Where is Charm in the Afternoon? (with the Monday Angel)
High above an ancient river, its source far from here, up in the world’s tallest mountains, I am swept away on a cloud of euphoric, sensory joy, so much pleasure in a glass of wine, some real and some, perhaps imagined.
It is hard to tell from here, orbiting amongst the heavens, watching Khmer angels prepare for the Khmer New Year. The Monday angel, Koreak Tevi will take her turn to visit earth this time around; golden romdoul flowers in her hair, cane and sword at her side, her prancing tiger ready for the long ride ahead.
Khmer folklore has it that Dhammabal Koma learned the answer to Kabil Moha Prum’s, (the King of Heaven’s) test of three questions when he listened to two vultures who had flown in to await his demise. He overheard them say,
“Where is charm in the morning?
In the morning, charm lies on people’s faces, so they wash their faces before starting a new day.
Where is charm in the afternoon?
In the afternoon, charm is on people’s chests, so they bathe to cool their bodies from the afternoon heat.
Where is charm in the evening?
In the evening, charm is at people’s feet, so they clean their feet after a full day of work and get ready for bed.”
Today, Koma would lose his head because, on this fine Monday afternoon, the charm is in my glass, high above the world, (Valhalla) with a small group of friends and colleagues, tasting some incredible wines.
We are with VIK Europe and Asia export manager Caroline Fanet, who is about to dash off to catch yet another flight. I conclude that after a tasting like this, she could just be mistaken for the Monday Angel.
Higher Ground
Norwegian vignerons, Alex and Carrie Vik established their remarkable VIK winery on top of a hill at Millahue, in Chile’s Cachapoal Valley.
An incredible accomplishment, their property is an almost other-worldly blend of nature, art, humanity, and technology, combined with a vivid imagination, bold, brave ideas, a big vision, intrepid creativity, and an artistic spirituality. The Chi flows strongly here, biorhythms resonate with harmony and potential.
In winemaker Cristián Vallejo, they found the perfect and most gifted partner imaginable. Not only does he bring their ambition and vision to life, but he also transforms all of this – captured and expressed magnificently- in his impeccable wines. Vallejo is a highly knowledgeable and experienced winemaker (who previously worked at Château Margaux). He is never prepared to rest on his laurels, always pushing the processes further, going beyond where he has been before, and ever taking Chilean wine into unfamiliar territory. He does this, both in how he creates his wines and in the uniqueness of how he defines and expresses terroir.
Above and Beyond
General Manager of Rosewood Phnom Penh, Daniel Simon, has a keen eye for detail and a natural flair for charming, exquisite, luxurious hospitality. In overseeing Phnom Penh’s and indeed one of Asia’s most prestigious properties, he is an active and enthusiastic participant in creating experiences, moments and occasions that are always magnificent, truly meaningful, and usually unforgettable. Simon is ably supported by chef Jan Van Dyk and the entire food and beverage team, Van Dyk is exceptional at catering to wine events.
The wine room at Rosewood is a thing of divine exhilaration, floor-to-ceiling glass on the 38th floor of Phnom Penh’s tallest building, high above the city, looking out beyond the Mekong and Tonle rivers to horizons shimmering with promise. From concept to design to execution, it is as if a dream has been put into reality, a place where the pleasurable consumption of fine wine feels merely like the starting point.
Pliny the Elder, Roman naval and army commander, author and naturalist famously wrote “In vino veritas,” “In wine is truth,” yet up here is a place where imagination, possibility, philosophy, and poetry whirl in little eddies with every swirl of your glass. Panorama and panacea as an antidote to the swarming trials of life below.
Elevated Elaborations
Le Belle Piu 2019
La Piu Belle is the goddess of nature, love, fertility, beauty, and art. At Vik, they call her the mystical world’s personification of their incredible terroir. She embodies the sun enlightening the mist that covers the Millahue Valley at dawn. She incarnates the freshness of the Pacific coastal and Andean Mountain breezes cooling the grapes during the luminescent summer. She is the gentle rain giving life to the vines, enhancing and liberating the fragrance of the green and luxurious native flora and fauna surrounding the vineyard. She is the complexity of the soils, the roundness of the hills and the beauty of the valleys.
The striking label for Le Belle Piu was painted by renowned Chilean artist, Gonzalo Cienfuegos. He is a previous winner of the Art Critics Circle Award at the San Paulo Brazil Biennale.
The fruit for the 2019 wine is all from the Millahue estate in the Cachapoal Valley. The soils are deep, porous decomposed granitic soil with good drainage. The wine is a blend of Carmenere 44%, Cabernet Sauvignon 41%, Syrah 14%, Merlot 1%.
Maturation was for 24 months in French oak barrels, 5% of which were in the ‘barroir’ style unique to Vik. ‘Barroir,’ is the term VIK has given to their process where staves imported from France, are seasoned and coopered on the property, fired and charred with coals of locally grown oak, to impart a regional character and unique complexity.
The wine is bold and rich in ripe berry flavours but there is also that hallmark, impeccable attention to detail, giving the wine its elegance, and incredible finesse. The 2019 is still very young and there is a touch of brazen character to the black fruits and red berries.
Aromas are of violets, star anise, forest berries, dark fruits, some wood spice, milk chocolate, vanilla pod, and a touch of cedar. The wine glides onto the palate with a creamy texture, ripe berries hover on the mid-palate before some very fine tannin emerges towards the back and a hint of eucalyptus. It is an exceptional wine, complex, pristine and yet at its core, in its heart, it is an extrovert, generous and even playful. The fruit is lush yet faultlessly managed and presented, seriously impressive it was beautiful in the glass.
96/100
VIK 2019
This might just be Chile’s finest wine; it is certainly at the pointy end and right in the conversation.
Cabernet Sauvignon 77%, Cabernet Franc 23%, Millahue, Cachapoal Valley, Maturation for 20 months in new French oak barrels with an additional six months in barrels toasted with Chilean oak fires.
Elegance, aromas of blueberries, and violets, with Kola, cooking spices, chocolate, tobacco leaf and coffee grinds. The wine positively seeps onto the palate. It has astonishing depth with remarkable grace and poise. There is a juicy, sweet core of red and black currents, a deep pool of fruit that goes on forever. There are firm, fine tannins and exceptional length on the palate. The wine is youthful, with plenty of leafy notes, spices, subtle peppermint and earthy characters. This wine will only get better, but it is incredibly attractive right now.
99/100
Stonevik 2023
Like many an old wine critic, I have spent too much time during exhibitions at ‘natural wine’ stands, tasting mousy, volatile, mercaptan-riddled wines, trying to grasp what it is that has people so excited, fanatical and sometimes downright militant about the movement.
“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” -Che Guevara
I think of the artist Ornette Coleman, (1930 – 2015) and his extremely polarizing album, ‘The Shape of Jazz to Come”, (1959). Coleman was self-taught and played a plastic saxophone because he couldn’t afford a real one. He broke or simply ignored all the norms and conventions of music at the time. All of his music seemed improvisational, innovative, experimental and confrontational, it would soon come to be known as ‘Free Jazz’, but for the few who thought him some sort of new jazz genius/messiah, most just didn’t get it at all, some found it confrontational. Many rusted-on jazz fans were hostile towards both the artist and his music, critics called him a fraud. Miles Davis said that Coleman was “all screwed up inside” and Dizzy Gillespie remarked of Coleman that “I don’t know what he’s playing, but it’s not jazz.”
“A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.” -Fidel Castro
In 1949, after a performance with a rhythm and blues band in a Baton Rouge dance hall, Coleman was reportedly summoned from the bandstand and beaten by a group of concertgoers who took exception to his appearance and playing, they also smashed his saxophone. A decade later, at the legendary Five Spot venue in New York, drummer Max Roach came to listen to Coleman’s music and ended up punching him in the mouth.
“The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.” -Eugene V. Debs
Today, few deny that his musical output during the early 1960’s influenced and heralded the direction of jazz music that followed; that he indeed did shape the highly successful and much-lauded Jazz that was to come.
His 2006 album ‘Sound Grammar’ received the Pulitzer Prize for Music, making Coleman the second jazz musician ever to receive the honor.
I had begun to resign myself to the fact that I would probably never understand, or come over to ‘getting it’ when it comes to natural wine, or that the current offerings were perhaps just a precursor to the better things to come from it. That was until I had a taste of what was to come!
I think the key to making fault-free, high-quality natural wine without the use of any additions, chemicals or preservatives is to be highly skilled at making impeccable, pristine wines from spotlessly clean fruit, with good control over temperature and the hygiene standards of the finest hospitals.
“Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
My very first tasting of VIK winery’s first natural wine just blew my head off, here was everything natural wine could and probably should be. Here was natural wine taken to new heights, unravelled, decoded, and finally given life.
They call it STONEVIK and state that it is the Ultimate Natural Wine created in Nature by Nature, there is much to take in with that statement.
A blend of Cabernet Franc 77%, Cabernet Sauvignon 19% and, Carmenere 4%, the wines is fermented in French oak, native toasted, (Barroir) barrels for one cycle of the moon. The wine is then aged in seven handmade native clay amphoras, three for the universe and four for the earth, aligned according to astronomical principles. The amphoras are semi-buried in the La Robleria forest, protected by oak trees. The natural clearing is a most interesting site, at 1,000 meters above sea level it is an open circle amongst a mature forest of trees.
Winemaker Cristián Vallejo brought in a team of experts, including a geologist, an astronomer, an astrologist, and a shaman, to evaluate the site. All found something positive and were impressed, and it was soon the chosen ground. After twelve months maturing in the forest the wine was deemed to be of such high quality as to be ready for release.
Aromatically the wine is pristine, complex, and exotic with notes of crushed earth, graphite, axle grease, black fruits, wild herbs, damp autumn leaves, and truffles, the whole floor of the forest seems to be all right here in the glass. The palate shows dense fruit, Nietzsche’s abyss staring back at you, complex fascinating, layered and seductive. Black currants and forest berries, with notes of candied fig, olive tapenade, dark soy, and sage. There is fine minerality at the back, giving the wine balance and freshness. It is a remarkable wine, there is also aging potential here (how long will be fascinating). Indeed, I feel I have tasted a wine beyond the shape of natural wines to come, the future is here, and it looks incredibly interesting and worthwhile, what fascinating wines we are in for.
97/100
A magnificent tasting with the team from Rosewood, organized by Vibol Thach and B Him from The French Wine Collection. It was a stunning coda to the Cambodian calendar year, and with a promise of better things to come. “Sousdey Chnam Thmey” everyone, happy Khmer New Year.
Darren Gall
