When I was in Nottingham, I was browsing the website of Brigitte Bordeaux, to get an idea if there was something I didn’t want to miss picking up. I saw this one. It’s been awhile since I’ve had an orange wine from Italy, and I think never from Piedmont, so I picked up a bottle.
In the glass
Light. Slightly cloudy. Here I run into trouble, or perhaps the preconceptions of my training, and can’t quite decide what to call it. In the end, I go for ‘apple juice.’ The cloudy kind. It’s an interesting colour, but mostly because it hints at something a bit off the beaten path. Plus, if you look closely, you can see stuff floating in it. I usually find that promising. It’s a colour that leads me to want to try the wine, rather than sit and look at it a while longer.
The nose
I’m not getting much of anything. Not that that’s a surprise. I can’t decide what that faint whiff of something is. Possibly apple or apple peel? I don’t really know. That could be well a product of the colour influencing what I think I’m smelling. TY goes with papaya with a squeeze of lime.
The palate
This is where it gets really interesting to me. I still can’t quite figure out what I’m tasting. TY is bouncing up and down in her chair, going on about papaya and lime. I still don’t get it. ‘I have no clue what the taste is, but I like it,’ is what my tasting notes say. It’s dry wine, not really noticeable tannins. But having said that – there’s a certain sort of powdery-ness to the mouthfeel. Not drying tannins, but a recognition that it’s an unfiltered, unfined wine, with stuff floating in it.
I find it a very more-ish wine. It has a short finish, but rather than seeing this as a fault, it just gives me an excuse to drink more.
Rating
Now I have to introduce a category above Yummy-plus. I’m calling it Yummy-double-plus-good.
For me, it’s all about the texture on this one. I can never quite figure out the taste, and while whatever it is, is pleasant enough it’s not the main attraction. That’s the texture. It probably doesn’t sound appealing to read about the fine powdery grains, like you poured the wine into a very dusty glass. But that’s what does it for me. There’s enough going on in terms of mouthfeel that the vague taste doesn’t really matter.
Sustainability
The English Winemaker bills their wines as ‘low intervention site specific wines.’ Unfiltered, unfined, handpicked grapes, minimal SO2 added.
Other stuff
Probably the most tactile wine I’ve tasted to date, at least on this blog
The technical info and such
13% ABV. Moscato. £24.99 from Brigitte Bordeaux.