Archive for May, 2010
Rare Wine Co. Boston Bual Madeira
When Eric Asimov wrote an article about Madeira several months ago, two forces combined. On the one hand, my curiosity was piqued by his description of this style of wine, once all the rage and now soundly out of fashion. On the other, the fact that dessert wines are one of my favorite styles, one I’m always excited to venture further into.
And so, not too long after his article, I found myself face-to-face with a bottle of one of the Madeiras that he had discussed, the Boston Bual Special Reserve from The Rare Wine Company. I was the lucky recipient of a bottle as a gift, and we wasted little time diving into its contents to see what all the fuss was about.
The Rare Wine Company was founded in 1989 by Mannie Berk, and has since risen in stature to become a highly respected wine importer. Their reputation regarding Madeira is unparalleled, as demonstrated by a recent tasting that they held of several very old Madeiras. Today, their list of old madeiras is quite stunning, and surely contains many bottles available nowhere else.
The Historic Series is their effort to recreate styles of Madeira that were common at the height of Madeira’s popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries. The series consists of three bottlings: Boston Bual, Charleston Sercial, and New York Malmsey. There is also a 4th, but very rare, bottling named Imperial New York Malmsey. The styles are named after the primary grape making up the wine and the geographic region where the given style of wine was most popular.
Of the three bottlings, the Boston Bual lies squarely in the middle. The Charleston Sercial is a brighter wine with lots of citrus, whereas the Malmsey is allegedly sweeter and more viscous. The Boston Bual embodies a compromise between these two poles, with both citrus and nutty sweetness playing prominent roles.
The Rare Wine Company works with Vinhos Barbeito of Madeira to source and blend the wines in the series. While the Madeira industry as a whole has experienced significant decline during the last century, Vinhos Barbeito was founded in 1946 and has accumulated a remarkable stock of Madeira since then. The wines going into the Historic Series bottlings all range up to 30 years of age, demonstrating the remarkable longevity of Madeira.
Tasting Notes
The Boston Bual pours crimson brown with rich highlights, and heavy legs on the side of the glass. The nose has beguiling complexity, with notes of caramelized walnuts, sweet aged balsamic vinegar, raisins, almonds, and smoky molasses. The wine’s texture is mouth-coatingly viscous and heavily textured, with soft, warm flavors of walnut skins, molasses, brown sugar, and citrus. There’s an acidic core that wakes up the wine’s flavors, and highlights the note of complexity thrown in by the rancio character that grows as the wine warms in the glass. All in all, the palate is richly sweet without being cloying. The finish has well-blended notes of molasses, raisins, walnuts, and lemons.
The verdict? This is a rich, warming, complex dessert wine that should be in every wine-lover’s cupboard. The beauty of this wine is that not only does it taste delicious, but it stays strong for many months after opening the bottle. In fact, we’ve had one bottle open for nearly six months, and it’s practically as good as the day that we opened it.
Barrington Coffee Roasters Ethiopian Nekisse Micro Selection One
A couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune to pay a visit to Barrington Coffee Roasters, over in Lee, Mass. A long-time friend of mine worked there many years ago, and today his coffee shops work with Barrington for all of their coffee needs. Because the visit was something that he and I had talked about for ages, but simply hadn’t gotten around to, he was good enough to organize the field trip during my vacation week.
The timing was perfect. My thoughts had recently turned to questions of coffee seasonality and vintages (as captured in this post), thoughts that coincidentally are of great interest to the owners of Barrington Coffee. So I was pretty excited to visit them and talk about these ideas, so that I could learn more about the nuances that play into them and see what Barrington Coffee is doing along these lines.
The specialty coffee market seems like it’s in a funny place right now. Specialty coffee roasters are offering amazing, very carefully prepared coffees from great sources. These roasters are slowly building a landscape where lots of attention is paid to the details making up the coffee in your cup. The varietals, method of processing, elevation at which the cherries were grown, what micro-region the coffee is from, the background of the farmers or mill owners who produced the coffee beans, and so on. This level of detail gradually builds a story, one that is embodied by the coffee that you’re drinking. In other words, you’re not just drinking a single-origin Ethiopian coffee, but a single-origin, yellow-bourbon varietal, dry-processed, shade-grown coffee from a coop made up of 40 farmers who each farm 1-1.5 hectares of land apiece.
That’s a lot of information to digest, but is it the full story?
Herein lies the reason that my mind drifted towards questions of seasonality and vintages. Without question, there are pieces missing in the story making up specialty coffees today, details left out or as yet uncovered. And prominent among these are questions of how seasonality affects coffee, and whether vintage quality plays a role in the final quality of the coffee in your cup. I’m not content to know bits and pieces of a given coffee’s story, I want to know the nuances. And I’m not alone. Coffee can be wonderful and engaging, but leaving out the story is leaving out the romance.
The more I thought about this, the more I came to believe that the two concepts of seasonality and vintages are closely intertwined, and pulling them apart to look at separately is a bit thorny. In the end, this had a lot to do with the outcome of my discussion with Barrington co-owner Barth Anderson. He was generous enough to spend a few hours of his day discussing the topic, sampling both green and roasted coffees, and taking us on a tour of the roasters. But, in the end I felt like I was no closer to an understanding than I had been previously. The conversation took many twists and turns, followed numerous threads, I learned a ton, and – as the best conversations usually do – I ended up with more questions than answers, and certainly more questions than I had arrived with.
The gist of what I came away with was:
- Yes, seasonality and vintages play a large role in the quality of any given coffee. The weather patterns of a season have a huge impact both on the size of a crop and the quality, and therefore the same tree will not produce the same coffee two vintages in a row. The differences may be nuanced, but they are there.
- How weather affects the final flavor of a coffee is not clear. How does temperature affect the finished quality of a coffee? How about rainfall? Shade vs. sun-grown? Many questions remain to be thoroughly explored here.
- As a tree matures, the quality of its coffee will change. This will undoubtedly play into the quality of a coffee from one vintage to the next. Think of the role of old-growth vines in producing fine, vintage wines.
- Maintaining a coffee’s state for one or more years, so that you can directly assess the relative quality of different vintages, is a problematic and very tricky endeavor. Storage mechanisms and temperature, and ideal serving methods for vintage coffees remain wholly unanswered questions.
- As well, what coffees age better than others also remains an open question. Whether coffee from one region is more appropriate for aging than coffee from another is not entirely known, as well as what qualities a coffee needs to have in order to be age-worthy.
These are all questions that Barrington Coffee is very interested in, and has been exploring the answers to for several years. In their warehouse they’ve got bags and bags of beans representing several vintages of specially sealed coffees from several origins, representing the fruits of their awesome Landed Aging Program. And during our discussion, they brought out a wealth of information based on their experiences in aging coffees, specifically concerning which coffees age most gracefully, and what preparation methods best suit aged coffees. We also had the opportunity to talk about the profound varietal differences that can exist within single lots of coffee, and to begin exploring the question of which varietals are most suited to aging.
As I said, I came away with more questions than answers. But enough questions to fuel both further speculation and, hopefully, future conversations with the folks at Barrington Coffee. The conversation about aged coffees, vintages, and seasonal variation in quality is at a nascent stage, and while it may be taking place just in a small part of a small group of dedicated coffee enthusiasts, I believe that it’s an incredibly valuable conversation to have on a broader scale. Coffee deserves serious attention and consideration, and investigation into these questions, however hard they may be to answer, and however limited the apparent impact of their answers may be, is a relevant next step in elevating the level of that conversation.
As for this coffee, what is there to say? Lots! The Ethiopian Nekisse Micro Lot Selection One was harvested in December 2009 in the Sidamo/Shakiso region of southern Ethiopia. The trees grew at an altitude of 5904 feet, and the beans are made up of mixed heirloom varietals that were dry-processed. The beans came to Barrington by way of Ninety+Plus Coffee, a project begun by Joseph Brodsky whose mission is to deliver fine, unique small lots of coffee to specialty coffee roasters. They previously worked with Ninety+Plus to source their Ethiopian Beloya Selection Eight, which was magnificent.
Tasting Notes
The nose has notes of brown sugar, cinnamon, blackberries, and blueberries. The palate is fresh, with brightening acidity complementing a lithe, well-textured body sporting flavors of fresh berries, mint, kiwi, oak, and hazelnut. The finish has notes of bittersweet chocolate, blood oranges, and a subtle fruitiness, accompanied by a balancing acidity.
I tasted this coffee after preparing it in a french press. I also made it in a single-cup filter, and must say that the flavors came across quite different. Using the filter, the coffee was much more delicate, with brighter, strawberries. In the french press, the coffee was denser, with darker fruit flavors. At Barrington, we tasted the coffee from a vacuum coffeemaker–which is possibly the superior brewing technique. As a testament to the coffee’s quality, the coffee was delicious (albeit different) by all of these preparation techniques, so you can’t really go wrong here.
This Nekisse is carefully sourced, impeccably roasted, well-packaged (Barrington includes roast dates on their packaging now!), and presents wonderfully in the cup. The information they’ve included, both on the packaging and on their website, tells a good deal about the coffee, and gives you a fair notion of where this coffee came from, and why it is what it is.
All in all, a truly excellent cup of coffee. One that really opens up your taste buds, and your senses, and gets your thoughts perking first thing in the morning.
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Signatory Ben Nevis 1992 16-Year Cask-Strength Collection
Signatory is a whisky bottler that I’ve been tasting a number of very interesting malts from recently. They have two lines that I’ve been tasting whiskies from, their cask-strength and single-barrel offerings.
The single-barrel offerings have been interesting, and have included both sherry and bourbon casks. Each bottling is reduced to ~43%. Interestingly, many of these feature a very similar quality, a sort of soft luster, similar to old Hollywood films where they would use soft-focus when shooting close-ups of star actresses. These Signatory whiskies all tend to have this overtly pleasant, approachable element to them. They’re quite tasty and enjoyable, but not necessarily thought-provoking.
The cask-strength (often also single-barrel) whiskies are another beast entirely. Each is a pretty unique expression of the distillery in question, and the flavor spectrum tends to be rather dynamic and interesting. The whiskies bottled in their teens have been fairly exciting, and the older whiskies a bit more austere and difficult to approach. But all in all, a pretty good series of whiskies, highly recommended.
This bottle of Ben Nevis is from the latter series. The distillery is owned by the Nikka Whisky Distilling Company of Japan, who are themselves well-known for the whiskies they produce in their home country. Founded in 1820, Ben Nevis went on to become the first distillery to produce both malt and grain whisky when a Coffey still was installed in 1955. Today, Ben Nevis produces only malt whisky, to the tune of approximately 2 million liters per year. Bourbon, sherry, and French wine casks are used for aging.
This bottling is from a sherry butt, and is bottle 54 of 550. It was distilled on 7/3/1992 and bottled 16 years later on 8/15/2008. As I said, it’s cask-strength, weighing in at 54.6%.
Tasting Notes
The whisky is coppery gold in the glass, with some very nice, compelling beading along the edge. The nose is sweet and fruity, with rich, woody, sherried notes, maple syrup, and an undercurrent of citrus. The palate has a beguiling, mouth-coating texture, and is powerful and a bit overwhelming at full strength. The flavors are rich and sweet, with brown sugar, candied apples, rum-soaked fruit, a whiff of smoke, and a hint of citrus. The finish is long-lasting and spellbinding, with incredible notes of oak, creme brulee, caramelized turbinado sugar, and brown sugar syrup.
All in all, a great whisky. It took a fair amount of water to tame, but afterwards was both gentle and rich in the glass. Like I said, Signatory’s been bottling some very nice whiskies as part of this cask-strength line, and I’d highly recommend giving them a roll next time you’re on the hunt for a tasty malt to add to your collection.
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Full Sail Brewing Co. Black Gold Imperial Stout 2009 Release
Full Sail Brewing Company, located in Hood River, Oregon, is one of the breweries that I’ve looked forward to visiting during both of our trips to Portland in recent years. Hood River itself is supposed to be a cool town to visit, and Mount Hood has always been a destination of ours. Yet, despite Mount Hood looming on the horizon from almost anywhere in Portland, beckoning us to come and check it out, we’ve never made it that far east of Portland. Thus, we’ve yet to check out either the mountain or the town, and have not yet visited Full Sail at their home base.
We were fortunate to stop by their Portland tasting room during our last visit. This is definitely not the same as visiting them in Hood River, but it was still pretty cool to see so many of their beers on tap in one place. Several of them were rarities or one-offs, and so we enjoyed spending a couple of hours resting our feet and trying some great beers. Later on during the trip (in Fort Collins, no less), I was amped to stumble upon a stash of bottles of their Black Gold Imperial Stout, a beer I had really been hoping to lay my hands on.
The imperial stout that becomes Black Gold is brewed each winter, and then released the following winter after aging in bourbon barrels for many months. In this case, the beer was brewed in February 2008, and spent 10 months in barrels before being released. The brewery uses roughly 60 barrels, which works out to somewhere between 3200-3600 gallons of Black Gold (based on a bourbon barrel typically holding between 53 and 60 gallons). Not a bad haul, but fairly limited all the same. The beer is bottled at 10.5% with 65 IBUs.
What’s interesting is that they use barrels from a variety of different distilleries. In most cases, this is because they’re buying their barrels from a barrel-distributor, who themselves are collecting barrels from a number of distilleries. In contrast, there are some breweries who only buy barrels from specific distilleries. For instance, when we visited Allagash Brewing recently, all of their bourbon barrels are from Heaven Hill, makers of Jim Beam. At the release event for the most recent version of Black Gold, held this past February, they offered a horizontal tasting featuring pours from various different barrels, including Maker’s Mark and Four Roses bourbon, and Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Alongside this was offered a blend of the various barrels (representative of what the finished, blended beer would be like). You can read an interesting report about the event here.
Tasting Notes
Black Gold pours nice and thick, with 2-fingers of tan head that forms after a steady pour and drops slowly. The color is pitch black with ruby highlights at the rim. The nose has rich, alluring notes of bourbon, vanilla, oak, and blackstrap molasses. All in all, the nose is amazing, and the palate fulfills the promise it implies and more. The texture is soft and mouth-coating with a layer of prickly carbonation. Loads of rich dark maltiness form the base on top of which the other flavors play out: resiny oakiness, malted milk chocolate, vanilla, a hint of coffee, and mouthwateringly creamy whiskey flavor. The long, lingering finish is richly flavored with notes of toffee, caramel, and bourbon. Throughout, the whiskey element plays a big role, equal parts sweet caramel and vanilla, and heady whiskey flavors.
Quite simply, this beer is stunning. I’m a complete idiot for only picking up 1 bottle. What was I thinking?!
If you haven’t tasted this beer before, enjoy bourbon barrel-aged imperial stouts, and are in a region Full Sail distributes to, then rush out and find two bottles of this beer. Open one, savor it, enjoy it, and rest comfortable in the knowledge that you’ll be able to experience the amazing-ness that is this beer one more time.
Who knows if I’ll get to taste this beer again in the future, but let’s all cross our fingers and hope so.
Wow.
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Gordon & MacPhail Linkwood 1969 33-Year
As time has passed and I’ve had the good fortune to taste a wide range of whiskies, from new make spirit all the way up to 44-year olds, I’ve developed a real respect and affection for older whiskies. While I appreciate and enjoy the brash energy of young whiskies, it’s the greater complexity and stateliness of older whiskies that really has the power to mesmerize me. Time brings lots of benefits to whisky, among them more presence in the glass, and a ripe, richness that comes across as a much different characteristic when the whisky is younger.
Most excitingly, it’s always fun to dive into a really old whisky to see what it has to offer. Because Scotch whiskies past the 30-year mark can be an unpredictable mixed bag, you never really know what you’re going to get. At this point, the whisky has been in the barrel for quite a long time, and so the characteristics that it had when fresh off the still have long since been subsumed and transformed into a unique, profound relationship with the barrel that it’s been resting in for so long. The impact and role of the barrel are therefore predominant in determining the quality of the finished whisky. A bad barrel can ruin what would have been a remarkable whisky, and a great barrel can raise the same whisky to stunning heights.
Them there is the role of the bottler, who has a handful of decisions to make. Blend several old casks into a single bottling, or go single-cask? What proof? Cask-strength or diluted? If diluted, how low do you go? 46? 43? 40? Chill-filter? (shudder…) I’ve definitely tasted a number of old whiskies where you could just tell that bottled at cask-strength or as a single-cask it would have been an amazing whisky. But bottled as it was, well…something had been lost along the way.
In my experience, many of the older whiskies from Gordon & MacPhail experience a fate such as this. Their typical approach is to blend casks of older whiskies together and dilute at bottling, to either 40% or 43%. I can understand the rationale behind both decisions, but don’t empathize with it. Yes, 40% or 43% makes for a very drinkable whisky, but a rather tame one as well. And if I’m spending the money on such an older whisky, I want the choice as to how much water should be added to my whisky. I also have such a strong affinity for single-cask whiskies, that it’s simply too hard not to speculate longingly about how stellar some of the casks that went into the final blend must have been.
That being said, G&M offers a wide range of older whiskies at very reasonable prices, so it’s hard to take them to task too much. It’s more like buyer-beware: it’s important to know how they typically bottle older whiskies, so that you can have appropriate expectations. They’re all very nice whiskies, if not overly remarkable or inspiring.
This Linkwood 33-year old was one of the whiskies at we featured at the Old Whiskies tasting at Amherst Coffee this past March. It was the only one of them bottled at 40%, and it showed. Overall the whisky was quite good, but very understated.
Linkwood produces a fair amount of whisky each year, approximately 2.6 million liters. But what makes this whisky pretty darn exciting is that it was produced in 1969, 2 years before the distillery was expanded from 2 to 6 stills. So this particular whisky was distilled at a time when Linkwood was a much smaller distillery, and likely producing a slightly different spirit.
Tasting Notes
The whisky is the color of burnished gold with subtle amber tints. The nose has soft notes of red fruit reminiscent of sherry cask aging, alongside butter cookies, poached pears, candied lemon lime rind, and spun sugar. The whisky’s texture is very soft, gentle, and mouth-coating. The spectrum of favors is similar to the nose, with subtly sweet and gentle elements of pears, caramel custard, shortbread cookies, wheat and grain. The one note missing is the red fruit flavors, but these are compensated for by a buttered rum note that becomes more prominent as the whisky warms. The medium-length has flavors of genoise cake and soft, ripe fruits.
Very nice whisky. Rich and interesting, and quite drinkable. The flavors came across a bit soft, which is the impact of the 40%.
The one caveat to these notes, is that all of the flavors were very gently pronounced and subdued, not quite as profound as they sound in writing them. Nonetheless, this is a nice whisky. I remember distinctly at the tasting that the reception was very similar: this is a nice, very drinkable and enjoyable whisky, but without loads of character in the glass.
Still, pretty cool that it was distilled 41 years ago’ eh?
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