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A blinder: Part 2

White Burgundy.  If you include Chablis then I would be perfectly happy if this was the only still white wine that I would ever drink again.  I'm drinking 06 Bourgogne Blanc, Arnaud Ente as I write and, well, it's just what white wine is all about,

Very few growers produce what I would call "real" white Burgundy these days, which is to say wine that can age, and that develops well.  And, with the curse of "premox" (unending debate here) this is a tricky subject.  All bets are off.  Well, almost all.

Three domaines that make "proper" white Burgundy spring to mind.  Lafon, Jobard and Gagnard.  These three have made my white wines of the year of 2008: 2001 Meursault Perrieres, Lafon; 1990 Meursault, Les Charmes, Jobard and 1996 Batard-Montrachet, Gagnard (from jero, which means a 300cl bottle in Burgundy or Champagne, as opposed to a 450cl or 500cl bottle in Bordeaux).

We had two Batards from Gagnard on Friday.  The 1995 & 1996.  Both from jeroboam.  The 1995 was excellent: taut, edgy, classy, youthful, brilliant.  The 1996 was something else entirely.  I didn't take notes on these and regret it.  The colour of the 96 indicated an older wine than the 95, which had the clear and clean brightness of youth.  If I'm honest, the darker, more developed colour of the 96 worried me.  But FMD it was wonderful (or UFB, as a few friends would say).  The edginess, the class, the brilliance of the 95 but with such depth.  A smoky minerality.  A perfection.  Muscle.  A nervous richesse.  Just perfect.

The point here?  None really.  Drink white Burgundy.  Don't be afraid to cellar it for a while.  You might end up with a few bottles that look like tea and smell of Sherry, but you might just meet your maker along the way.

More blind tasting. Or rather, a blinder. Part 1.

I have just returned from the most exceptional tasting and dinner I have ever experienced, and might ever experience.  A celebration of a very good and impossibly generous friend's birthday.  The setting: Pauillac, and its finest property: Ch. Latour.  This might seem a bit controversial but let's face it: Mouton and Lafite, the latter particularly so, can and have made some pretty good wines but who is the Daddy?  Who is the King?  Lafite might get the points and yes, Mouton is building some pretty serious form but there is a class, a breeding, an ethereal regality in Latour.  It's best, and even the juice knows it.  The grapes would even be cocky if they weren't so well-mannered.

So, the challenge, the task, the treat.  1999 to 2008 inclusive, in random (sort of) order and we don't know which one is which.  Which (a) means one can't be prejudiced ("one": we're at Latour) and (b), much as one is a little scared of coming a cropper and rating the wrong wine as the best of the bunch, it really gets you thinking about what's in your glass.

Herewith the notes/results.  Great wines don't need long notes, and they all tasted of Latour, or impossibly good, regal Pauillac at least.

Wine 1: Graphite minerality.  Taut fruit.  Firm.  Lots of structure.  A little austere.  A good start.

Wine 2: Not as open on the nose but more developed, more mature in the mouth.  Long.  Getting better with air.

At this stage I'm still trying to get my bearings without the satnav that is a label.

Wine 3: Again a little closed but something very serious definitely hiding here.  Some mintiness.  And real muscle in the mouth.  Doesn't seem as long as wine 2 (interesting in retrospect).

Wine 4: Darker.  Bubble gum nose betraying its youth.  Simple but very, very charming.  A couple of the pros reckon this to be the 08.  I try not to be influenced.

Wine 5:  This be serious.  Something really rather good here on the nose.  Something deep.  And very, very complete.  Just getting some bearings, its completeness had me thinking it might be the 00.

Wine 6:  This not as obviously powerful, but lots here nonetheless.  Laid back.

Wine 7:  Rich mocha.  Legs open.  This is the 03, standing out like a hooker on the corner.

Wine 8:  Very young again.  And full and rich and edgy in the mouth.  Plenty of tannin here but everything in its place and all here.  Very, very good.  I thought this was the 05 (as did my neighbour).

Wine 9:  Very, very complete.  Forward, open.  Very long.  I'm getting lost again here.  Woods, trees, that sort of thing.

Wine 10:  Again this is a biggy, this is one of the serious ones.  Muscle.  Balance, length.  Perfection.

My favourites, in no particular order, were wines 5, 8 & 10.  I'm an 03 snob and knew what it was so rather unfairly discounted it;  5, 8 & 10 turned out to be 2002, 2008 & 2005 respectively.  I think I missed the 2000 in the woods and, a very clear point is that Latour just don't make anything other than exceptional wines.

What is the point here?  There are many; here are just a few:

Point 1:  Stick a blindfold on and you learn much.

Point 2:  Ch. Latour hasn't made anything less than exceptional for at least ten years.

Point 3:  Burn your vintage chart, forget the points, and see point 1.

Point 4:  Big Baltimore Bob might be right about 2008 Latour.

Point 5:  2002 Latour is a bargain.

The 2007 was rather lovely and seductive in a child-like way.  This was wine 4.  The 2000 that I missed was wine 3.  This pissed me off because I (a) love 2000s and (b) reckon I can spot them.  Wine 1 was the 2004, and the first wine is always hardest to judge because it is setting the benchmark.  Wine 6 was the 1999 which was beautifully loose-knit and almost ready.  Wine 9 was the 2006, which is seriously, seriously good.

Hard work this tasting lark.  And then we started drinking....

Point 6, an addendum from my host: "the thing about the different vintages of Latour is that they are first and foremost Latour".  Which sums it up.

Three descriptive words

Right then.  Lesson two chez one of a few former employers:

To sell a bottle of wine in a shop, to actually SELL it, rather than just ring it up on the till and wrap it, you need to be able to describe it.  Mentor number two had an easy rule - you need to be able to use three words to describe any wine in the shop.  I confess that many whites came under the description "crisp, dry, refreshing".  Because it was easy and is pretty much true when describing most whites.  Because that's what white wine is for. Champagne is easier, because you can say "fizzy".  Red wine is easier, maybe, because the character of a red is easier to describe: full or light, soft or firm, fruity or austere, etc, etc.

Move up the scale and it gets a little trickier.  I don't do "gooseberry" for Sauvignon.  I don't know what a gooseberry smells like (though it strikes me as being the time to find out).  I say Sauvignon, because that's what it smells like to me.

So.  A bottle of 1990 Lynch-Bages on Friday.  Put simply: Pauillac, mature, good.  Less simply: Pauillac, mature but just getting in to its stride.  Ripe, but not the over-ripeness that some 90s show.  Not flashy.  Faultless balance.  A cool and classy Pauillac edge to it (though not as cool or linear as 90 Cos, which I had picked as an 86 in my mind last week).  Points?  If forced I'd say 94 from me (though out of 101 cos I like to be different).

I tasted three whites last night, with six guys of varying experience of good wine.  We had Meursault, Tesson from Jean-Philippe Fichet; Meursault, Les Tillets from Patrick Javillier and Meursault Les Perrieres from Ch. de Puligny.  All 2007s.  Description of these was interesting, and maybe tricky, until we found a common language, something we all understood.

The Tillets from Javillier was the 5-series BMW.  Hard to fault.  Does the job and does it well.  If you wanted to pick bones you could say it lacked a little bit of character, but that's a bit harsh, maybe.

The Tesson: some thought a Jag.  Less efficiency, more character.  Stylish.  I personally love the style of Fichet's wines, their focus, their edge, and thought Jaguar a little unflattering, but only because this wine was racy, had edge.  It didn't have four doors.

The Perrieres.  This was very good and definitely showed its wings - it's a premier cru and you can tell it.  More concentration, more fruit, more intensity.  Ch. de Puligny is making better and better wine each year and this really was rather good.  This was my Jaguar: not a Bentley but just as fast, and just as comfortable.

I think I've got the Tillets and the Perrieres spot on.  So what about the Tesson?  A TVR?  Fast but leaks and breaks down?  No.  A Boxster?  Tempting, but no.  I think it's an S2000.  Very fast, very good-looking.  Doesn't break down, will last.  A tiny bit of badge-snobbery from label drinkers but otherwise just perfect.

Jedi Mastery

There is no shortage of advice on what to have for Christmas, and the supermarkets all seem to be discounting Champagne.  Good show.  For what it's worth, my Christmas Champagne will be Berry Bros United Kingdom Cuvee Blanc de Blancs.  En magnum, of course.  I should point out that Berry Bros & Rudd are my employers.

But the really fun bit will be opening it.  Which I will be doing in style with a kitchen knife (unless my folks have bought a sabre since I last saw them).  This is a laugh, impresses people, and it's easy.

With the usual safety caveats (wear a high-visibility jacket, safety glasses, unplug the telly, hand brake on, etc, etc) this guy here shows how to do it.

Much as I deplore the Health & Safety culture that controls our lives much, much more than it should do (small feature to follow at some point), I will add that I will go and find the cork, and the small bit of glass that will still surround it.  We don't want my Mum's dog cutting his paw in the garden (and bleeding all over the carpet).

Champagne

There is a rather good Eddie Izzard sketch about the Champenois.  In it they drink Champagne all day, making a celebration of every moment: crossing the road, the telephone ringing, that sort of thing.  But for the real deal: a birth of a child, marriage, and similar they crack open a few Stellas.

I drank rather a lot of Pol Roger on Friday night.  The skill of the servers was such that I have no idea how much but I'd say that a bottle and a half would be a conservative estimate.  It was quite excellent and I felt absolutely fine (indeed invincible) until I made the Champagne Mistake, which is having something else.  In this case it was a rather good New Zealand Pinot, a couple of glasses of which left me retiring hurt at a relatively early hour.

Champagne is the most branded and, I think, the most misunderstood of wines.  Ask someone what their favourite Champagne is and, whilst many will have an answer, it will be hard to qualify in any other way other than a simple: I like it.  I'll expand: very few people have the opportunity to comparatively taste Champagne.  It's expensive.  A comparative tasting of half a dozen "grande marque" Champagnes will set you back £150 or so at least.  As a result, I think, people tend to remember the brand that they like, that they drank at so and so's party, and stick with it.  And the brand thing.  Veuve Clicquot, Moet, whatever: all of them sell because of branding and marketing.  Because of the perception of what is good as opposed to the intrinsic goodness within.  Some people think that Moet is classy, others think it crass.  Ditto Clicquot, Mumm, the lot.

The choice of Champagne last Friday was a reflection on the good taste of my host (or, rather, his wife).  Ask a connoisseur, or anyone on the wine trade, what the best non vintage big brand Champagne is and most will say Pol Roger or Bollinger.  Some will say this in the same sentence and suggest that Pol is the lighter of the two: if you like something more chunky, or if this is to accompany a meal, then Bollinger might be the one; if this is to be served on its own then Pol is the one.

Beyond the brands there is a wealth of what you might call "growers' Champagnes": wines made by the people that own the vineyards, and made in small quantities (the larger houses generally buy the grapes for their wines rather than actually own the vineyards).  These are generally more vinous in nature, and represent an opportunity (for those with deep pockets) for a voyage of Champenois discovery.  A good one of these can be a little like what you might imagine sparkling Meursault to taste like (and I do intend to get myself a Sodastream in the near future to confirm this).

Back to the brands.  I hate brands.  James Bond drinks Dom Perignon and vintage Bollinger, and knows his vintages.  These days, if the right contract came up, then Daniel Craig would be drinking Mumm or Veuve Clicquot in the same way that he now wears an Omega (when any fule kno that he should be sporting a Rolex) and Roger, bless him, sported a Seiko.

What is my point here?  I'm not quite sure.  It's got something to do with drinking, or tasting, a lot of Champagne and making your own mind up rather than surrendering to the marketeers.  Who, as far as Champagne is concerned, seem to have it nicely sewn up.

Blind man's buff

Blind tasting: oh dear.  I am not very good at this at all.  The last time I seriously had a crack at discerning what was in my glass I was with (a) one of the most important figures in the U.K. wine trade and (b) one of the most influential wine critics in the world.  Great.

Bottle one: where were we?  The Rhone?  Somewhere in Alsace?  I was beginning, inexplicably, to think somewhere in Australia before my host put me out of my misery.  A single vineyard Condrieu from Andre Perret.  I should have got this for three reasons: Condrieu should be pretty easy to spot - it's got a sort of confection that makes you feel a bit girly when you drink it.  I also spent two miserable years working for the company that represents Perret in the UK.  Most irritatingly I had shared a bottle of almost the exact same wine (different vintage) about a week previously.  No: if "blind tasting" means the ability to divine exactly what is in your glass (region, grower, vintage, etc) then I am not good at this at all, and my performance for the remainder of the evening was equally dire.

So does this make me a crap taster?  I think not.  Blind tasting is a bit like "Name the Film".  "There are two kinds of people in this world: those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter the room and turn the television set off".  Name the film that this quote comes from.  That's the game.

It's partly about memory, and more about the various switches in your brain being able to translate the tastes in your mouth into something that your brain has filed away.  My brain simply does not have the wiring for this and, moreover, my brain does not react well to pressure.

You can learn to blind taste.  There is a method, one which is largely one of elimination.  You can get an idea of age and grape variety from the colour.  Pinot is garnet, Cabernet is dark purple.  Old Pinot goes brickish-brown and smells of, well, shit, but in a nice way.  Old Cabernet goes a slightly brickish-red and smells of, well, to me, old Cabernet, which sums up my weakness.

I did some blind-tasting, or guess the wine, this week.  For the first few I just kept my mouth shut and watched one man pick vintages and vineyards successfully, and the remainder of the group just get things wrong.  I joined in once.  At the end of the week.  I was rather full of confidence after a week of tasting where I had not only got through more than 350 wines in four days and lived, but I felt that this week I was really beginning to get rather good at this.  I had spotted different methods of vinification without being told, and I had spotted wines that were unfinished in terms of elevage, my thoughts being confirmed by both winemakers and the rather legendary chap that was tasting with me.

The wine was 1996 Latricieres-Chambertin, Domaine Rossignol-Trapet.  That we were in the cellars of Rossignol-Trapet rather narrowed it down, as did the fact that I knew I was tasting a grand cru.  The lifted style of the wine - a ballet dancer on her toes - had me thinking Latricieres.  Chapelle-Chambertin is more meaty, le Chambertin itself more complete.  So it was the vintage.  In retrospect it should have been easy.  One look at the wine in my glass should have told me that it was more than ten years old.  The acidity should have helped me with the vintage.  A colleague piped up: 2000.  Which sort of made sense.  2000s are very forward, silky wines that are drinking beautifully now, even right at the top, and what we were tasting was silky, and perfect.  This is what felled me.  2000s didn't have this acidity.  It must be a 2001.  Similar to the 2008s that we had been tasting all week in that the 2001s were a tricky lot, derided a little by the critics only because they had not the skill to judge them, if that makes sense.  I was going for glory, picking a long odds winner.

What a twat.  Any 2001 grand cru of that colour would have had to have been stored on top of the oven.  The colour should have told me that it was older, but my lust for glory, for being clever, brought me down.

So.  No, I'm not very good at this.  Not just because of my South East London childhood (so what exactly does gooseberry smell like?) but mostly because of my insatiable desire to be the cleverest and my lack of ability to do anything under pressure.  So I just read the label.

2008 Burgundy

Vintage charts: oh dear.  Be they from a critic, a merchant, whoever, they are pretty much useless on account of their general nature.  2001 Bordeaux?  7/10?  Well actually closer to 9/10 in Pomerol and many of the left bank wines are really coming on beautifully right now.  2007 Red Burgundy?  Well, for a start it's how you like them.  If, like me, purity and elegance is what floats the boat then 8/10 at least.  If you like them on the chunkier side then less.  Plus, and this is what I'm really getting at, in a region like Burgundy with a multitude of producers and the same again of microclimates, you just can't qualify a vintage in its entirety.  Roumier's 2007s are simply stunning.  As are Hubert de Montille's.  Why?  They just got the vintage right.  They made the right calls throughout the growing season and, once the fruit was in, they made the right calls in what they did with it.

So: 2008 Burgundy.  I've just spent a week tasting them from barrel.  Which is a tricky enough call in the first place - like looking at a year-old child and divining whether or not he'll make it as a bus driver or a pianist.  But that's another debate entirely.

Looking at the 2008 growing season in Burgundy and it doesn't look good.  They had more or less the same sort of August that we did - i.e. piss-poor.  You will, however, read in the merchants' offers about the beautifully clear, warm, dry and windy September that rescued the crop.  This is all true.  Look a little deeper and you will also find that, in August, it wasn't raining cats and dogs, it was just damp and grey.  The importance of this is that the soil was not soaked; the vines didn't have wet feet.  And vines hate soggy socks as much as you or I.  So, as a vigneron, if you had looked after your vines throughout the growing season, kept rot at bay, kept things clean, kept your faith, you were rewarded with an Indian summer that brought your fruit to bloom.  Treated carefully, this fruit could be coaxed into some rather good juice, albeit juice rather high in acidity on account of the lack of sunshine in August.  Carefully nurtured, this juice could be fermented into rather good wine, with an underpinning, fresh acidity rather than unripe austerity with an harsh acidic edge.

The best 2008 whites are simply lovely.  They make the 2007s (which I rate very, very highly) look a little too muscular, too edgy.  They have crisp acidity with a little elegant flesh.  Kate Moss springs to mind.  The best of the lot came from Domaine Jean-Noel Gagnard - the Chassagne Caillerets from this domaine quite possibly the white of the week.

The reds were trickier maybe.  The acidity on some of them maybe a little pronounced (but remember we are judging babies here), on others it was just fresh.  Discovery of the week was Olivier Bernstein.  These wines are not cheap but are so good they warrant an expletive (though the dog wouldn't like it).  A man on form is Christian Serafin, whose use of oak has troubled me in the past but who is clearly making some seriously good wines.

Back to the point.  Ignore the vintage charts: follow them and you may well miss a diamond on the floor in front of you.  Treat the critics with healthy scepticism but read all you can.  Likewise the merchants but listen. Any fool can make a decent wine in an easy vintage - nature does all the work.  A difficult one, like 2008, sorts the men and the ladies from the girls and the boys, and the rewards of finding the winners are worth it.

Oh, and bin your vintage charts.

God's telephone box

To loosely quote Jean-Philippe Fichet: "God has given us the finest terroir on the earth for making wine.  It is our responsibility to use it as best we can."

And Mr Fichet does his very best, not just through his undeniable skill, but also through sheer hard work.  And it's clear what drives him.

Burgundy is my favourite place in the world.  To me it's like God's telephone box.  I'm not quite sure that it works both ways but when I'm tasting something beautiful from cask, I know there is something serious going on, that I'm in the presence of something special.  The best winemakers know this too.  They know that from what they have been given - some earth, some vines - they can make something of beauty.  It's a partnership.  God, or nature if you prefer, does the earth, the plant, the rain and the sunshine.  Man does the rest.  And through a combination of skill, love and hard work we get wine.

Nowhere in the world sums this partnership up for me as well as Burgundy, where even the simplest of Bourgogne Rouges can show glimpses of something ethereal.  An exceptional bottle of claret is often just that: an exceptional bottle.  An exceptional bottle of Burgundy can make you want to cry...

Reports on 2008 Burgundy to follow.

Ethical Investments

One of the few things that I know rather a lot about is wine investing.  It's been a key part of my job for ten years, and I think I know what I'm on about, which is a rare thing.  Get to the mechanics of this: i.e. do it, speak to someone about doing it, and you will find no shortage of cowboys, crooks, uninformed but incentivised salesmen and, on the other hand, equally uninformed cynics and know it alls who know little or nothing.

Wine is an interesting commodity.  There are few other "stocks" that can provoke passion.  Certainly there are none that can get you drunk.  You can maybe compare fine wine with vintage cars but I think that's about it.  People like to compare wine with art but the problem with art is that it's so difficult to qualify: you need some bloke in a museum or a gallery to confirm that your painting is actually any good and, even if it is, what is the difference between the real thing and a copy?  Fake wine, loved by the press, is (a) pretty thin on the ground and (b) vastly different from that which it tries to replicate.

It's not just an interesting commodity, it's also a relatively easy and interesting one to research.  You need a subscription to Robert Parker's Wine Advocate and a subscription to wine-searcher.  The advanced may also look at Liv-Ex.  What soon will become clear is that the overwhelming trend of the prices of the top ten or so chateaux of Bordeaux is up.  That's what wine prices do over the long term.

As mentioned previously, wine investment isn't really investment: it's speculation, it's hoarding.  What you're essentially doing is financing stock: looking after it until it's ready.  Is this ethical?

I used to wonder about this but a recent answer to that question has set me straight.  I quote: "you don't need to worry about the ethics of fine wine investment, as this is the realm of the super-rich.  You could claim that it was immoral to speculate on the price of wheat as it is an essential foodstuff, but first growth clarets are only affordable to a global elite, and the release prices of the chateaux themselves have made them so (look at 2005 release prices).  Speculators are merely reacting to what the producers themselves have been encouraging".

This partly explains the shadenfreude of the "traditional wine enthusiast" when prices drop (rare, but they do once a decade or so) and the speculators lose out.  It's a class, or a wealth thing.  A chippy thing.  A bit like gloating at the chap whose Ferrari has conked out as you roll by in the Clio that you hate.

Jesus said: "the poor are ever with us".  He was right, but we can work on it.  The rich are ever with us too.  And their demand for the best pays my wages and that of many others that I know.  Is it their fault that I can't afford Lafite?  Nope.  It's the way of the world.  Get over it.