26. Getting to Know Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise

Anshu Grover: [00:00:00] 

Hello and welcome to The Wineitupanotch Podcast, a podcast where we talk about wine life and everything in between. My name is Anshu, I'm your host and I am thrilled that you've decided to join me today. Thank you for doing so! 

Welcome to Episode 26 of the podcast. I'm recording this after I finally, finally, finally, got back to running long distances again, and just this past weekend, I finished my first half marathon after three years away, I can't believe it's been three years - of course the Big C came in the middle and foiled my plans to run a marathon approximately three years ago. But if I backtrack those three years, I was a pretty regular runner.

I would be out multiple times in a week. I was always on a training plan. I would say I would crush 10 Ks and really enjoyed the half marathon distance and did two half marathons a year for several years. And honestly, I was thinking I was going to do my first marathon and then all of a sudden, you know, Covid came along and as I said, foiled that plan. 

Not only did it foil my plan to run a marathon, but it also made me exceedingly lazy. And while I did continue to exercise during that time and kept up with some running. I definitely didn't do it at the level that I was doing it before and had fallen off of long distances, but earlier this year, I had this feeling that I just really wanted to get back to running and do it in a meaningful way. So I made this commitment at the beginning of the year that I would run a half marathon, and I started talking about it more to make sure that I couldn't bail out of it, which is something that, you know, I love to do if I'm not committed to something.

 I started training and I have to tell you, I had a whole bunch of snafus in that training period. 

I started training and then I even signed up for a race and I thought, here I am. I'm ready to do this. But as these things go, it did not go as well as planned and I actually -if you follow me on Instagram, you might know this - but I actually fell and injured myself fairly badly about two to three weeks before the race that I just ran 

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this weekend.

 I was pushing for distance, but I had not actually crossed that large a distance relative to what I'm capable of doing when suddenly while running on a trail at about, kilometer 12, I tripped and fell and slid across the trail. I had a mouth full of dirt. The wind was completely knocked out of my body.

I was completely scratched up crying actually, when I called my husband and asked him to come pick me up, it was really quite the catastrophe. And I thought, okay, this is a sign, maybe I'm not supposed to run. But then I thought about it just a little bit longer and said, no, I am meant to run. So I decided regardless of what had happened, I was going to still run the race.

And so I am extremely proud to say I did it this past weekend. I walked/ran, I definitely did not run the full 21.1 kilometers that makes up a half marathon. I actually never could run that full distance, continuously. So it's a walk run for me, and it was slower than what I would usually have done from a pace perspective, but actually not that much slower.

So it took me about an extra 20 to 25 minutes at the top end. I think it was more like 20 minutes from my last time. Which honestly, over 21.1 kilometers was surprisingly less extra time than I thought it would be. 

It was messy though, you know, like I said, a lot of walking. I was definitely questioning my logic and my executive functioning skills at some points in the race when I felt like I couldn't do it anymore.

 But when I hit about kilometer 17, I felt fairly certain that from this point forward, we were really only talking about, you know, four kilometers and. The worst case scenario, I knew I could walk it. So at that stage, even though I felt really tired, I just decided that I was gonna stop thinking about quitting and I was just gonna finish it.

 Anyways, long story short, I'm done and I'm back in the game. I think I wanna run another half marathon later this year, and I was so proud to come home and share the medal with my kids. The funny thing is that the race started not that far from my house so my husband dropped me off, but it ended down in the city and I had to walk to public 

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transport, take public transport home, and then walk from the subway station to my house.

 So I actually probably tacked on another five kilometers of walking after running that long distance. So by the time I came home, I was completely exhausted and it had started raining, but I was still very proud to walk in that door and to share that I had finished what I had finished. And actually, you know what a funny thing is?

I think that all that extra walking helped with blood flow and keeping my muscles supple instead of them, you know, getting really tight after the race. it's two days later and I'm feeling quite good, to be honest. I don't feel very sore at all. So, as I say, the buddy as a memory, you know, it probably remembers that it used to be able to run these distances, but I think that that extra walking probably helped me.

Everything always works out the way it's supposed to, and I am sitting here to let you know that if you have your eyes set on a target, go out, do it. Believe in yourself. You can absolutely do it, even if something has come in your way. Even if something has come in your way multiple times and you feel like you can't get it done.

Put your mind back to it and get it done because you absolutely can and you always feel proud on the other side of that. So there's my little pep talk before we get into wine. 

Now let's talk about wine! 

So today I want to talk to you about sweet wines, and more particularly I want to talk to you about Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise.

 Now, I have not always really been a fan of sweet wine, if I'm perfectly honest and completely honest with you. It's not a wine style that I've really been drawn to in the past. However, in studying for my WSET Diploma, one of the units is on fortified wines, so that unit is called D5, and it deals exclusively with fortified wines, which I've talked about before on the podcast.

 And some of those fortified wines are sweet by nature, and one of those is Muscat Beaumes-de-Veni se. So we spent quite a bit of time studying Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise and I actually found myself really kind of falling in love with this particular sweet fortified wine. Much to my surprise, because as I said, I'm not a huge fan of sweet 

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wines.

At least I wasn't before I started learning more about them. But now that I understand a little bit more about the intricacies of making a sweet wine and really how delicate and interesting they can be, I want to share a little bit more about them. And in particular, as I said, I just found myself really drawn to Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise.

So that's what I want to talk to you about today. 

 So what is Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise? 

 Technically Muscat Beames-de-Venise is considered a Vin Doux Naturel, which is effectively a sweet, natural wine. It comes from France and it is part of a broader category of Vin Doux Naturel, but it is a specific wine made in a specific way, in a specific location.

 Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise is essentially a sweet, very aromatic wine that is made from the Muscat grape, and it's made in the Southern Rhone Valley in southeastern France. It actually comes from an area around a beautiful small village that is called Beaumes-de-Venise. This town has a long history of wine making, dating back to the Roman era, and in fact, the Muscat grape variety was one of the first to be cultivated in the area. They've been making it into sweet wine for centuries, but it wasn't actually until 1945 that Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise was awarded AOC (or specified appellation) status, which thereby recognizes the wine's quality and its origin from this area.

 And today, really, you know, if you're a wine lover, there's a good chance that you know this sweet wine style because it is fairly renowned and it's drunk and available all over the world. 

Now when we talk about Beaumes-de-Venise, there are actually two appellations specifically that have "Beaumes-de-Venise" in them.

 There's Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise and Beaumes-de-Venise. Both are AOCs, and I just want to clarify that it's only Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise AOC that makes the sweet fortified wines. The red wines that are produced in the area are produced under the Beaumes-de-Venise AOC. 

 Now the vineyards for Beaumes-de-Venise are located on the southern 

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slopes of the Dentelles de Montmirail, which is actually a small chain of mountains that are in the province of Provence, if you will, in southern France.

And it's on the southern slopes of these mountains at altitudes of about 100 to 500 meters that the vineyards of Beaumes-de-Venise are located. 

The total acreage that's dedicated to the production of this sweet wine is actually less than 500 hectares, so there's already a fairly small vineyard area that is available in the Beaumes-de-Venise AOC, or the Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise AOC, but then even smaller at only 500 hectares for Muscat.

 So it's really quite a unique and small production wine in many ways, if you will, though there's still quite a bit of it being produced and there's about 20% that's exported to markets outside of France, but that notwithstanding at 500 hectares, we're not talking about a really large area that's producing these wines.

And again, for a wine to be called Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise, it must come from the Beaumes-de-Venise area. 

 The overall climate here is hot. It's dry, it's quite Mediterranean, and it's affected by what's called the Mistral wind. The Mistral wind is a cool, fairly forceful wind that comes from the north of France down through the Rhone Valley, so it blows south, and it's very famously associated with the Northern Rhone and Southern Rhone, particularly some of the really high-end AOCs that make red wine such as Chateauneuf-du-Pape or Cote Rotie or Cornas, but it also affects Beaumes-de-Venise. So what the Mistral wind does is it effectively cools the area down a little bit, which as I mentioned, is a generally hotter area, which then allows for grapes to ripen for a little bit longer, to retain some acidity and really reach those levels of sugar that are needed to produce a naturally sweet wine such as Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. 

 If you're interested 

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in knowing about soils, the soils here are a mixture of clay and sand, but that's maybe potentially a little bit nerdy and not exactly that relevant to the ultimate wine style. But the Mistral wind and the hot Mediterranean climate absolutely is.

 So let's just talk a little bit about the grape that's used to make this wine. Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise is produced using the Muscat grape, but it's important here to note that the Muscat grape has a lot of permutations and combinations, in the wine world. So there's lots of Muscat and variations, or - I don't wanna call them clones, but let's just say different types of Muscat - that are being grown all over the world.

 In the case of Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise, this wine must be made utilizing the Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains grape variety, which is considered to be the oldest and most storied version or variation of Muscat. So really the highest quality of Muscat that is available is what is used in Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains is known for its small size of berries. Those berries have very intense aromatics, which usually lean toward notes of orange blossom, grapes and spices. A nd in spite of the name of the variety containing the word blanc, the variety actually produces berries that are white, pink, red, black - they're sort of. a range of colors. So they're not necessarily just white, but they are prized for those really high aromatics and their ability to reach high sugar levels. And the size of the berry is relevant because with a smaller size of berry, you're going to get more intensity in the juice that is pressed out of those berries, and that's why this particular variation of Muscat is so highly prized.

 It's worth noting though that Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains is actually grown all around the world. It's not only grown here and it has about 60 synonyms for its name worldwide. So I find the world of Muscat can get a little confusing. and definitely can be a deep study if you really wanna spend time learning about all the 

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variations of Muscat and all of the names that they go by.

But in this case, it's just worth remembering that it's Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains that is used in this wine and that this is a very highly prized grape variety. And it's also worth noting that Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise has to be produced using 100 hundred percent of this variety. 

 So let's talk a little bit about how the wine is produced.

 Now. I mentioned that I learned about this wine while studying fortified wines in my WSET Diploma class. So all that to say this is a fortified wine. The way that this wine is produced is that the grapes are harvested quite late in the season, as I mentioned, because of that dry hot Mediterranean climate, those grapes are hanging on the vines longer. They're accumulating more sugar.

They're becoming richer and denser when they're left to hang for longer, and so they're left to hang for longer in the growing season. That allows them to ripen fully and develop those really high sugar levels, and then they are removed. from the vine, usually through successive passages, through the vineyard, because the vineyard managers want to pick based on the maturity of the individual bunches. 

 By regulation, the grapes actually do have to have a certain potential sugar content. It's really high, actually. It's greater than 252 grams per liter in order to be harvested. So when the grapes are pressed and produced into a must that is then going to be fermented,

that juice and that must is already naturally very sweet because the grapes have that natural sweetness. This means that actually no additional sugar needs to be added at all while these wines are being made to affect that very sweet end product that we get with a Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. and what they actually do is they arrest fermentation through the addition of a spirit. This process is known as "mutage" in France, and that is what stops the wine from fermenting to dryness. It probably would struggle to ferment to dryness anyways because the sugars are so high, but that's what effectively creates a fortified wine. 

 So they start off by fermenting a regular wine. When they reach 

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the amount of alcohol and sugar that they wish to reach, they add a neutral spirit, which stops the fermentation process, raises the alcohol level and leaves us with a sweet fortified wine. 

 Usually these wines are produced in stainless steel tanks. I would say almost exclusively because the aromatics of these wines - really getting that beautiful perfume of the Muscat grape - is so critical to the final style.

 Sometimes the wines are then aged in oak barrels for several months to help to develop flavor and aroma . Where this is undertaken, those will not be new barrels. They will not be small barrels. They will be larger barrels that are fairly neutral because the intention is not to impart oak flavor in the wine.

 This is generally a very clean, very aromatic, very fresh, though sweet wine. If you're thinking about comparable styles, this wine is made in a style similar to Port or Madeira, but it to me is very different ultimately in the glass.

Now it's worth noting that there are very strict guidelines for the production of Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise, we are in France, after all, so this is the land of intense regulations, especially at the AOC level. Those regulations are governed by the INAO or the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine. And they have established strict guidelines for everything from, as I said, the grape varieties that can be used, which is a hundred percent Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains, all the way through to the minimum alcohol level, the amount of sugar in the finished wine, and the maximum permitted yield per hectare.

 To speak to that point, the regulations require that the wine , when finished, must contain at least 100 grams per liter of sugar and have a minimum alcohol level of 15%.

 This might be surprising to hear, but actually at a hundred grams per liter of sugar minimum, and a minimum alcohol level of 15%, the sweetness level is not actually that high for a sweet wine. In fact, sweet wines can get really high. I'm talking, you know, 

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150 grams per liter of sugar, 200 grams of liter per sugar.

So actually, a finished Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise is a relatively fresh wine, which is what I love about it. 

 So let's talk a little bit about what a Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise is going to give you in the glass. 

Generally it is going to be a golden color in the glass. Really pretty to look at a deep sort of yellow gold.

 It's generally a fairly youthful wine, as I mentioned. It is not aged for a long period of time. It is not aged in new oak. So this is a wine that's intended to be drunk young. And it displays a lot of beautiful primary fruit flavors and aromas, which are highly aromatic. Generally, you're going to get orange blossom, notes of honey, nectarine and ripe or dried apricots. 

 On the palate, the wine tends to have a fuller body, and it feels fairly rich because it's dense with sugar and sweetness and ripe fruit flavors. And a lot of those notes are going to continue on the palate such as apricots, honey, citrus fruits, and that florality. But though the wines are quite sweet, they are really redolent with a nice vein of acidity.

And that acidity really helps to balance the sweetness and often give the wine a crisp finish, a long finish, a very satisfying and pleasing finish in the mouth. So, the wines do not feel cloying. And this is what I love about a Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise because it's beautiful to smell. It's really nice and full in the mouth, but it leaves the palate feeling quite fresh, so you don't feel as though you're, you know, chewing on a thick piece of taffy or a really heavy candy.

 Now with sweet wines, acidity is always critical, but I really like the balance here (in a Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise) between the light, delicate nature of the aromatics and flavors and that acidity. Whereas in some fortified wines, even though they're relatively high in acidity - I'm thinking of a Madeira for example - sometimes they don't have quite that light, delicate, aromatic nature to them because they're made from different grapes and Muscat is very well known for that highly aromatic and 

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delicate nature.

 So I just love that mix and I think it's that mix that's made me feel - pardon the pun - but sweet on this kind of wine.

Now let's just point out once again that the wines are not as high in alcohol as other fortified wines. They're not as sweet as other sweet wines, so there's something pretty special here. 

Now if you are having a Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise, remember this should be served well chilled at about eight to 10 degrees Celsius.

 And now let me give my plug because I do think you should definitely be adding Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise to your repertoire. It's a beautiful wine to enjoy in warmer weather. With sweet food, fruit-based desserts are perfect. Anything with sweetness in it will do well with a wine like this. But it will also do well with spicy flavors, especially if you're having a dish that has a hint of spice, but also some element of fruitiness to it.

 So I would suggest any Asian dishes that have either a fruit glaze or some sort of a fruit component. So perhaps there's like a pineapple beef stir fry, or something along those lines that would go really well with a Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. 

I really think this wine is special. It's really great for special occasions too, when you're having a little bit of a celebration and you want something a little sweet in your glass, think about a Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. If you have not had one before, I think you'll be pleased with what you find. 

 And as an added bonus, these wines often come in smaller bottles, so about 375 ml, which makes them fairly easy to manage. You're not stuck with a full bottle. You can buy a half bottle and enjoy that with your family and friends as even a pre-meal drink or a post meal drink or just something on a patio on a nice spring day.

It just makes for a beautiful moment!

 So clearly you can tell I'm a fan - I do like Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. I've kept some around in my cellar even after I finished studying and I don't have to drink this wine anymore. And I definitely wanted to pass the love onto you and share a little bit about it. And hopefully I have inspired you to also try some Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise.

 If you do, please be sure to reach out to me. You can leave me a review on your podcast

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player. You can also reach out to me on Instagram or send me an email. Let me know what you think. And if you don't try it, but you've just listened to this episode, do me a favor, drop me a line, send me a review on your podcast player, because your reviews make all the difference.

 They give me the juice that I need to keep recording these episodes. Listener reviews also help the podcast to be discovered by other people such as yourself who are wine lovers, who would like to hear a podcast about wine. So definitely leave me a review if you can, or drop me a line and let me know what you think of the podcast. I always love to hear from you. 

 Now, if you want to learn more about Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise or you'd just like to read alongside listening, be sure to check out the blog post that I did recently at www.wineitupanotch.com, all about Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. I'll be sure to link that in the show notes. I'll also be sure to link a website about Rhone wines which goes into a lot of really nice detail.

Perhaps not as much as we have here in this podcast episode, but does give you some good details about Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise and other wines that come from the Rhone Valley.

 And with that, I will go back to my day and wish you a beautiful day as well.

 And don't forget, if you enjoyed this episode, you can also share it with someone else in your network that you think would enjoy it or put it on your stories for Instagram and be sure to tag me so that I will know that you have enjoyed this episode and I will be able to share your share as well.

Wishing you lots of peace, love, light, and of course, good wine! 

Until we meet again, take care.