Wines

My 8-year-old daughter would start this article writing “My favorite person in the whole wine world is Karim Mussi Saffie”. You may not know him yet but, after reading this article, you will love him. Karim Mussi Saffie, family man, born in 1974, is one of the most innovative Argentinean winemakers from La Consulta, Uco Valley in Mendoza, Argentina.  He is the head winemaker and owner of Karim Mussi Winemaker, a holding that owns Altocedro Winery, in La Consulta, Uco Valley in Mendoza; Abras in Cafayate, Salta (these first two wineries are terroir driven ones) and Alandes, a beautiful project where Karim makes wines along the Andes mountain ranges terroirs, from Salta, through Mendoza to Patagonia. The result are wines so unique that tasting them feels almost as a wine educational experience.

I met Karim a couple of years ago, during an event organized by Karim’s Dutch importer in The Netherlands. From the very first moment we clicked. I found him fascinating, incredibly knowledgeable and generous. He is the kind of guy that is willing to spend hours with you for the simple reason of sharing his knowledge. Karim belongs to the new generation of young Argentinean winemakers, but I believe that despite his youth, he has an old soul. Those souls that the early pioneers and explorers used to have.  He is adventurous, curious, persistent, thirsty for knowledge, an erudite person. He is constantly looking out for new opportunities. But, in spite of his serious appearance, he is incredibly funny, warm and welcoming. It is amazing how his personality is reflected in his wines as they are elegant, complex, full of flavors, but still fresh and approachable and most importantly, they are persistent as they hold well through the passage of time.

The more I knew this man, the more I wanted to understand him, so I could understand and appreciate his wines. I believe that a wine is a mirror of the winemaker. So, I established two interviews with him, with the excuse of writing this article, but most importantly, to ease my curiosity.

His origins

To try to understand Karim, first you need to know his history. His grandparents were the first arriving to South America from the Middle East. One side of the family came from Lebanon and the other from Palestine. Both families had to escape their countries of origin due to a religious persecution that took place in both countries during World War I. Both families belong to a religious minority in those countries. With what they could carry with them, the Lebanese family found shelter in Mendoza, Argentina, and the Palestine family in Chili. Both families, with perseverance, determination, sacrifice, and hard work, managed to build a future in their new countries. Fate then wanted for the Lebanese and Palestine grandparents to become close friends, and this is how Karim’s parents met. Right before his father married his mother, he moved to Chili to help his future wife and her mother, as she had lost her dad at an early age. In Chili, Karim’s father studied a new career in those days: international commerce. Once they moved back to Mendoza, already married, he opened what became, after a lot of hard work, sacrifice, and persistence, one of the most important Argentinean companies which commercialized concentrated grape must. 

From a young age, Karim, the eldest of three siblings, accompanied his father to business meetings at different wineries to learn the family business. However, the more he visited wineries and learnt about wines; the more he felt deeply in love with it. He found beauty in wine, like an artist finds beauty in colors or sounds or words. But most importantly, since then, he felt the need to share beauty and in wine he found his way of expression. Also, he saw wine as a cultural object. Through wine, people outside Argentina get to know the country, its food, and its people. In addition, he told me that his mother and sister are exceptional cooks. He grew up in a house filled with exciting aromas and flavors, a delightful blend of Middle Eastern and Argentinean traditional cuisines. Cooking was a way to show love and affection to others. It was also of tremendous importance the way the dining table was set up. Every little detail counted as well as the manners at the table. He told me that his mom’s cooking became very famous among his friends. They all wanted to stay for lunch, teatime, or dinner because there were always various sorts of different delicious food for everyone and a gorgeous table set-up. This led Karim’s friends to coin a phrase that they keep using today: “Comer a lo Mussi” (To eat like at Mussi’s family). His friends would go back to their homes and ask their mothers if they would cook as varied and as delicious as they had eaten at Karim’s house. It is my opinion that you can identify this in Karim’s wines because they are precise, clean and gastronomic. It looks as if Karim is creating wines already with a certain type of food in his mind. In addition, every single detail is taken care of, like the bottle presentation. The labels are in sync with the expression of the wines to create a harmony between the wine and the packaging.

Persistence, his dogma

When I asked him about what wine meant to him besides beauty inside of a bottle, he told me that for him wine is another way to transcend, to go beyond one’s mortality. That the vines he plants today, most likely will still be there after he is gone. But he doesn’t speak from a dark, pessimistic place, on the contrary. He explained to me that when your life is in line with nature’s life cycles of the vines, your understanding of life changes completely. You become more aware of things like life and death. He gave me an example of when the vines go dormant during the winter. It is a sort of a “short death”, and when spring arrives is like a renaissance, a re-birth. So, when you are more aware of these natural processes, it gives you inexplicable freedom and comfort. You know you will die eventually, but what matters is how you enjoy your life here. That brought to my mind what Russell Crowe said in the movie Gladiator by Ridley Scott: “What we do in this life, echoes in eternity”.

In the mid-1990’s, when Karim was in his early twenties, after finishing his engineering and this technical oenological study, he told his father that he didn’t want to be part of the family business. Instead, he wanted to make wine. He wanted to refurbish an old winery that the family owned in La Consulta and borrow some money from his father to plant his first vines. His father refused, telling him that he was crazy, that this was something the Italians did, that Italians knew about vines and vineyards. They were of Lebanese origin and what they knew was commerce. This was his welcome into the wine business world. But something he learnt from his family history was that if he perseveres and works hard, he could achieve all his dreams. Disregarding his father advice, at the age of 24 (in 1999) he opened his first winery called Altocedro and he became one of Uco Valley’s first developers of La Consulta as a fine wine terroir, in Mendoza, Argentina. Today, La Consulta is regarded among the top terroirs of the country.

This dream life I’m telling you about didn’t come so easy. Karim went through a very tough journey, among other things, he was victim of theft, scams, racial discrimination due to his origins, etc., but he never gave up. Moreover, he was in Argentina, a country famous for its constant economic instability. When I asked how he survived so many different crises that hit the country, he explained to me that when others see a problem, he is looking for the opportunity. What you learn in Argentina is to live in a constant survival mode, which has the advantage of removing the fear out of you and instead of fighting the crisis, you start thinking how you can find solutions that fit your business. This gives you a lot of elasticity. It is extremely difficult to get a bank loan in Argentina, not only due to the bureaucracy involved but also due to the outrageous interest rates. The first time he went into a bank to ask for a loan to open Altocedro, the bank director, after having him present his project and modify it for almost a year told him in his face to give up as he was never going to loan 300,000 USD to a 24-year-old kid. That was his welcoming to the Argentinean entrepreneurial world. He understood then that he had to do everything by himself, he only needed to be persevering. Karim said that in those times he had 3 evils: lack of knowledge, lack of funds, and lack of infrastructure. But that didn’t discourage him. Despite all the sacrifices that needed to be done, he knew he was on the right path. He was working the vineyard and the winery by himself. Many nights he slept in his truck while the winery was not yet finished. Against all odds, he kept on moving forward. It was through his father, who became one of Karim’s most important mentors, that he reached out to Carlos Pessutti from the former Bodegas Giol, once the biggest winery in the world, to be his winemaker and mentor. Together with him, they did the 2001 and 2002 vintages. When Carlos decided to leave Altocedro after the 2002 vintage, he told Karim that he was ready to become the Altocedro winemaker. With all the fears and doubts that come along when you are doing something by yourself for the very first time, but with a strong belief in the project, Karim did the 2003 vintage and with this he got his first 90 points wine spectator. In 2006 he got 92, and in 2008 the wine was chosen among the 100 top wines by Wine Spectator.

Another key point to survival Karim mentioned is to understand and know the nature of the wine business. It is easier to transform grapes into wine than wine into money. One of his biggest challenges was the transformation of his winery into a fully functioning company.  It took him around 10 years to make it happen. In addition, innovation is also key to stay in business. In such a traditional industry, one must create wines with personality, different from the rest. And yet, part of the innovation is not to change. You need to stick to your values, your dogmas, what you believe in. In the long run, the industry will understand what you wanted to do. As Karim put it: “you tell a tree by its fruit”. One of Karim’s innovations is the wine “El Jardín de los Caprichos” (The Garden of Whims). He made it out of gratitude towards the winery’s visitors. He wanted them to take home something unique. This wine, of which not two vintages are the same, is only sold at the winery shop. They are unique and limited. Once a vintage is sold out, it’s gone forever. He already produced twenty-three vintages. This experience also took Karim on an adventure into the NFT world, a project he is currently developing.

My final thoughts

His life story and achievements are a source of inspiration to me. Sometimes we see a tough road ahead in this wine industry, but what I learnt from Karim is that I just need to hold on tight to my values and what I believe in and persevere

I’m going to make you sing a bit with these simple words by Playahitty: “the summer is magic, is magic…” yeah, you feel it now, the summer is around the corner and when the temperature starts rising and the days are nicer and sunnier, it is rosé wine time!

But, how can I choose a rosé that fits my tasting profile? To answer this question you need to know the two things that have the most impact on the taste profile of a rosé wine (I promise I will not bore you with technical matters):

1. The grape variety. It will determine the aromas and flavours of the wine
2. The way the wine is made: It will determine the aroma, flavour and colour intensity of the wine and therefore, the style of the wine.

1. The grape variety

You can make rosé wine from any kind of red grape variety. This mean that the grape variety or varieties (yes, there could be more than one grape variety) will provide their signature flavours to the wine, but not as intensely as when you are making a red wine. For example, in Spain, it is very common to find rosé wines made from Tempranillo grapes, the same grapes that are used to make red Rioja wines. These wines will have the same aromas and flavours of red cherries, raspberries and strawberries, as a young Tempranillo wine, such as a Rioja Vino Joven, but with the difference that the rosé will be fresher and . Another example are the grape varieties Grenache and Syrah, most commonly used in Rosé coming from Côtes de Provence and Pays d’Oc in Southern France. The Grenache provides red fruit flavours, a bit of spices and medium to high levels of alcohol, while the Syrah contributes with medium to high levels of acidity in order to enjoy a refreshing well-structured, easy to drink rosé wine.

2. The way the wine is made

The way the wine is made will determine the style, aromas, flavours and flavour intensity of the wine. The two most common methods to make a rosé supermarket wine are:

1. Direct pressing method: This is the most common way to make rosé. Once the grapes are taken from the vineyard to the winery, they are crushed and pressed. The grapes’ skins are quickly removed to prevent them from adding more colour intensity aromas and flavours which would not suit this style of wine. Then, the juice is fermented at a low temperature and once the fermentation is finished, voilà! You made your rosé wine! The lack of skin contact produces rosé wines that are paler in colour and lighter in body. Also, the aromas and flavours are more delicate as they come straight from the grapes’ juice and a tiny bit from the grapes’ skin when pressed. These wines are usually more citric and green fruit oriented, displaying notes of grapefruit, watermelon and red apple, sometimes floral and spiced depending on the grape variety. Most Côtes de Provence Rosé wines are made using this direct pressing method. For example, the AH Excellent Selectie Côtes de Provence rosé (€ 8,29) has a pale salmon colour, a medium to high acidity, and has floral notes, as well as citric notes such as grapefruit and orange peel, watermelon, and wet stones (minerality). Most Côtes de Provence rosés are a blend (a mix of grapes varieties), with Grenache usually the dominant one, followed by Syrah and Cinsault. Each producer plays with the proportion of each grape variety in the blend to create their signature wine. They can even choose to make the wine with only two grape varieties, like La Tulipe Rosé (€ 6,49), which is made with Grenache and Syrah grapes. These grapes give the wine more of a fruity character, displaying notes of grapefruit, watermelon, strawberries and red apples. Both wines above have a lovely fresh acidity, making them very pleasant and easy to drink.

2. Short maceration: This is the second most common way to make rosé wines. It is similar to the direct pressing, except that the juice spends hours in contact with the grapes’ skin, adding more colour intensity, flavours and aromas. This is called maceration. Then, the juice is drained off the skins and it is fermented at a low temperature. Once the fermentation is finished, voilà again! Wine has been made! These wines are deeper in colour and they have more of a red fruit flavour than the direct pressing method and they tend to have more of a medium to full body, as tannins are being added to the wine (a wine natural chemical compound that provides structure to it). Here, the winemaker should pay attention not to add too many tannins during the maceration time, or else, the wine will have a bitter taste. Sometimes, maceration keeps going during the beginning of the fermentation and this extracts even more colour, flavours and aromas. For example, Los Molinos Tempranillo Rosado (€ 3,49) has spent between 4 to 6 hours macerating to create a lovely medium pink wine with aromas and flavours typical of a Tempranillo grape, such as strawberries and red cherries, with the addition of red apples. It is medium bodied and with a refreshing acidity that makes it very easy to drink and enjoy on a summer day. The price-quality relationship of this wine is surprisingly good. Another example of short maceration is the Echo Falls White Zinfandel (€ 4,99), a rosé from California, which is great for those who enjoy the sweeter rosé wines. The Zinfandel grape produces so much sugar that it can’t all be turned into alcohol. Therefore, some sugar is left in the wine, making it an off-dry, medium sweet wine. This wine has notes of watermelon, pomegranate, red cherries and strawberries. Its low acidity is well balanced with its low alcohol level, making it a nice wine to drink as an aperitif or with a fresh green salad.

My rosé recommendation for this summer

If you like more delicate, floral, citric, green fruit, lighter-bodied, less intense wines, choose a pale style of rosé, like a Côtes de Provence Rosé such as the AH Excellent Selectie Côtes de Provence rosé (€ 8,29) or the La Tulipe Rosé (€ 6,49)

If you like more intense, fuller-bodied, red fruit oriented wines, go for a darker coloured rosé, like the Los Molinos Tempranillo Rosado (€ 3,49) or if you like them dark but a bit sweet, then try the Echo Falls White Zinfandel (€ 4,99)

If you want to try something different, then, start playing using the criteria I pointed out in my last article (How to find a great wine in a Dutch supermarket) and enjoy your wine adventure!

Rosé serving temperature

The serving temperature for a Rosé is between 10ºC to 13ºC, slightly chilled, so a bit warmer than your fridge temperature (5 ºC to 7 ºC). It is best to take it out of the fridge 30 minutes before you will drink it so it warms up and you can enjoy all its aromas and flavours. If it is too cold, the wine will be closed and it will not be able to show you all the joy that the wine can give you. You will have to wait until it warms up inside your glass.

Rosé food pairing

Following wine and food experts, Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, in their 2006 book “What to drink with what you eat”, rosé wines are one of the most versatile wines regarding their food pairing abilities, they pair well with many different options, such as cold food, grilled fish, salmon, charcuterie, pâté, Indian food, Mexican food, paella, grilled or roasted pork, green salads, seafood, and grilled seafood, sushi, Thai food, barbecue and barbecue sauce, sausages, and the list goes on and on, but creamy sauces and oysters must be avoided (oysters go great with Champagne) as they don’t pair well with Rosé style of wines.

I hope you liked the article. Please share it among your friends and if you have any questions or comments, send us an email at info@twec.nl
Many thanks and Happy Tasting!

Have you ever been to the supermarket thinking: — “I’m going to try a new wine today”, but there were so many options that you couldn’t make up your mind and you went home with your usual bottle? Well, we’ve all been there! This is why this post will give you smart tips on how to spot that amazing wine bottle standing on the supermarket shelf that best fits you!

Wine’s taste profile and its price

There are 2 factors to pay attention to, the wine’s taste profile and its price. The wine’s taste profile is how the wines do taste, is it dry, fruity, etc. Supermarkets do this to make your life easier, instead of having to worry about country of origin, vintage or grape variety, etc., you can just focus on finding a wine that fits your taste preference. Price will define the wine’s quality, in this case, the more expensive, the more intense, tasty and complex the wine will be, you’ll see that in the price range categories further down in this article.

But, first, let’s get something out of the way. Wines sold at the supermarket are well made. You won’t find a bad quality wine in a big supermarket chain. Each of these big chains have a wine department with qualified professionals that will choose wines with the best quality for the price they want to sell it for, and behind each of these wines there is a very big winery that produces millions of wine liters per year, using the latest techniques and technologies to make the best product they can under different price range categories.

Factor 1. Dutch Supermarket Wine Classification

In many Dutch supermarkets wines are classified according to their taste profile, how the wine does taste:

For whites, in general, they are classified as:

1. “Vol en Droog”, full bodied and dry, with structure, wines that are more serious and more complex in flavours, that will need more time to drink as each sip will display a different character of the wine, like an oaked Chardonnay;
2. “Lichtzoet”, lightly sweet, sometimes fizzy and refreshing wines where Moscato, Lambrusco, Riesling Spatlese and Asti are found;
3. “Fris en Droog”, fresh and dry, easy to drink wines, a place for Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Verdicchio, etc.

Red wines are, in general, classified as follows:

1. “Fruitig”, fruity, easy to drink wines like a Pinot Noir, Beaujolais AOC and Cote de Rhone AOC
2. “Soepel”, smooth, with a bit more structure than the fruity ones, such as a merlot or Cote de Rhone Village AOC
3. “Stevig”, firm, complex and serious, also these wines will need more time to drink as each sip will display a different character of the wine like a Rioja Reserva DOCa, an oaked Cabernet Sauvignon or Bordeaux AOC.

For Rosé and sparkling wines, in general, there is only one category for each style, Rosé and sparkling wines, where the last is are referred as “Bubbles”.

Factor 2. Price Matters

In the case of supermarket wines, the quality of the wine is directly linked to the final price offered on the shelf. The more expensive the wine, the more the wine will give you in return, for real!

There are 2 variables that explains this, the cost of an empty bottle standing on the supermarket shelf and the wine per se, the liquid inside the bottle:

1. The cost of an empty bottle

This cost includes the glass bottle, label, cork or screw cup, foil, transport, supermarket logistic etc. According to wine journalists Esmee Langereis and Karin Leeuwenhoek, an empty wine bottle placed in a Dutch supermarket costs on average 3 euro. This is a cost that will remain constant for any supermarket wine price range;

1. The cost of the wine (the liquid inside the bottle)

The cost of the wine inside of a bottle will vary drastically depending on the quality of the wine. For example, if you buy a € 3,50 wine bottle, you will be paying only € 0,50 cents for the wine, the liquid, but remember that the 0,50 cents will include the winery and the supermarket profit too, so, the real cost of that wine (the liquid) may be around € 0,10 or €0,20 cents. What can you expect from it, right?

Still, even the €3.50 wines are well made wines. They are produced intentionally towards a value of €3.50, resulting in very simple wines, with few aromas and flavours. These wines are easy to drink but the flavours will disappear as soon as you’ve swallowed the wine. These wines are ok but, for just €1.50 extra, the next wine price range can provide much more enjoyment and pleasure.

Wine price ranges — What are the differences?

I divide supermarket wines in 4 price ranges:

1. Less than € 5 euro
2. € 5 to € 8
3. € 8 to € 10
4. More than € 10

As I mentioned before, the quality of the wine will be linked to the price range category of the wine. It is fascinating that for wines below €10, every euro extra makes a big difference in taste.

1. Less than €5

In the first group of less than €5, we find, among others, the supermarket brands such as AH Sauvignon Blanc from France (€ 4,99). In this category, wines are very simple, with a low aroma and flavour intensity, as well as few aromas and flavours, in the case of the AH Sauvignon Blanc from France (generic Sauvignon Blanc), it mostly displays aromas of green apples and grapefruit; Also, wines are light to medium body but with a short finish (the finish is the duration of the pleasant flavours in your mouth after having swallowed the wine, the longer those flavours linger in the mouth, the better quality of the wine). In the Sauvignon Blanc example above, the flavours disappear immediately after swallowing the wine, leaving a bitter taste due to the wine’s high acidity.

1. €5 to €8

In the second group of €5 to €8, wines begin to be more interesting, their aromas and flavours are more intense than the first group, more aromas and flavours are identifiable, and the finish will be longer than the first group. For example, the AH Excellent Selectie Touraine Appellation Touraine Contrólée Sauvignon Blanc (€ 7,99) displays notes of grass, asparagus, green apples, grapefruit and lime, with a longer fish of lime, grapefruit and grass, or a Jacob Creek Sauvignon Blanc (€ 7,49) will have notes of passion fruit, grass, asparagus, peach, displaying more aromas and flavours than the previous category.

1. €8 to €10

In the third group of €8 to €10, wines are more serious, in the sense that they will have an even higher aroma and flavour intensity and even more aromas and flavours. These notes will linger longer in mouth and they will have a level of complexity higher than the previous levels, resulting in more balanced wines. Within this category, we find wines labeled “Reserve” or “Reserva”, therefore, more winemaking techniques will be implemented to produce the wine, like the use of wooden staves, wood chips or in some cases, the use of oak barrels to add oaky characters to the wines, like the Casillero del Diablo Reserva Especial Chardonnay (€ 9,29) that display aromas and flavours of green apples, pear, white peach, nectarine and pineapple. As well as, hazelnut, and vanilla from time spent ageing in barrels and complemented by a subtle minerality. In some cases, like the Antonin Rodet Bourgogne Chardonnay (€ 9,99), the wine undergoes an ageing period on its lees before they are filtered out, lees are a wine natural sediment that before it is removed, if it is left on purpose for some time in contact with the wine, it adds roundness and richness to the mouthfeel, reducing the wine’s acidity levels, while adding notes of biscuit and bread.

1. More than €10

As for the last group of more than €10, if you are willing to spend more than 10 euro on a wine, I recommend you to go to your local wine store and buy your wine there. The personnel from the wine store will be able to recommend something that will be in line with your taste profile and that will surprise you. Wine shops generally manage smaller wine producers that don’t scale for supermarket chains. These producers can provide a higher quality in a limited production, making their wines more special and unique.

Recommendation

The next time that you go to the supermarket, check out in which taste profile and price range category your favorite wine stands. Then, start playing with these 2 variables!

1. Same wine taste profile, different price ranges

If your “go to” wine stand in the “Fris en Droog” taste profile, like the Jacob Creek Sauvignon Blanc (€ 7,49) — 5 to 7 euro price range — then choose another “Fris en Droog” but from the next price range category — 7 to 10 euro price range — like Brancott Sauvignon Blanc (€ 8,99) and try to find that quality difference.

1. Same price range, different wine taste profile.

If your “go to” wine is under the taste profile “Vol en Droog” like the Undurraga Chardonnay (€ 5,29), then you may choose another wine taste profile like “Fris en Droog” wine within the same price range like the Mesta Organic Verdejo (€ 5,29) and taste the difference.

1. Same price range, same wine taste profile, different wine

If you “go to” wine is the “Soepel” Berberana Red Dragon Tempranillo” (€ 5,99), then you might choose another wine from the same price range and taste profile like the “Soepel” Welmoed Merlot (€ 5,99)

Before you know it, you will have tasted many different styles of wine and flavours. This is the fun part of the wine adventure!

I hope you liked the article. Please share it among your friends and if you have any questions or comments, send us an email at info@twec.nl
Many thanks and Happy Tasting!

NOTE: Always drink in moderation. Remember to drink water while enjoying your glass of wine, the “divine proportion” is, one glass of water per glass of wine