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Wine labels from Terras Gauda white wines

Giovanni Morelli waxes lyrical about the Albariño grape, traditionally planted in Galicia, before turning his nose to the latest in wine forgery.

‘Good wine is a good familiar creature if it will be well used’

William Shakespeare

— Othello.

If I remember correctly, and memory is a fragile thing, the first time I tasted or even heard of Albariño was when I was having lunch with Chiara by the pool in the Arts Hotel in Barcelona about 15 years ago. The Arts is one of the best Hotels in which I have ever stayed.

I remember the wine was crisp, a little fruity and a beautiful slightly green colour. The grape, Albariño, has traditionally been planted in Galicia. However, since its rise in popularity over the past 10 years, it has been planted in California and Australia.

DNA testing

Interestingly, the so-called Albariño planted in Australia is not Albariño, but a French grape from the Jura in the Pyrenees called Savignan (not Sauvignon). This has been confirmed by DNA testing! Albariño from Galicia comes from the area Rías Baixas DO and the municipality of Cambados in the province of Ponteverda.

Since the early 1990s, these wines have become widely available in Ireland. The cheaper, mass-produced varieties can be tasteless, but recently I have tasted three wines from Terras Gauda, the Abadia San Campo, 100 per cent Albariño, the Terras Gauda O Rosal, 70 per cent Albariño, 20 per cent Loureira and 10 per cent Caiño Blanco and the La Mar,  85 per cent Caíño Blanco and 15 per cent Albariño.

Terras Gauda is a relatively young company, a little over 20 years old, but it has put a lot of effort into planting the best Albariño clones and blending this grape with others in the region. All of these wines are well made but the outstanding one is Terras Gauda O Rosal 2010. Fermented with natural yeasts, this is unusual as it is a blend of Albariño with other grapes. This had a floral nose, a beautiful structure, long follow-through and a magnificent greenish colour.

Albariño, Abadia San Campo, which retails at between €16.95 and €19.95, is available from the Corkscrew, Chatham Street; Fallon Byrne; Redmond’s of Ranelagh; KC Peaches, Dublin 2; Gourmet Food Parlour, Swords; Mayfield Eatery, Terenure; Deveney’s, Dundrum; The Grapevine, Glasnevin; Red Earth, Mullingar; Sweeney’s, Dublin 11; Worldwide Wine, Waterford; and Barry’s Off Licence, Midleton, Co Cork.

The O Rosal is available from Jus de Vine, Portmarnock; Martin’s Off Licence, Fairview; Sweeney’s, Dublin; The Wine Boutique, Dublin 4; Worldwide Wines, Waterford; Mulcahy’s, Charleville, Co Cork; Matson’s, Bandon; Manning’s Emporium, Bantry, and retails at €21.99.

I tasted the Pittacum 2007 and the Pittacum Aurea. These are well-made wines from a grape with which I was totally unfamiliar, Mencía. It comes from Bierzo, a small region in the northwest of Castilla y León on the eastern border of Galicia. Terras Gauda have a major interest in this vineyard and the vines are 50 to 80 years old. The wine has a beautiful magenta colour and a nice balance of fruit and wood with a good, long finish. I really enjoyed it.

Soft fruity taste

Lastly, I tasted Quinta Sardonia 2007 (SQ). This wine is a blend of mostly Tinto Fino (otherwise known as Tempranillo in Spain) and Cabernet Sauvignon with a little Merlot, Syrah, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. I really enjoyed this; a lovely soft, fruity taste and not overpowered by the French Oak. The makers say they follow biodynamic principles (see my last article).

Recently I have been reading a book called Blink. It’s about how you know something instinctively, after years of experience, and then you have to spend a long time proving it! It’s a bit like seeing a patient who you know is sick but you don’t quite know what is going on. It may take some time and a lot of investigations before making a precise diagnosis.

What has this got to do with wine? Absolutely nothing, you may say. But hold on a minute! Blink talks about forgery in art and how it can be spotted intuitively and recently there has been much concern about forgery in wine.

Wine forgery in LA

John Harlow in The Sunday Times has been writing about the FBI and wine forgery in Los Angeles. The gentleman they were investigating, Rudy Kurniawan, apparently had a Lamborghini, a Merc and a Range Rover in his driveway, together with a sophisticated laboratory containing blank wine labels, heat-aged corks and decades-old wine bottles, which sell for about €850 each in his house. Mr Kurniawan wore grey T-shirts and black jeans and collected Damien Hirst art works. Gynaecologists and cardiologists beware. Make sure your wine and art purchases are not forgeries!

The experts — and who are they— say that at least 5 per cent of fine wines are fake and wine investment is growing more perilous by the day. Funnily, Kurniawan boasted that he preferred to drink wines that were made before phylloxera devastated French vineyards in the 19th Century. As Harlow says, few wine-drinkers in Los Angeles had ever tasted pre-phylloxera wines so he remained unchallenged.

People got suspicious when Kurniawan offered a grand cru Clos Saint-Denis 1945, originally a church-owned vineyard. Laurent Ponsot, for the family, said that they did not start bottling wine until 1982 and the wines would have been signed by his grandfather Hippolyte. As Ponsot says: “There was no television then”.

The Dusties

According to Harlow, Kurniawan did not like the fusty wine merchants, whom he referred to as ‘the Dusties’. However, these same ‘Dusties’ were his downfall, as the staff in Corney and Barrow spotted mistakes on labels and misspellings on the lead covering the bottles of a case of Romanée-Conti 1971 which, if genuine, would be expected to fetch €100,000 at auction.

The sad fact is that many fake bottles are in collectors’ cellars, from Beijing to London and from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.

So if you want to splash out vast amounts of money on wine, make sure you know what you are doing and remember Blink:  trust your intuition.

Happy drinking.

Giovanni

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