WTN: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2005 Cune Viña Real Rioja Crianza 13.5%
Prunes, powdered sugar and light vanilla. Pleasant mouth feel, lively acidity, good acid/sweet balance. Simple but quite nice, downed easily and quickly.

2008 François Labet Pinot Noir Vin de Pays de l’Ile de Beauté 12.0%
Intrigued with the idea of a pinot noir made in Corsica by a Côte d’Or producer, I asked myself if I could shell a few Reais in the name of adventure and replied ’Corse-I-can! Plastic cork, boo. There’s vague pinosity in the sour strawberry aromas, but the taste is enough to make anyone emigrate to the mainland. There's bright acidity, but the fruit is not pleasant, or up to the task of matching the acidity, and it all ends in an unpleasant bitter note. There’s an odd sweetness that Marcia calls excessive and new worldish. The latter's hard to believe at 12% alcohol, but it’s academic at this point. I tried to remove PN from my expectations, wondering if I’d be at least intrigued if it was some obscure Corsican grape, but the No resounded like the cannon at Waterloo.

2008 Piccini Chianti 12.5%
According to the shopkeeper, 30% of the grapes are raisined and added after the first fermentation and a second fermentation is induced. She says this generates more alcohol and body without more tannins, since the skins are the same. Hmm, is spoof not spoof when well-established as local practice? P’haps, dunno. What say you? But, here, it is all in vain. Aromas are acceptable, sour cherry, iodine and eucalyptus. Decent acidity, some tannic grip, but unpleasantly bitter finish and a flimsy quantum of fruit that doesn’t deliver, not before food, becoming barely sufficient with it, as the wine opens and the critical faculties recede. Not as bad as the Corsican PN, but not to be repeated.

[David M. Bueker]

To be honest, that CUNE doesn't sound all that good. Prunes and powdered sugar smacks of a really bad breakfast.

Revised to read "tastes of hominy grits!"

[David M. Bueker]

Revised to read "tastes of hominy grits!"

Yum!

'Cannon at Waterloo' for a bad Corsican is very good, Oswaldo.

Oswaldo wrote:
According to the shopkeeper, 30% of the grapes are raisined and added after the first fermentation and a second fermentation is induced. She says this generates more alcohol and body without more tannins, since the skins are the same. Hmm, is spoof not spoof when well-established as local practice? P’haps, dunno. What say you?

My Great Grandfather and the other Italians in Brooklyn seemed to use this technique a lot and they called it “Governor”. Probably goes way back.

Salute

It happens I had the 2006 Piccini Chianti from magnum earlier this month. Fairly boring, but no obvious flaws. Completely acceptable, but not much more than that. Fortunately all but half a glass went into Boeuf Bourguignon.

Oswaldo wrote:
According to the shopkeeper, 30% of the grapes are raisined and added after the first fermentation and a second fermentation is induced. She says this generates more alcohol and body without more tannins, since the skins are the same. Hmm, is spoof not spoof when well-established as local practice? P’haps, dunno. What say you?

My Great Grandfather and the other Italians in Brooklyn seemed to use this technique a lot and they called it “Governor”. Probably goes way back.

Salute

'Governo' in Italian; certainly traditional, but one can't help wondering if it wasn't an effort to compensate for thin, tart wine to start with.

Oliver wrote;
Governo' in Italian; certainly traditional, but one can't help wondering if it wasn't an effort to compensate for thin, tart wine to start with.

Maybe Oliver, but the technique (holding back a percentage of wine grapes and getting (or forcing) them to raisin) and adding them later in the alcoholic fermentation phase does help in separating the free-run wine (it will actually “raise” a sinking cap).

Salute