I met Woody Allen
I met Woody Allen
S2 E10 | I mean, his doppelgänger: he lives in Malta and he's trying his very best to go to jail while producing wine
Ciao! I'm Giulia and this is the second season of the Intergalactic Guide for Wine Explorers: the newsletter that helps you connect the dots in the wine universe, a couple of bottles / songs / words / random stories / links per month.
I will try to translate all previous episodes, but it is going to take some time, as I’m not that fluent in English anymore.
🚀 Wine and stuff in Malta
Your beloved wine padawan has just come home after a week in Malta. An unexpectedly eventful yet relaxing week, spent chilling on beautiful beaches. If retirement was actually a thing for us Italians, I’d love to spend mine there.
While talking about one particular eventful afternoon to a friend, I received a rather specific request: why don’t you write about it in the next episode of your newsletter?
Who am I to ignore my readers’ requests?
So, here we go: this episode is going to be “one of a kind” and quite different from previous episodes you might have read - mostly in Italian. This is the story of a unique wine-afternoon spent in Malta.
☀️ Mar Casar: la maison du vin naturel
What I liked the most about Malta were its rough edges: the island has not bowed down to the unbelievable stream of tourists flowing in every season. Sliema, the small city we stayed in, was crowded, loud, kinda dirty, with a decadent allure – which reminded me of the small villages one can only found in the depths of Southern Italy.
Sliema lives off tourism, but it doesn’t really care about looking polished: Sliema is Sliema, unapologetically so. It gives all it has to offer - astounding beaches and picturesque surroundings - but it never makes you think there’s anything more than that. That’s it: a beautiful promenade and breathtaking naturalistic glimpses.
A real sense of astonishment can be felt when discovering the efficient bus service that connects the island from north to south, from east to west. There’s a very useful app to plan every routes and there are several travel cards that allow tourists to travel far and wide, at very cheap fares. We enjoyed unlimited rides from 6AM to 12AM for a whole week for just € 40. (A lot to learn for our beloved Italian public train system)
On a sunny Thursday morning we jumped on a bus heading southbound, we dropped off at the “Girgenti” stop and we headed towards the hinterland of the Southern coast. After quite a long walk - surrounded by the omnipresent prickly pears and expanses of barren land, parched by the scorching sun, we reached our final destination: Mar Casar Winery, la maison du vin naturel.
That’s when we met him: the one and only Maltese Woody Allen. You can see him in the picture below, immortalized in the act of opening the first of MANY bottles that he generously let us taste throughout the afternoon.
He moved around lightly, followed by three stray dogs, entertaining us switching seamlessly from Italian to English to French, sharing quite peculiar ideas he firmly believed in: like, that plants do suffer - even though they do not have a brain.
The opening act was a Chardonnay, which had undergone 5-6 weeks of skin contact maceration: chameleonic I’d say, just like Woody himself; it was followed by a very kind, velvety blend of Merlot and Petit Verdot.
An then, out of the blue, an unbelievable demi-voleé , we didn’t see coming, like, at all. A truly unforgettable Merlot, that underwent maceration in contact with hemp buds; a unique taste profile, velvety, smooth, green-ish: a caress to the palate.
Our afternoon went on bottle after bottle, one sip at a time: we had the chance to taste unreleased wines, old vintages, experiments. Woody never left our side, except for a few times where he sat on a office chair to smoke his pipe.
After one too many trips to the office chair (I think it’s pretty clear what Woody was smoking - to fight back pain) Woody came clean and told us he’s been experimenting with many other substances - coke leaves, magic mushrooms and “stuff”.
As he wisely put it “If I don’t get arrested, we’ll have a lot of fun”
We shall all agree on that, I guess.
🪐 A wine from Mar Casar
🍾 The Chardonnay Amber Natural Wine 2017
🦞 When to drink it: on the beach, a kebab or a greek pita in your hands, the sun going down in front of you and all your worries behind
🎮 For my wine nerds:
Skin contact maceration: a blessing and a curse, for all winemakers making whites.
Why is that? Skin-contact maceration is like salt: the correct amount can greatly enhance any dish, just a pinch too much will ruin the flavour of whatever dish you cooked.
What can we say about our friend Woody’s Chardonnay? Good, even better than good, 100% enjoyable, could drink a case of it. We had it again a few days later while packing to go back home, and it literally brightened up our evening. But, it could be anything. The skin-contact maceration dictated how the wine tasted. Not tipicity, or anything else.
We must keep in mind though, that Chardoanny is kind of malleable: it takes after the winemaker and the land where it’s grown. Given the torrid climate of Malta, perhaps, a substantial amount of time spent in contact with the skins could only do good.
☄️ Another wine from Mar Casar
🍾 The Merlot “Sacrum” CBD Natural Wine 2020
🦞 When to drink it: I’d say any night when you really need/want to leave a mark. Be careful who you invite over though!
🎮 For my wine nerds:
As I mentioned in the first lines of this episode, this wine is fermented in contact with not only the skins, but also hemp buds. As soon as the fermentation starts, the hemp buds are added to the mix.
The CBD extraction is still minimum, yet it gives the wine a unique character. It gets even more clear when tasting this wine alongside the blend of Merlot and Petit Verdot - which was produced without this peculiar twist: it’s all about this green nuance, like minty aftertaste, freshly cut grass aromas, that comes and goes.
The fermentation of this one -like all Woody’s wines- is carried out in qvevri, which are Georgian amphorae “handmade by George Kopadze from Shroa, with the best Caucasian clay containing a great deal of gold, silver and magnesium”.
🎷 Amr Diab, Nour El Ein Spotify | YouTube | Apple Musicc
We spent three hours tasting Woody’s experiments, picturing his dreams and listening to him talking about anything; from the origin of the stray dogs wandering around the estate, some vignerons in Champagne that are allegedly buying grapes from the UK and the changes men’s libido goes through after the age of 62: the world that keeps evolving, while standing still.
All of this at the slow, relaxing yet steady pace that characterizes the landscapes - both urban and rural - of this island, at the southern edge of the Mediterranean.
I have to admit I don’t clearly recall what he was talking about (we tasted MANY bottles that afternoon), but I’d like to end this story with a sentence I jotted down on my notebook, said by Woody himself, while comparing relationships and wine drinking:
“A bottle of wine is like love: there’s the beginning, the middle or “clou moment” and the end. If you put it in a decanter, well, that’s a whole another story”.
💫 Wine for thoughts
Amphora winemaking: a practice that has grown to become quite popular in the last thirty years, thanks to bold winemakers (could I ever avoid mentioning Josko Gravner?), but this technique actually dates back to the dawn of time of winemaking.
Can you see the black holes in the picture above? Well, those are the mouths of the buried amphorae. Grapes and everything are put into them, they are sealed and the must becomes wine by fermenting inside them.
What is so special about amphorae, especially when compared to containers that are more commonly used for winemaking?
Clay shares with the most typical of containers, steel, the fact that it is a neutral material, which does not release aromatic substances to the wine during its stay in the container. In this way, the originary identity of the grape is not altered.
Terracotta amphorae have porosity in common with wood: the degree of porosity depends on the clay mixture and temperature at which they are produced; a lower degree corresponds to a greater capacity to exchange oxygen with the external environment - with a consequent enrichment in terms of taste and color.
Finally, with cement, terracotta amphorae share thermal inertia, that is to say, the capacity of the material, and therefore of the wine contained in it, not to undergo sudden changes in temperature. This is true for all types of amphorae, even more so if the amphorae are used “Georgian style”, that is, buried underground – as in the case of Woody’s amphorae.
🪐 Have you ever wondered how to take your first steps in exploring the world of wine, without the typical awe that goes with it?
I am shaping the Intergalactic Guide for Wine Explorers into a series of evenings dedicated to the discovery of one’s personal taste, an introduction to wine that does not aim to train future sommeliers, but conscious drinkers: taking the first step and nurturing one’s curiosity for a conscious approach to wine.
🛰️ Update: between the trip to Malta and other less enjoyable things, the production of the course has slowed down a bit. I hope I’ll be done with contents by the end of the month. Then I’ll have to find an e-commerce willing to provide the wines, a suitable platform for online editions, pitching restaurants in the area. Many many things! But I am really happy. I feel link a fermentation vessel: everything’s moving and growing and hopefully slowly turning into an awesome experience.
(I’m less excited about having to wake up at 5:30 AM everyday to have time for everything but it’s alright)
👉🏻 For obvious reasons, the course is only going to be in Italian. But if you still would like to give me suggestions or hints to help me build it, I would be immensely grateful. You can do so by leaving a comment or sending me a DM on Instagram.
🌒 Link worth sharing
By following this link you’ll find a thorough argumentation on amphora-aged wines written by Wine Enthusiast.
A brief article on Malta’s viticulture with a few suggested wineries - Woody is not included, you are very welcome.
Lebanon Winemakers pray for peace. The fact that it’s ok for some countries to ruthlessly invade and destroy other countries will always make me sick.
N/A drinks… well before N/A drinks were a thing. L’Antidote.
🌍 Q&A
Do you have a question for me but don't have Substack to leave a comment? Would you like to talk about something specific? Or perhaps recommend me a botte of wine, or a winery to visit?
📣 Did you enjoy this episode?
Could this become a recurring thing?
I’ve got a few weekends away planned ahead and a few wine fairs to attend: if I came in contact with cool wine stories, would you be interested in knowing more and reading episodes like this one?
That's it for this month: thank you very much for your time.
If you enjoyed this episode of the Intergalactic Guide for Wine Explorers, you could share it with your friends or acquaintances who might also be interested in the project:
If you have anything to ask, or doubts, you know where to find me: I’m always happy to talk about wine, down below in the comments section, or on Instagram.
Until next time.
Ciao!