This wonderful image comes from the people behind Game of Rhones (why didn’t I think of that name!), a Rhone-focused wine event in Melbourne, Australia. Check out the website; they’re really all-in with the Game of Thrones theme. Oh, and the wine sounds awesome, too. I only wish I wasn’t on the other side of the world.
Hidden message? If you look closely, you can see the word “Hodor” just to the right of Drogo’s face. We’ll take Hodor on #TeamMourvedre, too.
Your monthly roundup of Mourvèdre-related interestingness from the interwebs circa March 2013.
Last month’s roundup led off with a jealosy-stoking post about a major Domaine Tempier tasting, so let’s start March’s roundup with @ErinBScala‘s post on a vertical tasting of Hewitson’s Old Garden Mourvèdre, from the first vintage (1998) through the latest barrel sample (2012). If you don’t know, the Old Garden vineyard, in the Barossa Valley, contains the world’s oldest known Mourvèdre vines. In other words, holy ground. My post on the 2005 (her favorite of the tasting) here.
March also saw the 16th Annual Rhone Rangers Weekend Celebration of American Rhones in San Francisco. One of these years, I’ll have to make it to this event. One of this year’s seminars, moderated by @jbonne, was Mourvedre, A Rising Star in the World of American Rhones, described thusly:
Mourvedre has taken center stage in many California Rhone strongholds, long since having outgrown its traditional role as a blending grape that brings structure and ageability to wines based Grenache. To show that Mourvedre is ready for its renaissance, seven Rhone Rangers winemakers will present their candidates for Mourvedre in a leading role: 2012 TERCERO Rosé (presented by Larry Schaffer), 2010 HOLLY’S HILL Petit Patriarche (presented by Josh Bendick), 2010 DAVID GIRARD Mourvedre (presented by Mari Wells), 2010 FOLIN CELLARS Mourvedre (presented by Rob Folin), 2009 KENNETH VOLK Mourvedre (presented by Ken Volk), 2010 VILLA CREEK “Damas Noir” (presented by Cris Cherry), and 2012 TABLAS CREEK “Vin de Paille Sacrerouge” Dessert Wine (presented by Jason Haas).
Artisans of Barossa reminded us that the name Mataro still holds sway in Australia. (And reminded me that I’ve got to find a way to get my hands on more varietal Mourvèdre/Mataro from Australia here in the U.S.)
In March, I discovered even more nooks and crannies of the wine world where Mourvèdre wine is made, including Tunisia, Greece, and Mexico.
A funny exchange on Twitter about the World Sommelier Competition where the winner mistook a Jumilla Monastrell for an Italian Cannonau in the blind tasting portion. Includes this winning tweet:
@TomokoKuriyama Cannonau/garnacha resembles monastrell/mourvèdre like a cow resembles a horse… Oh well.
— Victor de la Serna E (@VictordelaSerna) March 29, 2013
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If you come across any Mourvèdre goodness, let me know and I’ll probably link to it.
I’m a huge fan of the George R.R. Martin books (A Song of Ice and Fire Series) and the Game of Thrones HBO series based on them. As a wine geek, I noticed lots of references to wine as I was reading the books. My mind would start to wonder about the wine geography and wine culture of this fictional world. Eventually, I started making notes of these references in my copies of the books with the idea that maybe I’d turn it into a blog post.
Well, five books later I’ve got a small moleskin full of notes and hundreds of dog-eared pages that need to be revisited. But with Season 3 of the HBO series starting tonight, I’ve decided to start sharing what I’ve got, with the plan to add to it as I can. I’m starting with a look at the two major wine regions: The Arbor and Dorne.
MAJOR WINE REGIONS
In Westeros, the continent on which the majority of the action in the books takes place, there seem to be two principal wine regions: “the Arbor” and Dorne. Wine is produced elsewhere, but these are the only two that are referred to with geographic specificity. There are other wines from beyond Westeros that I’ll try to cover in future posts.
THE ARBOR
Geography
The Arbor is an island off of the southwestern coast of Westeros. It is part of a fertile region called The Reach, the seat of which is Highgarden. Wine is clearly part of the identity of the Arbor: the ruling house is House Redwyne, whose sigil is a grape cluster.
The Wine
Wine from the Arbor is widely viewed around Westeros as the finest wine in the world. Most references to it are in the context of how fine it is or what a luxury it is.
Dany to Xaro:
“The Arbor makes the best wine in the world,” Dany declared. “Come with me to the Arbor, Xaro, and you’ll have the finest vintages you ever tasted.”
Arbor wine is served at King Joffrey’s wedding feast:
“Let the cups be filled!” Joffrey proclaimed, when the gods had been given their due. His cupbearer poured a whole flagon of dark Arbor red into the golden wedding chalice that Lord Tyrell had given him that morning.
Tyrion Lannister to Sansa Stark:
“There is a flagon of good Arbor gold on the sideboard, Sansa. Will you be so kind as to pour me a cup?”
…
[Sansa] sat on the edge of the great curtained bed and drained half her cup in three long swallows. No doubt it was very fine wine, but she was too nervous to taste it.
Sansa, again, at House Baelish with Littlefinger:
The wine was very fine; an Arbor vintage, she thought. It tasted of oak and fruit and hot summer nights, the flavors blossoming in her mouth like flowers opening to the sun. [She’s a 13-14 year old girl, so forgive her florid language. – VINEgeek]
Regarding wine at Chataya’s brothel in King’s Landing:
The wine was poor stuff compared to the vintages from the Arbor the house normally served. “You must forgive us, my lord.” Chataya said. “I cannot find good wine at any price of late.”
Anguy, lamenting how he’d lost the fortune he’d won in an archery tournament:
I won a fair fortune myself, but then I met Dancy, Jayde and Alayaya. They taught me what roast swan tastes like, and how to bathe in Arbor wine.
Petyr Baelish/Littlefinger:
We shall serve him lies and Arbor gold, and he’ll drink them down and ask for more.
Jaime Lannister, offered a choice of wines:
[Orton Merryweather]: We have Dornish red and Arbor gold, and a fine sweet hippocras from Highgarden.
[Jaime Lannister]: The gold, I think. I find Dornish wines as sour as the Dornish.
Queen Cersei:
Cersei beckoned to her page for another cup of wine, a golden vintage from the Arbor, fruity and rich.
“Arbor gold” is the most often mentioned type, but there are also references to Arbor reds, so I assume that “gold” is an indicator of the color (a rich white wine), rather than just a reference to quality, which was my initial impression.
Real World Analog
Photo credit: alasam via Flickr
Based on the unquestioned status of the wine, I want to think of it as Burgundy. But given the descriptions of the wine itself — “fruity and rich”, “oak and fruit” — and the fertile region it’s from, I imagine Arbor wine as definitely on the California/New World end of the style spectrum.
DORNE
The Geography
Dorne is an arid, mountainous region, also at the southern end of the continent of Westeros. References to crops such as citrus, olives, pomegranates suggest a climate similar to our Mediterranean.
The Wine
In contrast to wines from the Arbor, Dornish wines are strong and less rich/sweet, thus less universally appreciated.
Tyrion Lannister, drinking Dornish wine with Janos Slynt:
Quite the find. Dornish wines are not often so rich.
Prince Oberyn of Dorne to Tyrion Lannister reflecting on a past visit to Casterly Rock, seat of House Lannister in the Westerlands:
“Your skies were too grey, your wines too sweet, your women too chaste, your food too bland…”
Another conversation between Prince Oberyn and Tyrion:
Is it Dornish wine you’re drinking?”
“From the Arbor.”
Oberyn made a face. “Red water.”
[Later…]
I think I may drink some of Lord Redwyne’s grape juice after all.”
“As you like.” Tyrion served him a cup.
The man took a sip, sloshed it about in his mouth, and swallowed. “It will serve, for the moment. I will send you up some strong Dornish wine on the morrow.”
Dornish wine plays a role in a legend about the Rat Cook:
The Rat Cook had cooked the son of the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots of pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine.
Dorne makes some sweet wine as well; there is a “sweet, heavy strongwine” beloved by Prince Doran of Dorne.
Real World Analog
Photo credit: Ryan Opaz via Flickr
In my head, Dorne is like Spain, particularly the Jumilla/Yecla/Alicante areas. And that would mean Dornish red is probably Monastrell! Not sure the descriptions themselves fit the modern wine from this region, but the mental image of the landscape is biasing me. What do you think fits?
—
Well, that’s it for now. I have many more post ideas ahead, covering other wine types, wine-drinking culture, medicinal uses, food and wine pairing, a master list of who in the books has drunk wine and probably a special post just for my homeboy Tyrion Lannister and all his adventures (and turns of phrase) with wine.
I know many of you may not give a Rat Cook’s ass about this kind of post, but it makes me happy. And what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t indulge your peculiar interests. Hope some of you enjoy.
In an article written by Sally Easton MW in db‘s April issue, she highlights research to show that it’s impossible to get minerality in a wine directly from the nutrients in the ground.
This news came to my attention via Twitter in breathless ALLCAPS. In recent years this has been a somewhat contentious issue, with scientists trying to debunk (or bunk, I suppose) the idea of “minerality” in wine.
I really don’t get why this is supposed to be surprising. Nobody thinks that a wine with chocolate notes comes from soil with chocolate in it. Or all those petrol-aromaed Rieslings are from vineyards near gas stations. The words we use to describe wine are just poor approximations of the experience of tasting a wine, not ingredient lists.
But maybe, at the end of the day, we should be happy that most wine talk is so ridiculous. In a world that is oversaturated with overdetermined meaning, there’s something decidedly cheering about this mischievous drink that resists plausible description.
It’s the first #MourvedreMonday of the month, so here’s a roundup of Mourvèdre-related interestingness from the past month: February, the dwarf month. (I wonder if someday, February will be downgraded from full month status to “dwarf”, like poor ole Pluto.)
The Leon Stolarski Blog stoked my jealousy this month with a post describing a major Domaine Tempier tasting which included 19 bottles, from a couple rosés to 7 vintages of La Cabassaou.
At the always-worth-reading Drinkster blog, Philip White recommended two Aussie Mourvèdre/Mataros: Yangarra 2010 Mourvèdre McLaren Vale and Esperanza 2010 Monastrell McLaren Vale. (He also suggests blending the two and calling it “Yangaranza Matourastrell”.) Here’s a taste:
It’s intensely-flavoured, velvety wine, with aromas that subliminally hint at 6B pencils, Parade Gloss boot polish, and freshly-polished horse tack. Its fruits are somewhere between the rooty-fruity fragrance of borscht – cool beetroot soup with yoghurt – and the meaty twang of blueberry. Its flavours are somewhere between those fleeting notions, inked with the reek of times and tastes past: it’s nostalgic stuff, with soft tannins that remind me of the grainy images in old movies. It’s never heavy, jammy, or gloopy. It’s the sort of red I can drink in the morning, without food, just for its powerful memory triggers. I could have it instead of lunch, or with some, in which instance Wah Hing tea-smoked duck comes immediately to mind. I could have it in the afternoon, with or without Alison Paxton’s exquisite Kangarilla Creamery goat cheese from next door, and then, come to think of it, I could have it with dinner, with dribbly lamb cutlets and mash. In other words, I recommend it. Trust Unca Phil.
The March 31, 2013 Wine Spectator failed to call out a single varietal Mourvèdre in it’s annual California Rhone review. The full listing of 600+ wines with scores is available here. The highest scoring varietal Mourvèdre — if you’re into scores, that is — is the Cypher Mourvèdre Paso Robles El Pelon 2009 (90, $55). They made up for mostly snubbing Mourvèdre by running a Domaine Tempier/Bandol feature in the same issue. (I’ll not link to it because it’s behind a paywall.)
Have you head of the new “Locations” project from Dave Phinney (of Orin Swift)? I hadn’t until recently. He’s sourcing the wine from sites across France and blending them together:
2011 is the first vintage of our French red wine sourced from some of the finest locations throughout France. Grenache from the Roussillon, Syrah from the Rhone, and assorted Bordeaux varietals are sensibly blended in an original style that showcases the best of what this historic land has to offer. During months of travel throughout storied growing appellations, winemaker Dave Phinney was able to secure prized vineyard sites to realize his objective. Utilizing a carte blanche approach and forgoing tradition, a powerful and balanced wine emerged that justly pays homage to the country of France.
In addition to this Franc-enstein bottling, he’s done one from Spain (Spain-kenstein?) that blends across Priorat, Rioja and Ribera del Duero. Another from Italy is in the works.
This offends my sensibilities on several levels.
That said, I got a chance to taste the French version and I actually kind of enjoyed what was in the glass. Go ahead and call me a snob, but just because it tastes good, doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Apparently, I’m a year or two late to this, but HOLY SHIT, did you know Nicholas Felton designed some wine labels! How did I miss this?
Nicholas Felton is a star in the world of data visualization. His Feltron Reports (each a data-driven record of his year, done in the style of a corporate annual report) are legendary. He also cofounded Daytum and inspired the Facebook Timeline. As a data geek, both professionally and personally, I love his stuff. Which is why I can’t believe I never heard of this. If there are two things that always catch my eye on Twitter, it’s talk of data visualization/infographics and wine labels.
Alright, enough of my dismay over missing this news. Let’s take a look at the labels. They were done for Between Five Bells, a small winery in Victoria, Australia. You can read their story of the labels here. There are two general label styles: one style is focused on the vinification data and the other style is focused on the growing season or vintage data. Let’s start with the first.
The main visual on each of these labels shows eight key data points for each grape variety in the blend: from baume and pH to whole cluster and de-stemmed percentages to maceration days and fermentation temperatures. That’s a lot of data and it makes for a unique and cool signature of each wine, almost like a thumbprint.
Two quibbles. 1) In the little chart on the left that presumably shows the proportions of each grape variety in the final blend, why not include the actual percentage values? The data labels are shown for every other data point on the label and the average wine drinker cares way more about this information than all the rest. 2) As a Mourvèdre evangelist, I cringe a bit at the spelling “Mouvedre” on the 2011 label.
But very cool labels, indeed.
•••
Next up are the Rosé labels, which focus on the growing season data.
The Rosé labels take a different approach. I wonder if it was driven by the difficulty of employing the other style with seven grape varieties instead of just four. These two are more different from each other than labels in the other style are, so let’s take them one at a time.
The front label of the 2011 shows the historic average high and low temperatures across the growing season (September to April) — that’s the white band. The yellow band overlays the average high and low temperatures for the 2011 vintage. You can see at a glance that this vintage was a cool one, especially in the last several months of the growing season. The back label (not shown here) displays the rainfall vs. the historic average in a similar fashion.
With the 2012 label, they decided to “stack” these charts, which makes some sense given that they are on the same time scale. Also the high and low values are not shown as a band; rather, each is is plotted as a ribbon, with the deviation (positive or negative) from the average filled in. I find the 2012 more confusing than the 2011. To my eyes & brain, it’s harder to tell from a quick look at the high and low temperature ribbons when they are above or below the historic average. This is easier on the rainfall ribbon, which is very cool and has the unique signature effect.
I really love the 2011 Rosé label. Even beyond the data, I think it works really well as a wine label. Because it’s trying to do less, it’s cleaner and there are fewer axis labels and such, which makes it possible to see it as label art first and chart second. Also, bonus points for it fitting on a single front label, not a wraparound label. As a blogger who frequently photographs labels for posts or Instagram, wraparound labels are a pain in the neck. I also love that it speaks to the wine’s place more than the winemaking style. Now if they could just add those grape variety percentages and maybe add soil composition, vine age…
•••
You may be wondering, what finally tipped me off to this. Instagram, of all things. I saw a photo from @hawk_wakawaka that mentioned this winery. Intrigued by the unusual blend she mentioned (cool-climate Shiraz, Sangiovese, Grenache and Zinfandel in Australia), I googled them only to have my day made by their labels. Better late than never.
Read Eric Asimov’s article on Antonio Galloni leaving The Wine Advocate to start his own online property “aimed at younger wine consumers.” I wish him well. My favorite quote:
I have this vision of going to a restaurant and seeing a bottle of wine on every table. Everything I want to do is centered on how do I make that happen, how can I help people make these choices.
— Antonio Galloni, on his new direction upon leaving The Wine Advocate
Inventor Adrian Cheok, profiled by Eliza Strickland at IEEE Spectrum, is “dedicated to building multisensory communication gadgets.” After building little haptic jackets for pet chickens (!), he’s setting his sites higher:
Cheok has a “digital lollipop” in the works that electrically and thermally stimulates the tongue to produce basic flavors—bitter, sour, salty, sweet. He dreams of a system that would let friends in Paris send you a taste of their wine over the Internet. “The ultimate Internet,” he says, “will integrate all our senses.”
This will never really work for wine, right? So much of the “flavor” of wine is olfactory. Stimulating the tongue couldn’t communicate even 1/10 of the real experience of drinking a particular wine.
It is nice to imagine Mourvèdre lollipops, though.
I mentioned the other day that I’m a chart nerd; it’s an occupational hazard (I’m a marketing researcher by day). Well, when the Top 100 issue of Wine Spectatorshowed up in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago, I found myself wondering what you’d end up with — varietally speaking — if you did a master blend of them all. An equal blend, one bottle of each of the 73 reds on the list.
Would all the Napa Cabs and Bordeaux mean a Cabernet-dominated blend?
Would the Rise of Pinot push it to the top, aided by the fact that it is almost always bottled as 100% Pinot Noir?
Or would there be a surprise to uncover?
My curiosity was piqued. I had to find out. So I fired up Excel and started a spreadsheet.
Here’s the result:
So what do you think? Syrah/Shiraz at #1 was a mild surprise for me. Any surprises for you?
This was a fun little exercise. Next year, let’s hope for a little more Mourvèdre in this blend.
) and the Game of Thrones HBO series based on them. As a wine geek, I noticed lots of references to wine as I was reading the books. My mind would start to wonder about the wine geography and wine culture of this fictional world. Eventually, I started making notes of these references in my copies of the books with the idea that maybe I’d turn it into a blog post.
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