UPDATED EVERY THURSDAY NIGHT,

WHETHER WE’RE SOBER OR NOT!

So what the hell is this?

And who the hell are you?

And why should I give a damn?

Welcome to Friends of the Forgotten Grapes

Friends of the Friends

of the Forgotten Grapes

Please support them because

they support us...with wine!

Doing for Forgotten Grapes what

Dancing With the Stars does for

forgotten celebrities.

Copyright  ©2009 by ForgottenGrapes.com

You got something to say about it?

Home

Become our Friend on

Previous Grapes

If You Wannabe My Lover, You’ve Gotta Get With Cinsault

This week’s Forgotten Grape goes by many different names: Cinsaut (minus the L), Oeillade (yeah, we have no idea what that means either), Hermitage (thank you, confused South Africans), Black Malvoisie, and Ottavianello – much in the same way that Mrs. Beckham has had a lot of different names herself: Victoria Adams, Victoria Beckham, Chief WAG, Posh. But she’ll always be Posh Spice to us (we’ve held a small place in our hearts for the Spice Girls ever since they burst on the scene in 1996), and we’ll always call this week’s Forgotten Grape Cinsault. With the L, thank you very much!
You can argue about the name, you can argue about the spelling, you can even argue about the pronunciation (the Americanized sin-SO vs. the Francophonic san-SO), but one thing you can’t argue about is that this particular grape is posh,
feminine, hearty and produces some awfully good single varietal wine, even if she very rarely given the chance to strut her stuff solo.
You see, Cinsault – like Posh over there – just doesn’t get credit for the talent she possesses. To many wine aficionados, Cinsault’s only contribution to society is either as part of a group or when it’s hitched to a more rugged and more masculine grape to impart grace, charm, softness, and bouquet into the blend. But then again, the groups and other grapes Cinsault has been connected to are some of the superstars of the wine world! Cinsault is one of the 13 grapes legally allowed to be included in Chateauneuf-du-Pape wines (though to be honest, only a handful of Chateauneuf-du-Pape producers actually use Cinsault in their blends) and she’s one of the six red grapes used in the Cotes du Rhone region, where she is used more often. Beyond that, you often seen Cinsaults paired up with either Grenache or Carignan, two decidedly rough-hewn, manly grapes that need a strong feminine influence to make it more presentable. That’s Cinsault’s purpose, and she does a damn fine job bringing glamour and sophistication into the wines she’s a part of.

Because Cinsault grapes are highly susceptible to rot and mildew in damp conditions, the grape is particularly fond of hot growing areas, much like the perennially-tanned Mrs. Beckham. You will most often find her lurking about in those aforementioned southern Rhone appellations as well as those further south in France: Provence and the Languedoc-Rousillon. Because of her durability against heat and drought and her propensity to be incredibly fruitful and multiply, produce larger than normal amounts of fruit per acre, Cinsault has become increasingly popular across the Mediterranean in nontraditional wine countries with more desert-like conditions, such as Lebanon and Algeria. She’s also found smaller international fan bases in Italy, Australia and South Africa. But just like Posh (and Becks and Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue and soccer, for that matter) despite her world-wide appeal, Cinsault just can’t seem to get a grip in the American market.
The reason for this may be because Cinsault does her best work when she’s dressed up in pink. And while Europeans have no problem with the color, lots of Americans – especially American males – just haven’t quite taken the same fancy to the color as their compatriots across the pond have, particular when it comes to their wines. Cinsault adds structure, perfume, and a softness to fashionable Provencal and southern Rhone rosés, and can often be found leading the show in those wines, sitting in the front row and commanding the bulk of the spotlight all to herself.
However, most of those rosés are still blends of several different grapes, which means that Cinsault rarely, if ever, gets to show what she can do in a 100% varietal wine. Which is a shame, because she truly does make a remarkable wine on its own - soft, supple, richly perfumed, and highly feminine yet still exceptionally drinkable. It sometimes makes you wonder what the wine world has against Cinsault, why it continues to sell the grape
short again and again. No bother to us who’ve already fallen head over heels for the remarkable grape, though. We’ll just pass along samples to our friends, spread the
word, and continue to build our grass-roots campaign for more solo joints from this
posh, feminine, sophisticated Forgotten Grape. Trust us: if you really want to spice
up your life, seek out some of this week’s Forgotten Grape Cinsault on her own.
You’ll be scary, sporty, baby, and ginger that you did.     

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

Cinsault looks like:

Cinsault smells like:

Cinsault tastes like:

The beauty of Cinsault is that it smells as sweet as it looks and feels, which is why it’s such a popular component of rose wines. It brings a lot of its strawberry and ripe red cherry scents to any blend it’s included in. Sniffing a Cinsault is a lot like standing in the middle of a strawberry or raspberry patch: soft, fresh, sweet. It’s the scent of Grandma’s homemade strawberry preserves or, if you’re a bit less rural and more urban, a Strawberry and Fruit Punch Starburst mashed together. In the warmer-region Cinsaults, you might also get a bit of a gamy smell to the wine, particularly if it’s been aged for some time. But even on those wines, the soft, fruity strawberry/cherry aromas will still be there. You may just have to look a little harder to find them.
The very first thing you’re going to notice on a Cinsault is just how soft the wine is. It has a particularly velvety mouth feel and very little tannic pull to dry out your mouth. It is a feminine wine in just about every way, shape, and form. Flavor-wise, you’ll get the same strawberries from the nose, but also some slightly darker red fruits: raspberries, currents, and Bing cherries moving from red into black. In older Cinsault and those from more drought-ridden Mediterranean climates, the flavors may be completely different – drier, hardly any fruit, a much meatier, saltier flavor to the wine with a darker cocoa or coffee-esque aftertaste. But those are generally rarer exceptions. From the more Old-World style Cinsault, it will be bright, light red berries and super softness along the tongue and mouth.
• Just a few of the myriad names that Cinsault also goes by around the wolrld: Black Malvoisie, Blue Imperial, Bourdales Kek, Budales, Calabre, Chainette, Cincout, Cinq-sao, Cinquien, Cinsanet, Cinsaut, Cubilier, Cubillier, Cuviller, Espagne, Espagnol, Froutignan, Grappu De La Dordogne, Hermitage, Malaga Kek, Marocain, Maurange, Mavro Kara Melkii, Milhau, Morterille Noire, Moustardier Noir, Navarro, Negru De Sarichioi, Oeillade Noire, Ottavianello, Ottaviano, Ottavinello, Pampous, Papadou, Passerille, Pedaire, Picardan Noir, Piquepoul D'Uzes, Pis De Chevre, Plant D Arles Boudales, Plant D'Arles, Plant De Broqui, Plant De Broquies, Poupe De Crabe, Pousse De Chevre Rouge, Prunaley, Prunelas, Prunella, Prunellas Noir, Salerne, Samson, Senso, Sensu, Strum, Takopulo Kara, Ulliaou, West's White Prolific, Black Prince, Boudales, Oeillade, Picardin noir and Ulliade.     
• Outside of France, where Cinsault is the fourth most-widely grown grape in the country, the next biggest producer of Cinsault is, surprisingly, Lebanon. Winemaking in Lebanon is more or less limited to only one region of the country, the Bekaa valley 30 miles east of Beirut, which for millennia (yes, we wrote “millennia”) has been Lebanon’s more fertile and most important agricultural region. With an altitude of around 1000 meters above sea level, lots of stony, hilly countryside, and a Mediterranean climate of rainy, cool winters and hot, dry summers, the Bekaa valley actually mirrors the terroir of several southern Italian and French wine regions and makes for excellent vitiulture. The history of winemaking in Lebanon actually dates back over 6000 years, but today the Bekaa valley (or Beqaa valley, with the more regional Arabic spelling) produces almost as many different grapes in one 75-by-10 mile strip as are produced in all of France (or in Southern California’s Temecula Valley – remember folks, sometimes quantity is not preferable over quality). In addition to Cinsault, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Mourvedre, Tempranillo, Grenache, Carignan, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Clairette, Ugni Blanc, and local white grapes Obaideh and Merwah (related to Chardonnay and Semillon, respectively).
Notable Lebanese wineries include Chateau Ksara (one of the oldest wineries in Lebanon, founded in 1857 by Christians living in the area), Chateau Marsyas, and Chateau Kefraya, but the most famous Lebanese producer is Chateau Musar. “Discovered” by British enophiles in 1979 at the Bristol Wine Fair (Musar’s 1967 vintage was named “Discovery of the Fair”), Musar was founded in 1930 by Gaston Hochar and is still to this day run by members of the Hochar family. Musar is most known for its red wine, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, Carignan, Grenache, and Mourvedre created in a natural wine style (meaning as little chemical or technical involvement as possible) that requires much aging in oak before it can be drunk. The winery also produces a second wine, called Hochar Pere et Fils, with a similar blend to the Musar that requires less aging and works as a pretty good barometer for what the Musar will taste like when it’s finally released (Musar wines can not only vary wildly from vintage
to vintage because of the natural winemaking style and shifting of the blends, but it
can also vary from bottle to bottle within any given year).

With the exception of 1976 and 1984, Musar has produced a vintage of its wine
every year, despite the turmoil and unrest that has plagued Lebanon over the
last half-century or so.

Fun Facts to Impress/Bore People At Parties

From Brein’s Brain to Your Plate

 

 

“Strawberries, strawberries, strawberries. That’s the first thing I think of when I either smell or taste a Cinsault. It’s always strawberries. So even though you’re not supposed to pair a wine with the main flavor you smell or taste on it, I am going to recommend pairing strawberries with a Cinsault, but you’ve got to add something to them to counter-act all those soft, fruity strawberry flavors and balance out the wine with a stronger, saltier taste. So what I would do is serve your strawberries with a rich, creamy blue cheese. Something like Maytag or Danish – a cleaner blue cheese – not something that’s going to be really green like Gorgonzola, Roquefort, or Stilton. I think the pungent saltiness of the cheese will really cut well through the acid of the strawberry fruit and the jamminess of the wine. This would make an epic either appetizer or dessert. ”

“So if you don’t want to use strawberries or want something else stronger and saltier to cut across the wine and contrast with the fruitiness and softness, you can try this little recipe out for size: saute a whole bunch of chicken livers in some garlic, herbs, and shallots. Then take the cooked livers, given a bit of a mash together with all of the good stuff left in the pan, and spread that on a crusty piece of baguette with some stone ground mustard. That’s a very French dish right there, but it makes sense, since Cinsaults are very French wines. That’s just classic bistro food right there and is going to be so, so tasty and really pair well with the soft, supple fruitiness in the wine.”

“Now, if you’ve got a bigger, older Cinsault, one of those from Lebanon or wherever, the flavors are going to be completely different – drier, meatier, saltier, darker – and you’re going to need an entirely different dish for that kind of wine.  I’d recommend doing a smaller fowl with one of those wines, like a squab. It has the richness of duck, but it’s still light like chicken. Roast some squab with some beets or braised green cabbage (make sure it’s green – red
cabbage will be too much for this dish) and serve it all with a
dark chocolate-red wine sauce. That will definitely hold up to
a big untamed wine like that.”

Chef Brein Clements is the chef/owner of 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.

 

Go On. Try It. You’ll Like It.

2006 Frick Dry Valley Creek Cinsaut

I say this without any hyperbole or exaggeration: after I tasted this wine a second time, it immediately catapulted into my current list of top five favorite wines. No joke. To be perfectly honest, the first time I tasted down in San Diego, I was pretty sure it was love at first sight, but not being a believer in that, I needed to try it one more time just to be sure. I’m sure now. This is a wonderful, soft, feminine wine with just perfect characteristics and expression of what the Cinsault grape is all about. It’s soft and supple with just the faintest hint of tannic support, but with big, jammy strawberry and raspberry scents and flavors. Velvety smooth in your mouth, it gets just a little darker on the tongue with a lovely toasty quality that reminds me of a lazy Sunday morning eating buttered toast with strawberry jam in bed. It also finishes long with some elegant spicy notes at the end. There were only two flaws we could find with it: the fact that they spell Cinsaut without an “L” on the label (damn you, Big Government!), and that this tiny little picture which we tried to blow up just to the point of Pixilating is the only image of the wine we could find online. Get on that, Bill! There’s really not much more to say about this wine other than you need to click through this link to Frick Winery’s online store immediately and buy several bottles before it sells out. Trust us: you won’t be disappointed. But if you buy a bottle and it does sell out, please know that we’ll be knocking on your door quickly and may even fight you for your bottle. And we’re not kidding around.  

1999 Cave Kouroum Bekaa Valley Cinsault

Take more or less the opposite of everything described in the Frick Cinsault, and that’s what you’ll get with this Lebanese Cinsault from one of the mid-level wineries in the Bekaa valley. It’s a big, meaty, rugged, animalistic wine – and much of that comes with the fact that it’s ten years old, just on the long side for aging a 100% Cinsault wine. Honestly, this wine was fascinating and interesting during our first glass, and as we went to pour our second, it had turned. Apparently it was right on the cusp of expiration when we opened it up.

 

Regardless, this 1999 Cave Kouroum Cinsault was marked by that brick-red/burnt-orange color of older wines, and the nose was just big and gamy and loaded with musky barnyard scents. Brein actually commented that the wine has the same aroma of teriyaki-style beef jerky, and we couldn’t disagree with him. The flavor was long and deep and dark and bone dry, with almost tar-like qualities upon first sip. That opened up into dry, dry, dry black and Bing cherries along with coffee and bitter cocoa on the finish. Despite all of this description (or perhaps because of it), it is still an intriguing and highly drinkable wine that desperately needs to be paired with food to be properly enjoyed. You can also see the potential that exists in later vintages; you can tell that the 2004 or 2005 vintage of this wine will be softer, fruitier, and tarter than this, with bold, plummy flavors. We picked this up at Mission Wine & Liquor, but when we got there, they told us there were only 3 bottles of this vintage left. We suggest either requesting a more recent vintage from them, or

else trying one of the other Lebanese wines that they

carry. They seem to have the market cornered on U.S. Wine

imports from this off-the-beaten-path wine region.

Think you’ve got a better pop culture icon to describe Cinsault than what we came up with? Let us know in our Comments section. If it’s good enough, we may use it in a future update.
Taste, smell, or see something different? Let us know in our Comments section.
Know something about Cinsault that we don’t? Share it with us and other wine lovers out there in our Comments section.
Think you can pair food and wines better than Brein can? Share your best food pairings with Cinsault in our Comments section and see what the master has to say.

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.

Because Cinsault appears so often in rose wines, most people think of it as a pink grape, and that’s actually a pretty apt description for the color of Cinsault. Even in a 100% varietal wine, Cinsault has a lighter, brighter color than most of the heavier red wines from the Rhone valley coming in at a deep hot pink to an almost magenta color, similar to the stylish frock Posh is sporting in the picture to the near right. The one exception to this color is with the Cinsault wines produced in Algeria and Lebanon. Because of the higher temperatures and because those wines are often aged in oak, Cinsaults can take on a brick red to almost burnt orange color, similar to the outfit worn by the decidedly toast-colored Mrs. Beckham in the picture to the far right.
Know of a bottle of Cinsault that we should try? Tell us about it in our Comments section.

But Don’t Just Take Our Word for It...

Whenever possible, Friends of the Forgotten Grapes will offer up a short interview with a winemaker working with the week’s featured Forgotten Grape. It’s his or her chance to tell you a little bit more about who they are, the winery and wines, and how he or she got started working with this particular Forgotten Grape. We do this because we want you to get to know the winemakers and better understand their mind set and passions for particular Forgotten Grapes. We also do this because we’re givers and only want to make you happy. Isn’t that enough for you? What more do you want?

 

This week’s interview is with Bill Frick, proprietor and winemaker at his eponymous Frick Winery in Sonoma’s Dry Creek region. We met Bill at a wine tasting in San Diego, and his wines were the first ones we tasted that day. Though we tasted a lot of other really good wines that day, Bill’s were the ones we kept talking about after the tasting and through the better part of the next few weeks. We absolutely fell in love with his Cinsault, as you’ll read all about in our glowing mash-note to it below. Seriously, you really need to try it for yourself and become a believer. But that’s to come later. The only flaw we’ve found in either Bill or his wines is that he uses the strange non-L Cinsaut spelling for the grape, though he told us that’s because when he submitted the label for his first vintage of Cinsault,  without the L is the way the government required he spell it. So we forgive him. Here’s Bill:

Friends of Forgotten Grapes: You work with a variety of Forgotten Grapes at your winery: Cinsault, Counoise, Carignane, Grenache Blanc, and some really exotic stuff like Valdeque, Palomino and Burger in your blends. What got you interested in working with so many lesser-known and Forgotten Grapes?

 

Bill Frick: Mainstream grapes are boring, they are the fodder of corporate wineries that live by the bottom line on a ledger. But more seriously, the grapes that you mention do best in the hillside vineyards like mine here in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County.

I listen to grapes and most of these varietals say they will produce superior wine if they can live on the hillsides. And they fulfill this promise up here in the hills.

 

FoFG: Cinsault is a grape that is fairly uncommon here in the United States, and even in its homeland of France, it is really only used in southern Rhone and Provencal red and rose blends. You hardly every see it as a 100% varietal wine. So why did you decide to do just that and produce a 100% Cinsault wine?

 

BF: My first vintage was going to be for a blend that I was planning on creating.  But the minute I tasted the 100% Cinsaut wine, it knocked my socks off. Great full bodied fruit, round and soft tannin, spicy long finish. I did not make that blend until 10 years later. Every vintage I make a 100% Cinsaut and most of my Cinsaut grape production goes into the 100% Cinsaut wine.

 

FoFG: Forgotten Grape or not, what is your favorite grape to work with, and what is the grape you enjoy drinking the most?

 

BF: For drinking, Syrah, but that’s really no longer forgotten, isn’t it? Second choice is a really Forgotten Grape, Counoise (pronounced "koon-whaz"), restrained and complex. You may note that most Forgotten Grapes are hard to  pronounce. Maybe that is one reason they are forgotten? My favorite to work with is Cinsaut because during fermentation it makes the most beautiful pink-red foam when I am punching it.

 

FoFG: You started Frick Winery in 1976 with the proceeds from the sale of your 1957 Chevy. Have you ever thought about what might have been had you not sold your car, and have you ever thought about getting another 1957 Chevy now that Frick Winery is so successful?

 

BF: Had to sell the car because we needed a motor for the crusher and a wine press. Otherwise we would have been using out feet. Frick is so successful that I've now

got a scale model reminder of my '57 Chevy in the tasting room. Set me back

$19.95.