BFC #3 : Pink Wins, Pink Wins!

There's a new champion in the McDuff Food & Wine Trail Bubbledome!

A sweet and funky Vin du Bugey-Cerdon, Patrick Bottex, La Cueille, NV has smashed the Italian champion, Ferrari Brut, NV (see here and here for past results) in a unanimous decision.

Bugey, in Southeastern France (in the Ain Department, see map below), is 20 miles up the Rhone River from Lyon and about the same distance from the Swiss Border. Historically, it was under the rule of the House of Savoy for those of you keeping track of the holdings of Renaissance kings.

The rosé sparkling wine from there, called Vin du Bugey-Cerdon, is VDQS, Vin Délimité de Qualité Superieure, which is just below the highest rank for French wine, AOC, Appellation d’origine contrôlée, but above VDP, Vin de pays (country wine), and Vin de table. Think of these as weight classes for our fighters, with the heavyweights being AOC and the table wines as flyweights.

According to the VDQS rules, it is made from either all Gamay or a Gamay and Poulsard blend. It is usually pink. In my experience, brightly so. Playful, often tasting like raspberry soda or sparkling kool-aid. And usually on the light-side, alcohol-wise, 8%. Bugey-Cerdon is a great conversation piece for a hot summer afternoon. Though rarely does the memory of the wine survive the sunset.

This wine from Patrick Bottex maps to my preconceptions of Bugey-Cerdon, except in one important category. It's awesome.

It's imported by the crème de la crème of West Coast Francophile wine importers, Kermit Lynch. You really can't judge a wine by it's front label, but a Kermit Lynch imprint on the back label usually implies a reasonable level of excellence in the bottle.

Here's the results:

A full-fizz method ancestrale sparkler, this looks (and tastes a bit) like black cherry soda. It has a sweet, yeasty nose of Mirabelle plum and strawberries. In the mouth, it's sweet, but not cloyingly so. In fact, it feels more sweet than it actually is. Your first sip you almost can't believe the big, bright, honeyed black cherry and strawberry flavors, but before the delicate, faintly chalky finish has passed, you realize it's really not as big, or ripe, or sweet as you thought. You blink, taste it again, and realize that this bottle of giddy pinkness has remarkable structure. You might even call it cultured, approaching elegant. But before you get carried away, you remember it is what it is, which is something like liquified Jolly Rancher cherry candy with a fake Pirate map label. Let's say it's like a guy in a tuxedo, eating cotton candy at the county fair. Oh, and he's got an eye-patch too.

I've seen it a few places, but I bought this one at K&L Wines, $20.

(map of Ain, France by Marmelad used per the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. Don't borrow it without checking out how.)

Bubbledome #2: A Spaniard in the Dome

Main Event in the McDuff Bubbledome:

Today, the Gran Sarao Brut Cava NV from Spain takes on our current champion, Ferarri Brut NV, from Trento, Italy.

The Italian took the belt in the first-ever battle in the B-dome with a solid, Champenoise nose and autumnal palate. (click here to see the tasting notes.)

The challenger is a Cava made from a blend of mostly traditional Spanish varietals, Macabeo, Xarel-lo, Parellada, and a dose of Chardonnay (10%). It's produced by the Mont Marçal winery in the Penedès wine region and bottled and branded as Gran Sarao for the importer. The Penedès dates the origins of its wine production to the 6th century BC when Phoenicians brought Chardonnay to the area. So it's not like they're José-come-lately to the wine game.

A couple of my favorite sparkling wines are Cavas from Spain. In general, I'm a fan. I bought this one because the tasting notes at K&L Wines made it sound exciting even if the label design is basically lame. I know there's no relationship between what's on the bottle and what's in the bottle. But I couldn't help lowering my expectations. I even bet one of Lab's chemists a week's pay that the Italian takes the fight in a wash.

But the Cava was surprisingly good. Dominating citrus and lemon zest on the nose with hints of almond paste and honey. It was austere, almost elegant, with zippy acid, muted golden apple flavors and a chalky, nutty finish, which, unfortunately, turns bitter at the end, morphing into something like ground peach pit on the tongue.

Not quite the complexity of the Ferrari and lagging behind in structure as well, but the Gran Sarao only cost 8 bucks! That's a huge advantage in the value category.

If it weren't for the bitter finish (and the fact I didn't feel like losing my bet), we might be crowning a new champion today in the B-Dome. But the Italian sparkler had enough stuffing to hang on to the title against this very inexpensive competitor. And I've got a chemist who will be working for free next week.

Olé.

(bullfight image: © Chantal Ringuette | Dreamstime.com)

Postscript to a Fight

After the excitement of our inaugural battle in the Bubbledome died down around the Lab, I noticed two things. Both worth mentioning, as very wine-geeky footnotes to the big event.

1. The Ferrari Brut lied about its age. Certainly not grounds for disqualification, but when I was checking receipts, I noticed I had bought the bottle at Winebid.com, a wine auction site that I find utterly addictive. The Ferrari is NV, and the problem with non-vintage wines is that you can never really be sure where they've been, or for how long. The cork on the Ferrari had 2004TN printed on it. This could be the date the bottle was disgorged. Which would suggest this wine had some bottle age. Or, it could mean nothing at all. I went to K&L Wines in Hollywood over the weekend and I bought a new bottle. I'll add another footnote with what I find when I open the new one.

2. I googled Puzelat's Vin Pétillant and read quite a few tasting notes. Each seems to be a description of a totally different bottle of wine. There is clearly some wild fluctuations bottle to bottle. Several notes claimed the wine was undrinkable. Maybe it's something to do with the vinification. After all, the secondary fermentation upon which the méthode ancestrale depends could be construed as an intentional flaw, as secondary fermentation is a flaw when it's not intentional (huh?). Or maybe Puzelat just needs to disinfect his tank hoses. Either way, I'm pleased to note that we seemed to have gotten one of the good ones.

Bubbledome #1: A Winner by Knockout!

One would expect the French to dominate these events. Champagne is, after all, the sparkling wine equivalent of the US Basketball Dream Team (Barcelona, not Athens). But our first champion in the Bubbledome hails from Italy. The non-vintage Ferrari Brut (no relation to the fancy cars) was the hands down winner against the 2005 Pétillant Naturel from Puzelat.

So it's a win for Italy out of the gate. But Giulio Ferrari was inspired by France. When he founded his winery in 1902, he actually planted cuttings originally from Champagne. He chose to put them in the nearly Alpen regions outside Trento (north of Verona) because the soil matched that of the famed French region.

Thierry Puzelat is a celebrated grower based in the Eastern stretches of the Loire Valley. He has a cult following amongst aficionados of "natural wines". (Lab note: there are subtle differences between "organic," a term for vegetables, "natural," which usually involves some form of organic farming and non-interventionist winemaking, and "biodynamic," which is kind of natural+plus. We will will try to illuminate the distinctions in a future report. And if anyone knows of a succinct explanation somewhere we'd love to know about it.). A writer who's tasting notes I always enjoy, Brooklynguy, recently wrote up several of Puzelat's wines with an enthusiasm that makes you want to drink them.

Puzelat's sparkler is made from Chenin Blanc in a méthode ancestrale, meaning the secondary fermentation (where the bubbles are produced) happens without liqueur de tirage (additional of sugar) or additional yeast. Fermentation, and therefore bubble production, simply stops when the yeast in the bottle is exhausted. Sparkling wines made in this manner are sometimes not so bubbly.

But this one had a fair amount of fizz. And an unexpected nose, faint hints of lanolin and Fuji apple and something strange and pleasant that I could only describe as caramelized rubber bands (and not at all like cork taint, promise). In the mouth, it falls fairly flat. Green apple (and you scoffed at our palate training exercise) with some faint mineral tones on the finish.

So the Puzelat wasn't bad, but it was out-classed by the Brut from Trento.

The Ferrari started out strong with a really interesting nose of doughy, buttery French toast and spiced apples. It continued to be impressive on the palate. Golden Delicious apple (again the palate training pays dividends!) with a lovely toffee undertone. Great acid balance and a sexy, if too brief, finish that was less chalk and maybe more like a white nougat. Hard to be precise because the delights of the finish are more about texture than flavor. Overall, this wine leaves a deep impression of Autumn with its buttery spices, crisp apples and falling leaves. I'm buying another bottle to drink in October.

This one could hold onto the champion's belt for a while.

Big News from the Bubbledome

One of the Lab staff recently pointed out that she felt we were missing an important commercial opportunity. I replied that we were a scientific research lab, unmotivated by petty, material concerns. Then I thought about it and asked her what she had in mind. Given the inevitable success of our Bubbledome competitions, the enormous (likely) fan base and the inestimable value of electronic real estate, she thought we should sell naming rights for the stadium. What a great idea! She also thought we should make tiny little boxing gloves to tape on the bottles. I guess it's true lightning doesn't strike twice.

The negotiations for the sale of the naming rights are likely to be protracted. How do you value "priceless?" So until we have the details worked out, we thought we'd offer the rights free-of-charge to some our favorite wine writers on the Web.

First up: McDuff's Food & Wine Trail penned by Philadelphian David McDuff, who was kind enough to offer the Lab it's first public encouragement (Thanks David!). McDuff is a highly knowledgeable wine connoisseur and a devoted foodie. His detailed accounts of treks to vintners and highly perceptive tasting notes are a valuable aid to the Lab's research.

So without additional ado, the Lab is excited to announce our inaugural match.

THE MCDUFF FOOD & WINE TRAIL BUBBLEDOME PRESENTS

Thierry Puzelat Vin Pétillant Naturel, 2005, Touraine, France ($18 at Chambers Street Wines, Manhattan)

vs.

Ferrari Brut Spumante, NV, Trento, Italy ($20 at K&L Wines, Hollywood)

Fight results tomorrow...

(Image credit: © Ryan Gerdts | Dreamstime.com)