Tasting Notes
Fruit Days Cata 12/03/23
After spending three months in Crested Butte and taking a break from drinking and thinking about wine, I made sure I was back in Madrid in time for Fruit Days March tasting for some amazing natural wines!
Claus Presinger, Ordinaire 2021
Everything I want from a pet nat. This wine had this juicy, playful, refreshing forest berry fruit profile with a salinity you wouldn’t expect from an Austrian wine. It also had a chalky minerality and subtle notes of black tea and some herbs that gave it a more serious complexity that in combination made you keep drinking to know more. And the wine was very well made, clean with great, fine bubble structure. I loved it.
Imanol Garay, Ixilune 2020
A high acidity white wine with citrus notes and a fuller body from southwest France. It was nice and well-made and interesting but nothing particularly sparked my curiosity. Every year the blend is composed of Petite Corbu and Petite Manseng, the percentages depending on the vintage and fermented in 500L oak barrels. Good.
Oriol Artigas, La Prats 2015
Nice acidity, with an oxidized pink color and a salinic finish that led me to wonder if it was something more experimental out of Sanlucar. But was a surprise to taste an older vintage from Catalonia, something I haven’t tried before, and cool to see the wine had held up nicely.
Nicolas Joly, Clos de la Coulée de Serrant 2016
A Chenin Blanc from the Loire this wine had a really beautiful element of surprise with its bright golden color. The finish was this really curious honey sweetness with a minerality that created a very rich complexity that drew you into the wine. It balanced perfectly with the melon and citrus notes and high acidity. The wine came from a late harvest after a very rainy difficult season in the Loire, with the fruit finally ripening well into October with some botrytis. This was such a well balanced, interesting wine and very cool to try something from the biodynamic legend.
Domaine Les Horées, Aligoté En Coulezain 2020
Yes. This wine was so precise and well made while still reflecting a very natural character of the grape. A very crisp acidity from the Aligoté elevated the wine and balanced quite well with the floral aromas and bread notes of the finish that came from the sur-lie. The wine felt very complete, expressive, and characteristic and while slightly restrained. I was really impressed and inspired by the winemaker, Catherina Sadde a German chef turned winemaker who is also in the process of ‘unlearning’ a very traditional background while maintaining the good parts. This wine also started a very interesting discussion about how winemakers can have control over the price of their own wine, as her limited quantity wines have blown up and are now being resold on the internet for 200-300$.
Nicolás Jacob, La-bas L’Etoile 2020
To be completely honest I lost some focus by this point in the tasting. And had made a new American friend. A chardonnay from the Jura which was nice but not the most memorable for me. It had a more rounded finish with notes of oak and a glycerin finish.
La Maison Romane, Château de Berzé 2016
Biodyanmic Pinot Noir from Mâcon. It was interesting with a lot of red fruit but had that tired finish where the fruit isn’t bright enough but the structure isn’t strong enough to pull it through to the end. I think it would have been really beautiful a few years ago.
Clos Massotte, A Nous 2020
Old vine Grenache from the Languedoc in the calcareous soils that are typical from that region. This was a nice, well-structured red wine with darker fruit.
Closing thoughts: Ilan and Rodrigo did a really great job, as always, of putting together eight very unique wines of variety that kept us surprised, and interested, and were so fun to drink. I felt super contented to be back, and talking about wine in an open and fun but serious way. I also felt really challenged and rusty, like I had lost the tasting muscle, focus, and so much basic information. It ignited a motivation to get better and back into it. But also resistance to not wanting to obsess too much over wine.