Rare Wine Report

WORDS BY JOE GURBA

Rare Wine Report

Many Albertans outside of the drinks business don’t realize how good we have it here for wine selection. We live in one of the best wine markets in the world. Every week we see a new wave of lovely and limited wines appear in our shops, however briefly, until those in the know snap them up.

This is a small sampling of the terroir driven wines you need to hunt down this month, wines made on small farms by true vignerons with that rare gift for gently translating nature into art. These wines are nourishing and artful records of another lap around the sun.

As the Anchorman famously said, “it’s so hot out… milk was a bad choice.” You can say the same of big red wines. But with new vintages landing, now is the time to collect for your cellar so you’ll have those perfectly aged drops ready to comfort you when the long cold nights return. Here are three red wines you could drink this winter or lay down for several winters to come.

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Hiyu 2017 Corvus

Chardonnay. Champagne AVA Oregon, USA

$125

Still available at: Crestwood Fine Wine

www.modernluxuria.com- 46 -

Nate Ready of Hiyu Wine Farm in Oregon stands among the most innovative vignerons in the world, crafting wines that marry the most abstract explorations of history and nature with a host of innovations in natural poly-farming and minimalist cellaring techniques. While reinventing his cuvées into dozens of configurations each year, his Corvus is perhaps his proudest and rarest of wines.

If you turn this gorgeous bottle around, you’ll see a sketch of a scallop shell, the symbol of the Camino de Santiago. This is because the Corvus cuvée is a pilgrimage in a bottle, a dark and bloody and mystical wine that testifies to that famous medieval journey while also exploring the genetic ancestry of its chief grape. This wine comes entirely from a miniscule plot of only one acre where Ready removed the buds from old vines and hand-grafted a field blend onto each vine trunk, consisting of Cabernet Franc and several of its genetic ancestors, much rarer indigenous grape varieties that still grow in lesser known Spanish appellations that dot the pilgrim’s path from the Abbey at Roncesvalles to Compostela de Santiago, grapes including Mencía, Abouriou, Brancellao, Manseng Noir. Farming these and harvesting these as a whole and then vinifying them without separation, a pre-industrial field blend is achieved that accesses the genetic underpinnings of that beguiling fruit we call Cabernet Franc.

All of Ready’s Hiyu cuvées are thought provoking and palate bending experiences. He and his wife China (responsible for drink and food, respectively) farm fourteen acres of vines, four acres of field and pasture, half an acre of market garden, four acres of forest, and a duck pond. The rest of their acreage is being fallowed into natural food forests for foraging. Aside from a little work beneath the vines with a scythe, there is no mowing or tilling in the vineyards. Instead, the control of vegetation is done by their pigs, cows, chicken, ducks, and geese that are strategically released among the vines during different parts of the vine’s annual lifecycle. Nate and China direct the diversity of plants on the site by seeding directly into the dense growth or behind the pigs as they root around in search of food. They only make a single cut of their vines at pruning—there is no hedging, green harvest, leaf pulling, or other interruption of the vines’ growth cycle. This is all in pursuit of a farm that completes its own ecological continuum. As counterintuitive as it sounds, the result has been fruit of overwhelming complexity and singularity.

Only 25 cases made and only 12 bottles in Alberta, you must get your hands on this wine and anything else by Hiyu (a.k.a. Smockshop Band, a.k.a. Tzum). Grab two if you can! One to open this Thanksgiving (and be sure to decant for a good eight hours before drinking!) and one to lay down in your wine fridge for another 4-6 years of development.

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Succés Vinícola 2017 El Solà Trepat

100% Trepat Conca de Barberà DOP, Spain

$50-$53

Still available at: Highlands Liquor

www.modernluxuria.com- 48 -

Not only a new producer but a new region to our market—in fact a whole new grape variety to Alberta—this introduction is by no means entry level. From an appellation two hours west of Barcelona called Conca de Barberà, from a single vineyard called El Solà, from an indigenous Catalan grape called Trepat, from vines planted in 1900, comes a micro-cuvée of only 300 bottles, farmed and vinified with minimal intervention by husband & wife duo Albert Canela and Mariona Vendrell of upstart cellars Succés Vinícola.

On the nose, this wine has much to unfold as it decants (and a long decant is indeed advised), showing a nose of red currant, crunchy plum, potters clay, wet rocks, petrichor, light roast cold brew, chestnut spread, whole wheat, and enoki mushrooms. The juice was fermented 40 days on its skins before being pressed into barrel for fourteen months of ageing, then bottled and aged a further two years before release. At the risk of blurring with comparisons, as a new grape for

most readers, I will say the wine shares certain features with single varietal grenaches like those of Comando G and with the austere chestnut aged reds of the Penedès like Suriol, while also bringing a certain Barolo like character to bear in its savoury mushroom qualities and silky yet prominent tannins over generous acidity. It’s a full bodied drop at 14.5% and would be a treat to visit again after another five years of cellaring.

Mariona and Albert are two upstart vignerons who met in winemaking school in Priorat. They bootstrapped space in a cooperative cellar and took up farming and buying organic grapes in this lesser known appellation where Albert himself had been raised by grape farmers. The two of them work hand in hand, creating a number of lovely everyday wines at excellent prices, but their single vineyard micro-cuvées are the ones to hunt down and lay down. Do it now, they just might cost a lot more down the road. It’s not like 120-year-old Trepat vines are in generous supply!

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Sainte Cosme 2018 Côte-Rôtie

100% Sérine Conca de Barberà DOP, Spain

$120

Still available at: Crestwood Fine Wines

www.modernluxuria.com- 50 -

Ah the roasted slope, the holy grail of most acolytes of Syrah. The vines of this famously steep appellation of only 224 hectares cling to the south facing bend of the Rhône where they struggle nobly each year to ripen the inky, peppery, floral, savoury, black-fruited, t-skinned indigenous grape of pride, Syrah. But as you’ll note above, this wine purports to a different variety: 100% Sérine. Do not be alarmed!: Numerous growers in the Côte-Rôtie, including Louis Barruol of Saint Cosme, have been arguing that the oldest vines of Côte-Rôtie are in fact an ancient and hyper-localized variety of Syrah that is markedly different from modern clonal selections. In their words: “Sérine is not synonymous with Syrah; rather, Sérine is synonymous with Côte- Rôtie.” If you’d like to assess this difference for yourself, you can’t go wrong with Sainte Cosme’s stunning example.

Besides being farmed biodynamically and vinified elegantly with a minimalist approach that reveals this unique terroir beautifully, Barruol foregoes the uniquely Côte-Rôtie addition of roughly 5% Viognier that gives

many other examples their extra floral kick (and give somm’s an important clue when blind tasting). And Barruol is not alone, many of the best producers in the area who boast the oldest vines have done away with the Viognier as well. Sérine, as you’ll see, really doesn’t need it—it’s already packed with its own notes of freshly picked violets.

This wine was farmed on some of the steepest vineyard inclines in France, reaching 55% inclination, in four lieu-dits planted on the famous schist based soils of the Côte Blonde half of the appellation, known for the more elegant expressions that are less heavy on the classic bacon fat note that rewards bottle age and more of that mystifying peppery velvety violet aspect that makes Syrah (ahem, Sérine) lovers swoon. Lay this down for a decade if you can, though I’ve tried a vertical of 2014 through 2018 and even in its youth this wine packs a powerful punch of fresh fruit without too much tannin to be enjoyed now, though you’d be remiss not to give it a good eight hours decant first.

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