"Stereo vs. Mono:" turning up the tasting volume: Canary Island wines & English Stilton cheese in perspective.

Another Webster Wine Bar classic staff meeting for the books! The past few days I've been studying wines from the Canary Islands in preparation for the introduction of our new feature wine flight. Many thanks to Jeremy Quinn (Webster's wine director), for putting together a lot of great reading for us. One of the many unique characteristics of the wines of the Canary Island is that they are made from ungrafted vines. These vines have not needed foreign rootstock to avoid phylloxera due to the Island's remote location and relentless climate. I could elaborate more on the terroir of the 7 wildly unique islands but I'll leave that to the oh-so-eloquent Mr. Quinn. Please check out his introduction to this utterly fascinating wine region here. And for a little eye candy I can't help but post a picture of the moon-like volcanic landscape of Lanzarote.

One of the articles that Jeremy compiled became the inspiration for the comparative nature of our staff meeting. In  "Post Pasteur," Peter Liem writes about the tasting scope of wines made from ungrafted vines vs. grafted vines and brilliantly parallels it with the differences between cheeses made from raw milk vs. pasteurized. This is a very relevant subject right now, the FDA is currently taking many aggressive steps forward in regulating, and in some (sad) cases shutting down, creameries working with raw milk. A great tribute to Sally Jackson cheese can be read here. I should reserve my rants (before I REALLY get goin') regarding the more specific regulations of raw milk cheeses around the world for another day.


A blind tasting between 2 red wines: #1 a red wine from the Canary Islands (ungrafted vines), and #2 a red wine from Spain (similar in style) made from grafted vines. Between the ten of us the two wines immediately provoked candid conversation and surprisingly accurate results and comments. Everybody found a certain rustic nature to wine #1: slightly hazy and more texture. Wine #2 having a lot more impression of alcohol on the nose. In Peter Liem's article he quotes Noël Pinguet, winemaker at Domaine Huet in Vouvray, "There's usually less alcohol in the ungrafted vines seperately..." proving that the presence of alcohol on the nose of wine #2 (12.5%) being more prevalent than the actual higher (13%) alcohol ungrafted wine #1. 

• #1: 2009 Tajinaste (100% Listan Negro) from the D.O. Valle de Orotava, Tenerife.
• #2: 2009 Doniene Gorrondona, Bizkaiko Txakolina from the Basque.

I definitely leaned towards wine #1 as the ungrafted wine but, after revealing, I was totally surprised at how much more grip the Tajinaste had considering I was already familiar with the Gorrondona as being quite tannic. Next to the Tajinaste I (we) actually found the Gorrondona to be "softer" and more subdued while ungrafted wine #1 showed tons of clarity much beyond it's mid-palette grip: volcanic minerality and ripe fruit. Cheers to Jeremy for picking such a cool contrast, I think by doing this he truly highlighted the amped up "volume" of the Tajinaste. Well, actually, I shouldn't say volume... I'd rather draw attention to my subject title of STEREO vs. mono (kudos to Bronwen Percival*). If you were to listen to two audio recordings, volume being constant, stereo would provide more information than mono. Palette Information, there we go.
*coolest name I've ever heard.

Moving right along, two big "honks" of cheese were passed around the table with the same approach as the wine and, even cooler, they were the same cheeses chosen for Peter Liem's article. One of the English blue cheeses is a classic Stilton which is, by law, always pasteurized and the other called "Stitchelton," after an old name for the village of Stilton. I should also brag/represent for a moment and highlight that the Stilton is coming from the small producer COLSTON-Bassett. Yeah... Colston is my last name (sayy whaaat!). Back in elementary school, all that the class bully could muster was... "what's up cole-slaw." Not the greatest diss in the world and humorous yes, but the name Colston hasn't served as much of a namesake until I came across this. I apologize, it would be unlike me to not throw a little extra cheese in there. (here's lookin' at youu jQ) I digress. This blind cheese tasting turned out to be quite the shocker indeed! The flavors in #1 tasted softer, less intense than #2. The latter having much more amped up nutty-ness and astringent characteristics. Here is where we were all thrown for a loop. "Oh YEAH, it's totally obvious the difference between the two!" Some of us jumped right to the conclusion that #2 was the raw milk cheese purely for it's impact. Jeremy wasted no time chiming in, "NO! #1 is the (raw milk) Stitchelton!!" To my flat-out amazement I went directly back to the alluring yellowish tinge of the Stitchelton to get to the bottom of this. "DUH," I said to myself. The unpasteurized cheese lends to a much more complex finish despite the initial flavors being much less intense than the Stilton. Reminder to self: "it's not about the volume..." STEREO. And just like wine, one must take all senses into consideration when tasting cheese. Suddenly that alluring yellow tinge to #1 was even more noticeable.

Just looking at the cheese we began to find the clues. #1 the Stitchelton is on the left, #2 Colston-Bassett (Colston!) Stilton on the right. The yellowish hue comes from the high levels of beta-carotene in the milk (fat globules!) as a result of the cows feeding from the pasture's grass, something that doesn't evolve naturally after pasteurization. Given that both have been aged the same amount of time you'll notice a healthier looking mold in #1 being that it hasn't been inoculated with mold like #2.


By the end of the staff meeting I think it was unanimous that Liem's article "Post Pasteur" served as a perfect guide to our own version with fascinating results and a greater understanding of tasting wines & cheeses that have been produced with very little intervention: indigenous unelaborated vines and clean healthy milk aged in caves rich with natural mold.


Shout out to Ria Neri for letting me turn her bar into my desk for the duration of this article. Go visit her @ Bangers & Lace where she is running a KILLER beer program.


******UPDATE******
3/24/11


I have been informed that the 2 hectare plot of pre-phylloxera Hondurrabi Beltza vines HAVE NOT been grafted. While this voids any conclusions that may have been drawn, we believe our tasting commentary to still be valid. Since there are no grafted vines in the Canaries it was hard to choose a wine that was similar in style for the sake of eliminating too many tasting variables. A Rioja may have been just too different in contrast to be able to focus on the elements that would lead us to tasting differences between grafted vs. ungrafted wines. Peter Liem had the lucky opportunity to taste two of Domaine Huet's 2002 Vouvrays side by side, so we're going to look into this more and try to recreate the same scenario. Stay posted because I look forward to following up on this!


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