German and central European grape varietals struggle to compete for name recognition.
Yeah, you know riesling and gewürztraminer, but not as well as sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. And the region’s other popular grapes — müller-thurgau, schwarzriesling, dornfelder and spätburgunder — are clobbered by the likes of cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir.
And considering that spätburgunder is German pinot noir, these defeats must be particularly galling.
But no wine suffers more than lemberger. That’s right, a lovely red that bears far too much resemblance to the famously noxious cheese.
For a time, crafty marketing types tried to deflect the unfortunate association by switching to the Austrian “blaufränkisch.” With American aversion to umlauts and severe Germanic inflections, however, the effort faltered.
Enter Jed Steele. In a Don Draper moment, the Kelseyville winemaker proposed an Americanized take on blaufränkisch: Blue Franc
The 2013 Blue Franc from the winery’s Shooting Star label is a bright, gentle wine that somehow discourages the varietal’s fondness for showing off its burly tannins. A swirl of the glass opens bowls of ripe blackberries and fresh cherries. Yet there is a shady turn, as hints of dense stewed fruit, black pepper and toasted nuts emerge.
And there’s something more — a nebulous spicy aroma that drifts between weathered cedar chests and cured dates. Eventually your mind settles on cinnamon sticks, but it suits only to an extent.
Lemberg … um, Blue Franc, has a reputation for pelting the palate with tannins. For this reason the wine is prized for its longevity. So at four years, one might consider the 2013 Shooting Star on the youthful side.
Yet Steele sidestepped this by fermenting the red wine in stainless steel. The result is a wine twirling bright berries in a fruit forward rush. The dance of blackberries and red cherries slows, however. Mid-palate the wine puts on a more assertive show, with impressions of rich berry jam, cracked pepper, cinnamon and loam — remnants of the grape’s powerful tannic bent.
All of this is rounded on the edges by a bracing citrus note. On the finish, a whiff of smoky, toasted almond drifts in.
It’s a clever and engaging wine.
Steele located the lemberger at a vineyard in Washington, with vines that have gathered terroir for almost four decades. By giving it a light treatment in stainless, he added a bright aspect to a genteel wine.
Call it what you will, the 2013 Shooting Star Blue Fran proves that lemberger deserves more name recognition.
And a better name.
