By Marian Jansen op de Haar, Fleming’s Director of Wine
Early fall is harvest time here in Napa Valley. It’s the most exciting, frantic yet enjoyable season of the year. Mornings can be magical, with fog shrouding the vineyards. Days can be sunny and hot days followed by cool and even chilly evenings. At dawn, you can see crews picking the grapes, all dressed in several layers of t-shirts and sweats. Grapes are harvested when they are cool so they retain their freshness and acidity once they’re picked and brought into the winery. The smell of fermenting fruit fills the air. It reminds me of the beginning of the holiday season, which includes wonderful dinners with family and friends.
The grape harvest is a very busy and intense time for wineries. There’s a lot of activity everywhere — trucks with picked grapes trying to enter Highway 29 between tourists from all over the world who are here for wine tastings and fabulous food. The atmosphere is typical Napa-friendly, warm and inviting, and everyone seems to be in good spirits. They have been preparing for this moment, of course, by tending the vines, cleaning barrels and bottling previous vintages to make room for 2009. It’s a moment of true collective unity for everyone who lives here.
Of course, it’s harvest time in Europe as well. Grapes are picked almost simultaneously in Spain, Italy and France as well as in California. At Fleming’s, we focus on U.S. wines, which our guests often are most familiar with. However, almost all the grape varieties grown in this country originated in Europe and the wine styles of California are often modeled after those from the Old World. Europe has always had excellent wines and right now there are some extraordinary values as well. In fact, much of the Fleming’s 100 is made up of wines from outside the U.S. this year.
I’ve selected some of my favorite continental wines for this month’s European Grand Tour Wine Dinner. There’s a lovely sparkling wine called Cava from Spain, a Pinot Grigio from Trentino in Northern Italy and a rich Bordeaux from Haut-Médoc in France. Let me share a few of my personal tasting notes on these wines with you, so you can appreciate them even more when you dine with us on October 20 or October 23.
SEGURA-VIUDAS, Brut Cava Aria Estate Spain NV
Just a short drive from joyous Barcelona, the first gentle pressings of the three Spanish grapes are blended and crafted in the traditional Méthode Champenoise. The Macabeo grape provides a fine, honeyed aroma. Parellada lends subtle elegance, and Xarel-lo provides the backbone. The result is this deliciously dry, sparkling Aria, ringing out in an emotional range of pineapple, honey, almond and straw notes. Sustainable
MASO CANALI, Pinot Grigio Trentino Italy, 2007
There’s a saying in Trentino: “Pane e vino fanno un bel bambino.” It means “bread and wine make a beautiful baby.” Kind of gives you a sense of the importance of wine in this region, and the life-enhancing qualities of these grapes — a portion of which local winemakers dry on racks to concentrate the sugar and the flavors. With a brilliant, light gold color and flavors of pink apricot, lemon and pineapple, this wine is as charming as an Italian child.
CHÂTEAU SÉNÉJAC, Haut-Médoc France, 2006
A sip of this ruby potion is transportation to one of those turreted stone chateaus in Bordeaux, surrounded by fields of vineyards and sunflowers. The wine tells stories of generations past, when the bread was baked in the wood-fired oven, and served with vintages like this one — in velvet-curtained drawing rooms where people whiled away their evenings singing to each other and playing the harpsichord. A distinctly Old World wine with a modern twist, it has the brightness of cherries and berries, a slightly tough edge, and plenty of persistence.