the characteristically high acidity of Chenin Blanc and flavour profile of the wine is out of balance.  This leaves the drinker experiencing high acidity on the palate which overrides the flavours of the wine.  The alcohol has a slender but noticeable burn on the chest despite only being at the low/medium level (11.5% abv).  The wine has some complexity, but lacks both intensity and a broader range of flavour clusters to really represent Chenin Blanc well.  The wine’s finish could be longer, but it is only on the finish that the acidity and alcohol dies, and one can really enjoy the citrus fruit characteristics of this wine.

I have a range of wines from this Testalonga 2021 vintage to try, and I really hope to learn more about the natural styles he has produced.  The front and back labelling is eye catching and engaging.  But I know these are classic marketing techniques, hinting at stories and being controversial to engage and provoke an audience.  Many independent retailers I know sell out of these wines very quickly.  But are the wines as good as the branding?  The price of these wines are not prohibitive and his stance and approach to winemaking is honest, clear, and determined.  My mind is not made up, follow the story on my Instagram feed!

Furmint trade tasting 4.0 in London!

On Monday I was lucky enough to go to the Furmint Wine Tasting in London, sponsored by Wines of Hungary.

As well as meeting some great wine makers who are seriously passionate about their homeland, I learnt a few things about Furmint along the way.

A brief overview of Furmint!

Furmint is the most widely planted grape in Tokaj, around 70% of all plantings in the area. The beauty of this grape variety is that it can produce a range of styles from dry to sweet.  Even when fully ripe, unlike some varieties, it retains it’s full acidity very well.  Tokaj has a long sunny growing season and so vineyards with the right aspect and altitude can optimise this characteristic of the grape.

Tokaj, for many decades, has been largely known for producing sweet wines as despite being a thick skinned grape, Furmint is very susceptible to Botrytis.  As sugar builds in the grapes naturally through the growing season, botrytis can set in at harvest or late harvest, concentrating the grape’s sugar, whilst preserving acidity.

However, winemakers are now working much harder to promote dry styles of Furmint.  Furmint when fermented to dry is typically, full bodied, medium to high in alcohol, and high in acidity.  Flavours include lemon, green apple, pear and a hint of ginger – a very refreshing wine on a hot summer’s day.  The wines can be young and fresh, or matured in oak for a short or longer amount of time, giving a range of styles.  I also found some examples of extended skin contact and oxidised wine styles similar to oloroso sherry.

Here’s three wineries at the tasting I found very interesting:

Bodrog Bormuhely – I think this is a great example of how a wine label can be used to really encourage trial.  The label shouts young, modern, different – as well as DRY wine from TOKAJ

Breintenbach is a modern winery founded in 2006.  They are working with different winemaking techniques to create oxidised styles of wine which could be described as either orange or made with the encouragement of flor (a technique used in Sherry).

Gilvesy – an organic vineyard since 2014, shows the real flexibility of Furmint.  Producing sparkling, dry, off dry, oak aged, and extended oak aging wines.

New Zealand wine tasting @ 67 Pall Mall

Highlights would be a 2014 Viognier by Alpha Domus based in Hakes Bay, North Island, and two very contrasting Pinot’s.

The two pinot’s I loved were Tinker’s Field, by Rippon Vineyard, mature vines in Central Otago in  contrast to Te Whare Ra organic vineyard in Marlborough.

Marlborough and Central Otago are around 750km apart.  Central Otago is the only wine region in New Zealand to have a continental influence making the climate closer to Burgundy – it is also cooler and closer to Antarctica.

I found the Tinker’s Field to be lighter, fruit forward in style, red berries, lighter fruits, and generally a lighter style of wine / pinot.  The Te Whare Ra, was fuller in flavour and more complex, higher in alcohol with a longer finish.

The difference in styles interested me, and I look forward to trying more Pinot in New Zealand next year.

It all started back here!

When my then girl friend and now wife gave me a book about wine to take on holiday!

Though I had always grown up around good wine, I had never really investigated why that was, or what made good wine.

The rest as they say is history!