New Cantillon Releases

About a month ago, I was very excited to learn of our comparably generous allocation of Cantillon "Lou Pepe" Kriek and "Fou-Foune" apricot lambic. Apparently, it was so generous to have seriously irked a few accounts in the Bay Area who did not get any of these, but that's another story....

I bought two bottles of each, one to drink now and another to stash away for a few years. Yes, fellow oenophiles, beer too can be cellared, increasing in complexity, changing in texture, and generally evolving in ways similar to how well-made wine will after some bottle age. I don't know this from personal experience so much as I do from anecdotal accounts from beer drinkers and brewers.

A quick primer on Cantillon. They are the kings of lambic style beers, the traditional, spontaneously fermented, oak aged Belgian sour beer, as well as the benchmark producers of geuze, a blend of lambics of varying ages, usually 1, 2 and 3 years old. According to their brewer, Jean-Pierre Van Roy, the geuze beers improve in bottle for up to two decades - amazing! I'd love to try an older example. Though drinking the unusual combination of acidity, fizz, and brettanomyces influenced savor in a current bottling of Cantillon Geuze is arguably (depends on who you ask, sour beer is divisive) a wonderful tasting experience.

In addition to their famed geuze beers, Cantillon produces fruit lambics from fresh fruit that is thrown into the fermenting sour beer. They do so with raspberries (Rosé de Gambrinus); Merlot grapes from St. Emilion (St. Lamvinus), and as it relates to this post, cherries for the "Lou Pepe" Kriek and apricots for the "Fou-foune." Lou Pepe pours a beautiful, cranberry color, and shows intense, youthful cherry fruit to balance out the tart lambic notes. In fact, there is a really fresh cherry character here that almost brings to mind a lighter Alpine red wine. Other Krieks I have had show cherry fruit that is tasty but nearly overshadowed by the sour lambic. Upon further review, the "Lou Pepe" fruit lambics are brewed with 50% more fruit than Cantillon's (and other breweries) typical lambics. They are also aged in old Bordeaux barrels which are being used for beer for the first time, likely another cause of the vinous quality of these brews. Fou-Foune was bright, crisp, tangy and ethereal. Just the right level of tartness, complemented by subtle fresh apricot flavors. A real treat.

If you're not familiar with Cantillon, then I suggest you try one of their beers. Check out some more terrific info on this Belgian treasure on the importer's website. Other names to look out for in the world of geuze and lambic beers would include Girardin, Hansen's, De Ranke (who makes a killer Kriek) and Drie Fonteinen. Prepare yourself for a delicious, sour experience.

Notes from Dressner Tasting last week

Mr. Joe Dressner (?)

Now this was my kind of trade tasting. Held in the kitchen of Dressner's west coast rep's Castro home, with a manageable amount of wines to taste through and a friendly group of like-minded wine people. Thanks to Mr. Dressner and Shawn Mead for putting this tasting together.

2007 Lemasson Gama Sutra VdT

100% tasty gamay. This Puzelat protege clearly knows what he's doing.

2007 Lemasson Cheville de Fer

Cot. Deeper and more intense nose. Tangy mixed berries over a very smooth, elegant texture. Less earthy than the wine above, and a bit more heft. Delicious young cot - tasty now but will surely gain complexity over time.

2007 Cascina Tavign Grignolino d'Asti

Excellent. Pure cherry essence with wonderful acidity and loads of freshness. Grignolino as good as this is way too easy to drink (not necessarily a bad thing).

2006 Noussan Torrette Val d'Aoste

Mixed berry and dark fruit skins. Good flavors and focus here. Reasonably bright for a Torrette, which can sometimes be a bit darker and slightly chewier.

2005 Gioia de Colle Primitivo

My notes read simply, "Berry. Dusty cocoa. Best primitivo I've had." Ceri Smith, proprietor of the terrific San Francisco Italian wine shop Biondivino, shared my sentiments, saying that it was primitivo she actually liked. Couldn't agree more.

2005 Gioia Antello del Murge

More intense and brambly. Interesting. A touch more earthy complexity as well.

Massa Vecchia VdT Rosso (vintage?)

I have heard a lot about this wine. Maybe I'm just not ready for it; perhaps it's too 'challenging.' Regardless, I found the aromas to be very heady and intense. Macerated cherries on the palate, a touch of CO2, and the sans soufre/minimal sulphur nutty aftertaste I seem to be picking up with increasing frequency in some natural wines.

2006 Malescondo Rosso di Montalcino

Very intense, earthy, tangy red fruit. Some tuscan savor as well. Quite good.

2005 Malescondo Chianti Classico

More intense flavors. Darker fruits and fruit skins. Slightly raisinated nose and more assertive tannins, but all balanced and truly delicious.

Back to the French wines...

2007 Puzelat Tesnieres (Pineau d'Aunis)

Classic white pepper and wild strawberry nose, leading to vivid blue and purple fruit flavors. A true original, and very fine.

2007 Tue Bouef Cheverny

Light, earthy gamay. Tasty and decidedly thirst quenching bistro style wine.

2006 Descombes Brouilly
This is serious cru beaujolais; don't let the Brouilly cru designation fool you. Intense raspberry and blackberry on the nose lead to a palate of of lively mixed fruit, with great intensity and unique savor.

2006 Descombes Morgon
Damn, this is good. A good bit more tightly wound than the Brouilly and in want of long decanting or opening a night before consumption. Even better, stash it away for several years. Very dense, explosive berries, but as I mentioned, decidedly stern. It's not showing close to everything it's got to offer.

2007 La Guillaume Monpertuis

'Poopy red berries,' on the nose, according to my notes. Light, dilute, and perhaps too sans soufre-y for my taste.

2006 Ca de Nocci Sottbosco Ca de Roci
Emilia Romagna sparkler. 50% lambrusco grasparossa, 30% lambrusco maestri, 20% malbo gentile. Dark. Tastes like a sparkling Loire cot might taste if they made such a wine (maybe someone out there does?) Nice gripping tannins on finish. This wine makes me hungry for hearty Italian cuisine, of the regionally authentic, homestyle variety that is probably best pursued in Italy (but of course).
Long time, no new content...THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE! So despite my strong dislike for writing long posts with a bunch of random tasting notes, here is one such entry below. Occasionally, unique wines do merit my putting down the most boring, gray area prone, self indulgent of all prose known to man, wine tasting notes. Hope you enjoy reading.

Massa Vecchia Bia
Another wine that I don't enjoy. If I've lost points with the geeky Italophiles out there, that's just too bad. I apparently don't think dig these Massa Vecchia wines that much. The red was more enjoyable than this one, which had a weird, Brett and wild yeast geuze style savor to it. The Cantillon geuze of sparkling wines. I'd give you more info but the Dressner website links to the Ca de Nocci above when I drag my mouse over the Massa Vecchia link.

OK, whew...this took a good while to get up here. Busy at work, tired at home, and thus the delay in getting these up. Good wines, though, take a while to learn how to make. And so it follows that their descriptions sometimes take a while to post. Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading, and that you might find something new and exciting to try if some of these are available in a shop near you.

Brett and Fruit: GT Dave Kombucha, Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus

As a kid I used to eat lemons. When life gave me lemons, I might have made lemonade, but with, at most, half the sugar a typical recipe would suggest. I also loved fizzy drinks, except for soda, which of course was too sweet. As a substitute for soda, I used to mix Perrier with fruit juices. Orange juice and perrier, which I dubbed an 'oobie,' started my whole range of drinks, which would become popular with family, less so with friends. When I started getting into wine, I would satisfy my need for fizz and acidity by drinking champagne, cava, cremant d'Alsace, sekt, basically any well made sparkling wine. Recently I have expanded my horizons: during the day I satisfy my craving for tart and fizzy by drinking kombucha, and at night I have started to enjoy the occasional lambic, or Belgian fruit beer.

Kombucha is basically a type of sweetened tea that is slowly, naturally fermented over the course of 30 days. Aiding the fermentation are acetobacter bacteria (used in vinegar production) and several different yeasts, including brettanomyces. These days it is often flavored with fruit. Some CO2 is trapped in the bottle which makes the drink a bit fizzy. My only experience has been with the GT Dave brand, whose flavors I find to be uniformly delicious; try the grape, mango, and strawberry varieties - awesome with a sandwich or simply on their own for a late afternoon boost.

Lambics are spontaneously fermented Belgian beers. They have a strong acetic acid tang, as well as some barnyard like flavors due to the high count of brettanomyces in the brew. Often times the fruit beers you see in stores are sweetened for the mass market, and may not even be based on lambic beers. Cantillon, on the other hand, does things traditionally and naturally. Their rose de gambrinus is based on their geuze (a blend of 1 and 2-3 year old lambics) flavored with fresh raspberries, giving it an intense pink color. At first I loved the beer, with its refreshing framboise flavors and pleasant bitter snap to the finish. However, the more I drank I could not get over the increasingly persistent bitterness, which honestly came across as very bile-like. That right there might have been a deal breaker for many of you, and of course bitter, sour beers are not for everyone. But they're definitely worth a try, especially when made by a brewery as revered and respected by beer afficionados as Cantillon.