The wines and gorgeous grappa of Dalla Cia
Jude and I visit the Dalla Cia family in South Africa and try their wines and amazingly good Grappa (although obviously it is not really grappa as it does not come from Italy). Just as good as the real thing though - even better really than quite a few good Italian examples I have tasted.
Jude and I visit the Dalla Cia family in South Africa and try their wines and amazingly good Grappa (although obviously it is not really grappa as it does not come from Italy). Just as good as the real thing though - even better really than quite a few good Italian examples I have tasted. Dalla Cia – August 7th 2007
The very first ‘serious’ bottle of wine I ever bought, in 1988, was a 1986 Meerlust Rubicon. At the time, I was working at the now defunct Stellenbosch Wine Tasting centre, saving money to fund my trip to the United Kingdom. I knew nothing about wine but, thanks to the manager of the centre, Mr Abel, I was starting to understand just how wonderful it could be – good for so many reasons other than the alcohol content which had been the primary concern in my 15th to 18th year. At the time – and in many ways still today – Rubicon was the undisputed icon wine of South Africa – a classic Bordeaux blend. I knew Meerlust well, mainly though having attended some very good parties there in high school, sacrilegiously completely unaware at the time of its place in the wine world. Mind you, I doubt such awareness would have added to the experiences at the time much or indeed have made our behaviour any more decorous.
I was also then unaware of the fact that the wine maker at Meerlust was an Italian emigrant called Giorgio Dalla Cia – someone who’s name is synonymous with truly fine wine making in South Africa. I knew his daughter Marta well, having been in the same year as her at school, but it was only much later, in London, that I realised what the connection was.
I knew that Giorgio had left Meerlust to make his own wines and I had actually briefly spoken to Marta about these a few years ago at the London Wine Trade Fair but on seeing her at my school reunion, we had made plans for us to get together for a proper tasting. On leaving Spier on the morning of the 7th then, en-route to Wellington and Nabygelegen, that is where we stopped off.
The Dalla Cia family – Marta, her father Giorgio and brother George, moved to their current premises in February 2007. On the edge of Stellenbosh town centre is their tiny distillery next door to a small shop and bar/restaurant. It is a shame we did not have time to eat here as I strongly suspect that we would have had the sort of deliciously simple meal that generally is so amazingly allusive in South Africa. If you are heading to Stellenbosch soon, I highly recommend you take the time to search it out –: www.dallacia.com.
Giorgio was at Meerlust for 25 years before his son George managed to convince him to retire early and start a family business in 2003, making both wine and Grappa. George’s has always been the Grappa man– he had started making it at Meerlust in 1996, after having imported a still from Italy in 1995 . It was however Giorgio who guided and trained him in the art until he finally took over the distillation completely in 2004 and the plan now is to make Schnapps from plums and peaches as well in the near future.
Currently, the Dalla Cia concern produces about 20,000 bottles of grappa a year and about 10,000 bottles of wine, making them a tiny concern where everything is done by the family except the growing of grapes. These come from a variety of growers in the Stellenbosch area, all of whom are part of a collective known as the Company of Wine People and all of whom Giorgio has worked with for a number of years. With the wines, Giorgio’s primary concern remains making a style he describes as ‘classic’. There is little interest in exuberant, overly juicy new world fruit. Instead, the emphasis is on crisp, natural acidity – he is vehemently opposed to the apparently common practise of adding too much ascorbic acid in order to freshen overly ripe fruit. As ascorbic acid does not work without S02, the end result is a wine with over 7 grams per litre total acidity and lots of sulphur – destined to fall apart suddenly and spectacularly after anything over a year to a year and a half in bottle and often tasting startling and unpleasantly citric in youth.
We tasted the 2006 Sauvignon Blanc first and it was indeed what could be described as a classic style. Very easy to drink, the acidity was very balanced and the fruit utterly restrained and pure – no showy tropical notes here at all.
Next was the 2006 Chardonnay - described as unwooded, 5% of which has been barrel fermented and is added just before bottling. I thought this was the better of the two having an extra layer of complexity – citrus fruit with just a hint of underlying richness, Again, a very ‘classic’ style with nothing dominating, just harmonious elegance.
2003 Giorgio, their flagship wine came next. A blend of Cabernet, Merlot and Cabernet Franc – all fruit grown in the Helderberg area, one of Stellenbosch’s slightly cooler microclimates. This I thought was the star of the show – lovely inky, slightly gamey fruit on the nose and very soft, velvet tannins with plum, chocolate and spice flavours on the palate. Again, the epitome of elegance despite the aspects of richness in the fruit.
I asked Giorgio about the differences between this and Rubicon – possibly an amazingly tedious question for him but one he answered with very good grace. As you would expect from a maestro wine maker, it does come down to the grapes. The soils at Meerlust are very gravely, with clay and decomposed granite giving wines with much more structure. The fruit for Gorgio comes from the slopes of the Helderberg where there are deeper, richer red clay soils giving softer, more feminine fruit. Rubicon also has much more Cabernet – 70% - which adds to the backbone.
We looked at tank samples of the 2007 whites next - 2007 Sauvignon was much more fruity, richer and rounder than 06 but had the same clean, mineral finish.
2007 Chardonnay has a higher percentage of barrel fermentation than in previous years giving this added richness as well.
Finally, to the Grappa. Giorgio’s take on this is that a good chef might like to cook mainly meat and fish but will also occasionally want to dabble with mousse. Grappa and wine are completely different to one another – wine being the much more complex, moody, unpredictable sibling to the more dependable, down to earth Grappa. Although technically, the spirit they produce here is not Grappa, not hailing from the old country, it gives much of what I have tasted in Italy a real run for its money. Made entirely traditionally, the grape skins are distilled after fermentation, when there is 5 – 6% alcohol present. The skins of course have the primary aromas and the colour which dissolve into the wine during fermentation but both of these and some alcohol is stlll present when skins are pressed after fermentation in reds. Distillation will capture these aromas in their most concentrated form, but the great secret is ensuring that this happens before the skins start to oxidise and deteriorate. As with well hung game, there is only a very fine line between pleasantly aromatic and just plain rotten. If the skins get to this point, mercaptans (a truly nasty smelling compound – think rubber, cooked cabbage or rotten eggs) result. Many badly made Grappas exhibit these aromas and infusions of juniper are frequently used to try to mask these. This is never completely successful though and inevitably, a pretty bad taste is left in the mouth.
At Dalla Cia, they always distill the skin within 24 hours of pressing, so aromas are still very fragrant and very clean . They also take great care not to burn the skins during distillation – another common fault. Giorgio likens it to making soup badly – if don’t watch the temperature and you burn the bottom of the pan, an unpleasantly acrid aroma will suffuse all of the soup. They never exceed 100 degrees .
We tasted the Pinot Noir/Chardonnay Grappa first. Beautifully elegant and fine, this had delicate aromas of celery leaf and fresh nuts. It was also completely dry – there was no need to add sugar to cover up any burnt aromas, a common tactic with lesser producers.
Cabernet/Merlot was noticeably richer with a creamy, dark chocolate nose and lots of spice on the palate as well as a lovely, viscous texture – another fine result of using only very fresh, un-burnt skins apparently. Finally, we tasted the Barrel Aged Cabernet/Merlot blend. This spends 5 – 6 months in 2nd fill charred French oak barrels – any longer and more wood than they really want would be extracted. This shows lots of the same rich, chocolately fruit but there are extra smoky, toasty layers because of the oak.
Finally, we taste their Grappa chocolates. Hand made in Johannesburg, these are beautifully packaged dark chocolate cigarillos which I am warned to put into my mouth whole, just before I tried to nibble delicately on one end. Given the liquid content, it can become rather messy unless you commit yourself to a whole one from the beginning. There really was no need for hesitance – this was sensational. The chocolate is not too sweet and underneath this is a layer of crunchy sugar, keeping the slick of spicy grappa encased before it cuts through the chocolatey richness and crunchy sugar on the tongue. I am emphatically not a fan of liqueur chocolates – I have yet to encounter a liqueur I really enjoy and am a complete snob about chocolate. If it is not dark and amazingly good, I simply don’t bother. These were completely sensational though and I could have actually quite easily popped another whole one in my mouth – not something I would usually have the remotest urge to do after indulging in such a thing.
All in all, this was a very good visit. We liked the wines, especially the Giorgio but thought that the Grappa’s were particularly fantastic. Jude has long had plans for the Green & Blue spirit section, currently a rather unloved and uncared for part of the range, and the Dalla Cia spirits may be just the thing to really get this off the ground. We both agreed that all three of these were undisputedly better than the ‘real’ Italian grappa we currently stock (which itself is certainly not bad, it just seems to lack the finesse of the Dalla Cia range). Unfortunately, we won’t be doing the chocolates because of the difficulties in getting them to the UK fresh at a price that would make sense.
The very first ‘serious’ bottle of wine I ever bought, in 1988, was a 1986 Meerlust Rubicon. At the time, I was working at the now defunct Stellenbosch Wine Tasting centre, saving money to fund my trip to the United Kingdom. I knew nothing about wine but, thanks to the manager of the centre, Mr Abel, I was starting to understand just how wonderful it could be – good for so many reasons other than the alcohol content which had been the primary concern in my 15th to 18th year. At the time – and in many ways still today – Rubicon was the undisputed icon wine of South Africa – a classic Bordeaux blend. I knew Meerlust well, mainly though having attended some very good parties there in high school, sacrilegiously completely unaware at the time of its place in the wine world. Mind you, I doubt such awareness would have added to the experiences at the time much or indeed have made our behaviour any more decorous.
I was also then unaware of the fact that the wine maker at Meerlust was an Italian emigrant called Giorgio Dalla Cia – someone who’s name is synonymous with truly fine wine making in South Africa. I knew his daughter Marta well, having been in the same year as her at school, but it was only much later, in London, that I realised what the connection was.
I knew that Giorgio had left Meerlust to make his own wines and I had actually briefly spoken to Marta about these a few years ago at the London Wine Trade Fair but on seeing her at my school reunion, we had made plans for us to get together for a proper tasting. On leaving Spier on the morning of the 7th then, en-route to Wellington and Nabygelegen, that is where we stopped off.
The Dalla Cia family – Marta, her father Giorgio and brother George, moved to their current premises in February 2007. On the edge of Stellenbosh town centre is their tiny distillery next door to a small shop and bar/restaurant. It is a shame we did not have time to eat here as I strongly suspect that we would have had the sort of deliciously simple meal that generally is so amazingly allusive in South Africa. If you are heading to Stellenbosch soon, I highly recommend you take the time to search it out –: www.dallacia.com.
Giorgio was at Meerlust for 25 years before his son George managed to convince him to retire early and start a family business in 2003, making both wine and Grappa. George’s has always been the Grappa man– he had started making it at Meerlust in 1996, after having imported a still from Italy in 1995 . It was however Giorgio who guided and trained him in the art until he finally took over the distillation completely in 2004 and the plan now is to make Schnapps from plums and peaches as well in the near future.
Currently, the Dalla Cia concern produces about 20,000 bottles of grappa a year and about 10,000 bottles of wine, making them a tiny concern where everything is done by the family except the growing of grapes. These come from a variety of growers in the Stellenbosch area, all of whom are part of a collective known as the Company of Wine People and all of whom Giorgio has worked with for a number of years. With the wines, Giorgio’s primary concern remains making a style he describes as ‘classic’. There is little interest in exuberant, overly juicy new world fruit. Instead, the emphasis is on crisp, natural acidity – he is vehemently opposed to the apparently common practise of adding too much ascorbic acid in order to freshen overly ripe fruit. As ascorbic acid does not work without S02, the end result is a wine with over 7 grams per litre total acidity and lots of sulphur – destined to fall apart suddenly and spectacularly after anything over a year to a year and a half in bottle and often tasting startling and unpleasantly citric in youth.
We tasted the 2006 Sauvignon Blanc first and it was indeed what could be described as a classic style. Very easy to drink, the acidity was very balanced and the fruit utterly restrained and pure – no showy tropical notes here at all.
Next was the 2006 Chardonnay - described as unwooded, 5% of which has been barrel fermented and is added just before bottling. I thought this was the better of the two having an extra layer of complexity – citrus fruit with just a hint of underlying richness, Again, a very ‘classic’ style with nothing dominating, just harmonious elegance.
2003 Giorgio, their flagship wine came next. A blend of Cabernet, Merlot and Cabernet Franc – all fruit grown in the Helderberg area, one of Stellenbosch’s slightly cooler microclimates. This I thought was the star of the show – lovely inky, slightly gamey fruit on the nose and very soft, velvet tannins with plum, chocolate and spice flavours on the palate. Again, the epitome of elegance despite the aspects of richness in the fruit.
I asked Giorgio about the differences between this and Rubicon – possibly an amazingly tedious question for him but one he answered with very good grace. As you would expect from a maestro wine maker, it does come down to the grapes. The soils at Meerlust are very gravely, with clay and decomposed granite giving wines with much more structure. The fruit for Gorgio comes from the slopes of the Helderberg where there are deeper, richer red clay soils giving softer, more feminine fruit. Rubicon also has much more Cabernet – 70% - which adds to the backbone.
We looked at tank samples of the 2007 whites next - 2007 Sauvignon was much more fruity, richer and rounder than 06 but had the same clean, mineral finish.
2007 Chardonnay has a higher percentage of barrel fermentation than in previous years giving this added richness as well.
Finally, to the Grappa. Giorgio’s take on this is that a good chef might like to cook mainly meat and fish but will also occasionally want to dabble with mousse. Grappa and wine are completely different to one another – wine being the much more complex, moody, unpredictable sibling to the more dependable, down to earth Grappa. Although technically, the spirit they produce here is not Grappa, not hailing from the old country, it gives much of what I have tasted in Italy a real run for its money. Made entirely traditionally, the grape skins are distilled after fermentation, when there is 5 – 6% alcohol present. The skins of course have the primary aromas and the colour which dissolve into the wine during fermentation but both of these and some alcohol is stlll present when skins are pressed after fermentation in reds. Distillation will capture these aromas in their most concentrated form, but the great secret is ensuring that this happens before the skins start to oxidise and deteriorate. As with well hung game, there is only a very fine line between pleasantly aromatic and just plain rotten. If the skins get to this point, mercaptans (a truly nasty smelling compound – think rubber, cooked cabbage or rotten eggs) result. Many badly made Grappas exhibit these aromas and infusions of juniper are frequently used to try to mask these. This is never completely successful though and inevitably, a pretty bad taste is left in the mouth.
At Dalla Cia, they always distill the skin within 24 hours of pressing, so aromas are still very fragrant and very clean . They also take great care not to burn the skins during distillation – another common fault. Giorgio likens it to making soup badly – if don’t watch the temperature and you burn the bottom of the pan, an unpleasantly acrid aroma will suffuse all of the soup. They never exceed 100 degrees .
We tasted the Pinot Noir/Chardonnay Grappa first. Beautifully elegant and fine, this had delicate aromas of celery leaf and fresh nuts. It was also completely dry – there was no need to add sugar to cover up any burnt aromas, a common tactic with lesser producers.
Cabernet/Merlot was noticeably richer with a creamy, dark chocolate nose and lots of spice on the palate as well as a lovely, viscous texture – another fine result of using only very fresh, un-burnt skins apparently. Finally, we tasted the Barrel Aged Cabernet/Merlot blend. This spends 5 – 6 months in 2nd fill charred French oak barrels – any longer and more wood than they really want would be extracted. This shows lots of the same rich, chocolately fruit but there are extra smoky, toasty layers because of the oak.
Finally, we taste their Grappa chocolates. Hand made in Johannesburg, these are beautifully packaged dark chocolate cigarillos which I am warned to put into my mouth whole, just before I tried to nibble delicately on one end. Given the liquid content, it can become rather messy unless you commit yourself to a whole one from the beginning. There really was no need for hesitance – this was sensational. The chocolate is not too sweet and underneath this is a layer of crunchy sugar, keeping the slick of spicy grappa encased before it cuts through the chocolatey richness and crunchy sugar on the tongue. I am emphatically not a fan of liqueur chocolates – I have yet to encounter a liqueur I really enjoy and am a complete snob about chocolate. If it is not dark and amazingly good, I simply don’t bother. These were completely sensational though and I could have actually quite easily popped another whole one in my mouth – not something I would usually have the remotest urge to do after indulging in such a thing.
All in all, this was a very good visit. We liked the wines, especially the Giorgio but thought that the Grappa’s were particularly fantastic. Jude has long had plans for the Green & Blue spirit section, currently a rather unloved and uncared for part of the range, and the Dalla Cia spirits may be just the thing to really get this off the ground. We both agreed that all three of these were undisputedly better than the ‘real’ Italian grappa we currently stock (which itself is certainly not bad, it just seems to lack the finesse of the Dalla Cia range). Unfortunately, we won’t be doing the chocolates because of the difficulties in getting them to the UK fresh at a price that would make sense.
