Probolinggo Biru (Bali)

We all know you can't make wine from local grapes on the island of Bali. It's part of Indonesia; it's hot and humid, and it's on the equator. That's three strikes and you're out. Well, let's go to Bali to see if they can prove us wrong.

It's another tough trip from the US to this island paradise. Our first leg takes us to Seoul, South Korea, technically Incheon just out of town. It's a long flight, but in the world of vicarious travel, time stands still. Our layover is scheduled for 18 hours, but magically we are cutting it to 18 minutes. We're leaving South Korea to go to Indonesia and flying into Jakarta, the capital, and by some measures, the most populous city in the world with the metropolitan area having more than 33 million residents. Another 15 hour layover gets transformed by the magic of the grapeoftheday and 15 minutes later, we head on the much shorter, roughly 2 hour, flight to Bali. 

Bali has an interesting shape to it. It looks a bit like South Carolina, albeit with a knob on the southern end of it. Just at the northwestern corner of the knob is where we exit out plane. We're headed to vineyards about 10 miles mostly to the east.

The weather here is about the same year round. Daytime highs are 32-35C/90-95F for the most part, overnight lows about 23-25C/73-77F, and humidity is rarely below 85%. During the rainy months of November through February, they average 25-37 cm/10-15 inches of rain per month while the other months range from about 2 to 10 cm/1-4 inches. This is not traditional grape growing weather.

The wine we are sampling today is made of an unusual grape known as Probolinggo Biru. For our entire group, this is the first time tasting a wine made from this grape. In fact, we searched the internet and outside of Indonesia, we could not find any evidence that this grape exists. Our wine is a sparkling.

It is made using methods that closely follow, but do not exactly replicate methode traditionelle. Sugar is added during fermentation using a process known as chaptalization.  

This is an unusual sparkling wine. It's quite floral on the nose bringing scents that seem local in nature. On the palate, we get lots of green apple which is not unusual in a sparkling wine, but we also get some lemon pie which I certainly have not experienced before in a sparkling wine.

We're having this wine today with what some American restaurants refer to as a shellfish tower -- cold mixed shellfish of all varieties that pair wonderfully with the lemon notes. And, the coolness helps us as we taste in this brutal heat and humidity.



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