Wine & Spirits - June 2013 - (Page 8)

FINED& ﬁltered East, Meet West W Wine directors focused on Eastern Europe include Jeff Berlin of A Côté in Oakland and Amanda Smeltz, wine director of Roberta’s in Brooklyn. 8 hen Arthur Hon took over the list at Chicago’s Sepia, he was struck by a wine Scott Tyree had added during his tenure. “It was the 2007 Matoševic Malvazija Alba from ´ Croatia,” says Hon, recalling the wine’s scent of “white ﬂowers, sea breeze and great minerality.” It was the ﬁrst wine from the Dalmatian Coast that hit him, and he began to actively seek out others. Hon compares the wines to the New York Times’ “Frugal Traveler” column, explaining that they “take you to an under-the-radar place where you need not spend a lot to have some of the most memorable experiences.” Memorable though they may be, ﬁnding these experiences hasn’t exactly been easy. For over half a century, Communism and state control trumped winemaking tradition and family history throughout what was then known as the Eastern Bloc. Trade relations ground to a halt, stiﬂing the export market. Now, though, two decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the establishment of independent states like Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, sommeliers from San Francisco to New York City are listing Croatian zlahtina, vranac from Montenegro and bone-dry Hungarian furmint on boundarypushing wine lists. To Amanda Smeltz, wine director of Roberta’s in Brooklyn, the complex history and geography of Eastern Europe is an asset when it comes to explaining the wines to guests. “We get a history lesson out of these beauties,” she says. With Tokaji, for example, she’ll touch on the region’s early vineyard classiﬁcation in the 1700s and how Tokaji Aszú was globally revered for centuries. The fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rise of the Iron Curtain completely changed the fortunes of these vineyards. “People love to hear about it,” Smeltz says. Like other sommeliers beginning to work with these wines, she’s becoming ﬂuent in the terroirs behind the bottles. Smeltz references the Štoka Teran from Slovenia that she pours. Grown on iron-rich terra rossa soil just ﬁve miles from the Adriatic, WINE & SPIRITS JUNE 2013 Sommeliers Discover Eastern Europe By Stevie Stacionis it’s packed with bold, purple-red fruit and ferrous minerality bound by a saline streak. The diversity of Roberta’s unconventional pizzas makes room for a wide range of wines. The teran, for example, Smeltz calls “badass with red sauce.” For a pie called the Cheesus Christ—“with, like, seven types of cheese or something silly”—she recommends the Kabaj Rebula, an orange wine from Slovenia’s Goriška Brda region that’s fermented on its skins for 30 days. She ﬁnds that the tannins in the rebula marry with the fat in the cheese, bringing out the complexity in the wine’s ﬂavors. Matoševic Štoka and Kabaj are all ´, imported by Blue Danube Wine Company, started by Frank Dietrich and Zsuzsanna feasibility of) visiting the regions from which they come. Other importers have picked up on these same trends: Georgian wines are now well represented by Northern California–based importer Terrell Wines, launched in 2008 by Chris Terrell. He came away from a cycling trip through the area fascinated by ancient Georgian winemaking traditions. And the team at Winebow, a major importer and distributor in New York, has expanded its focus well beyond regional Italian wines; they followed up on the recent success of their Greek portfolio by launching the Balkan Wine Project earlier this year. The project is currently in a three-year test phase in New York City, so far representing ten labels from We get to help preserve winemaking traditions that are literally hundreds or even thousands of years old.” —Jeff Berlin, A Côté, Oakland Molnar just over a decade ago. Dietrich was born in Germany and Molnar in Budapest; in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, they began working as “ambassadors of American technology in Europe.” As they spent more time in Eastern Europe, they noticed a winemaking renaissance taking place and saw an opportunity—they decided to ﬂip the script and become “ambassadors of European wine in America.” In 2003, their ﬁrst container of wine arrived, ﬁlled with things like Austrian St. Laurent and unoaked Hungarian chardonnay. They quickly found they had over-ordered. Since then, Dietrich credits the slow but steady growth of their portfolio and interest in the wines to the evolution of the wine bar and the Internet. As Internet use has grown exponentially, so has the exposure of Eastern European wines—not to mention an interest in (and, at last, a real-life Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. The project is spearheaded by Marko Babsek, himself a native Serbian, who notes that while his personal background drove his initial interest in the wines, the ears of several team members perked up after noticing a pattern of “off-the-beaten-path wines doing quite well in the marketplace of late.” On the other side of the country, Jeff Berlin, wine director of A Côté in Oakland, has added a number of Eastern European wines to his list as part of his goal to support small family wineries. Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia are all represented on his wine list. “We get to help preserve winemaking traditions that are literally hundreds or even thousands of years old,” he says. As for his guests, Berlin ﬁnds their tastes have developed as well: “People are coming in now asking for Georgian saperavi by name.” ■

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - June 2013

Wine & Spirits - June 2013
Editor’s Note
Happenings
Fined & Filtered
Letter from Bordeaux
Mezcal
Destination: Atlanta, GA
Napa Cabernet, Interrupted
Tempranillo à la Chambolle
Mezcal in Mexico City
Value Brands of the Year
Introduction
Top Values of the Year at $15 or less.
Ribera del Duero
Southern France
Southern Italy
Hungary
American New Releases
Imported New Releases
Books

Wine & Spirits - June 2013