Naturally milky wine or not.

What a difference does a color make in wine! A hazy or milky red wine cannot be perceived as tasty as bright wine or can it? If the color is not bright, I might have a strong feeling that there might be something wrong especially if it's the first time I'm tasting it. The non-filtered or/and non-fined wines might behave that way I have recently learned.

I can imagine how many riesling producers lose their good night's sleep over the worrying of the potassium bitartrate crystals appearing in wine. Couple of weeks ago I had a '98 Santenay from Bourgogne where one bottle was bright but slightly out of condition and another one milky and more expressing nose but not giving everything I'd hoped an aged wine to give. In the end I concluded error on both of them or was it?

Last week I found milk in my red Bourgogne again. This time smelling like manure. It was a lovely rustic wine. I understand that the haziness could come from hands-off-style vinification. Weird. Does the real wine mean more non bright wines? I need to try the third wine Naudin-Ferrand Bourgogne '07 again.  Waiting how it will show itself me this time.

Recaredo Is Promising

How tough it is to get people to taste something they have never heard of and can't find almost any reliable information in English from the web. A couple of weeks ago I participated to a Recaredo portfolio tasting where there was just one handful of people.

What a producer. Not your average cava! The cavas were reductive and oaked like Bollinger or Krug but as stylish as them. Apparently, they age their bottles with natural cork stopper. The oldest cava tasted was from the '99. The single vineyard Turó d'en Mota of just 0,97ha. It was just extraordinaire quality.

Today, they try to do everything manually and respecting the biodiversity. They produce xarel.lo based brut nature cava with remuage and degorgement à la volée with an official organic approach to their viticulture. However they are still experimenting with yeast. Currently relying mostly to commercial but working towards to their own culture.

Recaredo is doing to cava what I like about my favorite grower-champagnes. I can know from which vineyard(s) the bottle comes from and can further find information about the climate and soil characteristics. This is what I miss in Champagne in general. Luckily there are many excellent and promising producers in Champagne. Recaredo is now excellent but with a promising future ahead. I hope to be able to follow their journey.

Writing this I have developed a thirst for champagne so I guess I'll be celebrating the 1^st of May with some recently acquired Tarlant.