Costers del Siurana Dolc' de L'Obac 2001
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Estate bottled. Unfiltered. Garnacha, Cabernet, Syrah, Merlot. The wine is made from grapes from the estate Camp dels Espills (2.4 acres), planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Garnacha, Syrah, and Merlot. The late harvest starts when the grapes are turning to raisins and the potential alcohol level is 16-18%.
"Deep ruby-red. Aromas of roasted plum, currant, tobacco and chocolate; from the nose, this could be a very rich but dry wine. Then sweet, highly concentrated and penetrating, with strong acids buffering the wine's considerable sweetness. Very lively in the mouth; I'm tempted to describe this elixir as elegant. Finishes with substantial dusty tannins and only modest sweetness. Made from raisined grapes with potential alcohol of 16% to 18%; the fermentation is stopped by the addition of neutral spirits, leaving a wine with 15.5% to 16% alcohol. I hesitate to give such a high score to a wine like this because some readers may think I am simply rewarding it for its sweetness. But this distinctive wine is extremely stylish, vibrant and easy to drink."
-IWC
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Tiny and entirely composed of craggy, jagged and deeply terraced vineyards, Priorat is a Catalan wine-producing region that was virtually abandoned until the early 1990s. This Spanish wine's renaissance came with the arrival of one man, René Barbier, who recognized the region’s forgotten potential. He banded with five friends to create five “Clos” in the village of Gratallops. Their aim was to revive some of Priorat’s ancient Carignan vines, as well as plant new—mainly French—varieties. These winemakers were technically skilled, well-trained and locally inspired; not surprisingly their results were a far cry from the few rustic and overly fermented wines already produced.
This movement escalated Priorat’s popularity for a few reasons. Its new wines were modern and made with well-recognized varieties, namely old Carignan and Grenache blended with Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. When the demand arrived, scarcity commanded higher prices and as the region discovered its new acclaim, investors came running from near and far. Within ten years, the area under vine practically doubled.
Priorat’s steep slopes of licorella (brown and black slate) and quartzite soils, protection from the cold winds of the Siera de Monstant and a lack of water, leading to incredibly low vine yields, all work together to make the region’s wines unique. While similar blends could and are produced elsewhere, the mineral essence and unprecedented concentration of a Priorat wine is unmistakable.