The Champagne Interlude

Champagne is unquestionably ideal as an apéritif, and indeed, it’s practically mandatory at the beginning of a proper dinner. It is also an extremely food-friendly wine, of course, and if you would like to serve champagne throughout the course of a meal, its diversity of styles, varieties and weights make it possible to find a candidate to match nearly anything. But usually one ends up drinking a multitude of other wines. (Yes, I know it’s a shock, but there do exist some wines other than champagne that are worthy of drinking. Not many, but you can find a few.)

Champagne, however, is also highly agreeable at a later stage in the meal. For many years, my friends and I have practiced what we call the “champagne interlude”: a bottle of champagne placed after the main course, before moving on to salad, cheese, dessert, madeira, or whatever else is to conclude a multi-course extravaganza. This has the happy and magical effect of refreshing both palate and spirit, especially if there has been an excessive quantity or diversity of wines preceding it. (Us? Excess? Never.) And besides, it’s delicious. Oftentimes a mature champagne is perfect for this, and since mature Burgundy is most frequently our red of choice, a mature champagne seems particularly appropriate to follow the refinement and complexity of such a wine. Sometimes, though, a youthful champagne can also be adapted according to the situation and the preceding wines, if it has sufficient personality. Regardless, the champagne interlude has become an indispensable element of our gastronomical lives, and we are attempting to spread its practice in civilized society.

But what if you have had a particularly heavyweight lineup of red wines? You need a champagne that is refreshing, yet you don’t want it to appear insubstantial or impotent after the power and weight of the wines before it. You also have to find a complement in character, as you want the transition to be harmonious rather than jarring.

Last night was a perfect and thrilling case in point. At a dinner for seven, we began with champagne and white wines before moving on to an array of Barolo: a confidently post-adolescent and virile 1982 Francesco Rinaldi and a mature, leather-scented 1974 E. Pira, followed by a superb 1965 Bartolo Mascarello in magnum, a contender for wine of the night with its aristocratic refinement and its gorgeous interplay of still-primary fruit and truffley, floral background flavors. It made a perfectly delicious 1967 Borgogno seem a little coarse and clumsy, although the 1958 red-capsuled Borgogno was as outstanding as ever, combining a powerful intensity and depth with breathtaking refinement and balance. Its majestic and authoritative presence even overshadowed the normally transcendent 1947 Borgogno, although admittedly our bottle of this last night was not quite up to the astonishingly high level of others that we’ve previously tasted. Not that, you know, it sucked or anything.

So as the array of decanters was slowly being emptied, the time for a champagne interlude was approaching. But what champagne to follow 60-year old Barolo? It turned out, as pure coincidence, that we had the perfect wine already sitting on ice: the 2004 Saignée de Sorbée by Bertrand Gautherot. Pungently fragrant, possessing both weight and elegance, it had the vinosity to stand up to the reds while its clarity and complexity of fruit provided both complement and counterpoint, especially after decanting it to better release its depth of flavor. Its acidity and minerality were delightfully refreshing, and it even showed a little light tannin that echoed, unobtrusively, that of the previous wines. I could not have found a better choice, and the wine was a joy to drink.


We closed the evening with a stupendous bottle of La Bota de Manzanilla Pasada #10, generously provided for us by the graciously hospitable folks of Castagna, and which turned out to also be ideally placed in its own way, with its marvelous finesse and character. Now to attempt to recover this morning, aided by a green pu-erh from La Maison des Trois Thés, so that we can do it all over again tonight...

Wine of the Week: Equipo Navazos La Bota de Manzanilla Pasada #10

My Wines of the Week are intended to be exclusively champagne, but unfortunately I haven’t had a single drop of champagne this whole week. Anyway, as I said before, sherry is the champagne of fortified wines, so this will do.

If sherry parallels champagne, manzanilla could relate to a Côte des Blancs chardonnay, and Equipo Navazos would be equivalent to the wines of Champagne’s hipster growers. However, Equipo Navazos, the brainchild of Jesús Barquín and Eduardo Ojeda, isn’t actually a winery. Essentially, they look for top-quality soleras of sherry that show particularly distinctive characters, and bottle these separately as small, limited-production lots, generally consisting of only 2,000 to 2,500 bottles.

What differentiates these wines from other sherries, even from sherries that are produced out of the same soleras, is that they usually select a smaller range of barrels from the solera, looking for wines that have a strong personality and distinct character, and then bottle these unfiltered, which is very rare. The vast majority of sherry undergoes a heavy filtration that dampens much of its flavor and aroma, and it can be downright startling to compare an unfiltered version of a similar wine. It reminds me very much of the relationship between namazake and regular sake — you might prefer one or the other, but there’s no question that they have very different characters.

In addition to their limited production, these wines are even harder to find due to the fact that this was originally conceived as a private operation, almost a sort of wine club. “This didn’t start as a commercial venture,” says Barquín. “We found some excellent wines that were not on the market, and we just wanted to bottle them for ourselves.” Today, however, a small quantity is being sold in selected markets.

You’ll notice that the above photo is actually of La Bota de Manzanilla #8, a spectacular single-vineyard manzanilla bottled in October of 2007, because I simply forgot to take a photo of the manzanilla pasada #10. The label looks the same, however. Unfortunately the #8 is completely sold out, so I chose to talk about the newer release instead.

La Bota de Manzanilla Pasada #10 was bottled in January of 2008, drawn from a solera of Hijos de Rainera Pérez Marín, producers of the famous manzanilla La Guita. This solera is composed of only 15 barrels, containing aged manzanilla averaging around 12 to 14 years old that was set aside for private consumption by the family, due to its exceptional quality. It is not used for La Guita, and in fact, it hasn’t been touched for two decades, except to draw off a little bit of wine every once in a while and refresh it with new wine from La Guita’s top soleras to prevent it from becoming an amontillado.

This is a wine of intense personality, and I had to taste it several times before I felt that I really understood what was going on. “The nose is very peculiar, even a bit heavy,” says Barquín. “You can only understand it when you put it in your mouth. The freshness comes out on the palate — it’s very, very long, and it grows a lot.” It’s remarkably rich in texture, although the balance and structure are classic for manzanilla, and the flavors on the palate are unusually fragrant, even forceful. The finish feels extremely detailed and nuanced, backed by racy, pungent salinity. Barquín notes that this wine needs a lot of air to fully express itself, and suggests serving it in a Riedel Bordeaux glass, never a sherry copita.

The wines of Equipo Navazos are imported into the United States by Eric Solomon Selections/European Cellars, Charlotte, NC. They tell me that they will be receiving La Bota de Manzanilla Pasada #10 sometime this summer, as well as two other wines from Equipo Navazos: the Pedro Ximénez de Jerez #11 and Pedro Ximénez de Montilla #12. Pricing is not yet available.

A Week of Sherry Tastings

I’ve tasted close to 300 sherries in the past week, in all possible styles, and many of my favorites were so good I had to taste them multiple times. As with champagne, I never tire of tasting sherry. Here are just a few of the standouts:

Most Exciting Fino from Jerez: La Bota de Fino #15 Macharnudo Alto
From the Equipo Navazos, the hottest label in sherry right now, this outstanding fino is a special selection drawn from the solera used for Valdespino’s Ynocente. Like the Ynocente, it comes exclusively from the Macharnudo vineyard and was fermented in wood, but unlike Valdespino’s version this is bottled unfiltered. It’s sleek and fragrant, with a seamless harmony from nose to finish, and shows an incredible depth of aroma on the palate, both from the particularly strong character of the selected barrels and from the absence of filtering. This was a preview, as the actual bottling won’t take place for another few weeks, and the wine will be released in September. Only 2,900 bottles will be produced.

Most Exciting Fino from El Puerto de Santa Maria: Lustau Puerto Fino Solera Reserva
El Puerto, being located near the sea, is closer in character to manzanilla than to Jerez fino. Lustau’s Solera Reserva is a classic example, showing a delicately complex fragrance and a long, elegantly balanced finish. Lustau’s almacenista bottling, the Fino del Puerto from Jose Luis Gonzalez Obregon, is more intense and austere, and even more complex — a wine for true sherry connoisseurs. I love them both, but would recommend starting with the more accessible Solera Reserva.

Most Exciting Manzanilla (i.e. Fino from Sanlúcar de Barrameda): Barbadillo Manzanilla en Rama Saca de Primavera 2008
I could have picked Equipo Navazos’s La Bota de Manzanilla #8, a single-vineyard manzanilla from Las Cañas in Balbaína, but just to spread the love around I’ll choose the spring 2008 bottling of Barbadillo’s unfiltered manzanilla. Honestly, I find Barbadillo’s standard manzanilla, called Solear, rather indifferent and innocuous. It’s striking to compare it with the En Rama, which is drawn from the best barrels of the same solera and bottled unfiltered, giving it a much fuller, livelier and more complex character. Barbadillo bottles a small amount of this wine four times a year, and the character changes each season due to the waxing and waning in growth of the flor. The only problem is that you really have to be in Andalucia to have any hope of buying a bottle.

Classiest Manzanilla Pasada: Lustau Almacenista Manuel Cuevas Jurado Manzanilla Pasada de Sanlúcar
Manuel Cuevas Jurado is one of my favorite Lustau almacenistas. This manzanilla pasada shows such striking purity and complexity, shifting kaleidoscopically on the palate with breathtaking grace and finesse. I tasted this several times directly alongside Hidalgo’s Pastrana, another manzanilla pasada that I adore: while the Pastrana shows more ample depth and body on the mid-palate, the Lustau is consistently finer, longer and more complex on the finish.

Greatest Rare and Old Amontillado: Gonzalez Byass 4 Palmas
I think there are more great amontillados than any other category of sherry. While there were many, many amontillados that I absolutely loved, it was the 4 Palmas from Gonzalez Byass that nearly brought me to tears. From a small and highly prized solera founded in 1871, this contains old finos of the highest quality, with an average age of 50 years, and its combination of balance, complexity, purity and elegance is simply stunning. This is the amontillado of my dreams.

Most Memorable Palo Cortado: Reliquia Barbadillo Palo Cortado
Barbadillo’s Reliquias are some of the most extraordinary wines of the region, drawn from soleras so old that nobody knows exactly when they were founded. The Palo Cortado is an absolute classic, with a richly concentrated array of aromas from coffee to tobacco to wood spice and black walnuts, all pinned down by an amontillado-like steeliness on the palate. The finish is unbelievably long and fine, simply oozing class.

Finest Old Oloroso: Gonzalez Byass Millennium Oloroso
There were a lot of great old olorosos offered for tasting, and some of my favorites included Hidalgo’s single-vintage, single-vineyard (El Cuadrado, in Balbaína) oloroso from 1986; the Oloroso VORS of Bodegas Tradición; Osborne’s BC 200, from their Rare Sherry collection; and of course Barbadillo’s extraordinary Reliquia. I even tasted an astounding 1959 vintage oloroso by Williams & Humbert, which I’m pretty sure I will never be able to again. However, I was particularly taken by Gonzalez Byass’s Millennium bottling, sourced from the finest butts in the bodega’s legendary array of soleras. This extraordinary wine encapsulates a century of winemaking, blending vintage wines from 1902, 1917, 1923, 1935, 1946, 1957, 1962, 1977, 1983 and 1992. The darkly caramelly, walnutty complexity of the old wines is superbly balanced by the fresh structure and vivacity of the “younger” wines, and the blend feels effortlessly harmonious and expressive.

Most Drinkable Pedro Ximénez: Pérez Barquero La Cañada PX
I’ll freely admit I really don’t like PX. It can be impressive to taste, but it’s generally too plush, too pruny, too viscous and too sticky for me to enjoy the experience. Pérez Barquero, in Montilla-Moriles, makes powerful, decadent wines that are greatly admired by Robert Parker, who gave Pérez Barquero’s 1905 PX Soleras Fundacionales something like 110 points. The 1905 is impressive, but I slightly preferred La Cañada, a single-vineyard PX averaging 25 years of age, as it felt more “balanced” (if you can use that word in the context of PX), allowing more complexity to emerge and feeling more buoyant and lively on the palate.

Best Respite from a Day of Tasting Sherry: A small vertical of Château d’Yquem
Only at Vinobile could you drink rare, old and expensive sherry all day and then take a break to taste a vertical of Château d’Yquem. It’s beyond ridiculous. Pierre Lurton and Sandrine Garbay were on hand to guide us through four vintages of the fabled stuff, in a tasting held in the beautiful old mosque of the Jerez Alcázar. I loved the 2004, with its elegantly refined build and clean, pure botrytis; the 2003 was plush and warm but had much more acidity than I expected, and it promises to develop superbly. The 1998 was still closed and awkward, showing a slight lack of acidity that troubled me, although the concentrated flavors were very pretty. And I’ve always loved the 1988: it still needs plenty of time, but it’s terrifically silky and seamless, just beginning to develop real complexity.