Carignan, the Snooki of Forgotten Grapes

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Carignan:

Lots of Color, Lots of Attitude, and Lots of Personality All in One Small Package

“Jersey Shore” – either because you’ve been out of the country or in a coma the past few weeks or just choose not to watch television in toto – please continue to read on. You may not get all the jokes and references here, but you will learn something interesting about a terrific Forgotten Grape called Carignan, and you might find yourself learning a little something about Ms. Snooki and maybe yourself in the process. You can thank us later***

Now, much like old Snookers up there, who can’t even get called by her proper nickname by her own roommates (honestly, she’s been Snooks, Snicks, Snickers, Snockers, and numerous other sundry variations of Snooki over the course of the series), Carignan too suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. For one thing, Californians have decided to add a superfluous “E” onto the end of its name, making it Carignane rather than the more traditionally French “Carignan”. For the record, in Spain, where the grape was born, it’s called Cariñena, after the village in Aragon where it was first popularized.

Second, both Snookers and Carignan love the sun. I mean, hello, Jersey Shore? Come on now! But sadly, like Snooki, Carignan’s never spent any real time on our east coast beaches. Instead, it haunts warner wine making regions like southern France, Spain, Italy, Algeria, Israel, California, Mexico, and most of the wine regions of South America. In fact, after Spain, the grape’s first big move was across the Mediterranean to Algeria, where it became one of the primary exports that African nation sent to France until 1962 (we’ll touch on this a bit more down below).

But suffice to say, Carignan like the heat, and that heat helps give it a whole lot of color. Now maybe Carignan doesn’t get its deep, dark color the same way Snooki does (no fake-and-bake tanning beds for this hearty grape), but its skins do have a dark, rich purple-black hue to them, which may be its most prized attribute. Carignan is not a straight teinturier grape (one that actually produces red juice naturally without any contact to the skins and stems; we touched on this during our Alicante Bouschet discussion), but it is more often than not used as a blending grape, adding deeper, richer color to other wines such as Grenache and Syrah.

And this gets to a key point about Carignan: for most of its life as a Forgotten Grape, it’s only been part of a family but never on its own, utilized the vast majority of the time as part of an overall blend (primarily in the Rhone valley and in the Languedoc region of France) rather than being allowed to shine on its own. Sort of like Snooki when she first entered the Jersey Shore house. The problem is, Carignan can be an especially difficult grape to corral and coax into a drinkable single varietal wine. It’s got extremely high acidity for a red grape, not to mention the high tannin levels (as you’d expect from a wine that dark) and astringency one would expect from such a tannic wine.

Like Snooki, Carignan has a very hard time getting noticed on its own, no matter how much it shows off and plays the fool. It takes a very strong and determined man (or woman; winemakers come in both sexes these days, and Snickers has certainly shown tendencies to get her love on from any person she can get those long white nails into) to tame these wild creatures, and while Snooki was unsuccessful finding her Mr. Or Ms. Right down the Shore, Carignan has gotten much luckier, as more and more winemakers both in California, France, and across the world are taking up the challenge and shining their spotlight directly on Carignan in the form of 100% varietal wines. In fact, the best Carignan results in California seem to come from older vines, where the grapes have had time to mature and mellow in increased age (we suspect the same will hold true for Snooki the older she gets; after all, she is only 21, though looking at her skin, you’d never guess that).

So despite starting out being nothing more than a face in a pack and being late to hitch a ride in the popularity Camaro, a new day seems to be dawning for both Snooki and this week’s Forgotten Grape, Carignan, as more and more people discover just how wonderful, interesting, and complex they both can be. You might even call Carignan a grape with tremendous break-out potential, if only we knew what it was breaking out from. Call it a Guidette, call it just a blending grape, but once you’ve tried Carignan and seen its softer side, there’s no way you won’t remember your experience and come crawling back for more. We suspect the same with Snooki, but we already have a girlfriend and aren’t willing to try. And that right there, bro, is the situation.

No wait, I take that back. This is the Situation:

What It Looks Like, What It Smells Like, and What It Tastes Like

Carignan looks like:

Carignan smells like:

Carignan tastes like:

Despite their reputation as bullying wines that lack complexity or distinction, Carignans can have surprisingly delicate and complex bouquets to them, depending on the process in which the wine is made and the age of the vines. Typically you’ll find darker, bramblier fruits on most Carignans, such as blackberries and black currants. You might also get some plummy notes to the wine, as well as some leather and hints of grilled meat or game. However, with Carignans made from older vines, you might get more vinous or vegetal aromas, such as olives, and also dark rich scents like toffee, chocolate, and something resembling a tawny port. And of course, depending on how long the wine spent in barrel, you might also get a heavy oak scent on the wine too.

Despite the deep color and dark and rich nose, most Carignan wines will be bright and alive in your mouth, extremely fresh and lively as it dances across your tongue. You have the higher acids in the wine to thank for that. They’ll lighten up the darker fruit flavors or blackberry and black currant, turning them more dark raspberry and black cherry. You may also still get some of that brambly, more vinous flavor on the wine, particularly from old vine Carignans. If oak was involved in the production, you’ll sense it here, either with a rounder mouth feel or a little tinge of sweetness to the wines, and there should be some length and good aftertaste to the wine as well. And of course, there will be tannins. Depending on how the wine was produced, the tannins might be mollified a bit, or they can be coarse, astringent, and very drying of the mouth, but you will definitely feel them there. Oh yes, you will feel them.

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• Despite Carignan’s reputation (or lack there of) as a Forgotten Grape here in the U.S., it’s far from that in France. In fact, you might say that Carignan is a four-letter word over there right now. Or two four-letter words. Or one eight-letter word. You get the idea. Anyway, France is currently locked in a love/hate relationship with Carignan, with the scale sliding heavily in the favor of “hate” these days (at least among wine makers and certain members of the government bureaucracy. So where does all this disdain and animosity stem from (tee hee!)? Well it might be that Carignan, along with another grape called Aramon (more on it in a future Forgotten Grapes posting) are widely considered to be responsible for France’s current “wine lake” problem, which is a cute nickname for the grape and wine glut that is currently been plaguing France’s wine industry and has been for over a decade.

Now suffice to say that it’s not entirely Carignan and Aramon’s fault for the “wine lake” (you could easily make arguments that the corporatization of wine; overzealous plantings by greedy winemakers; the increased utilization of pesticides and other artificial means of cultivation and production to ensure more robust harvests; and the rise in popularity, quality, and ease of importation of wines from other non-traditional wine regions – Spain, Australia, California, South America – at the expense of French wines are all in some way responsible for the current glut). But the French love to find a single entity to blame for their woes, so they’ve cast Carignan as the devil because it’s a high- yielding grape that they think they can’t do anything with.

Don’t get us wrong; there most certainly is a problem with a glut of Carignan, but it’s something the French brought on themselves. You see, as we mentioned above, Carignan got its start in Spain but quickly made its way into Algeria, where it was one of the few vinifera grapes that could thrive in that country’s desert conditions and under that hot, unforgiving sun. As Algeria spent the better part of the first half of the 20th century as a French colony, the grape was imported into France and all was well.

But then Algeria wanted independence from France and when they got it in 1962, the Carignan supply to France was cut off virtually overnight. To make up for it, winemakers in France’s sunnier southern regions, particularly the Languedoc (and if you’re a regular reader you know we equate the Languedoc to the wild west – a place where anything goes), began planting Carignan in their fields, turning the high grape yields into cheap table wine and vin de pays, which sold well and lead to more and more plantings. As long as the average Frenchman was buying and drinking plenty of vin ordinaire, everything was copasetic, and in 1988, Carignan achieved the notoriety of being the most widely-planted grape in France, with over 167,000 hectares (that’s over 412,000 acres) planted, primarily in the south of France.

Well, that same year, the government decided it needed to do something about the quality of French wine both in country and being exported around the world (it’s not a coincidence that 1988 also marked the rise of California, Australian, and South American wine imports hitting the market). So the government embarked on a highly ambitious vine-pulling strategem that, while targeting numerous varietals both Forgotten and traditional, affected Carignan most of all: by 2000, the number of vines dropped to under 100,000 hectares and Carignan was replaced by Merlot as France’s most widely-planted grape.

This vine-pulling and wine-quality directive still exists today, with the government paying more and more subsidies to vintners and grape growers not to grow their grapes (Midwestern farmers, you’ve got someone who can empathize with you). But even despite this alleged rise in the quality of wine, per capita wine consumption in France has declined by over 30% in the last few years and the majority of French wines regardless of varietal continue to be devalued with more and more wines from other parts of the world flooding the market. See, it’s not all Carignan’s fault. Why won’t they listen? LEAVE CARIGNAN ALONE!!!

• We also mentioned above that Carignan can be a rather difficult and unwieldy grape to work with, due to its high acidity and tannin levels. In other grapes, both of these aspects could be countered by fermenting and aging the wine in new oak, which would soften the tannins and lower the acidity of the wine over time. But Carignan is unique in the fact that it appears to be impervious to the wiles of oak; in fact, Carignan stored in newer oak seems to only exacerbate the tannins, making the wine tougher and chewier and more astringent. Some winemakers have tried using the natural process of carbonic maceration (which we touched on in our profile of Gamay) to lower the acids and tannins naturally by avoiding pressing, punch-downs, and extended time spent on the grape skins. We’ll keep you posted on how this process is going as we hear more about it
from our Carignan-producing Friends.

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Fun Facts to Impress/Bore People At Parties

From Brein’s Brain to Your Plate

Carignans are interesting wines to pair with food, because they normaly have the higher acidity that you’re looking for in a good food wine, but then they’re usually pretty high in tannins, which will knock off quite a few different things you’d want to match them with. I always think of Carignans as bistro wines – not as classic as a Gamay per se, but still more often than not used as one of the vin tables at local bistros in France. So that being said, first thing I’d do is pair it straight up with a French bistro classic: steak frites. This one’s pretty self-explanatory. Since the steak is usually an onglet or a cheaper cut of meat (though not here at Bistro O), the tannins and acids will help power through the tougher sinews of the meat, but the acids will also add some refreshment and a nice counterbalance to the overall savoriness of the meal.

“There are other bistro favorites out there you could pair with a Carignan, like venison or sweet potatoes, but I think duck goes really nicely with a Carignan – and yes I know that Pinot is the typical and classic pairing with duck. Think outside the box, people! But anyway, I also think that Carignans go surprisingly well with figs. Their earthier mellow sweetness will contrast the wine’s high acidity, and you often get some fig notes in the nose of the wine. So, do a roasted duck breast, super classic, but top it with a fig sauce. I think those flavors together are really going to pair well with the acids in the wine, and if you can find a Carignan that’s had its tannins tamed a bit, all the better.”

“In case you haven’t figured it out, because of those tannins, Carignan is a total meat wine, so for this last pairing, let’s put the wine with pork. But not just any pork: a big, thick, like 2 or 3 inch pork chop. Grilled. And I mean really grilled, so you get those big black grill marks across the meat and it takes on that brownish-black nicely crusted color. Those char marks and the flavor they bring are actually going to wok with the wine nicely, cutting through the acid and tannins and whatnot. And if you really want to throw in a twist, pan-fry some sour cherries into a nice sauce to lay on top of
that pork chop. That’s just going to be dynamite with a
Carignan. Trust me on that.”

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Chef Brein Clements is the chef/owner of Bistro O (formerly Restaurant Omakase) in Riverside, CA, which is quickly becoming SoCal’s answer to El Bulli. Minus the molecular gastronomy. He began his cooking career at Domaine Chandon in the Napa Valley and moved on to become Chef de Cuisine at the famed Balboa Bay Club before opening his own restaurant. Plus he’s only 28. My man knows his wine and he knows his food. Each week he’ll provide ingredient and dish recommendations that match up well with the week’s forgotten grape. You should heed what he says. No, seriously, heed it.

2006 Obscurity Cellars Amador County Carignane Murrill Vineyard–1916 Vines

Our good Friend John Smith up there at Obscurity Cellars in Fair Play, California continues to dazzle and impress us with the sher amount of Forgotten Grape wines he’s producing there in the Sierra Foothills. His Carignane (California spelling, of course) was originally planted in 1916 by a farmer named Frank Murrill, and after being cultivated for several decades, were allowed to grow wild for 40 years starting in the mid-1940s. When John and Frank’s sons decided to reclaim the vines, only 215 of the Carignan were left (the vineyard also has old Zin and Sangiovese plantings as well) but produced incredibly intense and well-structured wine. We got chocolate, toffee, and tawny port scents on the nose as well as some pepper. Flavorwise, this was a very bright fresh wine that also had some delicious jamminess to it. The acids and epth of the juice gave the wine the flavor of a grape Jolly Rancher candy, and it had a nice length to it as well. The tannins were ever-present, but not overpowering; the wine had a remarkable softness to it considering the tannins and acids at play. We chalked that up to the age of the vines, which you can definitely taste in the wine. Overall, an incredibly delightful and delicious wine from John, but what else would you expect. We should also point out that this particular vintage went 4-for -4 in gold medals in four wine competitions it was entered it, so it’s got a real pedigree to it. The only drawback is that John is sold out of the 2006 vintage, but the 2007 is just as good. We’re definitely going to be buying more of that , and we suggest you do the same by checking out Obscurity Cellars’ website, giving John a call at 530-620-5303, ordering a case for yourself, and then visiting Obscurity Cellars/Oakstone Winery next time you’re in or near Amador County.

2007 Pellegrini Family Vineyards Redwood Valley Old Vine Carignan

Before we received this bottle, we didn’t know much about the Pellegrini Family Vineyards. In fact, the closest we’d come to anything Pellegrini was our collegiate classmate Cara, whom we suspect was in no way related to this Pellegrini family, since she was from Jersey and these Pellegrinis make their home in Sonoma. But after tasting their Carignan, the Sonoma Pellegrinis instantly because our favorite Pellegrinis the world over, and we definitely want to know more about them. A deep dark violet color to this wine with big, brambly blackberries and black currants on the nose, we also picked up some hints of leather. On the tongue, the wine was very tart and very delicious, super bright and incredibly refreshing for a red. This wasn’t as jammy as the other Carignans we tasted, and the tannins were also much lighter, which we suspected was because this wine had seen 9 months in three-or-four year old oak (avoiding the toughness passed on to Carignan by newer oak barrels). The wine also had an interesting touch of alkalinity or saltiness to it, which actually merged well with the tartness. The older vines also produced a bit of a Nicoise olive flavor as well, but nothing that distracted from the bright, tart fruit across the body. We were torn in our Tasting Squadron, as several folks declared this to be their favorite Carignan of the evening, which a few others preferred the one below. We think you should make the decision for yourself by hosting your own tasting party and ordering a few bottles to try directly from Pellegrini themselves. Here’s the link to get there. Don’t hesitate!

Our Friend of the Forgotten Grapes Tasting Squadron tastes all of the wines you see here ahead of time to ensure that you aren’t getting anything rotten or clunky. We also try to ensure that most of the wines highlighted here are affordably priced ($20 or less) so you can try them out for yourself without having to take out a second mortgage or sacrificing your kid (or future kid’s) college fund to do so. Lastly, the Friends of the Forgotten Grapes has relationships with all the fine wine purveyors we link to in this section. We know them, we trust them. You can order these wines from them online right now and be trying them out in the next couple of days. Do yourself a favor and order from them by using the links below. It’s totally worth it. And tell them that ForgottenGrapes.com sent you, too.

Did we mention that Carignans are dark wines? The grape skins have a dark, purplish-black color to them and impart a lot of that color onto the wine during the crush, pressing, and maceration. Though not a teinturier grape, Carignans are regularly blended with other wines to provide deeper and richer color to those other wines or blends, so it would make sense that a single-varietal Carignan wine would have a deep, dark purple crimson color to it, a richness so deep that often the wine will look black in your glass.

Go On. Try It. You’ll Like It.

Well that just about sums it up right there, doesn’t it? Our work is done here. Good night, everybody!

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Alright, fine. It’s true there’s a lot more to both this week’s Forgotten Grape Carignan (care-in-YAN) and Snooki (SNOOK-ee) than just their color, attitude, and personality. But first, a brief disclaimer:

***NOTE: For those of you either unfamiliar with Ms. Nicole Polizzi’s most recent (and only) body of work, or for those who have not yet been caught up in the crest of the cultural tsunami that is MTV’s

2007 Chameleon Cellars North Coast Carignane

Like we said, our Tasting Squadron was torn between whether this or the Pellegrini was the best Carignan we tasted that night (for the record, we tasted the Obscurity Carignan previously, so it was not part of this competition; if it had been, our heads might have exploded). But we all agreed that this bottle easily had the coolest and prettiest label of all the Carignans we tasted. This particular wine poured even inkier and darker into the glass than the others, and from that pour and our first sniff, you could tell this was going to be a big, big wine. And it was: lots of wood and even more brambles on this wine along with the usual black fruits and just a touch of violet flower. There was just a wee hint of alcoholic burn when we first tasted the wine (which was weird because it was only 14.1% and we didn’t get anything like that from the other wines, which were all around the same), but it was still bright and lively wine with a good balance of acid and tannins. In fact, it was not nearly as tart as the Pellegrini and had a rounder, softer, almost buttery mouthfeel, no doubt brought on by the oak. It was a refined and almost elegant wine, with strong black fruits in the middle giving way to just a hint of sour cherry candy on the back-end. Really a special, delicious wine that shows off how elegant a Carignan can be. Like I said, we were torn between this and the Pellegrini, but you shouldn’t be: you should pick up a bottle (or six) of each and enjoy these wines through the winter, as they’ll keep you warm. You can buy the Chameleon Carignane directly from Chameleon Cellars’ website, and we highly recommend you do so. These are the wines you take to your Syrah-loving friends

(like me, guilty as charged) and blow their minds when

you tell them it’s Carignan.

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