by Patrick Ogle

Poderi Morini "Morose" Spumante Brut Rose  from Emilia-Romagna, is a find. When you spend around $12 on a sparkler you do not expect something with this textured and creamy. You also might not expect all the fruit and herbal elements. I get red berries--from raspberry to cherry and even something perfumey here. There is something like a fennel or tarragon herbalness here. The sugar is in the middle to high range for a brut sparkler. Twelve grams per liter is the upper limit and this has about 9. It is still dry but it isn't as low as brut goes (I refer to sugar ranges in Champagne here). Drink it on its own or make cocktails with it. It works well for both.

This is a lovely little wine that also has a neat story. The grape is Centesimino a grape that just as easily could have vanished into history. A gentleman named Pietro Pianori found the grape growing and championed it. When it was included in the Italian national catalog of vines it was named Centesimino in Pianori's honor (Centesimino was his nickname). Read more at the Fringe Wine blog.
 
The grape is also used to make still red wines. This is a non-vintage wine but apparently all the grapes come from 2015. This wine is made using the Charmat (Tank) Method. This means the wine gets its sparkle outside the bottle in a pressurized tank.

by Patrick Ogle

Le Canon is a rose wine from the Rhone Valley. Unusually it is made from muscat of Hamburg. The gentleman at the wine shop said "It is a wine made by, Hirotake Ooka , a Japanese winemaker in the Northern Rhone." The gentleman then extrapolated on a number of details. I could have responded with "You had me with that first sentence." He also would have had me by saying "muscat of Hamburg."

It almost seems to bubble when you pour it and it smells like a ripe red grapefruit. It tastes like that too (although the grapefruit is more subdued in the taste). There is also a good deal of grapefruit pith here, especially on the finish.

I had a hard time chasing other aspects of this wine. There is something tropical in the background that isn't citrus. The wine has strong acidity too. The CO2 and the acidity make this a lively wine. If you want to pair this with something thing salads and mild cheeses. It almost calls to mind a French farmhouse ale in some ways.

When you look at this wine, and when you know the story and what it is you might expect it to be weirder, to be funkier. It is unusual to be sure but it is also quite accessible-different but accessible. If you expect a mild mannered Provence rose? You are going to be surprised. Yet, if you are expecting to taste dirt and grungy nastiness because it is cloudy? You would be dead wrong as well.

This wine sort of tastes like summer.

It also shows that totally natural wines--no sulfur is added, it is neither fined nor filtered--are not necessarily unapproachable for casual wine drinkers. This wine doesn't even use additions in the vineyard allowed in biodynamic wines. It is pretty close to zero intervention from the winemaker, beyond even biodynamic requirements. This wine is fascinating for those into esoteric wines but people who like wine in a broader sense will not be turned off by it (provided they have an open mind). There is something primal here. It makes you think of the sort of fermented beverage the first people fermenting beverages might have tasted.

With the emphasis on non-intervention it is somewhat ironic that the grape used, muscat of Hamburg, is possibly the result of human intervention.

By Patrick Ogle

Beurer Wurttemberg Rose Trocken 2015 is a rosé that should find its place onto your summer table (if you can find a bottle). It is a blend of trollinger, portugieser, zweigelt and spatburgunder (aka pinot noir).

Trollinger (also called schiava grosso) makes a red wine that is so light in color that it almost looks like a rose. This rose is almost as dark in color as many trollinger reds. None of the other grapes are known for making particularly heavy wines.

The smell is like a grape jolly rancher--quite grapey. It is bright, has refreshing acidity and it is way up on the list of what you want to be drinking on a hot day. It is a rose that flirts with and acknowledges its inner redness but since the  wine is mostly  trollinger? This "redness" isn't too...well...too red.

There is a lot of dissolved CO2 here but it isn't sparkling but, even so, that gas leaves you with a wine that is quite lively. There is a slight vinegar taste here--acetic acid lurking well beneath the surface which adds a wee little bit of what you might, MIGHT call complexity to the wine. But it is hard to call this complex. It is an ultimately drinkable summertime wine that is interesting without being off-putting.