A Hedonist in the Cellar (6 page)

Nelson Mandela, Charlize Theron, and Pinotage are among South Africa’s distinctive contributions to global culture. The last is an unlikely hybrid of two French grape varietals: finicky, noble Pinot Noir and mulish Cinsault—imagine the love child of Jean Seberg and Congressman Bob Barr. Who knows what Professor Abraham Perold was drinking when he came up with this idea. While Pinotage can sometimes smell like nail polish remover au poivre, at its best it improves with age and is actually capable of provoking contemplative enjoyment.

The best way to see if you’re fond of Pinotage is to look for a bottle from Kanonkop, a winery located in Stellenbosch. (I assume the name has something to do with the seventeenth-century cannon that greets you at the end of the driveway of this beautiful estate.) Kanonkop is to Pinotage what Petrarch is to the sonnet, although the winery also makes a very good Bordeaux-style blend, which has twice won France’s Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande trophy. These victories suggest that South African reds have arrived on the international scene, but the news has been slow to reach these shores.

For several years now my favorite South African red has been the Pinot Noir from Hamilton Russell Vineyards, a hill-side
estate in the Walker Bay region, less than two miles from the Indian Ocean. A relative newcomer in a country whose wine history spans almost four hundred years, the property was established in 1976 by Tim Hamilton Russell, who struggled tirelessly against restrictive and irrational regulations; it’s now run by his son Anthony, an Oxford-educated whirling dervish who likes to say he’s just a farmer, although I’ve observed firsthand that he cuts a very stylish figure on dance floors from Cape Town to Manhattan.

The cool microclimate of this area, with its marauding baboons and its clay soil studded with prehistoric hand axes, produces the most Burgundian New World Pinot I’ve ever tasted, with the kind of earthiness, complexity, and age-worthiness rarely found outside Burgundy. The neighboring estate of Bouchard Finlayson, started by Hamilton Russell’s former winemaker, is also producing fine Pinot, as is newcomer Flagstone, a winery to watch for its Pinotage and blends as well.

Cabernet and Bordeaux blends are currently attracting the lion’s share of capital and energy, and the warmer region of Stellenbosch is probably the top appellation for these wines. It’s also among the most dramatic landscapes I’ve ever seen, where green valleys with white stucco Cape Dutch farmhouses could almost pass for Flemish landscapes, except that they are framed by jagged, vertiginous gray mountain ridges. The pioneer of Bordeaux-style wines in the Cape is Meerlust, an estate more than three hundred years old that makes earthy, slow-maturing reds, including a Merlot, and its standard-bearer, Rubicon (not to be confused with Francis
Coppola’s wine of the same name). Another historic Stellenbosch estate, a few kilometers up the road, Rustenburg is producing serious, curranty Cabernet blends that are drawing international interest. Nearby, Rust en Vrede makes rich, powerful Cabernet, Shiraz, and Merlot, and, finally, an estate wine that is a blend of all three—which seems to be the new Cape trend. None of these wines will cost as much as a good
cru bourgeois
Bordeaux from the 2003 vintage.

Rupert & Rothschild, in the adjacent Paarl appellation, is a joint venture between one of South Africa’s wealthiest families and the Baron Edmond branch of the Rothschilds from France. Until his death in a car accident, it was run by Anthonij Rupert, the gruff, Charles Barkley–sized black sheep of the family. This historic estate is producing very good Cab blends, with the help of Pomerol’s ubiquitous Michel Rolland. Rupert sometimes took longer than his wines to show his charming side, but I spent a hugely entertaining day with him, talking about wine, Italian tailoring, and African wildlife after turning into his driveway unannounced, and I was saddened to hear of his death. The winemaking continues to be in the capable hands of Schalk-Willem Joubert and Rolland. Another deep-pocketed venture producing Bordeaux-style blends is Vergelegen, owned by hydra-headed Anglo-American Industries. Winemaker André van Rensburg, hired a few years back, comes with a reputation as a serious Shiraz specialist, and is planting plenty of this varietal, which is gaining ground in South Africa, as everywhere else. In fact, I suspect that Cabernet-Shiraz blends may have a big and delicious future in the Cape.

Of the many hours I have spent lost on back roads of wine regions around the world, I doubt if I ever felt more lost in the wilderness than I did looking for the property of pro golfer David Frost in the remote foothills of Paarl. Frost gives lousy directions, but his Cabernet is a big currant bomb, and he is what the South Africans call a rugger bugger and what we would call a good old boy—a generous and gregarious host despite the fact that he was feeling the effects of a long night with his good friend Anthonij Rupert the night before. After the long hangover from apartheid-era isolation, South Africa’s red wines, like its actresses and golfers, are ready to compete internationally.

When the estate of the late Bill Blass was auctioned by Sotheby’s, I couldn’t help wondering about the fate of a certain item—a medal he had received at a ceremony in New York inducting him into the Confrères des Chevaliers du Cahors some five or six years ago. I was also inducted into the society that night, though, like Blass, I was slightly baffled by the honor, and hardly knew where Cahors was at the time. I have since visited the region and sampled many of its wines, and when I drink the big wines of Cahors I often think of Blass, a big man who exuded a hypermasculine sense of personal style.

Cahors is butch. Peter the Great was one of its many admirers, and his enthusiasm was shared by his countrymen. The “black wine” of Cahors was renowned for its power and density and was sometimes used to punch up the wimpier reds of Bordeaux. This muscular, tannic red wine of Cahors developed alongside the hearty, fatty cuisine of the southwest: foie gras, cassoulet, confit, and maigret de canard.

From the Middle Ages until the middle of the nineteenth century the reds of Cahors were as famous as any in Europe, until phylloxera wiped out the vineyards. When initial attempts to graft the local Auxerrois vines onto disease-resistant American
rootstocks failed, many growers planted hybrids that produced insipid
vim ordinaires.
By the middle of this century the big inky drink that was
le vrai
Cahors was almost extinct.

After devastating frosts in 1956 and 1957, a Cahors native named José Baudel left his post as the head of the government research center in Bordeaux to take over the local cooperative wine cellar and to save the wine of his homeland from oblivion. Baudel worked to banish the hybrids and propagate Auxerrois (known elsewhere as Malbec), a tannic grape that seems to have a particular affinity for the soils and climate of the Lot River Valley and the adjacent plateau.

In the last decade Cahors has made a comeback, as its winemakers groped to integrate their traditions with new technology and the international marketplace. “Ten years ago there was a midlife crisis,” says Ariane Daguin, proprietor of D’Artagan in New York, which specializes in the cuisine of her native region. “The wines, which had evolved in symbiosis with that heavy cuisine, were big and tannic. When people started eating lighter, they had to learn to lighten them up a little.” That said, Cahors will never be a dainty, aperitif kind of drink. It will never make a nice accompaniment for a plate of steamed vegetables, nor should it go to the beach. But it ought to find favor with advocates of high-fat, high-protein diets à la Atkins.

Locals consider Cahors to be the logical accompaniment to foie gras, and to most dishes involving black truffles— Cahors being more or less the heart of the Périgord region. The preternaturally boyish Pierre-Jean Pebeyre is a fourth-generation truffle negotiant; dining with Pebeyre and his wife,
Babethe, in the town of Cahors I have experienced some stunning food-and-wine pairings involving black truffles and Cahors. The Pebeyres taught me to make a sauce of butter whisked into warm truffle juice (available in tins) with pureed black truffles, which eroticizes almost any simple dish.

Stendahl once remarked on the resemblance of this part of France to Tuscany, and as in Chianti, the wine story here is partly one of deep-pocketed outsiders coming in to reinvigorate the area. Alain Senderens, proprietor-chef of three-star Lucas Carton in Paris, bought Château Gautoul in 1992.

The hyperactive Alain Dominique Perrin, former president of Cartier, who bought Château Lagrézette, with its impressive fifteenth-century château, in 1980, has become the Robert Mondavi of the region, the chief promoter and innovator of Cahors. Perrin seems to know nearly everyone of interest on the planet and has the photos in the château to prove it. His luxury cuvée Le Pigeonnier has set a new standard, with high ratings and a price to match. The superconcentration and 100 percent new oak treatment make this wine seem almost as international and polished as its proprietor, as if it were wearing a Cartier Panther watch around its neck; but in some ways I prefer the regular cuvée of Lagrézette, which seems more distinctively regional and less like something that could have come from Australia.

Alain Gayraud, the wildly enthusiastic proprietor of Lamartine, at the western edge of the appellation, still uses the cement fermentation tanks his grandfather built, and employs new oak barrels sparingly. His wines are among the most distinctive I encountered in my visit, muscular but a little reserved,
requiring time to reveal their considerable charms and distinctive regional character. Gayraud makes three different cuvées, the lesser of which is more accessible on release, as does nearby Domaine Pineraie, where they’ve been making wine continuously since 1456. Among the domaines worth looking for are Châteaux du Cèdre, Clos Triguedina, Croix de Mayne, Haute-Serre, and Château Peche de Jammes, owned by Americans Sherry and Stephen Schechter.

As with Bordeaux, the vintages to seek out are the 2000, the 2003, and the 2005. Although these wines will be decidedly young and somewhat wild, they should behave well in the company of a cassoulet or a charred slab of prime beef.

Giuseppe Rivetti, the proprietor of La Spinetta, describes Barbera as “the anti-Merlot”—which is as good a starting point as any other for a discussion of this provincial grape with multiple personalities. It’s easier to say what it isn’t than what it is. I take Rivetti’s comment to mean that Barbera is not the kind of mellow international beverage you order by the glass at the bar of a revolving cocktail lounge while listening to a pianist cover Billy Joel. Certainly Rivetti’s Barberas, with their rustic exuberance and feisty acidity, are more likely to evoke a noisy trattoria redolent of roasted goat.

The poor relation of noble Nebbiolo, Barbera had long been the workhorse of Piedmont, accounting for half of the region’s red-wine production. Barbera ripens earlier than the fussy Nebbiolo, the grape used in Barolo and Barbaresco, and was traditionally planted on cooler slopes and lesser sites. (The dirty little secret of Piedmont is that Barbera was—and, many say, still is—added to Barolo and Barbaresco to boost the color and add body.) Barbera typically produced a rustic plonk that was acidic enough to stand up to tomato sauce. Insofar as it was known outside the region, it was known as a pizza wine. Lacking in natural tannins—which extend the life of red wines—it was meant to be consumed young, and often.

A few wistful growers had Cinderella visions for this local grape. They wondered if, with the proper upbringing, it might not be capable of stardom. What if it was raised on prime real estate? What if it went to finishing school to learn French? Angelo Gaja, who revolutionized the treatment of Nebbiolo, told me recently that he was the first person to experiment with Barbera and French oak barrels back in 1969—the wood supplying the tannins that were missing from the grape itself. The idea was also proposed by French oenologist Émile Peynaud, who was consulting for a winery in Asti in the early 1970s. By most accounts, the man who actually placed the glass slipper on Cinderella’s foot was the late Giacomo Bologna, a motorcycle-riding, jazz-loving, barrel-chested bon vivant.

A native of sleepy Rocchetta Tanaro, some ten miles east of the town of Asti, Bologna inherited a property called Braida and experimented with practices that seemed radical at the time. He planted Barbera on prime, sun-drenched slopes; picked the grapes late, to alleviate some of their acidity; and aged the juice in toasted new French oak barrels, which further softened the hard edges while lending the wine some wood tannins, giving it more structure. In 1982, the same year that changed the face of Bordeaux, Bologna created Bricco dell’Uccellone, a barrel-aged, vineyard-designated Barbera that rapidly caught the attention of the international wine world, and of Bologna’s neighbors. Bricco was the first super-Barbera. Call it Barbarella. (They’re big on nicknames in the Piedmont. L’Uccellone is named for the crowlike old woman who used to own the vineyard;
l′uselun
means big bird.)

More than two decades after Bologna created this new,
sophisticated, smoking-jacket style of Barbera, it’s hard to generalize about this grape except to say that quality is better at all levels. Barbera is as stylistically all over the map as Zinfandel, another blending grape that has achieved recent renown. Many makers continue to produce the lighter-style Barbera—which can be a tremendous value, particularly given the recent string of stellar vintages in Piedmont. The 2000,2001, and 2003 vintages all achieved a ripeness that should counterbalance the natural acidity of the grape; good examples, like Michele Chiarlo’s Barbera d’Asti Superiore and Icardi’s Barbera d’Asti Tabarin, retail for about fifteen dollars. Barbera d’Asti is often fatter and fruitier than Barbera d’Alba, in part because the best, sunniest slopes in Alba are reserved for Nebbiolo, producing Barolo and Barbaresco. Many of the greatest producers of Barolo—Scavino, Clerico, Mascarello, Sandrone, and Aldo and Giacomo Conterno, among others— make supple, sophisticated Barbera d’Alba at a fraction of the price. The most concentrated, powerful Barberas are usually identified by vineyard name—often involving some variation of the word
brie
, which means hilltop in the local dialect. Price is another key indicator—the Barbarellas, like Franco Martinetti’s powerful Montruc, can sell for upwards of fifty dollars.

Bricco dell’Uccellone has proven itself over the past two decades to be a serious, ageworthy wine. Tasting at the winery this past spring with Raffaella and Giuseppe, Giacomo Bologna’s children, I was deeply impressed by the complexity and freshness of the ′89 and ′90 Bricco dell’Uccellone. The ′01 is another classic. The Bologna family makes several other excellent Barberas, including Bricco della Bigotta and Ai
Suma. The most mind-boggling Barberas I’ve tasted recently were from La Spinetta, which in 2001 was named winery of the year in the Italian wine bible
Gambero Rosso.
My teeth are still stained from the experience of tasting the ′99 Barbera d’Alba Gallina and the ′99 Barbera d’Asti that spring; both reminded me in some ways of great, old-vine Zinfandels, and also reminded me of a blackberry fight I had with two fifth-grade classmates in Vancouver, Canada. We were picking blackberries, and after we’d filled two buckets and eaten several handfuls, we started throwing the surplus at one another. Thirty years later, Giuseppe Rivetti’s Barberas made me almost that exuberant.