There aren’t enough pages in this magazine to highlight all the killer meals being whipped up in Edmonton’s best restaurants. Here’s a short list of three dishes you do not want to miss this month. They hail from tireless chefs who’ve beaten back the worst of our pandemic blues with stunning and satisfying recipes for the hungry and discerning.
Elio Sandri 2013 Riserva Barolo Perno DOCG
Nebbiolo. Piemonte, Italy
$100 – $110. Still available at Wine & Beyond
www.wineandbeyond.ca
The Sandris missed the memo on modernization. Their wines are a time capsule from before modern upgrades transformed Barolo into the oakier brawny affairs they are today. Sandri’s wines are still as austere, pious, and rustic as the monks his dad bought the farm from in 1965.
Elio Sandri farms just seven hectares on the Perno hill, a ludicrously small holding for today’s Barolo. When one hectare goes for over €1.2m, you must truly love farming wine not to cash out, live on a beach, and never shovel grape skins again. But Sandri’s passion has kept him in his farmhouse, the Cascina Disa.
Sandri’s uncompromising farming — even requesting his small team stays calm and hushed when among the vines — results in character-driven fruit that needs no additives or removals to shine, just a saintly patience while it matures. The Riserva bottling is Sandri’s tête de cuvée from his oldest vines planted in 1937 on SW facing mid-slope. There are less than 300 cases made of his regular Barolo. No doubt far fewer of the Riserva. When wines are this rare and magnificent at once, I marvel that we have them in Alberta.
If you foolishly open this now rather than ten to twenty years from now (as I did for this review) you’ll find all kinds of cherries over pencil shavings, potpourri, and hints of anise and mint and tarmac. The patient, however, will be rewarded with all the tar and roses and truffle notes great Barolo is famous for.
Domaine Philippe Chavy 2018 Meursault Chardonnay. Burgundy, France
$80 – $90. Still available at: Color de Vino, Fine Wines by Liquor Select, Crestwood, Glenora
www.colordevino.ca, www.liquorselect.com, www.crestwoodfinewines.com, www.glenorafinewines.ca
Phillippe Chavy is old-school. His website looks like Tom from Myspace made it in junior high school. He’s a third generation vigneron and no doubt nearing retirement himself. Nevertheless, he’s still out there in the vines, ploughing with a horse, eschewing chemicals, and practicing biodynamics in his humble eight hectares of Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault. But you can still taste the clean hard lines of modern technique in the cellar. He ferments in temperature-controlled stainless steel, pays the coopers, and filters his wines.
This richly poised Chardonnay over delivers for a village level bottling. The fruit comes from four old-vine parcels totalling less than one single hectare: Moulin Landin (planted 1957), Pellans (planted 1945), Gruyaches (planted 1932), and Pelles (planted 1973). Pellans and Gruyaches directly abut the lower flank of the Charmes premier cru and no doubt lend this wine its Charmes-like power. Pelles and Moulin Landin meanwhile benefit from cooling winds funneled through the valley from Saint Aubin, once a detriment but now an important balancing factor as climate change has noticeably changed the degree of ripeness year after year. These plots bring acidity and elegance to the blend.
This wine is archetypically Meursault, the sort of wine you’d use to train for blinding: Voluptuous, creamy, buttery (without being popcorned). It caresses the palate with its lovely leesy texture, exuding notes of poached pear, hazelnut, and beautifully integrated oak spice. Simply classic. Drinks well now but can be advantageously cellared for another three years.
Peter Lauer 2019 Schonfels GG Faß 11 Riesling. Mosel, Germany.
$85 – $95. Still available at Sherbrooke, Crestwood.
www.sherbrookeliquor.com, www.crestwoodfinewines.com
Twenty minutes south of Triers, sits one of the world’s most radical farms. Tumbling down a south facing cliff on the Saar river, a battalion of individually staked Riesling vines stands at attention, resisting the wind, their roots clinging deep beneath the blue-gray slate. Half way down, the vines halt at the deadly edge of a 100ft vertical drop above the river. Courageous workers park the tractor at the top, harness themselves to it with carabiners, and descend into the vineyard. This, dear reader, is Schonfels.
The wine from this GG vineyard (meaning grosses gewächs, Germany’s grand cru) is grown by fifth generation vigneron, Florian Lauer. With vines planted in 1912, this own-rooted vineyard was abandoned in the 1980’s when Riesling was out of vogue. The extremely low yields and dangerous toil of the farming made it impossible for the Lauers to sell the wine for what it cost to produce. But in 2000, after taking over from his father, Florian Lauer made the brave (insane?) decision of risking his entire business on the expense of reviving this fallow vineyard without even knowing if the vines would still produce, let alone whether the wine would taste worthy of the price tag it would need to justify.
Fortune favours the bold indeed. Today the Schonfels’ GG produces one of the boldest, most complex, fine-boned, and mineral-driven Rieslings on earth. This cuvée is everything the Mosel is famous for, turned up to eleven. Drink now or easily cellar up to a decade.
Their wines are a time capsule from before modern upgrades transformed Barolo into the oakier brawny affairs they are today.
There aren’t enough pages in this magazine to highlight all the killer meals being whipped up in Edmonton’s best restaurants. Here’s a short list of three dishes you do not want to miss this month. They hail from tireless chefs who’ve beaten back the worst of our pandemic blues with stunning and satisfying recipes for the hungry and discerning.
Places To Be
See this month's local flavours, products, and services.
