An Albanian cabernet sauvignon and an Unti Zin

WINE TALK
1
  • 2009 Unti Vineyards Zinfandel - USA, California, Sonoma County, Dry Creek Valley (3/26/2022)
    Disappointing. I got some odd flavors I couldn’t pin down. Glenn wondered if it was oak. I wondered if maybe the fruit has faded and only the oak remained. I’m a fan of Unti wines. I recall tasting this at the winery and it seemed brambly like an Amador zin and not like a Sonoma County claret zin. It didn’t open up over the course of the dinner.

  • 2019 Vreshti i Pashait Cabernet Sauvignon - Albania (3/26/2022)
    This was given to me as a gift from a childhood friend who brought it back from Albania. He wanted an evaluation of it. I’m sensitive to pyrazines so I waited for a gathering of Bordeaux/cabernet sauvignon drinkers to evaluate it. Glenn pulled the cork and I gave it a taste. No pyrazines so no green peppers, no potato water, no wet newspaper. I was happy I could enjoy it. It was still cold but I got black fruit like cassis and maybe some mushroom. The finish wasn’t bitter but was more sour. That was the only flaw. Glenn, Zachary and Richard all thought it wasn’t varietally correct. It didn’t taste like cabernet sauvignon to them. Michelle thought it did since she also got black fruits and pencil shavings. Michelle said there was a notable lack of oak, which she thought maybe came from being made in a foudre made from Slovenian oak. Without the pyrazines, I lean towards it being maybe a hybrid of cabernet sauvignon and something else. The sour finish disappeared as it warmed out and got more air, but Michelle wondered if that was due to my food consumption changing how it tasted. It was a pleasant drink. It doesn’t seem to have the stuffing to age.

UPDATE:
The winemaker read this post and passed along these comments:
The variety is 100% cab sauvignon, but it has aged 7-8 months in wooden barrels from Kosovo, not Slovenia.
The sweetness at the end comes as it is from the late grape harvest and was more concentrated…

3 Likes
2

I doubt there are any hybrids there - to my understanding Albania doesn’t even grow any. Furthermore, if the label says Cabernet Sauvignon, it’s quite likely the wine then is Cabernet Sauvignon.

And I wonder why you expected the wine to show any pyrazines. I think it’s nowadays very difficult to find any pyrazines even in any contemporary Bordeaux wines and Albania is located in the Mediterranean, at much southerly latitudes than Bordeaux, ie. it’s way, way warmer there.

3

In an earlier thread on methoxypyrazines, Roy Piper said in a previous thread on this board they don’t disappear until 25 brix. I don’t think a 13 percent alcohol wine was that ripe.
What counts as contemporary? I got a load of pyrazines in the 1989 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande I drank for Glenn’s 50th birthday. I check in with a Bordeaux every couple of years and I still get the green peppers or potato water.
UC Davis makes wine grape hybrids and several times people have been busted for mislabeling them and not calling them hybrids. Or perhaps it was cabernet sauvignon when it was planted a hundred years ago and it has changed naturally.

4

1989 is not contemporary. And can’t say I’ve ever had potato water. Not in wine or otherwise.

What UC Davis has to do with Albania? Or planting a vine 100 years ago?

5

Shocker: Otto is here to argue.

The Vreshti sounds like a really cool wine, Steve. I love it when I taste a variety that I drink a lot of, but from a region / country from which I’ve never had said variety.

6

And wherever I am, every now and then you appear in the same thread to comment on something I have commented on.

Anyways, I’m not here to argue, just to comment on stuff I find odd or otherwise worthy a line or two.

7

I didn’t find Otto’s posts argumentative. Rather, they corrected what seemed to be misperceptions on the part of the taster. To just name one: “contemporary” certainly means different things in different contexts, but winemaking and climate have changed enough in the past 30 years that a 1989 cabernet is not contemporary.

1 Like
8

This indeed. The Bordeaux wines from the 1950’s and 1960’s were different from the 1980’s which were different from the 1990’s. However, only in the 1990’s some of the wineries really started to modernize things and even then most 1990’s wines were still pretty classically styled from a winemaking perspective, even if the gradual rise in climate temperature and viticultural changes had made the 1990’s feel different compared to those from, say, 1960’s.

It wasn’t until the 2000’s when most of the wineries have changed both their viticultural and winemaking processes to what it is more or less today (perhaps going even a bit overboard somewhere around 2005, many making very fruit-driven modernist wines), although some producers have resisted the change up until this day (BAMA, I’m looking at you).

So when talking about contemporary Bordeaux, it’d be safe to say that it covers wines made in this millennium. Some started to change already in the 1990’s, others still haven’t but at least to me, the tide changed around the year 2000. Thus a 1989 Bordeaux is not contemporary. 2015 and 2009 definitely. 2000 or 1996 maybe, depending on the producer.

Of course I’d be happy to hear if somebody else has a differing opinion!

9

No potato water then no extreme sensitivity to pyrazines. Congratulations. Read about how people who are extremely sensitive to pyrazines react.
UC Davis makes hybrids of clones. People get those hybrids but when they bottle the wines they don’t identify them as being hybrids. They identify them as being the better-known varietal.
Grapevines also evolve. Say you clone a bunch of Pommard on existing vines. Those vines will be Pommard-like initially. In 14 years the grapes will adapt to local conditions and might be extremely un-Pommard-like.

10

The winemaker read this post and passed along these comments:
The variety is 100% cab sauvignon, but it has aged 7-8 months in wooden barrels from Kosovo, not Slovenia.
The sweetness at the end comes as it is from the late grape harvest and was more concentrated…

1 Like
11

This was just the first time I’ve seen anyone equate potato water with wine. I can understand people who are extremely sensitive to pyrazines can find even potato water overwhelming (I don’t, I know how it smells, though), but I really can’t see any way how they are similar, because potato pyrazines (alkyl pyrazines) are so completely unlike methoxypyrazines, which are the aromatics you can find in plants like Cabernet Sauvignon and bell pepper. I’d imagine people who are sensitive to pyrazines would notice they are very different from each other when people less sensitive - like I - can.

UC Davis makes hybrids of clones. People get those hybrids but when they bottle the wines they don’t identify them as being hybrids. They identify them as being the better-known varietal.

Yes I know UC Davis makes hybrids. However, growers in Europe really don’t grow hybrids, because they are for the most part forbidden in most wine-growing countries. You can find them mostly in non-wine growing countries like Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. I guess there are some Swedish vineyards with hybrids as well. However, in France and Austria only a few hybrids are allowed and even those exclusively in certain regions (like Baco Blanc in Armagnac).

Using hybrids and not identifying them in the label - or worse, identifying them as better-known varieties - is most likely a new world thing. Can’t remember seeing stuff like that from any European country. Furthermore, even in regions that allow for other varieties to be blended in small amounts, most producers still opt to make wines from 100% one variety. I think it is much harder to find a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from California than from any European wine-producing country! (Unless they are making Bordeaux blends, of course).

Grapevines also evolve. Say you clone a bunch of Pommard on existing vines. Those vines will be Pommard-like initially. In 14 years the grapes will adapt to local conditions and might be extremely un-Pommard-like.

They do. However, Albania’s climate is closer to California than to Bordeaux, yet even the oldest vines in these regions produce wines with elevated levels of methoxypyrazines if the grapes are harvested early enough. It’s just a characteristic of Cabernet Sauvignon that won’t disappear. I do agree that a vine can adapt so that the grapes reach both physiological and aromatic ripeness at certain time so that the grapes can be harvested at lower brix without the grapes retaining much methoxypyrazines, but you have to remember that the development of methoxypyrazines depends on so many factors (sun/shade, temperature, soil, ripeness, water stress, even which yeast strain was used to ferment the wine) that old vines would be only a very minor component in this equation. The Roy Piper example of methoxypyrazines disappearing at 25 brix that you quoted earlier is only applicable to vines planted on to certain soil at certain climate. If these vines were planted somewhere else in some other country, the number could be 24 or 26 brix. For the most part, there are no hard and fast rules with vines and wines.

12

Very cool that you tried that wine Steve. Not a lot of Albanian wine around!

As to pyrazines, I think they’re sensitive to UV rays, aren’t they? So early leaf removal reduces them - that’s been known for a while. But turns out there are other things one can do.

Thermovinification, or heating to 50C / 122F is supposedly the best approach. I suppose you don’t have to heat that high to get an effect though.

Just allowing the must to settle can reduce them substantially, so in Bordeaux they suggest that for Sauv Blanc.

Since they’re related to vegetative growth, irrigation increases them, as does growth late in the season.

That’s why you used to get Chilean wines that were both ripe and green with pyrazines. And today that’s the signature of Paso Robles Cabs if you’re trying to ID them blind.

BTW, I love the potato water description. That’s a new one for me, but it actually makes sense with some wine. [cheers.gif]

13

I had the same reaction. To me, I quickly thought of that very distinct smell I get when soaking spuds for frying, or even that smell you get when you’re scrubbing russet potato skin before cooking them.

14

Steve is the most pyrazine sensitive person I know. Be it Cab Sauvignon or Franc, he struggles getting past any pyrazines.

1 Like
15

Righty, that puts it into some context.

However, I still think it’s as difficult to find pyrazines in modern Bdx wines as it is to find in Napa Cabs. Not impossible, but something that happens quite seldom nowadays.

16

I took a taste upon the pop of the Cab from a chilly bottle. Less than full bodied, not much depth of flavor, no black currants or earthiness. I spit some at the end of the night, and while it did integrate some, it still was not my cup of Cab. More like Merlot than Cab.