Negrette, the Marvin the Martian of Forgotten Grapes

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Negrette: Isn’t It Lovely? No? That Makes Me Very, Very Angry Indeed!

Where is the Ka-boom? There’s supposed to be an earth-shattering Ka-boom.

Well, there will be when you open up a Negrette.

This little grape you’ve probably never heard of exists in so few places today, but where it does dwell, it rules those territories with an iron fist. Sort of like a certain power-mad Roman-helmeted Martian who was always itching to take over the Earth.

In many ways, Negrette is not so much a Forgotten Grape as it is an alien one. Descended from a grape called Mavro that grows indigenously on the island of Cyprus and said to be brought to France from Cyprus by knights returning home from the Crusades, Negrette is incredibly difficult to find on the vine, let alone in a wine store. At this point, Forgotten Grapes is aware of only two places on the entire planet growing Negrette and pressing into wine.

The first and most important region is located in southwestern France and is called the Cote du Frontonnais. As Mars is to Marvin, so the Cote du Frontonnais is to Negrette – its birthplace, its home, the region that both defines the grape and is defined by it. The Cote du Frontonnais, or Fronton appellation, is located southeast of Bordeaux, north of the Languedoc-Rousillon, and just twenty miles or so north of the city of Toulouse. The vineyards are scattered around the towns of Fronton (duh!) and Villaudric along the left bank of the Tarn river, making it one of the smaller appellations in all of France (it only gained its AOC status in 1975). Despite the size, though, Negrette still dominates – only red and rosé wines are produced in the region, and every one of those wines must include at least 50% Negrette, although most wineries produce 100% Negrette wines.

The other region producing Negrette (that we know about) is even smaller – a single vineyard in San Benito County, California (located in the hills south of San Jose and east of Monterey). This vineyard, called either Caleri or Calleri depending on whose wine you’re buying, outsources its grapes to two wineries from central California that produce 100% Negrette wines (more on them below) and is the only place we were able to find in all of the U.S. growing Negrette (though it should be noted that Negrette also goes by the name Pinot St. George, and rumor has it that a few other California wineries produce wines from that grape – or at least they used to. We haven’t found evidence of one yet).

Regardless of its scarcity, Negrettes make for big, large, hearty, rugged wines. They are most well-known for their large, heady perfumed nose that smell of equal parts blackberry bramble bushes and Middle Eastern bazaar. And yet Negrettes are wines that come off initially as big and burly but are then surprisingly soft-spoken in your mouth. They don’t taste nearly as rugged as they smell. Depending on the year and the producer (French Negrettes from the Frontonnais tend to vary wildly in flavors due to the liberal blending laws for the region), you very well might catch a Negrette with quite a bit of sweetness to it, as residual sugar can linger in the wines if the summer is not hot or dry enough.

Still, Negrette is a wine that should have your attention, at the very least because drinking one puts you in rare company indeed. Honestly, next time you are out with
your wine drinking friends, casually bring up either Negrette and the Cote du
Frontonnais and see who either knows about it or has actually tasted a wine from
the region. If you are looking for a good way to silence your wine snob friends –
albeit temporarily – the Negrette is your ticket to ride. Giddyup!

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

Negrette looks like:

Negrette smells like:

Negrette tastes like:

Okay, now here’s where things get really weird. So yes, you will get a lot of dark, dry fruit, berries, and earth in this wine – we’re talking bitter black currants, cranberries, under-ripe blackberry, pomegranate, that sort of thing – but you’ll be amazed at how soft Negrettes are. Especially with that kind of a nose. There are really very little tannins in the wine at all, and we even ended up picking up some subtle sweetness in each wine as it opened up – more jammier fruit flavors and even hints of brown sugar and vanilla. But still, very, very soft, amazingly so. We’re still not quite sure what to make of it, and frankly, you’ll have a dilly of a time figuring out foods to pair with it (as you’ll see Brein struggle with down below).

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• All right, so follow along if you can: according to the rules of the Cote du Frontonnais AOC, all red and rose wines from the appellation are required to be made from at least 50% to 70% Negrette. The remaining 30% to 50% of the wine must be Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc (maximum 25% combined) and/or Cot (a.k.a. Malbec, maximum 25%) and/or Fer Servadou (maximum 25%) and/or Syrah (maximum 25%) and/or Cinsault, Gamay, Mauzac (a white grape) and Merille (maximum 15% together). At least three grape varieties must be used. And yet 100% Negrette wines are also allowed to be produced under the Cote du Frontonnais AOC label. And you wonder why Negrette isn’t a more popular grape. My head hurts just writing that out. Sorry, no more fun facts for tonight, kids. Daddy’s got a headache.

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Fun Facts to Impress/Bore People At Parties

From Brein’s Brain to Your Plate

“Oh man. Negrette. That’s a crazy wine right there. Super hard to come up with pairings for it. But I’m going to try. Because I’m a man of the people, and I owe it to them. So consider this just me throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.”

“A wine with as big a nose as Negrette has instantly brings to mind either wild game or wild mushrooms, but definitely something gamey and earthy and pungent. So, if you can find yourself some wild game ravioli – like braised boar or elk or venison – and then drench that in a Portobello mushroom cream sauce. Or, if you’ve got the wild mushrooms but not the game, do a roasted pork loin with wild mushrooms. That should work with this. Or this too – roast or grill a big shank of lamb, then reduce the juices and put some Pomegranate seeds and some stone ground mustard into it. Let that reduce even more, then serve slices of the lamb with the sauce or even just some Pomegranate mustard that you’ve mixed up. That should pair really well with a big gamey wine like this...”

“Another way to go here is actually to seafood and certain kinds of shellfish, particularly if you’ve got a Negrette that’s got a little extra sweetness to it. Not like a dessert wine or anything, but just some added residual sugar left behind. So bacon-wrapped scallops would be an ideal fit with that, though again you need to make sure the wine isn’t too big for the food. Also, monkfish wrapped in pancetta, seared, and then roasted over a bed of thyme would really go nicely with a softer, lighter Negrette.”

“No no wait! I’ve got it. So Negrette, it’s a total bistro wine, really dry finish with some fruit. So you need a bistro dish to complement it. And for that I’m thinking Cassoulet. Really classical with the sausages and the onions. Or else, maybe something like lentils served with bacon or ham hocks. That’s a total French bistro meal, and I think it would pair really well with a Negrette.”

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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.

2007 Wild Horse Calleri Vineyard San Benito Negrette

We’re starting with the Wild Horse from San Benito first (sorry Ken, we’ll get to your wine in a second. You’re still second to none in our book!) because of how different it is from the Ken Volk Negrette, even though the grapes come from the exact same vineyard. It shows you just how much the actual craft of making the wine (the pressing, the fermenting, the barreling and aging) can affect the look, scent, and flavor of the wine. So this Wild Horse Negrette is, like a typical Negrette, a HUGE wine on the nose. Deep inky purple, it’s a wine that one member of our tasting squadron said “will eat you for breakfast.” Lots of earth and brambles and ground-up roots on the nose to complement the jammy blackberry aromas. On the tongue, though, this wine is surprisingly soft and very jammy – big jammy dark fruit colors with just a hint of soft sweetness on the finish, almost a cantaloupe flavor, if you can believe that. Our bottle came directly from the source, the online Wild Horse Wine Store, and we recommend picking up a bottle, if just to compare it to the Ken Volk. And speaking of picking it up, there’s no better time than now, as Wild Horse is offering all ForgottenGrapes.com readers 15% off any wine they buy through the online Wild Horse Wine Store. Just use the code FGWH1509 when ordering to get your discount. And the code is good for any Wild Horse wines (not just the Negrette!) through August 6th. What are you waiting for? Go! Go now and buy!

2007 Kenneth Volk Vineyards Caleri Vineyard San Benito Negrette

For the record and so we’re not accused of favoritism, we enjoyed the Ken Volk Negrette just as much if not more than the Wild Horse Negrette. We also recommend picking up several bottles of this to compare to the Wild Horse Wine. And as we said above, what struck us most were how different the two wines were despite all their similarities. Same vintage, same vineyard, same grape, same terroir, the only difference between the two – other than the producer – is that Volk spells Caleri with one “L” and Wild Horse with two. We have no idea who’s right and we’re not getting in the middle of it. We’re just here to enjoy the wine.

And we really enjoyed the Volk Negrette. It’s more refined than the Wild Horse – still soft on the palate, not as wild or as jammy but still with a big untamed nose and the same dark inky purple color (okay, one other thing they had in common). This wine had the same dark berry flavors but in a purer format, with less jam which meant less residual sugar in the wine. We also noticed that the Volk wasn’t as balanced as the Wild Horse. Its alcohol content was slightly higher (14.5% vs. 14.1 for the Wild Horse) and you could taste that extra heat on the tongue (we suspect it must have been hot in San Benito in 2007). This didn’t make the wine better or worse, just different, depending on what you like. Either way, both are great expressions of the hard-to-find Negrette grape and if you consider yourself a real Friend of the Forgotten Grapes, it’s a wine you need to taste at least once in your life.

We can order this directly from the Kenneth Volk Vineyards website, or call the winery directly at 805-938-7896 or e-mail them at info@volkwines.com

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.

Big, thick, inky and black (even though it’s really purple). Those are the best way to describe the color of a Negrette. It just looks like a big wine in the glass because of how deep and dark it is, and once you get your first whiff, you’re going to realize that the color completely fits the scent (you also might be looking for a horse hair or two in your glass, but that’s neither here nor there. That’s below, where we discuss what the wine smells like). Either way, take special care when pouring a Negrette, as you really do not want to spill any of this wine on your clothes, particularly if you’re wearing white. Trust us on this one...

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 Ken Volk, President and Director of Wine Making at the Kenneth Volk Vineyards in Santa Maria, California. We’ve been huge fans of Ken’s since his days as owner and chief winemaker at Wild Horse Winery, and we’ve also fallen in love with this new stuff. Not only is he still producing wines with the same array of Forgotten Grapes he used at Wild Horse (sometimes from the same vineyard), but his new Kenneth Volk Pinot Noirs remind us why Wild Horse Pinot Noir from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s were among some of our favorite wines we’ve ever tasted. Plus he’s got a dog named Lola Bear. What’s not to like?!

Friends of the Forgotten Grapes: Truth be told, we were huge fans of yours when you owned Wild Horse Winery, primarily because of the Pinots, which we thought were among the best in California; we even had the opportunity to visit Wild Horse a few years back. So why sell the property and start a new winery basically from scratch. Was the time just right? For the challenge? To try something new?

Ken Volk: If you liked the Pinot Noir I made at Wild Horse, you’re in for a treat when you try my KVV label wines. Our single vineyard Pinot Noirs from 2006 are the best flight of Pinot I have ever produced.

It will have been six years in August since I sold Wild Horse. It was a tough business decision to make but I’m glad I did sell the company. Wild Horse was a closely held family partnership on the real estate side and a S-corp on the winery business. I had accrued a significant amount of debt and I wanted to deal with a lot of difficult inheritance issues while it was possible to do so. I’m proud of what I accomplished at Wild Horse but I had become more of an administrator and had gotten too far away from the vineyards and the cellar, the part of the trade I love most. It was fairly stressful with forty families looking at me for a pay check.

FoFG: Both at Wild Horse and at Kenneth Volk Vineyards you cultivate and work with a lot of Forgotten Grapes. What first got you interested in working with such obscure and lesser-known varietals?

KV: I enjoy diversity and variety in almost everything, be it food, music, culture, wine. I have always been a gardener and horticulturist and enjoyed exploring different cultivars in fruit trees, tomatoes, orchids, etc. I think that wine grapes are just an extension of that horticultural curiosity. It has always amazed me that the wine business is essentially dominated by 20 varieties, yet there are literally thousands of grape varieties in existence. I have great respect for the so-called noble varietals, but a diet of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry gets a little old. In all fairness, when I’m asked the Desert Island question - if I only had one grape to make wine from - it would be Pinot Noir.

I found that I enjoyed trying wines from different countries, as well as various cultivars and styles, when I started becoming interested in wine. Italian wines really got me thinking about wine grape diversity and how in a matter of less than fifty miles you can encounter a completely different wine grape-growing community. I started to work with a lot of the heirloom varietals out of curiosity to see what I could do with them.

FoFG: You’ve worked in both the Santa Barbara and Central Coast appellations for over 25 years now, and additionally, many of the key producers of Forgotten Grapes wines and varietals are located in these same appellations. What is it about the Santa Barbara and Central Coast wine growing areas that makes them so suited for Forgotten Grapes and makes the local winemakers so interested in producing Forgotten Grapes wines?

KV: I started making wine in Cayucos in 1978. In regard to the popularity of forgotten grapes on the Central Coast I think there are several factors: the abundance of owner-operators, the former disparity in land costs between the Central Coast and the North Coast making the cost of entry easier, a sense of pioneering new growing regions and trying to understand what varietals or blends might truly make some of the best wines in the region, and the fact that these regions have been less pigeonholed as a preconceived notion by the wine press as being areas only suitable for x and y grape growing.

FoFG: Describe to us the allure of Negrette – growing it, turning it into wine, and drinking it.

KV: Negrette has been grown in California for at least 150 years and had more wineries producing it 40 years ago than do so today. Christian Brothers, Louis Martini, Beringer and many other wineries made Pinot St. George (the former name of Negrette in California). When the varietal labeling laws changed in 1978 from the post-prohibition standards of 51% to 75% [the percentage of grapes from a specific region a wine can be made from to put that particular region on its label], many of the mixed red field plantings of the North Coast and elsewhere were pulled out because it was too difficult to comply with the new labeling standards.

Then in 1997 when the BATF was trying to revise the grape/wine varietal labeling names that would exist in America, they chose to eliminate the use of the name Pinot St. George in favor of the French handle, Negrette, which discouraged some producers from continuing to produce it.

Negrette is not an easy grape to grow because it has extremely thin skins and very tight clusters that allow it to rot very easily with any rain at harvest. I first started working with Negrette from the original El Gavilan Vineyard in the Cienega Valley near Hollister. This old Almaden vineyard was planted in the late 1800’s and had more heirloom varieties than any vineyard I have ever walked in. There were approximately 200 Negrette vines in one section of the vineyard and I made wine from them for several vintages. When the vineyard sold to its new owners, the vast majority of the vineyard was bulldozed to make room for new plantings of more popular varieties. Fortunately Ron Siletto and I had taken cuttings from some of the non-virused vines in order to have plant material for a future vineyard planting at the Caleri Vineyard in Tres Pinos in San Benito County.

I like Negrette. It has some of the attributes I like about Pinot Noir - it can be very fragrant and display aromatics of Herbs de Provence and spice and has a very high malic acid content that allows it to have a very silky and creamy mouth feel; it also has some gamey qualities that I associate with Syrah and other red Rhône grapes.

I have produced Negrette using numerous production and aging regimes and I am still trying to determine which techniques I like the most. It can make a pretty wine in partial whole-cluster fermentation and ten months aging in newer cooperage, but it can also make an interesting wine completely destemmed and crushed with a longer aging regime in older barrels.

I enjoy working with Negrette because of its unique attributes as well as the feeling that I’m helping preserve a part of our viticultural heritage.

FoFG: What Forgotten Grapes are you working with or want to work with on the horizon? Any new heirloom varietal plantings we can look forward to in the next few years?

KV: I continue to make many hard-to-pronounce heirloom wines: Cabernet Pfeffer, Verdelho, Touriga Nacional, Aglianico, Mourvèdre, Roussanne, Grenache Blanc and Malvasia Bianca. This fall I will be getting my first production of Blaufränkisch from a new planting in Tempelton and next year I will be producing the first Albariño to be grown in the Santa Maria Valley.

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2004 Chateau Bellevue La Foret (Cote du Frontonnais)

Now it’s time to bring in the noise and bring in the funk. Since we’d exhausted our California Negrette supplies (or at least what we could find) we decided to try some Negrette straight from the source, and that’s what we got: pure 100% Negrette from the Cote du Frontonnais. And man, what a wine. I mean, the nose alone: huge, big, stanky, gamey...all those descriptions we gave the scent of the wine above? Those came primarily from this wine. It might have something to do with the age of the wine (Negrettes are supposed to be drunk fairly young) but still! Just a massive, massive funky nose that was equal parts Middle Eastern bazaar, corrugated box factory (will be get to see any boxes made?) and body odor being washed off by soap. All of these things in a good way, we might add. There were even traces of vanilla and brown sugar on this wine as well. Flavor-wise, it was very Old World style: dry, earthy, some bitter currant to cranberry flavors, yet still fairly soft and not overpowering with the tannins. Certainly an experience in a bottle, and as Brein said, a total bistro wine. We got this one at Flemington Wine Central (part of the WineAccess network) for a highly reasonable price. Let’s face it: once you’ve had the Cali Negrette, you’ve got to try the French version too, just for the sake of comparison. Definitely get

some and then look for it in younger vintages to determine just how

much aging affects the wine and when the best time to drink it is.

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