Egon Müller Sharzhofberger Riesling Kabinett 2002

It's nice that some of the most extraordinary wine estates in the world have entry level wines priced within the reach of the average punter. Well, maybe not average. Average-incomed. You have to possess a bit of passion and curiosity to go looking for this, a bit more than average. It's not only nice: it's important. Price is not always necessarily reflective of quality in wine, but it's necessary that there are benchmark hierarchies that work, that illustrate the scale and scope of wine from the basic level to its true heights. There should be a noticeable quality progression, for instance, from basic Bourgogne to village wines to premier and grand cru. Or from basic Kabinett to Spätlese to Auslese… etc and so on. Making great wine at every level, not just the top, is the hallmark of not only a great winemaker, but one who understands that quality is not just the reserve of the wealthy. 

Anyway. 

Pale silver - does not look 8 years old.

Apple, lime and flint on the nose. Very fresh and youthful. Zingy.

Incredibly bright and young - fresh lime and green apple skins, tasting as thought they're being drunk over stone and flint. Nuanced, layered, long. Great precision and structure and altogether classy. Superb now, but will last an age. I don't know if I'd want the weight it will no doubt gain, though. Thinking drink it now.

*****

Tasted at Shorehead, Winter 2010

Domaine Cauhape Jurançon 2000

I really like Jurançon. I should endeavour to drink more. You should too.

Nose is roasted apricots with nutmeg and toffee.

So unbelievably good with the lemon posset. Texture, fruit and sweetness all in superb harmony - spices and nutmeg come through as the finish begins and takes quite some time to end. 

****(*) five stars with a good food pairing. 

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Chateau Routon Sierratage 2005

A couple of years ago, I went for a holiday in Northern California. It wasn't a wine holiday, just a normal one, but I did wind up touring some of the wineries in the Sierra foothills. The most interesting of the bunch was Chateau Routon (geddit?), a horse farm and winery that specialised in fortified wines (port style) and a few table reds. They also had ice cream. 

They describe this as a 'Cask Port', which we all know is incredibly naughty. It's a bend of Touriga Nacional and a couple of other Port varietals and aged in cask for two years before bottling.

Impenetrably dark.

Candied blueberries with smoked bacon, fresh spearmint and maybe a touch of gun smoke on the nose.

The palate is rich and spicy with all those candied fruits and savoury notes from the nose coming through nicely. There's a circular, rounded structure to the tannins. This is still very young and certainly needs a bit of time, but it's actually fairly delicious at the moment. Quite earthy, too.

***(*)

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Warre's 1970

I'd not tried this in some time. If memory serves, this was their 'tricentenary' bottling, celebrating a staggering 300 years of making Port. 

Dusty looking and pale.

Hot on the nose with sweet cranberries.

Palate is gentle with cinnamon and dried, spiced apples with cranberries and sugar plums and more winter spice. Long and delicious and the best I've had it. Still a fair few decades left in it as well.

****

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer of 2010

Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1996

I've accidentally drunk a great deal more Mouton-Rothschild than I ever intended to. This isn't a bad thing.

The barest hint of fading on the rim, but still deep and dark.

Nose is savoury and minty and kind of brutish, with plums and wild herbs on the edges. It gets headier as it opens up.

The palate is backwards and ungiving at the moment. With coaxing, the ripeness of the fruit comes through, coated with sandy tannins. Leaps out with the food, but still seems to lack a bit of lift. I want to re-taste, as I was somewhat underwhelmed.

***(*)

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Leoville-Barton 2000

I tasted this with some trepidation. I have a case laying down and thought, 'you better be bloody good'.

Dark and unremitting.

Fantastic nose. Dark fruits with smokey edges and a tar note that opens to anise and cinnamon. The fruit is sweet.

Larger than life on the palate - big, rich, structured claret. Hints of all on the nose, but they're still all tripping over each other. Incredibly young, dark and unyielding. There's more to come. This was clearly infanticide, but the exciting kind. Years and years left.

***(**)

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Chateau Palmer 2000

I think Palmer's overrated, but it has a sexy label. I think they know they're overrated and so they try to get more out of their wine than it can give. 

Chocolate and violets on the nose with lavender and blackberries. Is nose feel a thing? Because it feels felt-y on the nose. Weird.

Soft, supple and complete. There's maturity there already and everything seems to have 'arrived' - there are no dark corners of the palate leaving question marks. It's all there to see/taste. Roasted violets and berry fruit with cedar bark. Incredibly sexy, though somewhat simple.

****

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Williams & Humbert Collection 12 yo Amontillado

I've no idea why Williams & Humbert decided to put a specific year stamp on this Amontillado. I thought that age statements on sherry were restricted to the VOS and VORS classifications. The youth and freshness of the wine seems to undermine whatever qualitative determination the statement has, so I can only assume it's a marketing decision. I don't think it's a good one, either. Sherry drinkers know the solera system and its age-defiance. Slapping a year on it - one I assume is either the mean or minimum age of the wines within the solera - doesn't do anyone trying to wrap their head around sherry any favours. Especially, in this case, as the wine is fairly atypical for an Amontillado.

Unless that's the point; to show that your average Amontillado is actually much older than you might think, and that at only 12 years, it's just barely in its post-Fino state. But that's not explained anywhere - you just get told it's 12 without any context.  

Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe I'm over-thinking the labelling. I don't usually care about labels, unless they're awful. In any case, this banter is distracting from what is, actually, an incredibly tasty sherry. Maybe they should have called it that.

Very pale. A light, golden brass, looks perhaps a little low on the filtered side of things.

Brine, salted nuts and chestnut mushrooms on the nose. Lively and fresh.

I said on Twitter that this was far more Fino-like than Amontillado-y. The front of the palate is lemon rind riding chalk dust, with a fresh saltiness. It's a bracing start that doesn't pick up that expected nuttiness until midway through, and even then, the zing and citrus pervade throughout. Blind, I might have guessed a Pasada. I wonder if the flor maybe wasn't quite dead yet? Regardless, this is a truly fantastic sherry. Ignore the label, as it claims to be medium dry. Nonsense. Bone dry, and brilliantly so.

*****

Tasted at Shorehead, 27 June 2012 

Ridge Monte Bello 2000

You don't need me to tell you Paul Draper is a genius, but Paul Draper is a genius. I've posted a fair bit about Ridge on this site, and I hope to continue to do so. I really love their wines. 

Rich, dark fruit on the nose, wrapped in cedar, tobacco and dusty leather. Lovely, bright, ripe nose.

The palate is fantastic - savoury, balanced and with great lift. Tasting this amongst some 2000 vintage Bordeaux and this is the most old world and claret-y of the bunch - great, tensile rope-like structure with saddle leather, cocoa powder, prosciutto or speck with integrated oak grain that comes right at the end. What an amazing wine. Long. 

*****

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Lustau Almacenista Oloroso Pata de Gallina (Matured by Juan Garcia Jarana)

This comes from a 38-barrel solera somewhere in Jerez de la Frontera. I think it's an absolutely awesome wine. I've been drinking it quite a bit recently. 

Light for an Oloroso. Nice brightness and brilliance. 

Nose of salted caramel with a bit of cocoa. But not heavy - quite elegant nose.

This may be one of the most elegant Oloroso's I've ever tasted. Blind, I may call it for a Palo Cortado. Like the nose, you have that salted caramel, cocoa and a pervasive nuttiness, but it's so gentle on the tongue. It's somewhat contradictory: rich but light, powerful but elegant. It lingers for some time. I feel better for having a glass.

*****

Tasted many times, but most recently at Shorehead, 25 June 2012

Richebourg 1998, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti

Quite early in my wine trade days, I was given the task of sourcing a selection of Richebourgs from different growers for a tasting. It was fun. I cracked several tomes and scoured the web in search of the best growers and vintages. Wine merchants from all over this small island had me pestering them on the phone, sorting shipping and payment details, clarifying provenance. The tasting was for someone's 60th birthday and time was of the essence. In the end there were six bottles - 3 x '95s and 3 x '97s from growers such as DRC, Leroy, Meo-Camuzet and Anne Gros. It was not easy to hand those wines over to the customer, not easy at all. And sadly, I was not invited to the tasting. 

Dark in the glass, with just a hint of ruby on the rim.

The nose is pungent - savoury and masculine Burgundy with perfumed edges and stewed cherries, layered with a hint of lacquer and beef jerky. It's never the same twice. 

Meaty on the palate, layered with ripe, sour, bright red fruit and just-softening tannins. There's so much there - it cascades across the mouth and then grips it in all the right places. Cherries and cocoa, beaten saddle leather and wood spice. Beautiful. Wine of the night. 

*****

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Newton Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1987

Keep your eyes peeled. I found this bottle in a liquor store in Arcata, Humboldt County, way-Northern California. It was dusty, seemingly long forgotten. It was on a shelf next to a display of beef jerky, Doritos and dips. The price tag on it read $20. The clerk, a white guy with dreads who smelled as though he'd been doing beer bong hits in the back room, gave me a big cheesy grin and said something like, '87 man, hella cool. Far out  - you gotta drink that ****, man'. It was like being in a Kevin Smith movie.

It was a bit of a risk - a 23 year-old bottle from a package store - but I figured it was worth it. Worse that could happen is that I get a dud bottle and a fun story. 

Still very youthful colour. Dark.

Smoked cherries with a bit of green stalkiness on the nose - there's a bit of debate as to whether it's very slightly corked. 

The palate is soft and charming with supple stone fruit and good texture. Then, sadly, it disappears, going totally hollow. There's still some nice vibrancy there. Just past it and maybe a hint of TCA. Fun to buy though.

Oh, and only 12.5% abv. 

**

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Jean Luc Colombo Cornas Masterclass

I attended this masterclass last year, following Hatch Mansfield's acquiring of the agency for these wines in the UK. I'd known of Colombo for years, but had never really tasted the wines. This masterclass brought us through their single parcel Cornas cuvées. Cornas used to be considered the scruffy cousin of Hermitage and Côte Rotie. Now it's considered the expensive scruffy cousin of Hermitage and Côte Rotie. The wines are all 100% Syrah. 

Jean Luc Colombo Cornas 'Les Méjeans' 2007

Sort of a breakfast Cornas, though I'm not sure I'd pair it with cornflakes. A blend of younger vines from their holdings in the appellation.

Nicel floral on the nose, that are quickly followed by some bloody, more savoury notes and maybe a touch of mint?

Lovely grip - bright red and black fruit with a touch of liquorice. Good unity between the fruit and the structure. Interesting - a light style of dark wine. 

***(*)

Jean Luc Colombo Cornas 'Les Terres Brûlées' 2007

This parcel of vines is between 20 and 60 years old, and the cuvée is said to be their 'prettiest' expression of Syrah.

The fruit is more intense on the nose, as is the black olive tapenade and crushed rose petals.

Serious stuff. Young. Dark, tight and tight knit with fantastic grip. Grabs hold of the tongue and all parts of the mouth. Great structure but still waiting to blossom. One to lay down.

***(**)

Jean Luc Colombo Cornas 'Les Ruchets' 2007

From 90 year old vines in the heart of the appellation. 

Jammy, menthol-y and a touch stewed. No floral notes.

It's a bit of a beast. Big, bramble (not stewed on the palate, just the nose), backed by very rustic tannins. Hugely backwards. Not entirely sure what to make of it. Needs time.

**(**?)

Jean Luc Colombo Cornas 'La Louvée' 2007

The name means 'she-wolf', which is kind of cool. The vines are around 70 years old, with great south-eastern aspect. 

More ephemeral, floral and elegant on the nose. Roses, strawberries and some darker blueberries as well.

Fantastic integration. Soft and pretty to begin with that then deepens as the palate goes on. Not as rustic as the others. Fruit, structure and secondaries all in great harmony. You could probably crack this one open now.

****(*)

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1985 (from half bottle)

Wine geeks should read widely. No two palates are identical and you should get as broad a view as possible when learning about wine and seeing how certain tasters react to certain wines. I read too much Parker when I started out. It was easy to do, as there were so many notes to read. But I thought that I was doing something wrong. I disagreed with him on a lot of wines and what did I know? 

Now, it's a different story. I don't tend to check specific notes on anything I taste, unless it's awful and I need to determine whether it's a fault or just a terrible wine. When looking for new things, I look to folks like Jamie Goode and Jancis for some guidance, but mostly winemakers and old friends; folks who get excited about new, brilliant wines.

In any case, I've had this a fair few times, and always liked it a lot more than Parker seemed to.

Showing its age in the colour - no amber, but some rusty ruby. Looking a touch Burgundian.

The nose is simply beautiful, though there's nothing simple about it. Floral and stone fruit notes with rounded herbs. Soft, elegant and balanced. I could smell this all day.

The palate started off a bit dumb - blind I doubted my call of a first growth from the nose. With time, it blossomed in the glass, becoming charming and ephemeral. It's faded somewhat from its glory days, but boasts elegance and balance that you don't find very often. It's a shame that it doesn't quite live up to the its aromatics - a little past its prime, but lovely nonetheless.

****

Tasted on Crawford Gardens, Summer 2010

Y'quem 1996

I remember the first time I tasted Y'quem. I was at Number 9 Park, in Boston, with my sister. The one that I like. They were pouring the '99 by the glass for $25. My sister was doing a wine-tasting course at the time and I was like, 'I guarantee you that they won't give you this to taste', and so we split a glass. It blew my mind. As far as I was concerned, it was to your average Sauternes or Barsac what an Aston Martin DB5 was to a 1988 Ford Fiesta. It's a comparison that should separate all truly extraordinary wine from the average bottle in every instance, and I know that similar metaphors are often used in the trade, but with Y'quem it seems like anyone could smell and taste it and realise that it exists at a different level. Its concentration and intensity seem too much for its physical form.

So, you know, I liked it.

This bottle was a gift to the Naughton Dining Club from a lovely couple. They gave it to us the day before they got engaged. They have since divorced, which is very sad. 

The wine, however, was excellent.

Gold. With its own light.

I always get pine resin with Y'quem's nose. Rich, resin-y, laden with pineapple and candied melon, chantilly, white chocolate and flecks of spice.

Young, with a palate that pops like the bubbles of an aero bar. Caramel coated pineapple, wood varnish, fresh chilli spice and maybe a bit of rubber. Not rubber in a bad way, but a sort of rubber tree plant rubber. Not petrochemical rubber. Piercing, intense sweetness. Which goes without saying, but still. Awesome.

****(*)

Tasted at Naughton, 29 April 2012

Henri Fuchs Riesling Grand Cru Kirchberg de Ribeauvillé SGN 1989

I used to drink more Alsace. Not exactly gallons, perhaps, but a healthy amount per week. I always felt the consumer's loss was the wine-geek's gain in that the wines are spectacular and, more often than not, a bit of a bargain. Some whiney chardonnay/sauvignon swiller complaining that they were 'too sweet' made every sip that bit more delicious. 

I need to drink more Alsace, and perhaps focus more on VTs and SGNs, thereby ensuring no bargains whatsoever.

We drank this in between our main - a roast lamb - and dessert - a ridiculously decadent crumble. I don't know the grower at all, thus enabling me to giggle at his name in a juvenile fashion without feeling too guilty. 

Quite young to the eye, though deepening on the edges.

Nose of tinned pineapple with botrytis must and a bit of dust. Opens to more brightness. 

Palate comes straight from the nose. Quite tight and sweet and dirty and pineapple-y with a nice oiliness. Long and decadent finish.

****

Tasted at Naughton 29/4/2012

Barolo Vigna Cicala Bricco Bussia 1990, Aldo Conterno

We opened this at a dinner a few months ago. I pushed for it to be one of the centrepiece wines, and I'm glad I did. The bottle was in perfect condition, and as you can see from the notes, it still bore a great deal of youth and life. Probably my red of the year, so far.

Lovely rusty brown ruby Barolo hue. Great clarity.

Wild brambles and bright cherries, crunchy, exciting nose. Compelling, heady and perfumed.

What wines feel like this, other than old Barolo? Wrapped in tar or anise balls or forest floor is this remarkably young, bright, crunchy, juicy cherry fruit. In every sip, there's this to and fro between the two but always that sense of biting through something to get to something else. They all meld into a fruit laden savoury saddle leather and wet tar grippiness kind of thing. Brilliant.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 29/4/2012

Baccarìa Frappato 2010

This native Sicilian variety always makes me think of milkshakes. Nothing to do with how it tastes; just the name. You don't often find it on its own - usually it's blended with Nero d'Avola for Cerasuolo di Vittoria.

Quite a light ruby on the edges with deepening purple to the core.

Herbaceous nose, with flower petals and some earthy, meaty notes.

Bushels of juicy red summer fruits on the palate, that seem to really kick off with a bit of food (I'm having lasagne). Very light on tannins, but quenching acidity provides nice grip without any aggressive astringency. Not much to write home about on its own - pleasant enough and all that - but really great with food. Imagine there's not much it wouldn't lift to with that acidity. Lovely, and a bargain.

****

Tasted 17 June 2012 at Shorehead

favourite wine

'What's your favourite wine?'

Not the best wine you've ever drunk, but your favourite. It's not as easy a question to answer. Or maybe I'm making it too complicated. Maybe you can answer it just fine and I'm over thinking it all. It wouldn't be the first time. For me, best wines are easy. I've got them categorised and everything, and can reel a list off counting by finger with very little effort. 

Favourite, to me, is different. A favourite wine is a bottle whose moment, or moments, pierce through the memory of palate, heart and mind. It may have been a revelation or a comfort, or both. It comes to be something that we consider defining as who to we are - not just wine, but food, music, art, movies, architecture. Often the story of how one particular thing becomes a favourite becomes one of the defining stories of our life. 

Again, maybe it's just me. It could be that I weigh down these moments with significance in hindsight, turning the odd moment into something far more than it has any right to be.

The first wine I tried from Freddie Mugnier was his 1997 Musigny. It was March 2003, and my flatmate at the time brought the bottle back from a trip to Beaujolais and Beaune. I cooked some lamb gigot chops from the farmer's market and decanted the bottle into my prized decanter (sadly broken a short time later). I didn't know anything about Mugnier and Musigny was almost as much a mystery. Andy paid €75 or something close to that for it, so we expected something good. What we got was something tremendous. The purity, elegance and precision of the wine blew me away. 

I spent the next seven months pestering the MD of our wine shop, demanding he find the importer and order vast quantities of every cuvée he could. It took awhile, but he did, and they stock those wines to this day. They're a bit pricier these days, sadly.

So that's my favourite wine. I love it. I wish I could afford to drink it more often.

Musigny 2000, JF Mugnier

Pale, translucent, rust with no orange. Bright to the core.

Bushels of cranberries, redcurrants, dried spice in bushes and some forest floor. Some cured, savoury notes come through with coaxing.

Bursting with crunchy, red, juicy fruit on the front side of the palate. It's no longer cranberries or redcurrants but cherries and cherry stones. There's a light dusting of cocoa that coats the cherries like leather. As it passes from the middle to the finish there's a soft heather note that slips into that perfumed, ephemeral dovetail.

*****

Tasted with good friends on Greyfriars, 7 November 2011

Chablis Clos des Hospices dans Les Clos Moreau 1991 (from magnum)

These magnums used to litter the wine merchant I worked for: they were everywhere. Not just from 1991, but spanning the whole of the decade, from 1990-99. Grand looking labels but shoddy cardboard boxes that disintegrated as though the inevitable entropy of the universe focussed the entirety of its attention on that sad packaging. A forage around the warehouse would result in the discovery of yet another '94, bin soiled and draped in corrugated cardboard that had been soaked and dried so many times that a light breeze would most likely reduce it to dust. Stock-counting was never easy.

Their ubiquity, for some reason, counted against them. I never tried one, in spite of some really lovely vintages laying around. Our director swore by them, and bought them every year without fail, and every year without fail we would attempt to stack the new boxes in the hope they would not collapse, releasing an ocean of Grand Cru Chablis. 

I never sold one. I don't think any of us did. But someone must have drunk them, because they all disappeared, but one. Bin-soiled, but great levels and no sign of premox. That's not a bad sign for a 21 year-old Chablis.

Nice, rich gold with still a touch of green edges.

Peach Wensleydale on the nose. Soft and gentle. Whiff of beeswax.

Bright, rich, lemony citrus with a hard, honeyed wax to it as well. Powerful stuff and still with loads of life. Opens incredibly with the food (smoked haddock fish cakes). Fleshy and gentle with a texture that gets silkier as it opens. What an eye opener. I was expecting it to be harder; more bracing. Instead it's savoury, soft and decadent. Brilliant.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 29 April 2012

Charles Heidsieck 'Cuvee Champagne Charlie' 1979

Opened along with a previously mentioned Grande Dame '76, as this was my host's birth year. The '76 was the better wine, but I could probably drink pints of this, should the opportunity arise.

Thin streams of bubbles rising quickly in the deep gold.

Sourdough and Cinnamon with quite exotic, slightly sweet chutney notes.

Crisp, rich and crunchy to start with, then softening and gentle on the palate, with a nice caress. There's an odd, zingy hint of quinine. Toasty, and a touch disjointed with the mousse. Almost a session wine, though that's quite a vulgar thought.

****
Tasted at Naughton, 28/4/2012

Baccarìa Nero d'Avola 2010

I had two disappointing beers last night. In itself, it wasn't a disaster. You win some, you lose some; wine, beer or whisky. But they were pricey, small, 'craft' beers that both felt that they were trying too hard. One was just laden with saccharine notes on the finish. Had I something to follow it, i would've chucked them down the sink. Bummer.

Mindful of last night's travails, I decided to grab a bottle of vino for this evening, even though with the baseball on and minimal efforts regarding dinner, beer seemed more my comfort zone. I chose this because it's a vintage I've not tried and if you can show me a wine that Thorman Hunt imports that fails to be excellent, I'll buy you a pint. It also only cost 50p more than my two shitty beers from last night.

It's made at a big co-op. Just above the label sits a silver sticker that proclaims it's made and bottled in Sicily. I like this. Siciliy ships gobsmacking amounts of wine to be bottled elsewhere, including quite a bit to mainland Italy. It gets blended and mucked about with and beefs up thinner wines. It's both legal and disingenuous. So it's nice to have something with a bit of provenance.

Ruby and purple. Quite light.

Flower petals on the nose with plums and a bit of spice. Pleasant and somewhat summery on the nose.

Palate is light, with a good combination of fruit, flowers and a very gentle dusting of rustic tannin. Simple and really rather nice with my unremarkable lasagne. It opens up nicely as well, growing in the glass with more fruit, savoury notes and grip. This is not rocket science wine, but it's just so good at what it does. Very nice.

**** (under a tenner, drinkable, and better than most pub/wedding reds)

Tasted 10 June, 2012 at Shorehead

Clos Vougeot 2005, Domaine Louis Jadot

I don't know when I began to 'get it'. At what point I crossed over from thinking a wine didn't taste very appealing to recognising its youth and promise. Young wines (and old) pop up on this site quite frequently, and I hope I do them justice. I hope the casual reader has a look and trusts that I have some idea what I'm talking about. 

Some fine wines reward the odd dabble in infanticide, and the guilt that comes with it can be, for real wine geeks, a bit of a thrill. Big tannins and sweet fruit and, yeah, it's going to get better but it's so huge and awesome right NOW… you know the deal. Or maybe you don't. If you don't, don't worry. You're not missing much. Wine nerdery's navel-gazing is nothing to envy.

Some young 'uns just don't say anything. Backwards; mute. This is easier to assess if you know the producer, as you can assume it will eventually say SOMETHING (or know that if does say something, it will be gibberish). Youthful strangers may not get a second look.

And then there are the bottles that bring both guilt and excitement, for the moment and for the future. Wines that show so much promise but so little generosity. The tannins might be big but the fruit has not asserted itself yet and tasting it is like untying a bosun's knot with your tongue. Your brain kicks in, grasping and gripping textures, trying to sense the fruit and make heads or tails of it. Wines that aren't ready, but that you know and love better as they age because you knew them when they were young and rambunctious. 

This was one of those.

Light, bright and brilliant with lovely depth to the core.

Floral red fruits on the nose. Strawberries and cranberries with the odd crushed flower petal. Nice purity to it. Coaxing reveals some more savoury, meaty notes, but still with pervasive fruit.

Very young palate. Texture and integration all there but it overwhelms nuance. Bit like drinking rope soaked in strawberries. Lovely grip and would benefit hugely from food, but needs at least ten-fifteen years, probably more. There's an underlying juiciness that's not quite settled with the rest, that rises at the finish. Will be stupendous.

****(*)

Tasted 8 June 2012

Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame 1976

Birth year wines can be a mixed bag. Sure, it's fine if you're utterly minted and born in an extraordinary year, but for the rest of us wine dorks, it's not that easy. I do not envy Bordeaux fans born in '73. I do not envy young, poor, wine trade-lings born in '82 and desperate to taste something affordable from that seminal (though now somewhat fading) year. 

Please do not point out that wine trade-lings born in '82 are not really all that young anymore. 

I've been lucky. '76 Champagnes have lasted well and there are a fair few Germans out there that are tasting good still. Sadly any Burgundy I could afford would probably be passed it, whilst I comfort myself that any bottle I can't afford is probably fake anyway. 

I've also been lucky because one of my best mates collects obscene amounts of Champagne and happens to be quite fond of '76. Ta, Pete.

Gold going to deep brass - excited while pouring but the bubbles settle to quite tiny and slow.

Honey and burnt orange rind, with nuts and mushrooms on the nose. Quite sherry-ish. Coaxing reveals some darker forest fruits and fruit compote. Hints of nettles.

Bright, big, deep, rich and powerful. Roasted walnuts, chestnuts and mushrooms enlivened with orange citrus, butter and the kind of slight crisp you expect with the glazed part of a croissant. That citrus goes to quince; rich, spicy quince. Lovely, centred weight provides great structure and superb length. You can taste the heat of the vintage in the brightness of the wine, but it never seems hot or unbalanced. Genuinely incredible stuff.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 28/4/2012

Ridge Geyserville 2009 from Double Magnum.

My friend Sam brought this gargantuan bottle to a dinner party last December. So, you know, go Sam.

Night-like purple. Very dark. Light barely escapes.


Deep and plummy; almost mulled on the nose. Cloves, woodspice.


Dusty cocoa with rich, candied plums. So incredibly ripe and yet never unbalanced. There's liquorice and softly gripping tannins. Juicy, long and really quite fine stuff. More-ish. Never as dense as the colour suggests. A fineness that eludes most Zinfandels. I've little doubt that it will age beautifully, as Mr Draper seems incapable of making wines that don't, but at the same time, I'm not sure I have the patience.


*****

Tasted 29/12/2011 at Naughton

April 20th Edition (or: Cannabis Wine? Really?)

I first read about the growing trend for some Californian winemakers to infuse certain cuvées with cannabis sometime last year, but I can't remember where. In fact, I tried to forget the whole thing; I was happy to scrub from my memory such whispered rumour and scandal. Then, a few days ago, The Drinks Business resurrected the story, timed no doubt to coincide with herbal enthusiasts the world over celebrating 4/20 (20/4 here in the UK).

For those in a rush, and not wanting to click on the link, the basic gist is that there are some winemakers in California who drop a pound of marijuana into a fermenting barrel of wine and leave it in there for anywhere up to about nine months. The first time I read about it, I thought it was a joke. Part of me still hopes it is.

First off, I'm not a prude. I would, were I in charge of the universe, legalise marijuana immediately and tax it heavily. I have, in my day, partaken of the magical herb. At one point, during my second year at university, I was probably one or two joints shy of permanently cladding myself in hemp hoodies, a silly wooly hat, combats, uneven facial hair, living on a commune and flipping a peace sign at passing pigeons. These days such events are more of a rarity, and usually result in me collapsing in bed well before everyone else.

So it isn't the cannabis part of cannabis-Cabernet blends that makes me shake my head in disbelief. It's not even the Cabernet part, though there are a fair few Californian Cabernets that have left me shaking my head in disbelief. It is the combination of two things that can only result in something far, far lesser than the sum of its parts. Why would you do that?

Actually, let's start with why you wouldn't do that.

First of all, marijuana tastes fucking awful. That's why people tend to smoke it. People who eat it bake it into chocolate brownies in an effort to mask the taste as much as possible. People who drink bong water sit so low on the evolutionary ladder that we can only hope they never procreate. Any time I encounter notes of dope in a drink I'm tasting (usually beer, usually if it's been hopped with a clumsy hand), it counts against it. It counts against it because it's unpleasant and awful. Apparently these wines wind up smelling like a college dorm or a Grateful Dead concert. Are you kidding me? Give me farmyard-y Burgundy any day.

Second of all, wine shouldn't taste fucking awful. So, you know, don't add something that tastes fucking awful to it.

Third of all, it's hard to make wine. It requires, especially at the top level, herculean effort. Nothing should go to waste. That includes wasting a barrel by dropping a pound of ganja in it.

Fourth of all, Californian Cabernet is potent enough as it is, nes pas?

Fifth of all, wouldn't Cabernet Franc, with its vegetal leafiness, be a better match than Cabernet Sauvignon?

So, why, then?

The only reason I can come up with is that it gets you really fucked up. And that shouldn't be a reason to make good wine. That's what we folks that make quality wine fight against, tooth and nail, is that what we make is just a means to an end. Of the roads to intoxication, this is the autobahn; our own, funky, reeking version of a speedball. And that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

Not quite as nasty as bong water, though. Don't ask.

Champagne Week Finale: Epic Dom Perignon tasting of Epicness at Naughton, 7 April 2012

Drawing Champagne Week to a close with notes from a special tasting and some thoughts.

This tasting was originally just going to be a side-by-side between the 2003 and the 2002. One thing led to another, though, and we wound up with a full-fledged vertical tasting. It was huge fun, sparked off some good debate and we all got to drink a metric ton of DP.

However, throughout the tasting, and not for the first time, I wondered at its practical application. Comparative wine tasting at any level removes the tasters from the context for which the wine is meant. Richard Geoffroy, when he made Dom Perignon 2003, made it to be enjoyed as a singular wine, to accompany excellent food, not to be tasted with several other of its brethren. As such, how valid are our conclusions? How much further does this widen the gap between 'wine folks' who pass judgement with authority and the average consumer? This is oft-tread ground as wine discussion goes, but recent chat on Twitter and elsewhere has thrown it all into sharp relief. I don't have any answers, but it's something to ask yourself while your tasting.

Dom Perignon 2003

Mature colour, with slow and tiny bubbles.

Fat, rich nose with buttered shortbread and brioche. Roasted strawberry pips.

Big and brash on the palate with almost burnt toast and strawberry jam. The burnt notes give the impression of a shell, or skin that you bite through to gain access to the fruit. It seems to replace acidity in terms of structure, as everything rides on it and it's delivered through that toastiness. Remarkable winemaking. Not my favourite by any means but I'm kind of blown away by it anyway. Infinitely superior to Bollinger 2003.

Dom Perignon 2002

Paler, more lively mousse and brighter.

Flecks of lemon peel, apple and a touch of cream to it. Lemon curd.

Palate is buoyant, bursting, tight knit citrus and incredible grip, mouthfeel, and tightness. Fruit and secondaries are woven perfectly into each other. Great harmony. Slatey and chalky texture. So young, remarkable and brilliant. Lovely nerve and energy.

Dom Perignon 2000

Beginnings of brass on the gold.

Bushels of butter and hay on the nose.

Soft on the palate, sensual mousse but lacking grip. There's a bitterness on the finish that's not pleasant. Perhaps a touch too flabby.

Dom Perignon 1999

Active mousse, nice colour.

Very mute on the nose at first. As it opens it's all pencil lead and limes. Flinty and citrusy.

Disjointed on the palate. Rambunctious mousse that stops abruptly midway through, releasing an almost oily butteriness. Needs perhaps to be wrapped around som fore gras. Instead we have it with pheasant and it really livens up. It grabs the food and lifts with lush, tropical notes.

Dom Perignon 1998

Shed its silver and and bright gold.

Heady nose of balanced hay, chantilly cream and crunchy green and red apples.

Lovely harmony on the palate. Subtle and pleasing combination of all the barnyard - hay and biscuits and brioche, and fruit basket - pear, apples and a touch of quince, all held together with a lovely creaminess. At its peak. Not the best wine, but perhaps the best wine now.

Dom Perignon 1996

Superb brilliance with lively, pinprick, racy bubbles.

Brioche, toffee apples, clotted cream, candied lemon peel and quince on the nose.

Full and youthful. I'm sure this is one of the more youthful wines on the table. Big, mousse, exciting but not aggressive. Younger and livelier than the last time I tasted it, I imagine this is about to close down for its awkward teenage years. Just beginning to show fleshy white fruit and quince. No mushrooms yet. Perhaps a touch of cep. Its class is indisputable.

------------------------------------------------

Put simply, the 2002 and the 1996 were the champions of the tasting; their reputation as fantastic vintages is wholly justified. I can only hope that I am fortunate enough to taste them as they mature over the next three or so decades.

The 2003 is remarkable for existing, but I do not think it ranks highly in the echelons of vintages that I have tried. Time may change that, but for now, it is what it is, an accurate reflection of that hot summer. When I interviewed Richard Geoffroy, he made it clear to me that reflecting the vintage was paramount to his mission as a wine maker. As such, it's a success. But when held against wines like the 2002, the shortcomings of the vintage become apparent.

By the end, we wound up asking more questions than the wines were answering. Wine can't really answer questions, but it provokes the asking in spades. The biggest question was how much more reductive the wine-making style in Champagne has become over the last decade. It's not unique to this region, by any means, but my own anecdotal, tasting evidence suggests that more and more houses are going this route, most likely to counter the noticeably hotter summers. Has anyone else noticed this? Young wines are paler, with more apples, pears and pear drops. Tangy, youthful marmalade in a young Champagne seems to have become a thing of the past. It's fascinating, tasting the changes in the world and our response to it through wine.

Champagne Week: Pol Roger 1990 (from magnum)

Magnums are fun.

Still very youthful colour with steady, small bubbles.

Nose of forest fruits and lemon rind. There's a bright fresh pithiness there as well. Still very youthful and exuberant.

Beautiful velvety texture on the palate. Quite fibrous and quince-like. Light red fruit followed by a citrus grip. The toast and brioche are still in hiding but there is a nice early note of mushroom and earth that shows up on the finish. This is lovely now, but there is a great deal more to come.

***(**)

Tasted at Naughton, 29 December 2011

Champagne Week: Champagne Roses de Jeanne Blanc de Blancs Lieu-Dit 'La Haute Lemblé' 2006 Cedric Bouchard

The middle wine of a three wine tasting, this was the best combination of fun and serious. Not terribly tasty with pizza, though.

Quite pale; silvery, with lazy bubbles.

Bready, floury nose, with hints of candied lemon peel. Quite blossom-y, with a richness that comes with coaxing.

The palate rides the mousse and then erupts as it hits the middle of the tongue. It's rich and doughy, with roasted citrus that melts to leave a flinty anise note along the edges. Generous, but still with good focus. Vibrant - hums a bit.

*****

Tasted somewhere in Fulham, 4/3/2012

Champagne Week: Champagne Larmandier-Bernier Tradition 1er Cru Extra Brut

We opened this as the last wine in a tasting of complex, intense, serious wines and it was glorious relief. 100% Biodynamic.

Very pale. Quick mousse.

Clotted cream, strawberries and floury scones and lemon curd. Bubbly high tea on the nose.

Strawberries and lemon rind, nicely integrated fruit, mousse and texture. Soft, but not flabby. Not as cerebral or complex as some of the bubbles I've tasted recently, but relaxingly so. Gentle and elegant wine that is delicious and more-ish.

****

Tasted somewhere in Fulham, 04/03/2012

Champagne Week: Blind Blanc de Blancs Tasting at Naughton, 18/2/2012

What better thing to do on a cold, February night than to taste a selection of Blanc de Blancs blind? Well, kind of blind - we knew what the cuvées were, we just didn't know what order they were being served in. Which can lead to mistakes, as that little knowledge of what's available can bring preconceptions and affect how you interpret your tasting.

I don't blind taste often enough, though I do find myself designing blind tastings quite often. From my experience, the less you focus on what the wine could be and the more you focus on what you're tasting, the better you'll perform. The three of us tasting all scored 50%, though we didn't get the same 50% right.

Wine A

Quite a straw colour.

Hay and coconut nose - manages to be exotic and restrained at the same time.

Gentle palate. Creamy with green and red apples that develop caramel notes and a touch of marzipan. Textured and gentle with a long finish that leaves a slightly sweet, powdered sugar sensation. Charming, delicious and harmonious.

My guess: Pierre Péters 'Les Chétillons' Cuvée Spéciale Grand Cru 2002

Wine: Pierre Péters 'Les Chétillons' Cuvée Spéciale Grand Cru 2002

Wine B

Again quite pale, silver.

Nose more apple-y and forward.

Palate quite balanced, luscious but with good acidity. Soft. Possibly a touch of dirtiness. Short.

Immediately pleasing, but doesn't hold up with air, sadly, and falls apart after about an hour.

My guess: Taittinger Comtes de Champagne 2000

Wine: Delamotte 1999

Wine C

Darker. Feel this has a bit more maturity than the others.

Lean nose that seems a touch disjointed. Bit dirty.

Loud on the palate with big mousse and a lack of balance. A bit of teenage Champagne rambunctiousness.

My guess: Delamotte 1999

Wine: Taittinger Comtes de Champagne 2000

Wine D

Just the very beginnings of brass on the edges of rich gold.

Clotted cream, apples and a hint of toffee on the nose.

Rich palate that is just starting to caramelise with age. Initially quite simple, though. As it breathes, complexity reveals itself with bready, textured mouthfeel and more expressive fruit. The other wines shut down a bit as the night went on, whereas this just got better and better.

My guess: Pol Roger Chardonnay 1996

Wine: Pol Roger Chardonnay 1996

The most disappointing of the bunch was the Comtes, and it increased my conviction that 2000 is not a great year in Champagne. The Pierre Peters was delicious, though that powdered sugar finish still has me scratching my head. Regardless, they're a grower I recommend seeking out, as the wines are compelling from entry level up to the top. Delamotte's continued inconsistency frustrates me, and the next time some wanker from Corney & Barrow waffles on about how 'it's basically Salon', I shall have to be restrained from punching them in the face.

The Pol's another story all together. On the one hand, it was easily the best wine of the evening. On the other hand, it took about three hours of breathing time for that to become apparent. Now, the folks I taste Champagne with are strange, and we are more than happy to let a bottle breathe as needs be. But I would venture that we're the exception. Champagne tends to be cracked open and drunk, often in haste, which is, forgive the rhyme, a waste. That said, I have a hard time telling someone to open a bottle and let it sit for three hours.

Champagne David Léclapart 'L'Amateur' Blanc de Blancs 1er Cru

A tiny cuvée from a tiny producer - only 8000 bottles per annum.

Fast bubbles - already some deeper gold and green.

Nose is intense; layered. Fino notes- flor-y, sour dough-y that lead to limes. Green apples. Changes with with every sniff.

Remarkably bracing, gripping palate. Like sparkling manzanilla, with an unmistakable salinity. Piercing precision and nerve. Tastes like both the oyster shell and the liquor. Biting right from the beginning to the sharp, lingering finish. Rigid structure and focused mouthfeel. Demands food. Gets sharper, more citrussy as it opens and the temperature rises. Flint-shard mouthfeel that reveals flavour, rather than the other way round. While I keep tripping over the idea of a fizzy Manzanilla, it occurs to me that the sensation is more like base wine - Champagne pre-secondary fermentation. If you've ever tried a base wine, you'll know it's a jarring experience.

I don't really know what to score this. It's extraordinary, but pretty weird. Perhaps with the right food. It is certainly not for everyone. I've never had a champagne like it - the focus and purity is awesome.

***(**) - buyer beware; not for the faint of palate

Tasted somewhere in Fulham, 4/3/2012

Champagne Week

It has been my great fortune to drink quite a lot of Champagne of late, Champagne of all shapes and sizes: grower bubbly, vintage bubbly, non-vintage bubbly, grand marque bubbly, blind bubbly, blanc de blancs bubbly. To celebrate this springtime decadence, the remainder of this week will be dedicated to the notes from these tastings and some observations on the region in general.

To start with, we have a wine from Vertus.

Champagne 'R', Vve Fourny & Fils Vertus Extra-Brut

Green & silver with medium, slow bubbles.

Slate and green apples on the nose with a hint of lime and crumble. Whiff of strawberry. Kind of like water biscuits on the first smell. Very dry biscuits.

The palate kicks off with with apples baked with lime rind. Bracing and dry until the end of the mid palate, where a burst of ripe white fruit kicks up, rolled in oats. Great balance of thinking and feeling wine. 100% vinified in oak, and while there's not much oak to be tasted, its influence is felt with a softness that arrives as the finish develops. Fantastic wine that, once you step back and stop nit-picking the bits and pieces, shows great harmony. The blend is 70% Chardonnay, 15% Pinot Noir and 15% Pinot Meunier, though the red fruit definitely makes its presence felt.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 07/04/2012

Parker adopts 1000-point scale

In a move that has left the wine world reeling, renowned hedonist, critic and cyclist Robert M. Parker Jr. announced Sunday morning that he would be dispensing with his polarising 100-point scale and replacing it with a more comprehensive grading system.

"Wine is too nuanced, too complex, too vast a subject to trap within the confines of a mere hundred points" Parker explained while tucking into an enormous lobe of foie gras decorated with Maryland crab claws. As he washed it down with a La Mission Haut Brion '89, swilled from a Sommelier series Riedel tankard, he stared at the liquid for a moment and reflected. "For instance, this used to be a hundred point wine. Which is nice and everything, but now it's a thousand point wine - how f***ing cool is that?"

Wine merchants throughout the world have been left on tenterhooks, wondering what the new scores would be and how it would affect prices. One anonymous source based in Hong Kong suggested that an extra zero could be added to the price tag as well as the score. He salivated, rubbed his fingers together and gazed emptily into space as he made the remark.

The cynics and whiners in the trade, those who eschew the hundred point scale and find 19% table wines with obscene sugar levels and no acidity ungodly, were unsurprisingly non-plussed by the announcement. "I don't even know where to start. This is ridiculous," said one Phd-touting wine blogger. Another just laughed and cracked open a beer.

Producer reactions were a mixed bag. Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon gazed for a few moments at a perfectly cut piece of quartz and then returned to his crossword, muttering something about sleep. Michel Rolland bought an oak forest and winked at this journalist conspiratorially.

Bizarrely enough, some Twitter folks were most vocal in their outrage, claiming that Parker, by increasing his scale, had in fact stolen a precious character from their limited budget.

One journalist was mauled by a rottweiler, having mistakenly pestered Robert B. Parker, creator of the Spencer For Hire books, for a quote.

In the midst of all the furore, The Wine Advocate offices revealed that whilst the scale would be 1000 points, simply being a wine would immediately qualify for 950 points.

So there you go.

Happy April.

Vigneau-Chevreau Vouvray Cuvée Silex Sec 2010

I've never found a vintage of this wine I didn't like. It's one of those bottles that brings a smile to my face, regardless. Organic and hand-harvested, it's tremendous value at £13. Today, the first day of British Summer Time, seemed as good a day as any to try a new vintage.

Pale, silver with edges of green.

Focused nose of waxed lime peel and barley grist. Quite intense. Barest sense of flint at the end.

Incredibly youthful. Tightly wound, integrated citrus zing of lime and lemon peel wrapped up with bees wax and the slightest of honey-nut notes. It fills the mouth with an almost squeaky juiciness and as the finish starts comes a faint hint of pear drop. Crazy young and intense, you squint as you taste it, but in a great way. I don't understand how some people can disparage Loire Chenin Blanc when wines like this are so utterly brilliant. This would easily beat a wine twice its price. With age, those honey and nut notes will develop while the citrus will pick up roasted character. Drink now and cellar too.

*****

Tasted at Shorehead 25/3/2012

50 best Portuguese wines as chosen by Tom Cannavan

From Port to Portugal. Tom Cannavan was last year's Portuguese Wine Writer of The Year, and as such selected the 50 best wines out of about a thousand tasted. Tom's a great guy - I've known him almost as long as I've been in the trade. He also has a great palate and understanding of wine, and so I was looking forward to tasting his favourites. I was not disappointed. Two of the wines came out of nowhere and blew the back of my head off with bizarre awesomeness (the Dúvida and the Ameal sweetie) whilst the overwhelming quality of the rest would do any country proud.

There are no scores, but hopefully the quality comes through in the notes.

See if you can guess where the whites end and the reds begin.

Julia Kemper Reserva 2009

Bright lemon nose, pithy with oats.

Confit, juicy palate. Long with bracing citrus.

Casa de Mouraz 2009

Chantilly, creamy nose, touch floral.

Rounded and gentle with nice mouthfeel and bright citrus underneath.

Castrus 2009

Pear drop nose, quite confected but not in an off way.

Again with pear drop on the palate, very much a glacé candy thing.

Alvarinho Dorado Superiore 2008

Toffee and butterscotch, weird but groovy.

Rich and creamy on the palate, nice weight with obvious leesy balanced woodiness.

Arenae Colares Malvasia 2006

Spicy nose, floral but peppery.

Spiced wax on the palate.Most bizarre. Kinda cool though. Lime wax.

Nossa 2009

Very mute nose. Coaxing brings rich toffee.

Manuka honey.Palate much from the nose. Toasty and quite decadent. A bit tropical as well.

Palpite 2008

Lemon roasted in hay on the nose. Nice.

Superb textured mouthfeel - hay and oats rolled in lemons and honey, bright and fresh too.

Herdade dos Grous 2010

corked?

Esporão Private Selection 2009

Honeyed nose.

Palate as big and rich as always.

Quinta dos Carvalhais Colheita Seleccionada 2006

Toffeed pineapple and clotted cream.

Rich, toasty and kind of crazy on the palate.

Alves de Sousa Reserva Possoal 2005

Nettles and pine on the nose.

Gripping, bracing palate. Green and peppery. Bizarre but cool.

Quinta Sant'ana Riesling 2009

Mute, rubbery nose. Touch of lime and Flint.

Brighter and juicier on the palate than expected. Nice, but why?

Valle Pradinhos 2009

Rose and Turkish delight with potpourri and eastern spice.

Palate is luscious. All comes through from the nose. Lovely.

Vinhas das Ira 2006

Very plummy nose with a touch of tar. Bright fruit.

Soft and pleasing red fruit though a touch disjointed on the acidity.

Quinta Dona Maria Reserva 2006

Dark and tarry fruity nose.

Broody palate, but crunchy too. Good length. Lovely.

Pera Manca 2007

Chocolate plums.

Cassis.

Beautifully rounded and soft. Bit of tannic grip at the finish, but mostly cocoa plums.

Terrenus Reserva 2007

Spearmint, cocoa, brambles and tar.

Bit aggressive on the palate.

Scala Coelli 2007

Perfumed nose. Dark fruit too, but good perfume.

Rustic, elegant palate, though a touch thin.

Mouchão 2006

Massive fruit extraction on the nose. Stewed? Confected?

More genuine on the palate.

Solar dos Lobos Grande Escolha 2008

Soft on the nose, gentle fruits. Bit of earth.

Big grippy tannic rustic brilliant Portuguese stuff.

Marias da Maladinha 2007

Fruit forward nose - cassis and bramble.

Gentle palate. Bit of a curveball. Subtle and charming.

Quinta do Francês 2008

Classic nose.

Good balance and mouthfeel. Nothing jumps out but the general harmony.

BTT 2009

Meaty and rubbery nose.

Meaty and rubbery palate. Weird.

Quinta das Bageiras Garrafeira 2001

Big and briary, minty, forest floory nose. Tired?

From bottle - better fruit, still mature, but more complete. Leathery, gripping but gentle, lovely red and black stone fruit. Brilliant.

Quinta dos Termos Selecção 2007

Black cherries and general secondaries.

Not grabbing me. Dusty.

Quinta dos Roques Touriga Nacional 2008

Cherries, cassis, woodland.

Quite warm. Big brash beautiful beast.

Quinta de Lemos White label 2007

Touch jammy on the nose.

Rich, enormous palate. Big, juicy stuff. Touch stewed but in a nice way. Saddle leather.

Munda Touriga Nacional 2008

Cherry nose again but with candy floss.

Lovely palate layered with cherries and tannin and a bit of candy.

Quinta da Falorca Lagar Reserva 2004

Touch fermenty on the nose.

Soft cherry palate with nice rounded notes. Still big, but gentle. Bright fruit.

Cabriz Reserva 2008

Nice nose and palate, but again, not jumping out.

Quinta do Corujão Reserva 2007

Dark nose, minty and brooding with black stone fruit and berries of darkness.

Again, lighter on the palate. Elegant, balanced and tasty. Dark fruit, polished tannins, nice perfume and lift. Great balance.

Meruge 2008

Not getting much on the nose. Dusting of fruit.

Gorgeous, gentle palate. Mature notes. Rounded. Lovely.

Adelaide 2008

Tar and bramble nose.

Ripe and dark fruit on the palate. Polished. Bit super-portuguese

Poeira 2008

Juicy nose.

So good, such balance of ripe fruit and tannin. Great elegance, juicy. Fantastic.

Batuta 2008

Closed nose. Dark though.

Touch thin and hot, but perhaps needs time.

Chryseia 2008

Heady, jammy fruit on the nose.

Big, but a touch simple.

Quinta do Portal Touriga Nacional 2009

Violet, flowery nose. The first of the day. Tea leaves and flowers.

Crunchy candied violets, purple flower petals.

Quinta do Noval 2007

Fleshy cherries.

Lovely mouthfeel, texture and structure that cradles the fruit.

Quinta da Romaneira Reserva 2008

Broody with mint herbs and dark fruit.Balanced, polished palate. Why does polish irk me so?

Pintas 2008

Quite ripe nose. Juicy, gets the taste buds going.

Intense juiciness, bursting stuff. The tannins take awhile to come through from it.

Quinta do Vale Meão 2008

Perfumed cherry and basil, sage and forest.

The palate is at another level. Soft and nuanced mouthfeel with stones and stone fruit slowly revealing over a long progression.

Quinta de Tecedeiras 2008

Minty pine and forest.

Pretty on the palate. Good balance, soft and long.

Quinta do Infantado Reserva 2008

Very deep nose.

Intense, concentrated dark fruit with touches of tea leaf and pipe tobacco on the finish.

Afros Vinhão 2009

Barn yard. Nose and palate.

Hexagon 2007

Soft, gentle. Nose & palate.

Vale d'Algares Selection 2008

Meaty, fruity nose.

Starts light and then builds, to bursting point.

Dúvida 2005

Fruit and wood varnish.

The palate explodes like a supernova and then collapses like a black hole, sucking all matter in the mouth and face back down the throat. Awesome and crazy.

Quinta do Ameal Special Harvest 2007

Yellow plums soaked in honey. Spearmint.

Tensile structure of a table wine. Sinewy and brilliant honey, figs and apricots with plum skin, baked lemons and a nice, textured stoniness underneath. Awesome.

Moscatel de Setúbal Supierior 10 Anos

Nice example of the style

Tasted at The Balmoral, 8/6/2011

Taylor's 2009 Tasting (with some 1985s and other odds and ends as well - woohoo!)

Nobody's talking about Port at the moment. The immense non-event of Bordeaux 2011 teeters above all of us in the trade like the sword of someone far more boring than Damocles and so most vinous thoughts are focused on the Gironde and not the Douro.

Pity, that. Port's awesome. I tasted some last summer and they were rather nice. I'm not sure why I've taken so long to post this, but there you go. With everyone dropping heaps of cash on re-scored Bordeaux, the savvy might find a bargain here.

Adrian Bridge, the Managing Director of Taylor Fladgate, was our host. Informed and charming, he explained that 2009 was special enough a vintage for the group to break with the '3 Declarations per Decade' tradition and declare a fourth vintage. I bit my pedantic tongue with regards to 2000 technically belonging to the previous decade due to there never having been a year '0'. Apparently, 2009 was a hot summer and harvest but never excessively so. It was also very dry, with low-yields and high concentration. Which is perfect for Port, as during ferment you have a very small amount of time to get maximum extraction.

There are no scores here - I rarely use them for a tasting like this. Also, there's no mention of colour for the 2009s, because they were all crazy dark.

Taylor's Skeffington 2009

Nose of plum and spiced apple with a nice mealy-fleshiness. Very apple-y.

Fleshy fruit but with a touch of bitterness that starts at the end of the mid-palate. Simple, pleasant, but probably wouldn't lay it down for more than 20 years.

Croft Vintage 2009

Dark and sweet on the nose, quite brooding. Hint of varnish. With air there's more apple and less varnish.

Big purity of fruit burst on the start, with all the secondaries and tannins coming through from that ripe, brash dark bramble and cassis. Intense and structured. 20-30 years before I'd really start enjoying it.

Fonseca Vintage 2009

Glazed meat with black cherries and plums. Quite stony. Floral notes as well- apple blossom on a warm, spring day.

Utterly delicious. Rich, layered fruits with superb purity that just flows from juicy to floral to rustic and back again. And then there's this awesome, bracing grip. The tannins lock down on the tongue, reminding you of its youth and that it's going to take time to come round. The first half of the palate is decadently drinkable. The second half reminds you that patience will be a virtue.

Taylor's Vintage 2009

Brighter fruit. More flower petals.

The palate is so elegant. Light, crunchy dark fruit crushed with violet and apple blossom petals. Superb structure and poise. The tannins kick in a touch earlier but they're sweeter than the Fonseca.

Taylor's Vargellas Vinha Velha 2009

Not a lot coming through on the nose. Bit of apple, bit of stoniness, bit of meat.

Um. Wow. Quite enormous. The grip jumps in from the start. The fruit and savoury just match each other step for step. Flower petals, cassis, pata negra, ground cloves and anise and all the bits and pieces are kind of turned up to 11. Depth, complexity and great stoniness. Incredibly intense, but also brilliant.

 

We then moved onto some older vintages, starting with a couple from my favourite vintage harvested in my lifetime, 1985.

Very large harvest in 1985 - 25,000 cases of Taylor's - as the weather was hot and the fruit abundant.

Interestingly, Taylor's still source from small holders who tread themselves. Fladgate still foot tread 2000 tons a year themselves - just for vintage though, not for 'wood ports'. There is three and a half days between picking and fermentation and all extraction has to come in that period.

Taylor's Vintage 1985

Slightly lighter than the Fonseca, but still intense and bright.

Quite hot on the nose, surrounded by glacé cherries and plums with red apple peel.

Creamy on the palate. Very luscious, with nice softness of the fruit. Cherries and strawberries with clotted cream surrounded by wood spice and cloves. A bit of tobacco leaf, touch of leather. The booze pops up on the finish, but a bit of cheese would sort that out no problem. Delicious.

Fonseca Vintage 1985

Lovely colour of ruby and translucent purple. It's lightened, but not rusted. Intense.

More perfumed, soft on the nose with a soothing spiciness to it. Still cherry-like.

There's such beautiful harmony and integration. Candied cherries, roast plums and toffee apples, coated with cinnamon and spearmint. There is still that lovely creaminess and again a hit of booze on the finish, but it's softer and more liqueur-y. I think this pips the Taylor's to the post.

Croft 1991

Still deep colour, though a bit stewed looking (no bits or anything, just a bit)

Like a massive slab of cured ham or beef glazed with a cherry jam.

Nice, fleshy palate. Dark cocoa and plums, with quite soft tannins and really nicely integrated fruit. There are some bitter tones that come out with coaxing, but not unpleasantly. Minty. Quite charming.

Croft Roeda 1997

Dark. Ruby edges.

Black fruits and caramel on the nose.

Quite simple, dark and pleasant. Doesn't go anywhere in particular, but it's nice.

Fonseca Panascal 1998

Nice maturity on the colour.

Hot and savoury nose. Hot salt beef and roasted red apples, laden with plums.

Very much follows through from the palate. Savoury, meaty with stewed fruit. Not a huge amount of structure. Small hit of mint on the finish.

Fonseca Guimarens 1996

Youthful colour.

Bit mute on the nose. Touch of mothball.

Soft and light on the palate, relatively speaking. There's a lot of secondary mint and mothball and a bit of heat too. It's also a bit drier than expected. Not in a bad way, but all of it results in being a touch thin.

Taylor's Quinta de Vargellas 2001

Young and dark.

Quite serious on the nose. Young, dark and a bit broody. Dark fruits.

Palate is superb, bright but dark fruit integrated with youthful but curbed tannins. The structure is table wine like. Good length and spectacular purity. Nice one.

Taylor's Quinta de Terra Feita 1999

Quite earthy and rustic on the nose. Berries and brush, forest floor.

Nice dominance of sweet secondaries surrounding the fruit, giving it structure and providing a nice elegance. 

Tasted at The Bonham in Edinburgh, 14/6/2011

revisiting Ausone 1988

I *think* I have one of these left in my cellar. I hope so, as it's rather lovely.

Good red-rustiness on the rim with nice brilliance and depth at the core.

Black pepper and tobacco leaves on the nose that give way to cassis and cherries. There's a nice dustiness to it as well as stained leather. Great secondaries.

Harmony on the palate - cedar and cinnamon roasted pipe tobacco wrapped around red cherries and blackcurrants. The fruit rises quickly with still-gripping acidity and juiciness but it's quickly followed by savoury notes and winter-spiced tannins that don't linger on the edges but instead ride the fruit along the tongue - which is what gives that fantastic feel of harmony. It leads to a finish of both fruit and spice that lingers with a dusty, leathery touch. Long and warm.

*****

Tasted at Shorehead with a cracking roast chicken and trimmings, 30 October 2011

Vin Jaune Clos des Grives 1998 Claude Charbonnier

My knowledge of the Jura is limited to the whisky of its namesake in the Hebrides, basic winemaking techniques (flor is encouraged, as in Jerez) and that they have a grape called Savignin, which I try very hard not to pronounce 'Sauvignon'.

Vin Jaune (literally, 'yellow wine') interests me because of its superficial sherry-like qualities. I love sherry-like qualities, superficial or not.

Jaune. Huge surprise - quite rich as well.

Oaty, porridge-y, Fino-y nose.

Hay & biscuits and salted shortbread. Touch of damp mint leaf as well.
Intense and mouth-filling. Like salted gravel wrapped in hay and roasted limes. Tasty stuff, but pricey. Not sure I 'get' the wine style yet, and it's a big investment to further discover. Any Jura-heavy tastings out there?

****
Tasted at Luvians Bottleshop, 23 November 2011

Lambrusco, the next big thing, bored wine folks and the circle of life

It's not their fault. There is a low ceiling of subject matter for wine writers. I've grumbled about this in the past, finding myself bored with tastings and my own tasting notes to the point despair. Wine exists in cyclical form, the growing season to the harvest to the winter and pruning and back to the growing season. The trade and press exist also in a cyclical form. The year starts with Burgundy en Primeur, followed by Bordeaux en Primeur. By the time Bordeaux en Primeur is finished you have, in alternative order, rosé, zingy summer whites and BBQ reds to cover, before slipping in maybe a light reds that go great with salads and seafoods. Dotted throughout will be Champagne releases. If it's a really fun year, some Vintage Port releases (with the standard explanations of declared vintages, the three a decade rule guideline, the difference between ruby and tawny etc) may be available.

And then autumn comes. Hark the Nebbiolo sings, with the sneak previews of Burgundy en Primeur peeking around November. After that we have the top billion Christmas wines list, endless nonsense about detox and we're back at the Burgundy en primeurs. Like high-priced, limited quantity, endlessly appellation'd phoenixes from the ashes the prices soar and reactions range from delirious excitement to calloused cynicism and everything in between.

It gets repetitive, it gets boring and even the most enthusiastic of wine writers/tasters/buyers/merchants grow weary. We need something new to write about, read about and taste. The Next Big Thing becomes the next big thing and so here, there and everywhere, throughout the press and blogosphere Lambrusco emerges, not for the first time, as the world's most criminally neglected wine suffering from consumer misconception and if-you-don't-get-in-on-it-quick-then-my-goodness-the-price-will-double-once-the-masses-rush-out-and-demand-high-quality-sparkling-Italian-red. Ancient sales ledgers are inevitably produced, showing how top Lambrusco once matched Champagne in price as it was held in similar regard. To be fair, ancient sales ledgers are used all over the place for such things, be it in Beaujolais to prove top Crus once cost as much as top village Côte d'Or or in the Rhône to show people bought new oak before Parker, but there you go.

I should say now that Lambrusco is today's example - others include the Lagrein grape, all the wines in Alsace (which have suffered from the 'how do we get consumers to understand how awesome these are' problem forever), Sherry (mmmmmm…), Hunter Valley Semillon, Savennières and pretty much every other once-lauded-now-less-so region or varietal.

And so we all talk about Lambrusco for awhile - not the bulk rubbish, but the real thing. We taste (But possibly don't drink) a bunch and find it fairly remarkable. Tactile, grippy red fizz that would go brilliantly with this, that or the other. Independent merchants get a few in and push it for a month or two before the dust settles on the last 2 or 3 bottles on the shelf that sit there until it gets put on bin-end before the big Bordeaux promotion kicks off.

Too soon and it's forgotten. Something else comes along, and that's ok because Romorantin and Cour-Cheverny have been overlooked for too long.

Not anymore, though. It's the next big thing.

Givry 1er Cru Clos des Bois Chevaux 1999 Joblot

From a cache of bottles I stuck in the cellar years ago.

Just the faintest hint of rust, but still quite dark Burgundy.

Initially very gamey, shitty & farmyardy. This blows off, and rich, cherry/strawberry glazed savoury meats come through.

The palate is as elegant as the nose is brusque. Soft red fruit tied seamlessly with dusty tannins and great, herby, spicy secondaries. The fruit still has great crunch. Nice balance, rustic - but not sloppy. Great sinewy length. Textured, deep, nourishing. Superb, but better with food.

*****


Tasted at Naughton, 16/3/2012

Champagne Paul Bara Special Club 2002

So we really didn't know much about this when we opened it. That's a good thing. I like surprises. Champagne that surprises is a bonus. A cursory bit of research revealed the blend - 70% Pinot Noir 30% Chardonnay - all coming from the brilliantly named Grand Cru village of Bouzy.

Nicely deep gold. Looks a bit more mature than I expected. Medium mousse with a bit of a rush to the bubbles.

Tiny wild strawberry nose, with shortbread and a wee bit of cep dust. Generous and inviting.

Ripe, juicy red fruits - strawberries and currants - that burst and crunch at first, slipping back and picking up biscuit and shortbread flavours and feel. Silky and beautifully put together. The mousse carries it all with a gentle touch - like carbonated clotted cream. Fruit and secondaries are all well integrated and then there's this lovely lift and lightness to it all. Really fantastic. Sexy, elegant, more-ish, balanced and beautiful. Delicious.

*****

Tasted at Naughton 16/3/2012

Jacques Selosse Lieux Dits Mesnil-Sur-Oger 'Les Carelles' Grand Cru Extra Brut.

Wine tasting is often laden with expectation. Experience does little to assuage this, though it probably should. It's a double-edged sword: experience can enforce pre-conceptions whilst also exposing the taster to more and more peculiarities that don't fit that palate's world-view.

I approached this wine with a degree of expectation. Selosse and his wines are legendary in Champagne circles, both for their quality and their divisiveness. His vinification techniques seem more at home further south, on the Cote d'Or. Devotion to detail in both the vines and the winery is his hallmark.

Information on this cuvée is few and far between. Selosse's Lieux Dits are small parcels of superb vineyards in various Grand Cru villages, parcels he took control of at the beginning of the last decade. Initially released as vintage wines, as reserves have built up he has started using the solera system favoured in Jerez (and that he uses for his 'Substance' cuvée). I couldn't find production numbers, but from what I understand the bottling is infinitesimal and strictly allocated. This particular wine is 100% Chardonnay.

We served this a bit differently. Kept in the fridge for only 15 minutes, the wine was cool, but not chilled, when first poured. We then put it in an ice bucket and it got colder as we topped up. The effect was interesting.

As far as my expectations go, I thought it would be bracing and grippy. Selosse is known to keep dosage to a minimum. So as we were examining the bottle and peeling the foil off, I prepared myself for cerebral, piercing bubbly.

Quite rich and golden colour, medium bubbles with excitement.

Nose is farmyardy in a pleasant way. Mushrooms, strawberries, salt caramel, prickly quince and herbal honey.

Full, broad, rich, toasty palate with bubbles forming the impression of a honeycomb lattice. Roast apricots. Brioche with light butter. Very soft and silky. There's almost a maltiness to it. Strikingly low acidity- luscious, giving and very much a 'now' wine. Foie gras please? My expectations are confounded. Instead of a 'thinking' wine, this is every bit a 'feeling' wine. As it gets colder, it gets racier but far less expressive. There's also a peculiar powdered sugar finish that comes in with the cold. Much of what makes this wine is lost with the chill, and I would say it should be drunk no colder than cellar temperature.

*****

Tasted somewhere in Fulham, 29 February 2012

 

what do diamonds filter, anyway? (or how I learned to stop worrying and love Crystal Head Vodka even though I wouldn't pay for it)

Super-premium vodka is bullshit. It's important to get that out of the way right now - you're welcome to disagree with me, but you're wrong. As wrong as a creationist denying climate change whilst adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 7.

Grey Goose, Belvedere, Chopin, Absolut Level, Smirnoff Penka, Ciroc, Uluvka, Stolichnaya Elit, and that ridiculous mammoth tusk were all created to exploit society's ridiculous compulsion to spend more on something stupid in hopes of buying an 'image'. The idea that a liquid whose main purpose in the universe is to be as neutral and vapid as possible, and that the more neutral and vapid it is, the more exclusive and expensive it must become? That reminds me of a certain Hans Christian Andersen story. Hint: it's not The Little Mermaid.

If similar taste factors were used to appraise beer, Bud Light would be the most rare and expensive beer in the world, sold in zircon-studded cans individually wrapped in faux-felt adorned with a stitched print of the St Louis skyline. Think about that for a second. Have you stopped shuddering? Good.

Oh but they use the best ingredients…

Why? So that they can extract all trace elements of character and flavour from them? How important is your ultra amazing water source after 5-10 distillations? Is potato vodka better for when you get wasted and grab a bag of chips on the way home? Is it better to have a cider chaser with apple vodka?

It's all marketing, marketing without substance and marketing without substance is bullshit, pure and simple.

Which is why I fucking love the diamond-filtered, conspiracy-theoried, purified-by-aliens gibberish that is Crystal Head. Because in an ocean of grain-neutral, marketing-driven, multi-national, ridiculously packaged, over-priced, over-hyped bullshit, Crystal Head rises like a leviathan, out-purifying, out-packaging, out-bullshitting every single one of them. And who's doing this? Dan-Fucking-Aykroyd, that's who. Elwood Blues is selling snake oil; Mr Conehead has sewn a new pair of threads for the emperor. Big business marketing bullshit versus someone genuinely creative and surprise, surprise, the latter has a far more interesting line of fertiliser. They're selling image and he's selling a story. He's got my money.

Or, he would, if I ever felt like spending £50 on a bottle of vodka.

the new wine rant

Things are changing. This blog is one of those things. In the next month or so there will be a move away from Blogger, a re-design and an increase in content.

I started this blog in 2005 as a means of chronicling the wines I encountered along the way. There was no plan, no goal and, as it is plain to see, no set schedule. I guess it was in part a vanity project. I drink nice wines. People who care about nice wines like to tell other people who care about nice wines what they drink. It's a vanity that forms the foundation of most wine writing. I could easily go on infrequently informing my minuscule readership what I've been drinking, complete with my little smart arse rants, for as long as I draw breath and stroke keys.

But that seems lazy to me. My curiosity has grown.

Wine isn't just what's in the bottle, and wine bottles are not the only bottles I'm interested in. The scope here is broadening and with all the tumult and antics of the booze trade, there's little critical commentary or perspective kicking about. The trade press is saturated with barely disguised press releases and sycophantic back-patting. In-fighting grows on issues such as natural wine, craft beer, en primeur campaigns and the Asian market and there are few people that point out how hilarious it all is. I want to be that guy, and I want this blog to be that place - a place with insight, humour, a dash of iconoclastic criticism and a healthy dose of 'are you fucking kidding me?'. The wine and booze world needs more of that.

I should point out that this will take the blog further from any use as a 'consumer' resource. I don't care about the average wine consumer drinks. The average wine consumer doesn't care about what I drink either, so in that sense we're even. I'm sure this smacks of terrible wine snobbery but the truth is that focussing on the average wine consumer means dumbing down, over-explanation and, worst of all, drinking supermarket wines.

Instead of the average wine consumer, I'm looking for the informed and curious wine drinker. So pull up a glass; give it a swirl and a sniff. Don't worry if you spill some - it happens to the best of us.

Updates and looking forward

Apologies for the hiatus. The reasons are multitude - I have dozens if not scores of half-drafted tasting notes to post, waiting in the wings as it were. For a change though, the culprit is not laziness. I've been thinking about major revisions to the blog and my wine writing in general and have paused updates whilst I sort these things out in my head. Also, I've just started working on a top secret wine writing project, the details of which will be unveiled in good time.

So please bear with me. It should be worth the wait

Montes Limited Selection Pinot Noir 2009

In spite of the oceans of wine Chile produces, I've never taken it seriously as a wine country. There was a time in the early 2000s when they excelled at cheap and cheerful, but somewhere along the way they lost the cheerful. The cheap wines morphed from fruit forward and inoffensive to jammy and over made or filthy and confected. There are the occasional exceptions but they are few, far between and not really worth the effort of sifting through the dross to find them.

There's also the small matter of institutional fraud that comes with one of the more popular varieties in the cheap and cheerful(?) crowd. Wines advertised as Sauvignon Blanc from Chile are unlikely to be so. More likely than not, they are mostly Sauvignonasse/Sauvignon Vert. However, there is no repercussion for this fraud because once this oversight was widely realised, the Chilean wine governing body simply refused to accept that any grape planted as Sauvignon Blanc in Chile was anything other than Sauvignon Blanc. According to them, Sauvignonasse simply does not exist in Chile.

What a bunch of bullshit, huh?

There are some decent wines at a high level - Don Maximiano, Almaviva, Seña etc, but they tend to be quality in kind of a boring way. Delicious, but lacking a sense of place.

The pinots are a minefield - either too candied, sweet and confected or riddled with hot, off farmyard notes that seem to be an attempt at manufactured complexity. Structure in particular seems to be a fairy tale when it comes to these wines.

Which brings us to tonight's wine. Montes's top range, the Montes Alpha wines, are not bad. I've sold them on and off for years. American golfers used to love pairing the Cabernet with a delicately grilled fillet of halibut and I could do nothing to stop them. This 'Limited Selection' branding is new to me. It can't be that limited as Majestic have them on sale for £7.99. This wine in particular has received rave reviews on their site, suggesting many a happy customer.

Dark ruby but still with pinot translucence. Good brightness.

Nose is pulped red fruit and cook berries. There's a greasy savoury-ness and a barn and matchstick hit that follows the fruit. Subsequent sniffs and the order gets mixed up.

What should I expect from £8 pinot? Am I being too critical? Is my sore shoulder and head ruining this wine for me? Because this doesn't have any definition. It's jammy, unpleasantly savoury and inconsistent. There's an oiliness to the finish that reminds me of eating junk food. Liquorice comes and goes. It could be far worse. I'm not recoiling with each sip.

However.

I hate this wine. I can think of better bottles for a fiver. They won't be Chilean and they won't be Pinot Noir, but there you go.

*

Tasted at Shorehead 17 December 2011

Madeira Barbeito Malvasia 1994 Colheita Cask 232c

The single cask series from Barbeito are some of the most extraordinary wines I've ever encountered. I still have one bottle left of the Cask 18a, which is one of the single best wines I've ever drunk. A good future would be one in which Barbeito released several more of these gems.

Honeyed brass.

Smoked hay dunked in toffee and pepper. Hot and somewhat steamy.

Orange peels roasted in a muscovado crust. Toffee and salted caramel, with cigar smoke and pipe leaf. The notes of most wines like this read the same, but they're not the same. This is juicy, piercing, intense and explosive, but rich and voluptuous all at the same time. I've never really considered dessert island wines before, but one of these casks would surely be one of them. Incredible stuff.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 6 November 2011

 

Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny 2002

My love for these wines is well-documented. They form a valuable chunk of my cellar. I wish I could afford to drink them more often.

Quite young, beautifully translucent Burgundy.

Sweet nose of underbrush and confit strawberry. Pithy notes. Full and somewhat leathery. Hint of cocoa.

Feels incredible. Strawberry & cranberry laced suede and leather that drifts into silk and satin, then flutters along into a finish that leaves more feeling than flavour. Warm Burgundy, elegant and ephemeral. There are are wood spice and forest like notes as well, but the harmony of all somewhat obscures the individual notes.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 6 November 2011

Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 1995

I've become more and more convinced that Champagne goes through a pronounced intermediate phase towards the end of its teenage years. The vibrancy of youth and the rich, toasty-ness of age meet for a time and mute each other. I don't really know the technical term for this or even the science behind it. But I know it when I taste it.

Bright gold. No brass or green.

Bready and savoury on the nose.

Sourdough and nameless citrus and fibrous fruit. Long-lovely, but more sensuous than flavourful. Spiced quince. Intense but under-developed. Needs a long time.

**(***)

Tasted at Naughton 6 November 2011

Tio Pepe

Given my love and devotion to the wines from Jerez, it's a bit of a surprise that I've never bothered to post a note for this benchmark Fino. About six years ago my mate Broomie and I toured the impressive Gonzalez Byass bodega. The scale was staggering. They never commented on just how many bottles they produced, but given the seemingly endless barrels in the solera, I imagine it's quite a lot. Yet the quality, regardless of scale, is extraordinary. This is a good thing. Tio Pepe is ubiquitous throughout the UK. It's nice to know that, theoretically at least, you're never too far from a decent glass of Fino. Sadly, far too many of the bars and restaurants that stock it leave it open too long, dooming it lose its freshness and zing to oxidation. Ah well.

Silver and bright with green highlights

Nose of hay, flint and sourdough bread with limes soaked in olive brine.

Imagine tearing a chunk of sourdough bread, squeezing lime juice onto it, dipping it in olive oil and then smearing it with green olive tapenade. This wine is like that. But then it finishes by crunching oyster shells with lemon peel. Benchmark fino.

*****

Tasted at Luvians Bottleshop, 1 November 2011

Aldo Conterno Barolo 2004

I bow to whimsy more than occasionally. Today that whimsy is a bottle of something I've been wanting to try for sometime, and a grey October Friday seemed the perfect time to do it. Autumn and Barolo go together like, well, like Autumn and red Burgundy - they are almost perfectly suited. That rusty, rustic crunch sits well with the falling leaves and slow-cooked stews of the season.

Stained-glass red - pale, rusty and bright.

Dusty nose with dried strawberries, raspberries and cranberries. It tugs at the nostrils and gets the mouth watering. There's hay and leather on the edges as well.

My goodness. Stunning palate that starts softly but quickly shrieks with juicy, crunchy, soured red berries - cranberries, raspberries and strawberries - all so juicy that you wince, squint and blink a bit. Then, beneath the juicy fruit, the dust, leather and tar-like tannins assert themselves, balancing that juiciness with a firm grip that goes from silk to suede to a prickly hint of sandpaper. Structure, charm, grip, fruit, earth, poise and balance, this pretty much has everything I wanted it to, and perhaps a bit more. Still incredibly youthful.

There is no hint whatsoever of the 14.5% alcohol.

Fantastic stuff.

*****

Tasted at Shorehead 14 October 2011

Chateau Margaux 1990 from Imperial (600cl)

Fortune smiled upon me this morning when a restauranteur friend of mine invited me around to taste the remains of something remarkable. It's important to resist the 'awe' factor of such wines - to not let their reputation and price precede them and potentially cloud your judgement. As a self-confessed Bordeaux cynic, my guard was up, but it's difficult not to be intimidated/impressed by a six litre bottle worth somewhere in the region of £8,000. Especially from such a legendary estate.

I should note that this had been opened and decanted the night before, though seemed none the worse for it.

Mature colour, but no amber - red rust and deep leather.

Quite a lot going on here. Cedar, licorice, saddles and Christmas spice. Glazed game, compote blueberries and currants - both red & black. Sugar-coated dust, pipe leaf tobacco and candied violets. All this on the nose and it's all intense, pervading and powerful. It's also quite addictive - I keep shoving my face in the glass.

Still young. Piercing, fresh, juicy berries - cherries, raspberries, with real crunch to them. Bright, vibrant and incredibly focused. The grip and tannins begin to take hold mid palate, at first softly, like suede or velvet, though growing more assertive by the finish, which is dark, tight and suggests a very, very long future ahead. Beautifully layered.

*****

Tasted at The Seafood Restaurant, St Andrews, 4 October 2011

Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou 1970

One of the first big tastings organised by the Naughton Dining Club (oft-referred to wine-swilling gang of trade and ex-trade mates) was a vertical of Ducru dating back to 1955. If memory serves, and subsequent tastings are any indication, the 1966 was the wine of the evening. But we all loved the 1970 as well. In those days, and up through to the 90s, Ducru provided the poise and elegance of St Julien. Nowadays it tends towards the bigger style of claret, which is a shame. As such, revisiting old Ducru is not something that needs to be forced upon me. I'll sip willingly.

Mature, but not old, and classic claret tones at 41 years.

Soft nose, with bunches of tangy berries - the dried ones you find in a good muesli, and hints of cloves on the edges.

This is almost aperitif claret. Sadly ill-suited to the lamb shanks. Perhaps the acidity of the tomato in the sauce is cutting into it a bit. Tasted away from the food, it's delicious. Supple and textured, it's not quite as big and vibrant as the La Chapelle, nor as poised as the Barolo, but sits somewhere between the two. Is it a touch too old? Nah. I'd keep drinking it over the next five years or so. Perhaps longer.

****

Tasted 20 August 2011 at Shorehead.

Jaboulet Hermitage 'La Chapelle' 1972

The search for good wines from our birth year is almost and endless task for those in the wine trade. I'm a 1976 baby myself, so Champagne and Germany have yielded the best results. A friend in the trade was born in 1972 and has searched for years in vain for a decent wine from that year. His most recent acquisition was this, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

Rusty red edges, but quite dark blueberry compote at the core.

The nose is meaty, savoury with cocoa-laced stone fruits - plums - and a whiff of stewed blueberry.

That savoury, meatiness follows through on to the palate mostly with a nice, mature saddle leather mouthfeel that guides cocoa and confit blueberry on the mid-palate. There's still a nice, rich vibrancy to this. The fruit is youthful while the texture and mouthfeel enjoy the luxury of maturity. Nice depth, too. Fantastic - possibly wine of the night (though I do love the Barolo).

*****

Tasted 20 August 2011 at Shorehead

already routine

My alarm sings the marimba at 530 in the morning and I fiddle about trying to turn it off. I avoid 'snooze'. The snooze button is not allowed during harvest.

By 630 we're at Coume del Mas, rinsing and assembling the press and loading the first comports (big plastic tubs holding about 50kg worth of grapes). It's a small bag-press, so it only takes about 18 comports. We don't talk much at this point. We've said bonjour and possibly ça va and that's about it. Yesterday's wine will be racked from cool tank into barrels in the cool room (cool, huh?) while we fill the press. Apart from a few barrels of fermenting Syrah, it's only white at the moment, with the wines that will be Folio, c'est pas de Pipeau and Catala just starting their ferments. Grenache Gris, Roussanne and Vermentino all bubbling away.

Once the press is loaded I grab a lift from Coume del Mas in Cosprons to Mas Cristine in Argeles. If all's going to plan, we get to Argeles about 730. Mas Cristine requires more strategy when getting equipment together, as our corner of the ancient co-op is cramped and a bit inhospitable. We move the press outside in order to save space. This is a larger beast than the one at Coume del Mas, and can take - with coaxing - about 35 comports. More often than not, there is wine to rack from tank to tank, and at the moment we've a Roussanne ferment to cool down in the mornings. The first grapes come in about 830. Thus far we've had Grenache Gris, Muscat, Roussanne and Macabeu for whites and a small amount of Syrah and Grenache Noir for rosé.

The standard press cycle takes about three hours, during which we clean, rack and sort out all the tanks and barrels for the grapes yet to come. Quite a lot of winemaking is being ready and quite a lot of being ready in winemaking is being clean. Scrubbing the caps for tanks, the tartaric residue off of stainless steel and epoxy vats, it's all part of the harvest.

As the press clangs and howls through its various pressures and in between all the cleaning, racking and tidying, we taste the juice. We usually switch vessel about 1000mBars, separating the lighter press juice from the harder. The juice from the first presses tends to be fruitier, more elegant, while the later presses boast more phenolics and secondary flavours. In most cases they will ferment and mature independently until the blend is decided late autumn.

Some days, we'll do two full presses, others one. Over lunch we'll chat about the odd variations in grape maturity throughout the vines. The odd cool spell and bizarre humidity levels have led to uneven ripening. Some of the best fruit won't be ready for a month, meaning the much talked about early harvest may also be one of the latest harvests in recent memory, with some reds not being picked until October. The last three years in the Roussillon, most of the ferments had finished by then.

At Mas Cristine, there is usually beer when the shift ends. It's cold and never quite big enough.

Home by 7ish. In bed around 10. The same again in the morning. I'm enjoying it while I can, as when the reds come in it will start to get busy.

Fontannafredda Barolo 1961

Sitting on the outskirts of Banyuls, typing up tasting notes from last week, staring out at the steep-terraced vineyards and wondering what the future holds. The immediate future is easy: there are grapes by the millions to turn into wine. The distant future, not so much. Even October is a mystery. I hope, though, that someday a wine I had a hand in turns out as lovely as this in 50 years' time.

Rusty red but no brown.

Stoned, dried plums and strawberries on the nose with dust, hay and a zingy marmalade tang.

Soft, old and classy on the palate. Arguably a touch simple, but elegant and really gorgeous with roast lamb shanks. In spite of the softness, there's still a welcome and firm grip to the tannins whilst that dry fruit ripens up and lifts with the food, still showing off some proper juiciness. Charming.

****

Tasted 20 August 2011 at Shorehead.

Some notes on winemaking (or how not to hurt yourself too badly while working vintage)

I am by no means a winemaking expert. I wouldn't even say I was at an intermediate level - more an enthusiastic and curious beginner with three years' experience. Along the way I've picked up a few nuggets of knowledge that may help the aspiring young vigneron out. They're numbered in no particular order.

1. There is nothing cuddly in a winery. The tanks are steel, oak, epoxy or concrete. The hoses are reinforced and have stainless steel at each end. The bottles are glass. The pallets splinter. Pretty much everything is heavy or sharp or hard. Some things are all of those. Be careful.

2. If you forget rule one and do hurt yourself, don't bitch. Don't stop if you're in the middle of something. Everyone's hurt themselves. Everyone is bleeding or just scabbed over, with bruises forming and bumps rising. Anything short of a broken bone, lost limb or death can wait. Just try not to bleed into the wine and when there's a pause, find a bandaid.

3. Making wine hungover is something you only need to do once to learn it is the worst fucking thing in the world. Remember: self-inflicted wounds deserve and receive no sympathy.

4. Drink a lot of water.

5. You don't have to be a morning person, but you have to function in the morning, regardless of how miserable and grumpy you are. Everyone around you wanted an extra hour or two in bed and none of them got it.

6. There is no 'are we there yet?' attitude, there is only 'what can I do next?' attitude.

7. If there's coffee, drink it. You'll need it.

8. If there's wine at lunch (and there will be in France), take it easy and match it with water.

9. Try, if you can, to get a bit of breakfast.

10. If someone else is lazy, it's not your job to call them out. Their laziness will reveal itself. Focus on what you're doing.

11. Always double-check the valves. Wasting wine is a terrible, terrible thing.

12. Do your job and be helpful.

13. Learning what not to do is every bit as important as learning what to do.

14. When in doubt, ask. It's better to be annoying than to do something wrong.

15. Nobody likes a smart ass. That's applicable well beyond winemaking.

16. Don't stick your hand in the de-stemmer.

17. Make sure you know where the emergency stop button is on every bit of equipment you use. It's usually big and red.

18. Make sure everything is clean at the end of the day. If you half-ass whatever you're cleaning, you can fuck it up for everyone.

19. Don't fuck it up for everyone.

20. Have fun.