Friday Night Bubbles

2000 Movia Puro Rosé, $50 on the east coast, $42 out west, Domaine Select Wine Estates. Early in July of this year while reading Jeremy Parzen's always intelligent and pleasurable blog, I saw a photo of his pal Jon opening a bottle of Movia Puro upside down in a bowl of water. I asked why this is necessary and Jeremy posted this informative response, including a neat video showing a successful disgorgement.

Knowing that I kind of like Champagne, Jeremy felt that I would be a more complete human being if I were to disgorge and taste Movia sparkling wine for myself. He waved his magic wand and arranged for me to receive a sample, which I very much appreciated. I put the wine in the racks and tried to be patient for a few weeks so they could recover from their journey.

Jack and Joanne at Fork & Bottle, Jeremy Parzen, and Italian Wine Merchants (particularly their helpful page on how to disgorge the bottle) on their websites offer lots of information about Movia, so I will only tell you what I know about this specific wine. The 2000 vintage is 70% Chardonnay, 20% Ribolla, and 10% Pinot Noir (Pinot Nero in Italian, Modri Pinot in Slovenian). The 1999 vintage was all Pinot Noir, according to the Movia website, so I guess the wine maker is not wedded to a particular formula. Like most Movia juice, this is aged in barrique, in this case for 4 years. It then spends almost 3 years more aging in bottle before release. Obviously there is no dosage, as we consumers must disgorge the bottles ourselves. I might be wrong here, but I think there is almost no residual sugar in this wine, maybe a couple of grams per liter. This is amazing, considering how rich and ripe the wine feels. Must be all that time on the lees.

When I could wait no longer (3 weeks, more or less) I turned a bottle upside down one night and put it in the fridge. I wedged it between the side of the fridge and a jug of water, hoping it would remain still so the sediment could gather neatly in the neck. The next evening I knocked the bottle over while trying to take it out of the fridge. Oiy! So again I wedged it in there and swore that I would be more careful the next day.

I managed to extract the bottle very smoothly the next night, but then realized that I had to remove the foil wrapper and the cage before opening. How do you do that while holding the bottle upside down using only one hand? Cannot be done without some bottle shaking. I did my best, and then submerged the neck in a bowl of water and eased out the cork. An explosion of foam and jettisoned sediment, I turned the bottle upright, and I have no idea how much wine I lost because the bottle is strategically opaque. Not an entirely successful disgorgement, as the wine was a bit cloudy.

But the nose...a thing of beauty! So clean and fresh, and such incredibly rich and ripe fruit. The exuberance of eating a just-picked peach in August, the juices running down to your elbow. There is a hint of cinnamon in there somewhere, too. Nothing mineral or earthy going on here - all fruit all the time, but it is utterly beautiful fruit, and somehow with only fruit there is depth and complexity on the nose.

The palate did not follow through on the nose's wild promises. It felt rather thin, considering the broad richness of the nose, and the fruit was cidery, somewhat hollow. Maybe I messed up the bottle with my clumsy handling, or maybe, as is common with biodynamic and naturally made wines, maybe this bottle is not as good as most - lots of variation.

Luckily for me, Jeremy's generous sample gods sent more than 1 bottle. I waited a month and tried again. This time I placed the upside down bottle in a flower vase filled with water to keep it stable in the fridge. And I trained on the stationary bike for 3 weeks in order to achieve the vise-like knee grip necessary to remove the foil and cage without shaking the bottle too much. Disgorgement successful this time, I'm proud to say. Perfectly clear peach and onion skin colored wine.

The nose was again stunning. This nose is moving in a visceral way - is this what it smells like to stand in a fruit orchard on the border between Collio and Brda? And this time I liked the flavors much more. A spring water cleanness supports lovely ripe fruit and there is a spicy depth to the wine. The fruit perfume lingers in the nostrils after swallowing. I could imagine this pairing well with duck breast and confit, with light creamy cheeses and fresh fruit, or even with fresh scallops and shrimp - their sweet clean characters might compliment each other. I'm saving the last bottle for the winter when I'll be desperate for the scent of summer fruit. It will make a perfect Valentine's day wine, I'm thinking.