Nosh and slosh at Terroirs

Had dinner with Jamie Goode last night downstairs at Terroirs. Jamie is responsible for Wine Anorak, an exceptionally well researched, brilliantly designed and endlessly readable web site. He is also the wine correspondent of the Express and has various projects in the pipeline including a book on Natural Wine.

We put away a considerable amount of food including some Matje herrings (cured with lemon juice, olive oil and fresh herbs), a goopy piperade, a plate of juicy clams, Tuscan raw steak, braised rabbit with peas, baby broad beans and shallots served in a casserole and belly of pork with polenta. Oh, some rather delicious cheeses. That’s it – I’m not eating again until next week.

It may have been a root day but the wines were singing.

First out of the bottle like a startled jackrabbit was Thierry Puzelat’s Romorantin, a pale yellow wine bristling with acidity.

Consider 105 year old vines and younger vines (a mere 37 years old) planted on French rootstock on silex and then aged in old barrels. It may look fragile at 11.5%, but the wine is a veritable vin de garde and has an intensity that lingers remarkably on the palate. 

Aromas jostle for attention: lemon and chalk followed by mixed white fruits (white peaches, william pears), dry honey, almonds and clean, minerally scents reminiscent of finely-spun wool. It’s complex on the palate, too, extremely vinous showing lemon-cream and honey. Ripe apple juiciness quickly gives way to tart, steely acidity that sings like a taut violin string, providing balance and structure for the full, luscious fruit. As the wine sits in the glass the acidity becomes steelier and more penetrating and the flinty minerality more pronounced taking on back notes of ginger, white pepper, pearskin and hell’s granny smiths. 

Palate wetted - and whetted - we had a carafed bottle of 2006 Massa Vecchia Bianco, a blend of 80% Vermentino with a balance of roughly 10% each of Malvasia di Candia and Ansonica. The wine is fermented with the skins, which is conventional for red wines but still highly unusual for whites. The grapes are pressed by foot twice a day for five days then the wine spends three weeks on the skins, with a daily punch down. Aged in small chestnut casks, the resulting dry white wine is nothing short of thrilling, with a bright golden-amber colour and a powerful scent of wild herbs and just the slightest astringency (from the skins) in the finish.

Like so many white wines that see a combination of extended maceration and wild yeast ferment there is an al dente crunch to the mouthfeel – it is as if the skins are still in the glass. I always get a whiff of ginger, roasted coriander seeds and maybe some cinnamon from this wine and it is not too fanciful also to detect some sweet chestnut. The wine seems to take the buttered citrus and briny elements from the Vermentino and the vivid ripe apricot-cut-wth-cloves and orange peel aromas from the Malvasia. The finish is sustained, warm, exotic and beautifully balanced. Wonderfully nourishing, a thing of real beauty.

Difficult to top that!  Luca Roagna’s charming Barbaresco Riserva 1998, however, moves effortlessly through the gears. Taut and austere to begin with, it unwinds to reveal blackberry and redcurrant, then roses, tobacco and goudron, a sweet tarrinesss. This is a generous wine showing the many sides of the Nebbiolo grape; it is young, yet it displays development, it has tannins, yet they are fine, it is ripe, but in no way blowsy.

Our final red, Domaine Arrextea’s 2007 Irouleguy Haitza Rouge, is suffused with vivid red berry fruits (plums and black cherries and a hint of cranberry on the nose). More black fruit and pleasant leathery notes on the palate with subtle tannins. Bold, earthy and rustic, refreshing acidity and good supple textured fruit, a refreshing contrast, literally, to the more obviously overoaked styles.

We finish with a sherry and a dry Marsala. The former is the Amontillado El Tresillo 1874 from Emilio Hildago. It is almost like dry treacle with stunning sweet toasted walnut and brazil nut aromas, burnt cream, coffee and caramel. The mouth-coating texture gives the wine incredible length. Vecchio Samperi Ventennale from Marco de Bartoli is also made by the solera method, although it is not a fortified wine. The power and purity of the Grillo grape shines through and there is dynamic, surging acidity that carries the melange of orange citrus, walnut, vanilla and dried spice across the palate. Again, the finish is spectacularly long.