Chateau Latour-Martillac

What a fabulous start of lunch by sipping Chateau Latour-Martillac Blanc 2001 from Pessac-Léognan. This 15 year old wine was elegant, fresh with great refinement - a reminder of how a great Bordeaux white wine can develop.

The lunch was hosted by the Chateau’s brand ambassador Edouard Kressmann, a winemaker by training and the fourth generation of the family-owned estate. Originated from Poland, the great great grandfather Edouard moved to Bordeaux in 1858, built a successful negociant business and eventually advised Chateau La-Tour in Martillac to plant white grape varieties. The property was subsequently bought by Alfred, the son of Edouard, who changed the name to Latour-Martillac. The terroir of the estate proofed to be exceptional for both red and white wines. When the Graves wines were classified in 1953 and again in 1959, only six estates had both their reds and whites selected for the classification, and Chateau Latour-Martillac was one of them.

Edouard is proud of the label, designed by his grandfather Jean in 1934. A striking geometric design with black, gold and beige pattern, it was inspired by the Art deco movement. I have to admit that the label does stand out and is probably well-received in China, the market that Edouard is focussing. He moved to Beijing in 2011, visiting various Chinese and Asian cities to promote the brand. Although Pessac-Léognan still lags behind the Medoc in China, Edouard is pleased to see that more and more Chinese consumers are not chasing big names.

Chateau Latour-Martillac was also a pioneer and employed the first female winemaker in the Pessac-Léognan appellation back in 1991. Valérie Vialard has been with the chateau since then. Michel Roland was the winemaking consultant until 2001 and when Valérie took over, she experimented with different ageing and blending techniques. Michel aged wines in barrels according to their quality (best wine in new barrel, second best wine in first year barrel and so on) an
d only blended them later, while Valérie first blends the wine then ages them in new, first and second filled barrels in equal portion. The final wine is more integrated and elegant.

Edouard is the only member in his generation actively involved in the family’s business. Although he misses harvest and working in the winery, he plans to stay here in the east for a while to understand the customers. His stint in China would certainly prepare him to continue the legacy of Chateau Latour-Martillac.

Chateau Latour-Martillac is available from Summergate.

Indigenous grapes, forgotten grapes?

I had the opportunity to attend two tastings in a role organised by the Hong Kong Wine Society on two classic European wine regions, one in conjunction with The Drinks Business on the Douro Valley in Portugal and the other one jointly presented with Cottage Vineyards on Piedmont region in Italy. Both countries are known for their vast arrays of indigenous grapes and the tastings, with focus on these varieties, were like fresh air.

The Douro wine we tasted, from Wine & Soul and Quinta de Maritávora, were made by the same winemaker Jorge Serôdio Borges who is also the owner of Wine & Soul. Douro is the home of port but still red wine has been gaining fame in the last 10 years. Jorge reckons now is the turn of Douro still white wine. Wine & Soul Guru, from a 50 years old vineyard planted with Gouveio, Viosinho, Rabigato and Códega do Larinho (field blend), is a light-bodied wine with only 12% alcohol. It was barrel fermented with 50% new oak but it has such intense fruit aromas that the wood just added complexity to the wine instead of overpowering it. The wine was a good match with the Pasties de Bacalhau being served but it would be equally impressed with grilled prawns or sardines. New vineyard plantings in the Douro tend to be of single variety for better management but Jorge now goes back to field blend planting. He blended wine from different varieties planted separately but now believes vines maturing together allows different varieties to interact in the vineyards resulting in more complex blend. Well, I don’t think we can argue with him - his Guru testifies his theory!

The two reds that followed were interesting comparison. Both were blends dominated by Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, amongst others. The Maritávora Grande Reserva 2011 was concentrated but with such freshness that reminded me of a young port without the sweetness. Wine & Soul Pintas 2009, a mega-blend with 30 varieties, is elegant and multi-dimensional with earthier notes. Jorge said Portugal is the New Old World, where indigenous grapes are used to make clean, fresh and balanced wine.

Italy’s indigenous grapes were mostly uprooted or lost. Fortunately a few committed winemakers have not forgotten them. Cottage Vineyards invited two winemakers from Piedmont to showcase three such varieties: Erbaluce, Vespolina and Pelaverga Piccolo.

I first tasted Erbaluce in 2014 at Vinitaly and it was such a discovery. A light -bodied wine with floral, smoky tones and a mineral finish, it is refreshing and in my view, a much more suitable wine for the Asian warm and humid climate. Jancis Robinson once said the better Erbaluce could challenge Arneis and Gavi, the leading white wines from Piedmont. The one we tried, Pietro Cassina ‘Nivis’ Coste della Sesia Bianco DOC 2014 (yes, 100% Erbaluce) was exactly what I remembered and it went extremely well with the seared scallop on mashed potato and hazelnut - hazelnut being a famous produce in Piedmont. Pietro Cassina ‘Tera Russa’ is 100% Vespolina grown on red soil, an earthy wine with notes of spices and herbs. Vespolina was nearly lost to phylloxera and there is only just over 100ha plantings left in Italy.

Another gem was Castello di Verduno ‘Basadone’ Verduno DOC 2013 made of 100% Pelaverga Piccolo. The grape is only grown in the tiny village of Verduno and is often blended with other grapes - another forgotten grape luckily revived in the 70s when Castello
di Verduno then winemaker dedicated a vineyard, Basadone, to the variety. The wine was eventually promoted to DOC status in 1983 and although there are 11 producers in Verduno, total planting of the variety is just over 20ha. The wine is light and elegant with sour cherry and spicy tones. Basadone means ‘kissing women’ in local dialect and winemaker Mario Andrion hopes the wine could reawaken wine lovers’ desire to these forgotten grapes.

Both Portugal and Italy are my favourite European wine countries and I love indigenous grapes. I hope the new generation of Portuguese and Italian winemakers will not forget their history, and keep crafting wines from these treasures.

Wine & Soul and Quinta de Maritávora are available from Maritávora Asia Ltd.
Pietro Cassina and Castello di Verduno are available from Cottage Vineyards.

Harvest in Clare

It was harvest time again in Southern Hemisphere and I was itching to go back to the wineries. This time I was lucky to spend just over a fortnight at Sevenhill Cellars in Clare, South Australia, working with a small but truly international team including Jeremy from Australia, Ricardo from Portugal and Yongxie from Guangdong province (mainland Chinese) who just finished studying at University of Adelaide, all worked under the watchful eye of winemaker Liz Heidenreich.

Established in 1851, Sevenhill is a Jesuit winery and the oldest one in Clare. Although it is only a medium size winery crushing around 300 tons (200,000 bottles), it makes all styles of wine from sparkling to fortified, as well as Alter wine for churches in Australia and Asia. A ceremony was held at the beginning of the vintage to give blessing to the grapes.


I have to say that winery work during harvest is pretty routine and repetitive. Daily chores are crushing grapes, inoculating the juice, checking ferments, plunging down, pumping over, pressing and endless cleaning. But what makes the work exciting and fun is the enthusiasm of people, who are willing to share their knowledge, help and learn from each other. No matter how experienced or not you are, there are always something you can give and take. And of course there is also the satisfaction that the sticky juice we are handling would turn into delicious, and maybe even award-winning wine one day, to be appreciated and shared among friends.

I was working with a great team. Starting with Yongxie, he completed a viticulture/winemaking degree in Beijing Agricultural University, did a vintage at one of the big wineries in the motherland before continuing his study in Adelaide. Sevenhill was his second harvest. Winery work can be heavy duty and Yongxie is petite, but he never gives up. Liz sent him into an open fermenter to manually scoop out 2.5 tons of Syrah skin. It was a tough job as he had to raise the spade full of skin above his head to dump it into the basket press. We asked to take turn but he did it all by himself. He reckoned winery work and grape processing are by and large about machine operation and that the quality of vineyards is the key to making the best wine. How true this is! The quality of Chinese wine is improving because of better winery practice but there are still vineyard management issues to be tackled. I would love to see more Yongxies - young Chinese with the right attitude who understand that winemaking is not about fancy cellars, huge tanks and expensive barrels, and who are eager to contribute to the China wine industry.

Ricardo is another young man with ambition. He is methodical and thinks through the work process rather than just takes instructions. Ricardo has a friend, Joel Santos, another winemaker from his village who is working at Tim Adams Winery close to Sevenhill. Joel and I have a common link: he is one of the 48 winemakers taking part in the Ningxia Wine Challenge and I was one of the judges assessing the applicants. The fact that I had also done four vintages in Portugal further forged our friendship. Both Ricardo and Joel are passionate about wine. We bumped into each other while visiting other wineries on our day off, and we went to the Adelaide Cellar Door Festival, an annual wine event featuring over 180 wine and food producers from South Australia. Although the Portuguese duo were having a great time in Australia, both plan to make wine back in their home country eventually. After all, they believe, Portugal makes one of the best wines in the world!

Jeremy is a friendly chap that is responsible for the winery when Liz is not around. Although quiet, he is always there to help as long as you ask. Liz, in contrast, is the most fun and non-boss like winemaker I have worked with. As a matter of fact, we went back a long way as we did three vintages together at Adega do Cantor (by the way, the property is in the market now) in the Algarve when I graduated from my winemaking diploma. She is a problem solver and leads by example. I had the grapes jammed like concrete in the passageway between the augur and the crusher once. Liz was cool, stopped the machines, dug and loosened the grapes with bare hands. She just said she is the one with the longest hand! Another reason why she was loved by us all was that she cooked us bacon sausage and egg sandwich on a barbecue stove, not once, but twice at the cellar in two weeks! I don’t think you can ask more from your boss.

Two weeks flew quickly. I came back with swollen fingers, cuts, bruises and scars but I was content - having crushed all the Riesling (where Clare is famous for) at Sevenhill, making new friends and meeting the new generation of Chinese winemakers. This is the spirit of winemaking and working at wineries always remind me of why wine is such a special drink.

Sevenhill is available from Free Duty, with retail shops at China/Hong Kong border and an online sales platform. Look out for the 2016 Riesling that I part-made in the next few years.

Inigo Riesling: Vibrant with intense citrus aromas and crisp acidity.
Inigo Syrah: Lively with bright red fruits and spices supported by fine tannins
St Francis Xavier Single-Vineyard Riesling: Elegant and pure, citrus and floral with lingering finish (not available in Hong Kong yet).

The secret behind the success of San Felice

With over 20 years of presence here, San Felice is one of the pioneer Italian wine brands in Hong Kong, at the time when the majority of wine in the market was from France. Today, with many more Italian players in the market, San Felice is still one of the most recognised Italian wine brands. I had a chance to discuss with Leonardo Bellaccini, San Felice’s winemaker for over 30 years, about the brand’s success and his view on the Asian market.

Leonardo attributed the brand’s success largely to the effort of its importer, Valdivia/Castello Del Vino, who has been San Felice’s partner in Hong Kong since the beginning, and understands San Felice’s philosophy and vision. He believes that being at the right places is more important than setting sales volume, and he is glad that San Felice is available in major hotels and restaurants, including The Peninsula, Four Seasons, Aqua and Sevva. Of course regular visits to the market, in Leonardo’s case, twice a year to Hong Kong, and supporting importer on various marketing activities also help. Nevertheless, his advice to newcomers to any markets: identifying a good importer is mandatory to success.

Claudia Capelvenere, managing director of Valdivia Ltd, echoed Leonardo, that mutual trust is the success to build the wine brand in the market. She also praised San Felice’s honest pricing, that they never increased  prices unreasonably because of awards, limited supply or allocation. This gives her space and time to develop the brand. The fact that Valdivia is the oldest family-owned importer specialises in Italian wine since 1975 allows the company to establish a strong rapport with key on-trade customers.

Leonardo is positive about Hong Kong. He does not see Hong Kong only as a gateway to China, and compares Hong Kong to Manhattan, both rich markets where all brands want to have a foothold. Hong Kong wine market is some 30 years more mature than China’s with more developed wine and cuisine culture while Chinese consumers are still at the discovery stage.

Turning to other Asian markets, Leonardo said Japan used to be San Felice’s number one market but it is more of a historical market now largely because of the stagnant economy, and perhaps partly because of a not-too-ideal import partner. However, he is bullish in South Korea and Singapore, currently number one and three of San Felice’s markets in Asia, with Hong Kong being number two.

Of course quality is also essential to the brands’ success. Leonardo’s believes in indigenous grapes which have a strong link to the region, and show much better of terroir. International grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot have strong personalities that put their fingerprints over terroir rather than expressing it. Having said that, San Felice is one of the first Chianti wineries to have produced a Super Tuscan Vigorello, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot, back in 1968, when Chianti was suffering from a poor reputation. San Felice wanted to show the world that Chianti is capable of producing a modern, international wine with a Tuscan character.

Nevertheless, to ensure full expression of terroir, its Chianti Classico Il Grigio Riserva, only uses 100% Sangiovese while the Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Il Grigio uses Sangiovese with a touch of other local grape varieties including Pugnitello, Malvasia Nera and Ciliegiolo. Gran Selezione is a new denomination approved by the European Commission in 2014 to showcase the excellence of Chianti Classico. Wine classified in this category must be made by grapes from the wineries‘ own vineyards, aged a minimum 30 months in oak and be judged and approved by a panel, amongst others. 2014 only had 25 wines approved while this year has increased to 93. Leonardo was very pleased that his Gran Selezione 2011 was awarded the #1 wine of Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 2015, demonstrated that San Felice’s success is a combination of quality, commitment and good partnership.

San Felice is available from Castello Del Vinov

Abridged version was published on Spirito diVino April/May 2016 issue