VINOLENT

Moving

2009-12-28T08:59:00.000Z

I've moved, and am now here.

A blinder: Part 2

2009-12-20T14:09:00.000Z

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.

2009-12-19T20:31:00.003Z

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

2009-12-16T19:19:00.000Z

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

2009-12-13T16:15:00.000Z

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

2009-12-02T19:43:00.000Z

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

2009-11-26T18:58:00.000Z

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

2009-11-23T16:18:00.002Z

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

2009-11-16T09:50:00.001Z

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

2009-11-10T18:55:00.000Z

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.

Palmer 1961

2009-11-09T15:21:00.001Z

For a few years I have had a bottle of 1961 Ch. Palmer in my rack at home. I had picked it up for a song due to a poor level - just at the bottom of the shoulder - and the fact that it had been across the world and back at least once, and had been rejected as out of condition at least twice. Its only value was romantic, and I have to concede that I just enjoyed the idea of having a legendary bottle of wine in the rack, no matter how shot to pieces it might be.

A serious bottle in the rack is always in danger of being wasted, if only because it has the greatest chance of being the LAST bottle at home on the evening that one comes home a little tired, a little late and in need of a glass or two with the pizza. The Palmer survived this on account of its condition for quite some time.

A while back I decided I'd open it. I had a bottle of Extra Ordinary Claret in reserve, which I was almost certain that I'd be opening. I was sure that the Palmer would be as dead as Dillinger. The dish chosen to match? Sausages (albeit some pretty fine ones).

So. The corkscrew. Opening old bottles is always hit and miss, and one should always be prepared for the cork breaking in two, followed by the total disintegration of the bottom half as one digs it out. This is not schoolboy error; this is just the way it is. The rare occasions that an old cork comes out in perfect nick are down to luck, not down to any particular skill, though it is satisfying. Pulling the cork on my Palmer followed the first path.

Surprisingly, the wine was still alive. Alive in that there were no obvious faults, it wasn't vinegar: it was still wine. The nose was clean, though it was just old claret: nice if you like that sort of thing, but unremarkable aside from its survival.

A few minutes later the genie started to emerge from the lamp. Something magical started. I had a winner, and it was coming to life.

The manager of Château Palmer tells a great story about a recorking session of the 1961 in a hotel in the Far East. A private collector had an entire cellar of the 1961, and had flown a team out from Palmer to top up and recork his stock. This took place in the cellars of a hotel, and by the end of the session the entire lobby of the hotel was alive with the bouquet of 1961 Palmer. Until I opened mine, I was always impressed with the flamboyance of the story, though now I fully understand. The bouquet of 1961 Palmer is indescribable - sweet fruit, floral, mineral, combined with the mature aroma that only very old claret gives; I'm struggling. If a lady passed you in the street wearing this perfume you would turn and follow.

In the mouth this was just as transcendental, with an almost impossibly perfect balance of sweetness, richness and gaminess wrapped up in the most beautifully silky texture. And it just got better and better. Needless to say the sausages were abandoned. I just inhaled the perfume. This really was a moment.

The bottle was gone. Finished before it started to fade though I'm satisfied that I got the best from it, partly because I can't imagine anything better. I have to confess to eating some of the sediment. It was that good. I didn't go back to the sausages...

And pigs...Coche and cochon...

2009-11-04T19:46:00.000Z

QPR vs Crystal Palace was rained off a month or so ago. Not such a bad thing: we stayed a little longer in what we now call the Coche Pub, enjoyed our pork boards and white Burgundy, then went home. It also gave us the opportunity to revisit the Coche Pub again last night for the rescheduled match (which wasn't bad). We had a different match at the pub: 2006 Puligny-Montrachet 1er cru, Les Enseigneres vs 2006 Corton-Charlemagne, both from the legendary Coche-Dury.

A post on label-drinking will follow in good time. What I've been thinking about over the past day is these two wines, both of which are amongst the rarest in the world and the most expensive (a case of the Corton-Charlie is worth more than my car), and particularly the vintage.

With growers of this calibre, vintages aren't good or bad, they're just different. I liked 2006 white Burgundies very much when I first tasted them in late 2007: they were open, balanced, clean wines. I preferred them to the 2005s, which were a little too "fat" for me at the time. A couple of years on and the 2006s now seem a little top heavy, a little too opulent. The "fat" 2005s have grown up a little and the fat has turned to muscle. We also have the brilliant, pin-sharp and focussed 2007s.

Of the two, I preferred the Puligny, which was a little more forward, showed more definition, focus. The Corton-Charlemagne was richer, fatter, definitely had more to it but seemed like a dancer whose shoes were too heavy - it was struggling to show how good it was.

Fine wine, serious wine, can be compared with humans. Young wines can be simple but show immense potential. Old wines can be delicate but show immense complexity. Crowd-pleasing wines can please crowds but are rarely the best. I could go on.

My point being that in suggesting that a 2006 grand cru white Burgundy, from a premier, no, champions league producer lacks a bit of edge at three years old is a bit like scolding a three year old child for not being able to quote Sartres. What we did see in both of these barely-born vinous nippers, was immense class, immense potential. These were both bouncing blue-eyed babies. The vintage? I guess it's like where you're born: Beckenham or Belgravia? Sydenham or Sloane Street. You're always going to have an accent but class will out.

Sheep, bulls, horses

2009-10-29T18:43:00.000Z

After fear at the back end of last year, followed by hope in the Spring of this one, we now have confidence in the Fine Wine market. A quick look at the Liv-ex 100 shows that things are back on the up. Closer inspection reveals that much of this has been led by one wine in particular: Ch. Lafite-Rothschild.

Much has been written about the fascination of the Far East with Lafite: about why its brand is so strong, about the insane prices that their second wine, Carruades de Lafite, now fetches and I won't add to that aside from the most recent amusing story that I heard: Lafite is now the currency of choice for those wishing to oil the wheels of a business deal. Send a case of the wrong first growth and forget about it.

Wine investing isn't actually investing: your money isn't actually building anything. It's speculation, and it's betting on future demand. Nowt wrong with this - it's just what it is.

So, given that we're betting, what about the horses?

Lafite is clearly the favourite but the odds are getting shorter and shorter, and the horse has been running for a long time. So what's next. We'll discount the uber-wines: Pin, Petrus & Ausone, and stick to the first growths.

My money is firmly on Mouton for a number of reasons. Firstly, the quality here is better than it's ever been. The hit-and-miss of the old days is no longer as attention to detail in both the vineyards and the cellars is assiduous. Secondly, it has the kudos of the Rothschild name. And thirdly, the label. Since 1946 each year's label has been designed by a different artist. And the artists have been premier league: Salvador Dali, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon. The list goes on, and includes the Prince of Wales, whose picture of "Mediterranean Pines on Cap d'Antibes" graces the label of the 2004. This is all highly marketable stuff, and can only add to the appeal of such an ultra-luxury consumable.

Whether or not speculation on wine prices is ethical is another story: it's not quite in the same league as parking your oil tankers a couple of miles off the coast and waiting for the price to rise, but the two concepts have similarities.

My outsider is La Mission Haut-Brion, by the way.

Off piste drabble: quality

2009-10-25T14:05:00.000Z

Quality. I think that this word has been so mis-used by the ad-men over the years that its impact has been eroded. I mean in terms of excellence, of being of the greatest grade of goodness. Say "quality wine" for instance, and the picture in my mind is of a ropey bottle of homonogenotrash (can I copyright a word?) at the local branded restaurant. "Quality jewellery": cheap trash. I don't think we think enough of, or aspire to, quality anymore. It's not about the best, it's about making another ten quid.

Quality is what I'm all about. It's what makes me tick. I like Musigny. I like meat that tastes of something. I like Krug. I like the Pauillac lamb at Cordeillan-Bages and the vegetables from Mrs Miggins down the road. Sadly I did not work hard enough at school for these. Or at least not to enjoy them on a regular basis.

So. Lunch. If I was in France or Italy, I'm fairly certain that I could find somewhere local to have a decent steak frites, or pig ragu, with a bottle of something natural, for less than a tank of petrol. Try this in England. Try finding something that (a) isn't pizza and (b) hasn't come out of the freezer. It doesn't happen very often. I don't think we understand. The exceptions are generally pubs: there are a few pubs that still offer individuality: home-cooked food, real beer. But they are increasingly hard to find and, when one does, they are almost invariably a drive away, which can make things difficult.

My current favourite pub in the world is the Princess Victoria, Shepherd's Bush. An outstanding wine list and quite excellent food. The pork boards really do the job. Ten years ago this was five minutes' walk from my flat. It's now 30 miles or so. Can someone please open something similar in Guildford?

Oh oh Seven

2009-10-21T11:37:00.000+01:00

I visited the Union des Grands Crus tasting at the Opera House this morning. This is the first mass outing of this vintage since it was bottled earlier this year. This is the biggest tasting of the year in London, and is more than an opportunity to taste the wines; half the point of going is to catch up with friends and customers in the trade, and most of the fine wine trade follow it with what we'd call a rather good lunch.

No fine wine benders for me this year, so the emphasis is all on the wines. The summer of 2007 in Bordeaux was pretty similar to 2007 in Basingstoke. Which is to say pretty much non-existent. And wet and dreary and by no means conducive to making blockbuster clarets. But difficult vintages give good winemakers the opportunity to shine and there are some 2007s which are rather good. I rated Larcis-Ducasse from the start, and they have done an excellent job with a pure, fruit-driven wine. Likewise big brother Pavie-Macquin: less seductive, more serious. Conseillante was rather good too. On the left bank things were a little more tricky but St Julien was the clear winner for me amongst the appellations (it is generally the most consistent) with the two Bartons, Langoa and Leoville, performing well and neighbour Leoville-Poyferre impressing. Domaine de Chevalier Rouge is another winner, and their white is a cracker in 2007, as are the Sauternes. These are excellent: not quite up to the almost perfect 2001s, but not far off.

In retrospect, this vintage was too expensive, and it didn't sell well. The wines are decent, but 2007 may always (rather unfairly) have a bit of a 1997-esque stigma. In truth, the best wines will make cracking drinking in only a few years' time, while we're still waiting for our 2000s, 2005s & 2009s to mature, and while we're still wondering if our 2008s are as good as Baltimore Bob reckons...

Notas

2009-10-12T18:40:00.000+01:00

If you do this wine thing for a living at some stage you will have to take notes. When I started I used to write notes on every bottle opened, everything tasted. This is tedious after a while, and you look like a geek in restaurants. And anywhere else to be honest. So after a while I went by memory and I had a good theory that worked: if a wine was vile, faulty, badly made or similar I'd remember it. If it was exceptional, stylish, classy, well made, etc, etc: I'd remember it. Anything I didn't remember would be passable.

This still holds true: I can still remember tasting 1927 Taylor nine years ago. I can tell you where I was to the nearest foot. Ditto 1949 Gruaud-Larose. Both positive, and 1927 Taylor remains in my top five all-timers. On the negative side I can still remember, with geographical position, a knackered 1998 Bienvenues-Batard, Leflaive in 2003 and corked 1964 Petrus in the same year. And the bigshots that didn't notice...

I do take notes when tasting wines where they are made. This is usually in Bordeaux or Burgundy, and usually cask samples being shown ahead of an en-primeur release. Next month 2008 Burgundy; last April 2008 Bordeaux.

Clive Coates writes an excellent article: Why Most Tasting Notes Are A Waste Of Space. He's spot on in many respects here but he misses a key point: the personal nature of taste. I miss Clive's notes on the most recent Burgundy vintage because his palate chimes with mine. Moreover, I understand what he's writing (whereas I find Parker, for instance, a long way from my palate in many cases and writing in a different language, American).

My notes make sense to me. And they might to Mr Coates. "Is it dancing? Yes, gently." I reckon Mr Coates might actually be able to pick this one (it's 2007 Chambolle, Amoureuses, Mugnier) but a long shot. And it makes perfect sense to me (wine from this vineyard, les Amoureuses: the Lovers, should dance on the palate - it's the test). But it will be pretentious drabble to most.

And every now and again a wine is above mere words in the same way that many are above scores. Mr Mugnier, maker of above-mentioned Chambolle, and a man with some genius quotes, says: "great wines do not need long notes", and he's right. My note on the greatest Bordeaux that I have ever tasted from cask ends with the word "love". At was the only word that I could think of that reflected how the wine made me feel.

Beer

2009-10-05T18:29:00.000+01:00

Why do so many people drink and eat rubbish? Nuggets, that sort of thing. And lager. A lager at the end of the day is hard to beat, I concede. But drinking pints of tasteless chemical fizz in the pub is something I just don't understand when decent ale is available.

Pre-football on a Saturday, a group of friends and I meet at the Grape and Grain, Crystal Palace. We usually drink Dark Star Hophead. This is about as good as it gets (certainly in South London). Last Saturday, ahead of a rare 4-1 win, we drank Hop Back Summer Lightning (though the general consensus was that this wasn't as good as it has been) and Purity Gold. Both lovely, and both a million times better than a pint of UK-brewed tasteless branded fizz.

So why don't more people drink proper beer instead of the branded fizzy rubbish? The answer is the branding. Not necessarily the successful branding and advertising behind Stella et al, but the success of branded bitters. Most lager-drinkers experiences of what they would call "ale" involve the likes of John Smith's or similar through dirty pipes and an electric pump. Understandably, they stick to the lager: tasteless is better than tasting horrible. At least that was my excuse until I saw the light.

Barbera, Barolo, Barbaresco

2009-10-01T18:41:00.000+01:00

Italy: perhaps the toughest wine region to learn. And little incentive in everyday life. Do you really expect much from the winelist at Pizza Express or that nice little Pasta House on the High Street? The Italy question for my Diploma was a map question. At first I was pleased as I had been given some good advice on this: copy my neighbour. But this advice turned out to be useless as my neighbour, one of those retired ladies on a personal journey, clearly had my number and shielded her work from me with a technique any ten-year-old would be proud of. I think the challenge was to circle Piedmont. I drew a very large circle around at least a third of Italy, probably not even in the North. I'm ashamed now.

In the same way that the best way to learn a language is to go to a place and speak it (eight years of French at school and I'm still confusing the weather with the time, eight months living there and I'm discussing the offside rule) the best way to learn a region's wines is to go there. Look at Vosne-Romanee from the foot of Romanee-Conti and it all makes sense.

I visited Piedmont earlier this year, and it's like I learned the language. I'm not quite discussing the offside rule yet, but I've sussed the grammar, if that makes sense.

The problem with Barolo is that, like Burgundy, there's just not much of it. And, like Burgundy, there are plenty of crap producers to negotiate on your journey. Unlike Burgundy, the wines can be ferociously tough in their youth: lots of tannin and lots of acidity is hard work in a young wine. But, like Burgundy, find a good, mature Barolo and the experience is ethereal. Nebbiolo, fierce and fighting when young, develops a delicacy and elegance that is hard to match. Only Pinot can match it. Barbaresco, again Nebbiolo but slightly lighter, is perhaps an easier start, and equally seductive in the right hands.

To confuse things, Barbera is made from Barbera. That's why it's called Barbera (Barolo and Barbaresco come from Barolo and Barbaresco). Barbera is easier, fuller, softer. It's also the perfect wine to match one of my other passions: sausages.

I'll get to Brunello (a grape, not a region, and actually Sangiovese) another time. It's just dawned on me that I would be perfectly happy drinking wines beginning with "b" for the rest of my life: Bordeaux, Burgundy, and these three. And some bangers. Plus the odd beer.

Oh nine

2009-09-29T19:00:00.000+01:00

For the third year on the trot I feel cheated of a Summer. Yes, we had a nice June, and September has been sunny so far, but does Summer exist anymore? Not in England. It's to do with the moon: we've had thirteen this year (and last year, and the year before). We're back to twelve next year, so there is hope.

In France the story has been different. In Burgundy the harvest is more or less done and dusted, and people are talking of another 1999 (big crop, cracking wines, a real "terroir" vintage"). Good show, I say.

The Bordelais are not quite finished yet: the fat lady is warming up, not singing, but things again look very good. The word of the 2009 campaign will be "diurnal". Hot days, cool nights. It means ripeness (hot days) and balancing acidity (cool nights). It means good wines, and it has a ring to it. I'm already looking forward to tasting the wines next April and, maybe even more, I'm looking forward to selling them in May and June.

The cynics are already moaning. High prices, the Bordeaux brand machine, speculators pushing prices, etc, etc. Greedy salesmen, merchants, negociants, properties.

I say yar boo sucks to the cynics. Another good vintage means more good wine. More pleasure. And there is not enough of it, as any fule kno.

George Dawes

2009-09-26T13:50:00.000+01:00

Scores. Out of twenty (the old guard, the English), out of 100 (our American friends, the young guns). A nightmare. I don't score wines as a matter of course, but ask me to and I can. The Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon that I'm drinking right now? 85 points: no clear faults, drinkable but forgettable. Last night's 2006 Bourgogne Blanc, Arnaud Ente: 89 points: character, class, very well made, but let down by the blowsiness that 2006 white Burgundies seem to be showing right now. The last 100 pointer (for me) that I tasted? 2001 Meursault, Perrieres, Lafon. If only because it was perfect.

100 pointers aside (i.e. perfection), scores are limited, limiting. Essentially you're putting taste into numbers and, importantly, YOUR taste. You can give the fish and chips at the Caprice 95 points but I don't eat fish.

Which is why the whole points thing, the Parker thing, winds me up so much. I think that 96 Latour is a better wine than 96 Lafite (it's about class). I think that 2005 Margaux came down from Heaven on a string: a 101 pointer. Robert Parker doesn't. So who is right?

Robert Parker is an astonishingly good taster. The nature of what he is most noted for - tasting Bordeaux from barrel - is such that his calls, his predictions (for that is what one is doing when tasting from barrel: predicting) can't really be judged for ten years or so. But read his notes on barrel samples of 1996s, 2000s, 1990s, whatever, and they are remarkable in their accuracy. I concede that Mr Parker tastes rather well, and is better at it than me.

BUT: I know that he likes fish. And I know that he likes Pavie. So where does that put me?

My irritation at this is compounded by wines that I taste that have been made for Mr Parker's palate, wines that are designed to suit him. I tasted a selection of Californian wines this week, and they were rather impressive: full, rich, balanced. Despite the high alcohol levels they had no hotness to them, no lack of freshness. But, much as my notes were positive, there was something missing: character. These wines didn't tell you where they were from, there was no love in them. No love, just work. Lots of work, very well executed work, but just work. They were feats of engineering rather than anything else. I am sure that they were made for him, for the score (and the gentleman showing the wines did rather bang on about them).

So: last night: 2002 Nebbiolo d'Alba, Valmaggiore, Sandrone. Crap vintage, excellent winemaker (who makes me a hypocrite: the purist in me says this is made, not born), and 91 points from me under duress. One of Mr Parker's soldiers says "The long and sustained floral aromas, the attractive notes of spice and coconut, and the solidity and grip of the finish almost defy explanation" and says 89 points. Erm. That would be the winemaking.

Spit the Dog

2009-09-17T18:32:00.000+01:00

“I like the way you spit”. One of the seedier chat up lines I have heard.

Go to a morning tasting, with work in the afternoon, and you’ll soon realise why spitting is necessary. If you don’t then you’ll end up drunk which, even (especially?) in the business I work in, is not good form at your desk. Moreover, if you’re tasting with work in mind, if you’re seriously appraising what you are tasting, you just can’t do it with a few glasses inside you: you lose your judgement and everything is either sublime, ok, or undrinkable. Very little in between.

I learnt this on the ground, at the coal face, at my first trade tasting. My employers had their own portfolio of exclusively French wines; I had rocked up to this tasting to see if there was anything worth listing in our tiny non-french section.

I arrived at 10am, and was booked in for lunch. There were maybe 50 wines to taste. I dived in. By 10.30 I was in my stride, chatting confidently about balance, questioning the price. By 11 my confidence was waning. By 11.30 I was pissed. Useless. I made my excuses and missed lunch. I still don’t know if I had made a fool of myself but what I did know was that I had (a) not done my job, missed an opportunity to maybe find something we could sell and (b) missed an opportunity to make a few contacts. I didn’t quite go home with my tail between my legs but not far off.

Lesson One learned, I embarked on Lesson Two.

Go to a big tasting and look for the pros. Not the sales guys, not the hosts, but the old-school wine trade guys and the serious journos (think Broadbent and Coates, not the young turks). Watch them spit. And it is a status thing. Your amateurs will bend over a spittoon, a bit like a child leaning over a bowl of soup. Your mid-table guys (including me) can generally get the contents of their mouth into a spittoon without stooping, and without looking like they are trying too hard. Your pros can do it from a couple of feet plus, at any angle, and with a nonchalance that can border on the arrogant. It is something to behold.

This is Lesson Two. It’s what we used to call “a practical” at school, though all you need is a bath, a pint glass, and a tap. And some time.

Style notwithstanding, it can still be a challenge. With a mouthful of 2005 Margaux (see meeting God; this was another theophany) are you seriously going to spit? Le Musigny from Mugnier? No way. It’s easier, I think, in Bordeaux but in Burgundy, where some wines can be so beautiful from the barrel one can wonder why they even bother bottling it, it’s tricky. If at all possible (read: if I’m not driving) I do not spit grand cru Burgundy.

Manipulation

2009-09-13T12:09:00.000+01:00

"I am not a winemaker". An odd comment maybe from a man who quite clearly makes wine, but one that impressed me. The man was Manuel Marchetti of Azienda Agricola Marcarini in La Morra, Barolo. His point was that he didn't intervene, didn't interfere with what he had harvested. No new oak, no fancy fermentation. He just shepherded the wine through its elevage in the traditional fashion.

I've met many winemakers, and I think that I can tell a good one without tasting his (or her) wines. A lot of it is about passion - it's easier to make something you love than something that just pays the bills - though the ones that have impressed me most are the men and women who recognise that they are working with something that is alive, that maybe even has a soul, and that over-manipulation of their product robs it of that soul.

There is plenty of manipulation in Bordeaux, most obviously seen in St Emilion, where the key aim of many properties seems to be to impress the critics (well, okay, one critic) who like big, broody "fruit-bomb" wines. The paradigm property is Ch. Pavie, whose wines split opinions and provoke sometimes venomous debate. Whatever you think of the wines, there is no doubt in my mind that the wines of Pavie are "made" as opposed to being born. I first tasted Pavie from barrel in 2004. The wine was the 2003 vintage - a bit of a monster in itself, which maybe accentuated the wine's rather Frankenstinian character.

Technically speaking - which is to say in terms of faults, balance, fruit and so on - there was nothing wrong with the wine at all. The fault, if that is the right word, though, was summed up perfectly by a fellow taster, one that had been tasting claret from barrel for many, many years more than I had: "You can taste the hand of the winemaker all over this". You couldn't taste Pavie: the soil, the terroir. You couldn't really taste the vintage, which is some going in a freak year like 2003. What you could taste, what was the dominant character, was the winemaking, which is very much a fault in my view.

Kudos

2009-09-10T19:46:00.001+01:00

Knowing a little about wine has a bit of kudos to it: oh, you're the wine expert, that sort of thing. And the nature of wine is such that one only needs to know a little to know more than most others. Read Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book and you'll likely know more about wine than the staff at many high street wine merchants, for instance.

I started my wine career in 1997, and before I was let loose on the residents of Marylebone High Street, I trained for three weeks at my employer's in-house wine school in the outskirts of Paris. Much of the time was spent in the classroom, the rest "on the ground" in their store in the rue de l'Ancienne Comedie on the Left Bank.

The thought of being a barely knowledgeable Englishman working in a Paris wine store filled me with fear. My French was good enough, though I thought my wine knowledge was a long way short. I knew a lot about Chablis, having been a tour guide in the region for a couple of seasons, and I'd done my time in the classroom in Villejuif, but the thought of advising Parisians on what to drink with their coq-au-vin filled me with fear. I put this to my mentor, the shop manager. His answer sticks with me still:

“You might not know much, but you know more than the customer. Otherwise he wouldn't ask. If you tell him to drink Cahors with his coq-au-vin, and it doesn't work, he will not blame you, he will think "well, the caviste told me that this would be perfect" and then decide that either (a) there is something wrong with his coq-au-vin or (b) there is something wrong with his palate.”

These words tell much about the nature of the man, but they gave me confidence and, helped by the ingenious aide-memoire devised by my employers I cruised along contently.

The aide-memoire was a work of genius. Prices ended with a “5” or a “9”, so FF3.99 or FF 3.95, say. This was more than monetary, with fuller-bodies wines ending in “9” and lighter wines in “5”. Sharp-eyed customers might also notice that the period separating francs and centimes was not the same shape for all wines. Depending on the style of the wine, it would be square for more structured wines, round for, well, rounder wines and diamond shaped for what I would now describe as “svelte” wines. Genius. And genius which meant that a wet-behind-the-ears Englishman could not only talk with confidence on wines about which he knew nothing, but could even tell the difference between the FF3.99 Bergerac and the FF 3.95 Saumur...

Wine and The Winemaker

2009-09-07T18:57:00.001+01:00

I’m not what you would call a religious man. I haven’t been to church since I was last coerced into a Mothering Sunday visit, and I have some pretty strong feelings on religions and their ability to either control or provide an excuse for their followers’ behaviour. But I have met God a couple of times.

In our supermarket world, we have become increasingly distanced from nature, and from providence. Our meat comes plastic wrapped, displayed in such a way that homogeneity of appearance, not nutritional quality or taste, is the key aim of the producer. Children (I hope) know that beef comes from cows because they are told so by (I hope) their parents or their teachers. I think that we have lost the connection between the field and our food. This may be part of the reason for our increasingly secular society, but that’s another debate entirely.

I first met God in Burgundy. At the Chateau de Vosne-Romanee. I was with colleagues, and our host was Louis-Michel Liger-Belair, whose family once owned some very significant parcels of Vosne-Romanee’s best vineyards. French law, responsible for much of Burgundy’s fragmentation, saw much of the vineyards being sold off in the 1930s; those retained by the family were leased out. Louis–Michel took back a parcel of vines in 2000 and, in 2002, took back the diamond of his family’s former holdings: La Romanee.

He had a stroke of luck with his first vintage of La Romanee – 2002. Whilst this was a tricky year for the Bordelais (though I like the linear style of many 02 clarets), and the Rhone had a disastrous vintage, with many vineyards in the South literally underwater, 2002 was a great success in burgundy for both red and white. We were here to taste Louis-Michel’s 2002s.

We started with the Colombiere and then moved on to the Clos du Chateau. This vineyard is best described as the Chateau’s back garden, and this was the first Burgundy that has ever seduced me from the barrel. I’ve still a couple of bottles left (I was too skint to buy on release but bought a case when finances allowed a year or so later). We then moved up to Les Chaumes and Aux Reignots, both premiers crus, until we finally reached La Romanee. The summit. Louis-Michel was experimenting with his barrels, seeing which type of oak would best suit the wine, so we tasted samples from the two different lots. By this time it had become clear that he had also had rather a good lunch, and the beauty of what we were tasting was amplified. We had stopped spitting (unwritten Burgundy rule: one doesn’t spit Grands Crus). And I was tasting something that was moving me. I was tasting something that was close to perfection. Layered. Impossibly balanced. Perfumed. With a texture that I cannot put words to. I had the most beautiful and perfect liquid in my mouth. This was like kissing a first love. There was much more going on here than simply grape juice.

La Romanee sits just above La Romanee-Conti. One can tell the two vineyard apart by a small track between them, and the different orientation of the vines. Depending on the time of year one can also see that the growers tend their wines in different ways. What is so special about these vineyards, and the ones that surround them, is that coincidence of nature and history (including seismic shifts and, rather poetically, monks) have enabled them to produce (with some help from mankind) a liquid that transcends the idea of taste, makes the word alcohol seem more like “diesel” or “electricity”.

For me these vineyards provide a conduit to our maker. One can wonder at the beauty of the human body, of the intricacy of the brain, the scale of the stars. What blows me away is the elixir that this dirt can produce.

A glass of burgundy beats Church.