Spending Time With… Jerram Winery’s Marechal Foch

August 28, 2010 by MTB

Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

Whenever I hit the wine trail, I head out armed with my trusty GPS, a list of wineries, and a cooler with ice packs for the wine I know I’ll be bringing home. I try to be judicious, don’t want to bankrupt my retirement after all, but there’s only so much you can tell about a wine from a 1oz sip – particularly when it’s tasted in the midst of a number of other 1oz sips that day. So whenver I find a wine that catches my attention – sometimes it wows me, sometimes I can see potential, and sometimes it’s just different enough from anything else I’ve ever tried – I take a bottle home. This provides the opportunity to sample the wine in larger portions, pair it with food, and see how it stands up after a day (unless I have guests, it’s usually 2-3 days per bottle of wine).

And though this has been my practice since I started on the wine trail, I’ve never bothered to put my new impressions to paper. Hence the launch of a new occasional series, “Spending Time With…”, follow-up posts on my impressions of a wine after spending some time with it. Keeping with the theme and focus of Vino Verve, these will primarily be “local” wines, wines I’ve picked up on my various travels. That’s not to say that there might not be the occasional post about a wine I picked up in a package store, but here at Vino Verve we like to focus on celebrating local wines, rather than just a running commentary of “what I drank last night.”

I launch the series with Jerram Winery’s Marechal Foch.

I’ve had this bottle about 18 months, having picked it up during my first visit to Jerram just after Christmas 2008. At the time I was still a newcomer to the Marechal Foch grape and wasn’t really sure I was a fan, finding the grape often tart and the wines “young.” My prior encounters had not left me with an overall great impression of the grape. However, Jerram’s Marechal Foch caught my attention; it felt more complex than some of the other wines I’d tried, and the cherry notes, while still bright and slightly sour, seemed to make more sense in Jerram’s wine than they had in previous Marechal Foch wines I had tried. I remember liking all of Jerram’s wines and actually going home with a bottle of each, but the Marechal Foch was one that stood out for me that day.

18 months later, I continue to be impressed. The wine held up well, smoothing out just a bit. The fruit notes are a bit stronger than I had noted during my original tasting, but they’re richer as well. The nose is dusky and earthy and there’s very little hint of the tangy cherry I found in the mouth. The wine starts out dry and slightly earthy, dusty almost, and then opens up into the bright notes of slightly sour cherries that are so characteristic of Marechal Foch. The finish is definitely smoother than my first tasting, mellower – the cherry tartness hits the roof of your mouth towards the front, and then the wine mellows as it moves back through the mouth.

I let the wine breathe for about 15 minutes before pouring the first glass, which I had on it’s own. I then paired a second glass with a grilled steak and beefsteak tomato salad. The wine held it’s own against the steak, but I don’t know that it was the right pairing, neither seemed to add anything to the other.

I finished the bottle on the second evening, when I paired it with a Greek casserole dish made of beef sauteed in onions, garlic, tomatoes, oregeno and basil pasta, and feta cheese. The heartier, spicier food was a much better pairing – the cherry notes in the wine became more juicy, and while there’s still that sour tart “bite” that is one of the grape’s hallmarks, it worked really well against the salty brine of the feta cheese.

Overall, a strong Marechal Foch, one I’ll definitely be adding back to my “cellar.”

Jerram Winery is located in New Hartford, Connecticut. They are open Thursdays through Sundays, 11:00 – 5:00 from May 1st to December 31st. Their website has a list of locations that sell Jerram’s wines, all local to Central Connecticut. You may also want to contact the winery to see if they will ship directly.