I’ll do this in order of fondness. The one I really want to talk about is d’Arenberg 2012 White Ochre: Viognier – Marsanne – Roussanne. As nearly as I can tell, this is an export-only offering from Australia’s d’Arenberg. From a consumer standpoint, sometimes I find it odd, living in a place like Hong Kong: with a population of 7 million, it’s too small to be a priority for much of anyone other than luxury brands who want to sell upscale shit to rich Chinese people. Although there’s no end to the McLarens and Rolexes and Maybachs and what-have-you, the selection at the supermarket is a bit off sometimes. On the one hand, it’s a vast improvement over Seoul, where I used to live. There’s actually an excellent selection of wine, for one thing, plus quite a lot of the organic/healthy/green/Commie/pink shit I like to eat. (When I still lived in the States, I think I put some Whole Foods executive’s kid through college. Ditto Trader Joe’s.) So I no longer have to cry when I travel, visit the grocery store, and see an array of things I’ve actually heard of and would like to eat. On the other hand, there’s this sense of being an afterthought. When I can’t even find this wine with a Google search, that suggests it’s a dreaded export-only label. As in: “Well, we’ve got all these grapes left over, so let’s bottle it, sell it cheap, and send it to Lower Slobbovia.”
When I lived in California, I knew there were knockoff wines like that, although they stayed local. The big wineries would do something similar with their excess grapes. Rather than throwing them away, they’d vinify them and sell them cheap (usually like US$5.99/bottle) under other names. I never bothered to do much more than cursory research, but I did find some interesting stuff by staying in the sub-US$10.00 range for my general beverage needs. So I’m not opposed to this idea at all. If the grapes are harvested, they should be used, not wasted. And in this case, the result is better than just good enough — it’s really something else.
I’d seen this stuff in the supermarket (Park ‘n’ Shop, Fusion, etc.) — not just the white, but also the Red Ochre variant, which is a Grenache – Shiraz – Mourvedre (which I picked up a bottle of tonight and will be talking about at some point) — and been curious about it. Previous experiences with Marsanne/Roussanne wines hadn’t ended well. It was like drinking wine-flavored cough syrup. My curiosity got the better of me, however, and I picked up a bottle. Why not? After all, there was Viognier to offset the syrupy weirdness, and if worse came to worst, I could pour the shit out.
The verdict: I think it’s one of the best cheap (HK$89/bottle, or something like that) whites in Hong Kong, and it’s a hell of a lot better than wines I’ve paid five times as much for. It does everything right. First of all, although I haven’t been able to determine the proportion, I think it’s mainly Viognier, but with enough Marsanne and Roussanne in it to provide body. While I like Viognier, I sometimes find it too dry and floral, the kind of wine you appreciate rather than enjoy. It’s not that it’s bad, but there are other things I’d rather drink. I have no clue what Marsanne and Roussanne are supposed to taste like on their own, so I can’t comment further. Suffice to say that in this case, we seem to have a pleasing balance. The Viognier’s good points are retained (crispness, floral notes, dryness without austerity), but there’s more body and complexity without the astringency I’ve found in bad ones. That Marsanne/Roussanne syrupy mouthfeel isn’t there. The color is a pleasant pale yellow in the glass, nothing that calls attention to itself. It’s crisp, and you do get a bite of alcohol (although this mellows out as the wine opens up). As for the flavor notes, this is where it gets rather difficult. What I came up with after the first bottle (a week or so ago) was that it tastes the way daffodils smell, only not cloying. Inasmuch as there are citrus notes, I’m thinking yuzu, not one of the better-known fruits like lemon or lime (neither of which it resembles at all). I also get something like pear or quince from this (I tried quince once to see what it tasted like), as well as… lavender? That’s strange for a white, but it’s there. Sort of an herbal quality without seeming vegetal.
To be honest, I am intrigued that I cannot figure out what the hell this wine tastes like. Which might make it sound like a train wreck. It’s not. It’s as if the winemaker (whoever that might be — I’m thinking some talented Aussie oenology grad student, maybe a hip lesbian with cool tattoos and a pierced nose) invented something uniquely itself, something quite a bit greater than the sum of its modest parts. This could have been a bottle of cast-off nothingness, but it isn’t.
There’s not a lot it can’t do, either. For summer-afternoon drinking, it’s awesome. Bring it to your next rooftop party and amaze your friends. With light dishes, it’s almost as food-friendly as a good dry Riesling. There’s enough acidity to cut through any lingering fat, but I also think it will play well with the complex flavors of a salad. I’d drink it with spicy Thai dishes or even Sichuan (provided it was very cold and I had enough bottles to make sure we all staggered out of the restaurant completely blasted, which is the only way to eat Sichuan). Obviously it’s not a wine for steaks (which I don’t eat anyway), but other than that, I think it’s a hard one to find fault with!
PlonkTastic! 