Get to know your nose: Wine Fest kicks off today
By Laura Raskin
Independent Arts Writer

Wineries and wine tasters gather at the focal point of the Nantucket Wine Festival — the Grand Tastings.

In the 2005 Academy Award-winning movie “Sideways,” wine got as much on-screen time as Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church combined.

In one scene, Maya (Virginia Madsen) welcomes Miles (Giamatti) with an ode to the ancient beverage: “I started to appreciate the life of wine, that it's a living thing, that it connects you more to life. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing. I like the think about how the sun was shining that summer and what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I love how winecontinues to evolve, how if I open a bottle the wine will taste different than if I had uncorked it on any other day, or at any other moment. A bottle of wine is like life itself – it grows up, evolves and gains complexity.”

Wine will breathe life into the island when the 9th Annual Nantucket Wine Festival oprnd today and runs through Sunday. Like last year, all of the events — from tonight’s opening reception to the grand tasting — will occur within walking distance of downtown. The silent auction will benefit the Nantucket Historical Association.

Alex Gambal is one of the numerous wine and food celebrities making an appearance on the island this week

Gambal compares pinot noir to an Olympic long jumper: great power, but always elegant. It is a grape of finesse and muscle, but it is not too dense. Chardonnay, on the other hand, is known for its richness and length. In hotter climates, it can become too heavy.

Like a little blonde-haired girl with a head of ringlets: “When it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad it’s terrible,” said Gambal.

Those lucky enough to have a ticket to Gambal’s limited wine tasting, one of the festival’s Great Wines in Grand Houses events, will surely sample only the finest of both.

Maison Alex Gambal is his winery in Beaune, France in the Burgundy region. It is where he spends most of his time, overseeing a staff of “two-and-a-half” who make the wine without pumps or machines. Gambal buys grapes and grape must, or juice, from small groves in the region – the Côte d’Or or Golden Slope – and then completes the vinification.

At the tasting, Gambal will explain the process.

“Frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to say until I open the bottles. It’s as much of a pleasure for me,” he said in a recent telephone interview from Seattle where he was selling his product. He may open bottles of which he only has a few left.

The relatively recent ex-patriot has been coming to Cape Cod since he was in college, and now has a cottage in East Orleans. Nantucket is a natural market, with many wine-oriented restaurants, he said.

Gambal left a life in the real estate and finance world in Washington, D.C., in 1993 for the small French village of Baille. With a passion for wine and food, he became immersed in a job with a wine exporter while his family became part of the local fabric, he said.

“It was the right place and the right time. I was open to the opportunity, most importantly,” said Gambal.

In 1996, Gambal enrolled in a one-year wine school in Beaune geared toward adults making a change in careers. He took chemistry, botany and biology, all in French. He was turning 40.

“During that year I had the idea of putting together a small artisanal winemaking opportunity,” he said. He started his company from scratch and produces 4,000 cases of wine a year. He would like to expand to 5,000, a number that would allow him to “still have fun and continue to keep my hands dirty.”

Gambal said he strives for “character of the palate” in his wines — that they impart the singular flavor of the vineyard, the grapes and growing season. This is the seventh year that Maison Alex Gambal has been producing. He bottled 2003 wine this winter and is finishing selling his 2002 and 2003 vintages, he said.

This past year’s growing season meant a later harvest — October instead of September. It was cool with an Indian summer in the fall. Burgundy is a marginal growing climate, almost at the northernmost point possible, creating a love-hate relationship with the grapes, said Gambal.

While he has to be in the States to sell, Gambal finds he is spending more and more time in France.

“That’s where I can really create. That’s where I need to be,” he said.

For more information on the festival and a full list of events, go to www.nantucketwinefestival.com or call 228-1128.