Sweet wines: Sauternes and its neighbours

I must admit, I do enjoy sweet wines. But not very often, because I can't seem to generate enough situations where it seems appropriate to pop the cork on something sweet. It's not like you'd open a bottle of Sauternes at 6 pm and drink it for the evening, is it?

I've been opening quite a few sweet wines from Sauternes and other neighbouring Bordeaux regions over the last few days because I had some samples in. It's been quite fun: overall, the quality has been good, and while these are by no means the best or most expensive examples of sweet wines from Bordeaux, they're pretty consistent, with one notable exception.

The exception was a Laithwaites wine, which was actually quite awful: the LS Semillon 2002 1er Cotes de Bordeaux. The thing is, it looked so good from the label (above), but unfortunately this tasted like cheap, dilute sweet white Bordeaux - not worth (to my palate) the asking price of over £6 for a half. In fact, I wouldn't buy this if it was £2 a half. [I hate to write negative notes, but sometimes the real underperforming wines need to be outed. I also think it's healthy for critics to be critical: my job is to write for consumers, not to act as a PR agent for the wine trade.]

The others, from Cadillac, Loupiac, Sainte-Croix-du-Mont and Sauternes itself, have all been enjoyable wines. With their golden colours, presented in clear glass bottles with white labels and gold capsules, they also look stunning. Probably the best (certainly in terms of value) has been the Chateau La Caussade 2004 Sainte-Croix-du-Mont (£11.86 Waitrose for 75 cl). Yellow/gold in colour, this has an appealing nose of honey, lanolin, spice and ripe peach. The palate is richly textured and broad, with sweet melon and apricot fruit balanced by a subtly spicy bite. It's not as intense or multidimensional as the best Sauternes can be, but it's still a really nicely balanced wine.

My only concern with drinking these sweet wines is how fat I'll get. They're deliciously sweet, with perhaps 130 grams/litre of residual sugar. That means a bottle will have roughly 100 grams of sugar in it, which, together with the alcohol, sounds like a lot of calories. Has anyone done the maths?

Bordeaux campaign, vintage 1934

At Fortnum & Mason today to taste a few sherries with wine buyer Tim French. Tim produced an old Fortnum's wine list from 1938, which made fantastic reading.

'It's amazing how tight the range was in those days', he remarked. There's a big section on Champagne, a page of Port from the wood, a page of Vintage Port, lots of Madeira, more than a page of sherry, then large sections on Bordeaux, Burgundy, Hock and Mosel.

The rest of France has a small section, and then there's a fascinating - if brief - list of 'Empire wines' (see below). It was fascinating also to see the Bordeaux section, including the 1934 campaign that includes both merchant-bottled and Chateau-bottled releases. How the wine world has changed.

The future of wine, and Bordeaux 2007

Just a brief post to alert readers to two documents that were in my in-box this morning.

The first is from Berry Bros & Rudd, and it's their predictions for the future of wine. They range from the sound, to the slightly absurd. It's a good read. See for yourself here.

The second is from Liv-ex, and it's a document on Bordeaux 2007. I quote:

"Each year Liv-ex surveys its members upon their return from tasting the new Bordeaux vintage. The survey is designed to track the consensus of opinion amongst the best professional tasters of young Bordeaux. Liv-ex’s membership numbers 175 of the world’s biggest buyers and sellers of fine wine globally. The 2007 was conducted from mid-April onwards and was concluded prior to the release of scores and notes from Robert Parker."

You can read this here.

More Bordeaux 2005. High alcohol? From Bordeaux?

What do you come to Bordeaux for? I'd suggest that the primary draw for most people is full-flavoured-yet-elegant, ageworthy, structured red wines offering impeccable balance and moderate alcohol - which you'd hope would develop with age into something complex and compelling.

I know a lot is made of alcohol levels these days. It's a bit of a stick to beat winemakers in new world regions with, and sometimes I encounter wines with high alcohol that seem perfectly balanced and at ease with themselves. But I did a double take with this next pair of wines in my round-up of affordable 2005 Bordeaux, because they weighed in at 14 and 14.5% alcohol, respectively.

Chateau Grand Barrail Lamarzelle Figeac 2005 Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux
14% alcohol. Sweet, open blackcurrant fruit with a bit of herbiness and some attractive minerality on the nose. The palate has classic dark fruits with a gravelly edge. This is ripe, balanced and quite elegant, with nice tannins, but it's not unapproachable. 90/100

Chateau La Clariere Laithwaite 2005 Cotes de Castillon, Bordeaux
14.5% alcohol. Rich blackcurranty fruit on the nose with some chocolatey richness and spice, but to an extent this is closed. The palate is rich and spicy with sweet fruit and some alcoholic heat. A rich, ripe, modern-styled Claret that's a little closed now - needs time to open out. 88/100 (£14.99 Laithwaites)

More Bordeaux 2005, and I'm not finished yet

I've been taking a closer look at affordable Bordeaux from the 2005 vintage. Four more bottles opened tonight and tasted together.

I'm beginning to wonder about whether this is the sort of vintage that's best offered out of sequence. What I mean is, some producers might be best off sending their 2006s and perhaps their 2007s to market before their 2005s. The Champagne houses sometimes do this with their vintage wines.

Many of the affordable 2005s have been almost impossibly tannic and quite closed: not wines that you gain much pleasure from drinking at the moment. This applies even to some of the less expensive branded wines. But in two years' time they may well be showing their best. [Let's not forget that these are not sweet, seductive wines that consumers can easily understand. They're quite challenging, with high tannins and high acidity. They have their work cut out.]

The problem is, they'll have largely sold through, and these days people drink wines as soon as they buy them. The possibility remains that most of this vintage will be drunk before its time. Pick of the bunch here? The Diane de Belgrave (stocked by Majestic).

Château De La Ligne Cuvée Prestige 2005 Bordeaux Supérieur
This property, with 11 hectares of vines planted in 2002, is owned by Northern Irish businessman Terry Cross (read about the project here). It comes in a heavy, broad-shouldered bottle. The fresh nose shows some fresh red fruits with a bit of tarry spiciness – some American oak was used here as well as French. The palate is bright with super-fresh red berry fruits and a bit of spice, but the dominant theme here is the firm tannic structure and high acidity, giving the wine an almost austere, savoury feel. While I like the freshness of the fruit, and the ample concentration, there’s not enough charm here - and far too much structure - for this to be an enjoyable drink at the moment. It may well blossom, however, with a decade in the cellar – hard to tell. Considering that the vines are still young, it’s a good performance. 85/100

Château Barreyres 2005 Cru Bourgeois, Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux
Given a couple of hours of air, this wine opens out to show a classic, attractive Bordeaux nose of subtly leafy, minerally blackcurrant and red berry fruit. The palate is beginning to evolve a little, showing soft green spicy notes underneath the fruit, held together with some tannic structure and good acidity. A balanced, well proportioned claret beginning to enter its drinking phase, and offering good value. Drink now and over the next couple of years? 86/100 (£8.75 Sainsbury’s)

Diane de Belgrave 2005 Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux
The second wine of fifth growth Château Belgrave, this has a really attractive nose showing dark fruits, minerals, olives and spice. The palate shows generous, rich blackcurrant and raspberry fruit backed up by spicy, mineralic structure. There’s some elegance here, and it isn’t as square and tannic as some of the other 2005s I have been tasting of late. Stylish stuff that’s beginning to be approachable now. Drink now and over the next three years? 89/100 (£11.99 Majestic)

Château Preuillac 2005 Cru Bourgeois, Médoc, Bordeaux
Very attractively packaged, this deep coloured wine has a slightly closed nose showing fresh blackcurrant fruit with some dark spice character. The palate is ripe and fresh, with a strongly savoury, gravelly, spicy streak, as well as some attractive chocolatey richness. The tannic structure is fairly dominant at the moment, and there’s good acidity, as well as a bit of oak. Tastes a bit tight and young at the moment, but there’s no reason to suppose that this won’t age well in the medium term. Finishes with dry, grippy tannins. Lose in the cellar for five years? 87/100 (£12.99 Soho Wine Supply)

Affordable Bordeaux 2005, part 3

Some more 2005 Bordeaux in the tasting line-up. Even at this level, I reckon some of the wines really need some time before they are broached. 2005 was a high tannin, high alcohol, even high acid vintage which means that opening the wines now doesn't necessarily maximize their potential for enjoyment. I haven't finished yet - more 05s to come!

Château Le Boscq 2005 Saint-Estèphe, Bordeaux
The nose here is perhaps slightly reductive, with a hint of rubber and some roasted notes (or is that from the oak?). The palate, though, is fresh and dense with well proportioned, ripe, slightly chocolatey dark fruits, as well as firm tannins and some supporting oak. It’s dense but not at all heavy, with some minerality and plenty of upside potential for the patient. 89/100 (£17.39 Sunday Times Wine Club, Laithwaites)

Château Pey de la Tour Reserve 2005 Bordeaux Supérieur
95% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Sauvignon and 1% Petit Verdot, so pretty much varietal Merlot. This is pretty impressive for the price. It’s dense, tight and firm at the moment, with the ripe dark fruits somewhat clamped by firm tannins and good acidity. But there’s lots of weight here, and plenty of charm waiting to emerge. I reckon this is one to hold onto for a couple of years, although you could drink it now with food. It’s proper Bordeaux, without the greenness and unresolved tannins that are the besetting sins of many wines at this price point. 88/100 (£8.99 Waitrose, The Wine Society)

Dourthe Barrel Select Saint-Émilion 2005 Bordeaux
70% Merlot blended with 30% Cabernets (Franc and Sauvignon). Fresh nose is quite classic, with blackcurrant and blackberry fruit along with herbal, subtly green notes. The palate has a distinctive minerally, chalky, slightly herbaceous streak alongside the fruit, which makes it very fresh and savoury. It’s a good food wine, but for me (and I’m probably being fussy here) the tannins are just a little too green, and the fruit just a little short of ripeness for this to really hit the spot. But it isn’t unripe, and there’s some class here, although I think Dourthe do better for the price elsewhere. 82/100 (£8.99 Waitrose, £9.46 Tesco)

Cabernet Franc sample from Calvet Reserve 2005 Bordeaux
In 2005 some Cabernet Franc found its way into the Calvet Reserve blend, and this is a sample of it. Smells a bit funky (as tank samples often do, with some oxidation) on the nose, but the palate shows lovely dense, tight, ripe red fruit character with lovely firm structure. Pretty good stuff, and a bit of a shame to see it in a bigger blend – it’s a really nice wine in its own right.

More affordable 2005 Bordeaux

Three more Bordeaux wines from the 2005 vintage. Solidly made and good value for money, I reckon - at least, by the usual Bordeaux standards.

Dourthe No 1 2005 Bordeaux
This well known brand is a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, put together by none other than M. Rolland. It's classic Bordeaux: there's a hint of gravelliness to the nose, there's some brightness to the dark fruits, and there's fresh grippy structure. It's not going to set the world alight, but it is very drinkable. Solid effort. 83/100 (£6.49 Waitrose, currently on offer at £4.79, until 13 May)

Chateau Pey la Tour 2005 Bordeaux Superieur
77% Merlot, 14% Cab Sauv, 8% Cab Franc, 1% Petit Verdot. Very attractive nose showing sweet open blackcurrant fruit with a nice sappiness. The palate is soft and seductive with fresh, almost pure fruit. A ripe, modern style of Claret that's very drinkable, without feeling at all tricked-up. Also one of the Dourthe portfolio. 88/100 (£8.99 Wine Society, Waitrose)

Chateau Rival-Bellevue 2005 Bordeaux Superieur
85% Merlot, 15% Cabernet. On opening this is dominated by sweet oak, but after a while it settles down to reveal attractive, forward sweet dark fruits bolstered by some spicy tannins and a bit of new oak. Ripe, modern and well put together, but perhaps just a little too much reliance on oak? 85/100 (was £8.99 at Waitrose, reduced to £5.99 in their French wines showcase, but currently out of stock, I believe)

Affordable Bordeaux from 2005, part 1

Cheap Bordeaux can be nasty. While the top wines, from the finest terroirs, are sought after by collectors and command increasingly high prices, the rest – and the majority – of Bordeaux vineyards struggle in the modern marketplace, which is increasingly fussy about quality. The problem is that you need really good sites to ripen the two Cabernets and Merlot properly in the average Bordeaux vintage. If producers are making wine from lesser vineyards, and in particular if they are greedy with their yields, the result can be rather thin, green, ungenerous wines that lack charm and consumer appeal. Get it right, though, and there are few regions that can make such digestible, classic red wines with moderate alcohol and food compatibility.

2005 has universally been acknowledged to be an exceptional Bordeaux vintage. Theoretically, less famous producers and the negociants should do a better job this vintage. So tonight I cracked four bottles of affordable (by Bordeaux standards) 2005 clarets to see how they matched up. My impressions are below, and I have more to follow.

As a side issue, it’s interesting to consider what the future will be for non-classed growth claret. Château or brands? One of these wines is a brand; the other very clearly are selling as Château wines, with old fashioned labels featuring an engraving of an extremely big house, and black, gold and red as colours. What is the way forward for Bordeaux as a region?

Calvet Reserve Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 Bordeaux, France
Pleasant sappy dark fruits nose with a slightly green edge. It’s savoury and fresh. The palate shows some ripe red fruit character, together with a leafy, chalky greenness that isn’t unpleasant. There’s some firm tannic structure on the palate, which is overtly savoury. For negociant Bordeaux at this price it is a good effort: if you are used to reds with sweet fruit and soft tannins, this might come as a bit of a shock. I reckon it’s a good session claret, and with food you could drink this quite happily. Top marks for the packaging, though – it’s a nice bottle shape and the label design is quite classy. 82/100 (£6.99 Waitrose, Co-op, Sainsbury’s)

Château Lapelletrie 2005 Saint Emilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux
70% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc, from a 12 hectare vineyard. Quite deep coloured. Aromatic, with attractive blackberry and blackcurrant fruit on the nose, framed with a nice chalkiness. The palate shows ripe red and black fruits combining well with firm, spicy tannins. There’s some softness here, as well as a bit of sweetness to the fruit, which in combination with the slightly grippy structure makes for a very self-assured, versatile and food friendly Saint Emilion. This is pretty serious for the price. 89/100 (£11.99 Tesco)

Château Tour Prignac 2005 Cru Bourgeois, Médoc, Bordeaux
A roughly equal blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from a 147 hectare estate. I like the nose, which is quite classic. There’s some smoky, earthy, tarry red fruit along with a subtle gravelliness. The palate already shows some evolution, with lovely balance between the sweet fruit and the slightly earthy, minerally savouriness. Drinking well now, although with potential for development over the next couple of years. I guess this is what most people come to Bordeaux for: something digestible and approachable that shows some character but isn’t too heavy. 86/100 (£9.99 Oddbins)

Château d’Arcins 2005 Cru Bourgeois, Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux
55% Merlot and 45% Cabernet Sauvignon from a 100 hectare vineyard. Very attractive nose, showing some evolution. It’s fresh, gravelly and attractively fruited, with some warm plummy blackberry fruit. The palate has soft, ripe fruit bolstered by grippy, minerally structure and a hint of oak. A really approachable wine: a classic claret for current drinking, but don’t hold on to this in the hope of improvement – it’s nice now. 87/100 (£13.50 Nicolas)

Nice lunch, cold rugby and sherry

So we had a nice lunch today. It was a small affair - a sort of unofficial farewell do. As I mentioned in my blog a couple of days ago, the place where I've been working as I've been developing my wine career is closing down, and we are being made redundant. My boss treated our small department of four to lunch at his club, the Atheneum.

The Ath is a remarkable institution - a club predominantly for distinguished intellectuals from the arts and sciences. We had a very enjoyable lunch in a lovely setting, washed down with the house claret, which is a delicious Cru Bourgeois Bordeaux from 2001. This wine, selling in the restaurant at £17, is utterly delicious: savoury, intense, a bit gravelly, with great balance and poise. This is what you want from a good claret. No wonder the majority of wine sales here are this particular wine, because it is just so well chosen.

This evening I spent three of the coldest ever hours of my life watching elder son play rugby. It was a tournament at London Irish, and it was utterly freezing. His team got hammered. They looked about half the size of some of the others. At this age group, U12, there is a remarkable diversity of sizes and developmental stages: some of the kids looked almost adult-sized. Fortunately, elder son's team didn't make it past the five group games so I was home by 21:15.

I'm currently sipping some more of the fantastic Hidalgo Oloroso Viejo I mentioned last week. With sherry and madeira, nothing beats time. When I get my life more in order, I'll try to make sure I always have great sherry or madeira on the go at all times. What a nice thought!

Serious, affordable white Bordeaux

I never drink white Bordeaux. Ever. Nor does anyone else. If you want Sauvignon, you go to New Zealand or the Loire. If you want it with a splash of Semillon, you go to Margaret River. What's the point of Sauvignon with an attitude problem? And it's only Americans who try to oak their Sauvignons.

But we know the truth is more complex than this, if we are honest with ourselves. In particular, we realize that white Graves is serious stuff, and that sometimes Sauvignon/Semillon blends from Bordeaux with a bit of barrel fermentation are worthy of our attention: they're serious, ageworthy wines in their own right.

Tonight I sip a white Bordeaux that is both serious and affordable. It's Chateau Beaumont 'Les Pierrieres' 2006 Premieres Cotes de Blaye Blanc, which Lea and Sandeman list for £7.95. Initially, on opening it Fiona and I had divergent opinions. She's highly sensitive to oak, and doesn't like oaked white wines at all - she immediately rejected this as being oaky. I'm clearly an idiot, and didn't get oak at all when I first tried it. Instead, I got a bit of struck match reduction as the defining feature on the nose. But Fiona is right: Beaumont used new oak barrels for this wine. They fermented it in new barrels destined for their red wine program, understanding that by the time fermentation was complete with the white, the red would be ready to press into the already-used barrels.

The combination of oak, reduction and fresh, herb-tinged fruit results in a fairly complex, savoury, expressive white wine that I reckon will improve in bottle for perhaps five to ten years. It's a really interesting wine, in the style of serious white Graves, but it's affordable.

Bordeaux 2005, assessed from bottle

So popular is the Bordeaux 2005 vintage with the wine trade that the organizers of this year’s Union des Grands Cru tasting at the Royal Opera House had to operate a two-shift system. Given a choice of morning or afternoon tasting, I opted for the 10.30–13.30 band, and despite the split shifts, the place was still heaving.

In a crowded environment, tasting is made quite difficult. While the Riedel glasses, the open, airy room and the sunny weather all worked in the tasters’ favour at this event, the crowds, the jostling for position near spittoons, and the general noise level meant that the fine discriminations that need to be made in order to assess quality at the highest level were quite tricky.

Add to this the usual bugbear at large tastings – the repeated exposure of the mouth to dense, young, tannic wines – and you have a bit of noise in the system, which means that the notes and scores I made today aren’t my final word. To make this buccal over-exposure less of a problem, I kept my sampling down to a relatively modest 40 wines, even though there were close to 100 on offer (including whites and Sauternes, which I skipped). This was my third tasting of a large batch of the 2005s – en primeur in April 06, then a second cask sample session in February this year, followed by this first look at the bottled wines.

Overall impressions? 2005 is a remarkable vintage in Bordeaux, across the board. All the appellations have produced generously proportioned, concentrated, tannic wines that look set for long development in bottle. These are not wines that you want to drink now (although I’d imagine that more commercial wines made in a lighter style will now be beginning to show their best). I was repeatedly amazed by the density of fruit, usually backed up by firm tannin and good acidity, and not infrequently a fair whack of new oak. It will take a while for many of these wines to begin to harmonize. Some may be so tannic and extracted that they won’t ever achieve real balance, although it’s hard to be sure at this early stage.

I’d also say this is quite an awkward stage to be evaluating the 05s, because they are so tight and tannic. It’s as if they are currently bunched together. In time, I’d expect them to diverge more and then spotting the real gems amidst the generally high overall level of quality will be easier. It’s important not to be seduced by the wines that are currently more open, because these aren’t necessarily the top wines. Some of the wines that are tight and a bit ungainly now will be the swans in 30 years’ time.

Notes on the wines will follow shortly on the main site. One final thought. Bordeaux is a bit different, isn’t it? All the winery owners, representatives and winemakers were wearing suits, or smart dresses. [Many of the guys were wearing expensively tailored suits, too.] There was lots of jewellery. You get the impression that even cellar hands in Bordeaux wear a shirt and tie. No T-shirts, no jeans, no non-conformists. The wines seem to reflect this.

I love wine!

Some bottles opened last night, and continued tonight, remind me why I do what I do: I love wine!

First of all, a couple of Gruner Veltliner. Lenz Moser's Laurenz V Sophie 2006 is a wine that we've consumed 15 bottles of in the Goode household since summer. It's brilliant for the price - around £5 on special from Tesco - and we have six more arriving next week. But a step up is the Stadt Krems Gruner Veltliner Weinzierlberg 2006, which is one of the most enjoyable whites I've had in a while. It's aromatic, full, generous, well balanced, lively and quite thrilling. This is GV at its very best, and just under £10 from Averys. I must buy some.

Then a really good Bordeaux: Chateau Brown 2004 Pessac Leognan. This is deep, minerally, gravelly, savoury and quite tight, with lovely dense dark fruit hemmed in by firm tannins, good acidity and a touch of oak. Pretty serious stuff, definitely in classed growth league, and which is a good four or five years off its peak. Again, this is a wine that had me on wine-searcher looking to see where I can get some. Unfortunately, none available in the UK...

The picture is of the closure used to seal the Stadt Krems GV. It's a Vino-Lok, which is a glass stopper with a plastic ring doing the business of sealing, covered in a metal cap. I'm not sure about Vino-Loks: they look good, and feel nice to open (no special tool is required), but plastic allows diffusion of oxygen, and it is plastic that is making the seal. Besides, they're really expensive compared with screwcaps and Diam, their main competitors.

A good day

Forgive the unrelated photograph. It's me on the back of a mechanical harvester, taken on Thursday afternoon in Entre-Deux-Mers. The other rider is Beverly Blanning. We were watching the harvest at Chateau Lavison, where Merlot was being picked, and the offer was made: do we want a ride? So precariously balanced on the back, quite high up, we watched as a couple of rows were picked. It's amazing how these machines can pick so well: the reception bins contained almost exclusively intact berries, and a simple triage at the winery picked out remaining stems and any rotten or unripe grapes.

Anyway, the title of this post refers to today, where a couple of nice things happened. First of all, I found Fiona's keys. Doesn't sound too eventful, does it? But it was. Last Tuesday, Fiona was walking RTL in Hanworth Park, when a horse, which wasn't supposed to be there, suddenly appeared. RTL ran fast towards it, and began running round its legs. There was panic, and Fiona ran after the imperiled hound trying to catch it. After the crisis had passed, she realized she no longer had her keys, which must have fallen out of her pocket. The problem is, Hanworth Park is huge, has tall, dense grass off the pathways, through which Fiona had to run, and the keys could have been anywhere within a patch approximately 200 m x 100 m. That evening we searched en famille without success; subsequent search attempts also failed the following day, so we gave the keys up for lost.

Now house keys are easy to re-cut. But the car key is a different matter. A quick call to Mazda revealed that it was easily replaceable, but at a cost of £260. £260 for a car key? That's more than an Ipod costs, and an Ipod is a whole lot more complex. And they needed the car for two hours on next Friday morning for some reason to supply the new one. Why?

So this morning, as I was walking the dog through Hanworth Park, my mind briefly flitted to the issue of the lost keys. Maybe I'll look for them again, I said to myself. I'd taken just two paces off the path when I looked down, and there they were. It felt like a miracle.

The second nice surprise was waiting for me when I got home: a nice royalty cheque for Wine Science. I'd previously just received and advance: this was the first time the earnings had passed the amount of the advance and I got some cash in my hand. It's selling particularly well in the USA, and has just been translated into Japanese. It's always nice to get money that you weren't expecting.

A brief Bordeaux visit

Just back from two action-packed days in Bordeaux. Day 1 was very practical, spent in Entre-Deux-Mers researching integrated viticulture - a scientific approach to sustainability that attempts to forge a balance between the environment, economic considerations and product quality. Yvon Mau have a club of 13 producers who are working in this system, which shows great promise because it is something that even large volume low cost producers can implement (unlike organics or biodynamics, for example), and it results in better quality with far fewer chemical inputs.

Then yesterday, Richard Bampfield (who organized the visit) and I set off early to do some tourism, either side of a visit to Jean-Christoph Mau's Chateau Brown in Pessac Leognan. We hit Saint Estephe, Pauillac, St Julien, Margaux before our visit, and then Pomerol and Saint Emilion afterwards. It's a really good time to see the visit as harvest is either soon to begin, or has begun, depending on where you are. More on the potential of 2007 later. For now, two pictures. First, harvest underway at Lafleur (Pomerol) and, second, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes at Lafite.

From an Asda press tasting to Bordeaux

Asda press tasting today was well attended. I bumped into Tim Atkin, Victoria Moore, Anthony Rose, Joanna Simon, Malcolm Gluck and Julia Harding. Also present (bizarrely) were Christine and Neil Hamilton. I was surprised just how drinkable Asda's half-dozen sub £3 wines were. I thought this was a category that had dried up. Philippa Carr MW has been doing some good work with the business end of her range.

I'm off to Bordeaux tomorrow for a couple of days, to see the harvest, and the forecast is good. Horridly early start, though! I'll have to catch the 05:06 train.

Le Dome 1996, plus others, blind

So we headed off to brother-in-law Beavington's (who is married to my sister Hester) for lunch, along with twin sister Anne and her husband Dominic. Little did I know that I was going to be treated to a flight of 13 wines, all blind. It was a really interesting excercise, and we had a great time.

As someone who professes to know a bit about wine, I love the chance to taste blind. Of course, there's more to a wine that just what is in the glass. The context matters, and the sight of the label can help a great deal in guiding or shaping our perception. At the same time, the sight of the label can lead us into bull***t land, where we begin to 'experience' things we have never really perceived, but this doesn't mean that the only legitimate tasting is blind.

What blind tasting does is focus the mind and provide a bit of a reality check. If a taster can't tell the difference blind between a first growth Bordeaux and a Chilean Cabernet, or Krug and Cava, then what are they doing wasting my money buying the top stuff? If the difference is too close to call, then they could save a lot of money by buying the cheaper option.

I'll just mention one of the wines we tasted today here; many of the others deserve their own space. It's a wine I immediately identified as a top Bordeaux, but it had what hindsight shows me to be some distinctive Cabernet Franc/Merlot leafiness - a clue that I missed, and which would have led me more to the right bank than the left.

Chateau Le Dome 1996 Saint Emilion
Beautifully perfumed, showing lovely deep, smooth dark fruits nose with a nice spiciness, and a subtle greenness that's really attractive. The vivid blackcurranty fruit makes me think Cabernet Sauvignon, and there's a bit of bloodiness, too. Quite intense on the palate with good savoury dark fruits and nice structure. Some age here. Not a heavy, structured wine: the key here is the gravelly, minerally complexity under the sweet fruit. 94/100

Surrey Hills and some wine

I'm slightly worried that with all these accounts of walks in the country en famille you are left with some picture of domestic idyll chez Goode. Let me correct this notion. When we announced to the boys this morning that we were intending to head off to the Surrey Hills for a family walk, there was severe rebellion in the ranks.

Not surprising, because the slightest parental request in our house is usually treated as fighting talk. For some reason, 'Would you like to come off playstation now, because you've been playing it for 2 hours and you need to eat lunch', is interpreted by elder boy as 'Step outside now'; it's not much better with younger son.

After some negotiation, we managed to set off for one of my favourite excursions, The Holmbury Hill Walk. The best bit about it is that half way round there's a decent pub where you can lunch. Fortified by a couple of pints of Ringwood, and encouraged by the half-decent weather, we had a lovely walk. Even though the kids had considered a long and painful death to be a better option than a family walk before we'd left, once we were there they enjoyed it too.

This evening, three wines sampled. Asda's Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2006 is just what you want from an inexpensive Italian red: it's pleasantly tart and light, with plum and damson flavours. Torres Gran Sangre de Toro 2003 is nicely dense, but has a little too much sweet vanilla-scented American oak for my liking: they should lose some of the oak, use a bit of French rather than American, and aim at fruit intensity. The best of the evening was Chateau Clauzet 2004 Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux. This is quite serious claret. The dark fruits nose has a bit of spice and earthiness. The palate is nicely dense with focused black fruits with good tannins and a minerally undercurrent. This is a substantial, savoury, spicy wine with fresh fruit and well judged oak. A really nice claret. 88/100

A day of family stuff

Took a day off today, to spend with the family. Fortuitously, it was one of the few rain-free days we've had over the last couple of months. It felt like summer.

We started off at Box Hill, near Dorking in Surrey. It's a beautiful spot, and one we return to frequently. A bit of gentle hill walking on a mostly-sunny English summer's day is hard to beat as an antidote to stress. From Boxhill you also get a great view of Denbies Wine Estate (below).

We then lunched at the Percy Arms in Chilworth, which has a nice garden. Greene King IPA and Ruddles Orchard were the accompaniment. This was followed by a visit to Mercedes Benz World at Brooklands, which the kids quite enjoyed. It's like a three-storey car showroom on a scale you've never seen before, with several attractions thrown in. It's free, and the kids really enjoyed sitting in some of the sports cars. You can spend a lot of money on a Mercedes. Me? I'm pretty happy with my Mazda 6 Diesel Estate, which has performed wonderfully over its first 14 months.

Then this evening it was off to Cineworld to see the latest Harry Potter film. It's good - as good as this sort of film can be. I'd rate this alongside number 3 (which incidentally had Michael Seresin, owner of Seresin winery in New Zealand's Marlborough region, as filmaker) as the best of the series. Imelda Staunton is a brilliant Dolores Umbridge, Filch is once again fantastic (especially when he's atop an implausibly high and shaky stepladder hammering Umbridge's edict no 113 to the wall), and there's a spooky, rather gritty edge to the whole film. But the problem is that by this stage in the series Rowling's books had become very fat indeed, and so compressing them into a single film means that there's not much time for character development or narrative - just action. It's hard to see how the next two films can develop the series, save for becoming 'darker', but then part of the appeal of Potter and his merry chums is magic and fun, and the lightness and childish delight is in danger of being squeezed out of this series.

Two wines. Calvet Reserve Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 Bordeaux (£6.99 Sainsbury, Waitrose, Co-op) is quite dense, dark, spicy and tannic - it tastes a bit like a Madiran, with firm, dark structure, blackberry/raspberry fruit and good acidity. Not terribly refined, but a good food wine with lots of savoury stuffing, and better than you might expect from Bordeaux at this price. 84/100. The second is Graham Beck Brut Rose 2005 Methode Cap Classique. This South African fizz is a pale salmon colour with lovely delicacy and poise. There's a smooth texture here, along with freshness and brightness. This is a really well made fizz that is fine for drinking on its own, but which would do a good job at table, too. 86/100 (UK importer Bibendum Wine.)

Four rubbish wines, one good one

I don't like to be negative. At the same time, a critic's job is to be critical of the bad as well as praising the good.

Last night I opened four wines, all of which depressed me. Wine should be authentic; it should be fun; it should inspire and captivate; it should make us think a bit. Sadly, there's a lot of rubbish wine out there that does none of these things.

Tonight, therefore, I played safe. I opened something I knew I'd like. I have a soft spot for Bandol, and Domaine Gros' Nore is one of the top producers. The 1999 which I'm sipping now has a haunting nose: it's sweetly fruited, but the dominant theme is a perfumed earthiness - a savoury melange of spice, herbs, crushed rocks and turned earth. In the mouth it is savoury, dense, earthy and shows a bit of tarry, spicy fruit. There's quite a bit of tannic structure and good acidity. Beginning to drink really well, and I reckon it's good for another 10 years. As with all Bandols, Mourvedre is the key grape here.

Back to the duds. Oddbins Selection Bordeaux 2006 is the best of them: I like the dark, sweet chocolatey blackcurrant and blackberry fruit. My problem is that it tastes like Australian Cabernet, with sweet jammy fruit you just don't expect from Bordeaux. Is there residual sugar here? I wouldn't be surprised. Next, Yaldara 'The Farms' Shiraz 2004 tastes like an average £7 Barossa red, with sweet fruit and disjointed acid, together with heat and astringency. Problem is that Laithwaites sell this at £18.95, a price at which it represents spectacularly bad value. It has a twintop closure. Not usually seen on £20 wines. Now Chileno knock out some decent cheapo Chilean wines. Their Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 is not one of them. The vibrant fruit has distinctive herbal greeness, and the result is a bit sickly. It's cheap, though, at under a fiver, but to be honest I'd rather drink water. Finally, Kendall Jackson's Cabernet Sauvignon Vintners Reserve 2003 from California is sweet and confected, with a vanilla streak to the red and black fruits. A crowd pleaser, but at £10 I was very disapponted: it just tastes 'made'.

Bordeaux and Port

Two very nice (but affordable) wines to report on tonight. The first is a well proportioned, balanced Claret; the second, an overperforming LBV Port.

Chateau Senejac 2004 Cru Bourgeois, Haut Medoc, Bordeaux
Lovely nose shows some blackcurrant fruit but it's quite restrained, and not too fruity, with a balanced, complex earthy, gravelly, cigar box sort of character. Very smooth and elegant. The palate is earthy and spicy with good density of fruit. Midweight with some nice tannin and really good balance. A well proportioned sort of wine where nothing sticks out too much, and at this price a real bargain for Bordeaux. This sort of wine is what Bordeaux is all about. Very good+ 89/100 (£9.25 Waitrose)

Niepoort LBV 2001 Douro, Portugal
This is a late-bottled vintage Port that would put some vintage wines to shame. On the nose there's some spicy, herby complexity, with some lifted tar notes and a bit of perfume. The palate has a pronounced spicy tannic structure underpinning the sweet fruit. Finishes drier and more savoury than you'd expect. Plenty of personality here, and a persistent structure. Very good/excellent 90/100 (£13 Butlers Wine Cellar, Cambridge Wine Company, Fareham Wine Cellar, Fortnum & Mason, Bentleys Wine and others)

Bordeaux 2005 revisited

Today's day trip to Bordeaux began early, at 04:30, when I got a car to the airport. The purpose of the visit was a tasting of a wide range of 2005 Bordeaux put on by Millesima, a wine merchant selling by mail order to France, UK, Germany and elsewhere in Europe - they are unusual in that they buy direct from the top Bordeaux properties rather than going through negociants (or, if you look at it the other way, I guess they are a negociant selling direct to consumers - equally unusual). Fellow travellers included Neil Beckett, Oz Clarke, Joanna Simon and Sally Easton from the UK, as well as a contingent from Ireland, including Joe Breen, who did a nice review of Wine Science in the Irish Times. Tim Atkin was on the same plane out, but he was off to Yquem and Cheval Blanc.

After a quick flight, we took a cab to Millesima's warehouses, where the tasting was held, split by appellation in several locations in the cellars. Tasting was quite tough: there was a strong smell of pine wood from all the wooden cases, plus a distinctive sawdust smell from the spitoons. It was cold; the wines were brutally tannic; the tank samples we were trying were a bit bottle-shocked. But it was thrilling to be able to try so many of the top wines at an interesting stage in their early development. Two favourites were Pichon Baron and Palmer, both of which were fantastic.

It was also nice to catch up with Michel Bettane, who has some strong views on the 2005s, and Luis Antunes, as well as a few others. On the flight back I had a nice chat with Anthony Hanson, who I've not met before. All in all, a very productive day. I was home by 19:08, which is pretty good going. Bit embarassed about my carbon footprint, though.

Now finishing off the remains of the 2003 Crasto, blogged on yesterday, which is drinking well.

Crasto 2003

Off to Bordeaux tomorrow for a day trip, tasting a nice array of 2005s. Problem is, I have to leave at 04:30 am. Ouch. Should be in bed now, but I need to take a bath this evening to avoid waking the family and RTL tomorrow morning on my way out.

Tonight I'm drinking Quinta do Crasto 2003 Douro (£6.99 Adnams). It's very drinkable, with ripe, sweet dark fruits providing the gratification, and subtly green, tarry tannic structure providing a nice counter. There's nothing terribly heavy or serious about this wine, and the bright plummy, slightly sappy fruit is really appealing. This is a wine for current drinking that has a hint of the new world to it, but also speaks (albeit rather softly) of its Douro origins. Great value, and recommended at this price. Very good+ 87/100

Crasto is pictured above, from my first visit to the Douro in 2002.

Les Tourelles 2003

Another wine from the current Bibendum sale, this is the second wine of Pichon Longueville Baron, from the hot 2003 vintage. I do wonder about the Bordeaux model of having the grand vin and then second and perhaps third wines, which by their very relationship to the top wine have their work cut out persuading consumers they are fine wines in their own right.

On one level, if I was a Bordeaux producer, I'd be curious enough to make several wines from my various patches of vineyard. But then, if the vineyard is a coherent, single terroir, I guess making just one top wine is logical. These days there's such a pressure to make an utterly perfect grand vin, not least because those who can get the points also get the financial rewards, I imagine a lot of very respectable wine is going into second labels. This is an example of that, I suspect.

Les Tourelles de Longueville 2003 Pauillac, Bordeaux
Quite deep coloured. Sweet but slightly muted nose showing ripe dark fruits and a hint of gravelly minerality. It's quite refined without being terribly vocal. The palate is smooth and ripe with a good weight of red and black fruits, together with some smooth structure. Quite modern in style and lacking real depth and intensity, but still nicely balanced and very polished. It's a BMW 3-series rather than a Porsche Carrera. I reckon this will provide satisfying rather than thrilling drinking over the next few years. I guess my note is beginning to sound a little ambiguous: this is a stylish, ripe Claret, but it just lacks a bit of excitement for me. Very good+ 89/100 (£17.99 in the Bibendum sale)

1997 Bordeaux

Just a tasting note tonight:

Château Pavie-Macquin 1997 Saint-Emilion, Bordeaux
So beautifully perfumed, it’s almost Burgundian, even though this is classic Bordeaux. There’s some gravelly minerality, a faint trace of tar, and tight red berry fruit, with an underlying earthiness. The palate shows savoury red fruits with some earthy tannic structure and good acidity. The wine has a lovely fresh feel to it, although the fact that the fruit seems to be beginning to recede a little makes me think this is one for drinking over the next couple of years. Tasting the wine again on day two confirms this. This is what we come to Bordeaux for, I reckon: complexity allied to balance allied to drinkability. Very good/excellent 90/100 (Will be featured in the forthcoming Bibendum sale, http://www.bibendum-wine.co.uk/)

A magnum of Las Cases

Friday night I was out for a wine dinner at L'Auberge in Teddington. It was c0nvened by Alex Murray, who until recently worked for Berry Bros & Rudd, along with two of his ex-colleagues from Berrys, Chris Maybin and Charlie Bennett. We drank and ate well: Bollinger Grande Annee 1997, Pol Roger Winston Churchill 1996, Colin Deleger Chassagne Montrachet Les Vergers 2003, Langoa Barton 1996, Armand Rousseau Chambertin Clos Des Ruchottes Grand Cru and Mission Hill Reserve Riesling Eiswein 2003 were all polished off with relish. But the highlight for me was the magnum of Leoville Las Cases 1985 that Alex brought along.

Decanted a couple of hours earlier, this was a magical wine, drinking perfectly. Perfumed, open and inviting, this combined sweetness of fruit with lovely earthy minerality. Quite dry and savoury, but very youthful tasting for a 21 year old wine. This is why Bordeaux is so sought after, and why people like to drink it at 20 or 30 years old. Also, magnums just seem to age so well: perhaps they offer the perfect level of oxygen transmission/volume of wine that allows the wine to reach just the right ageing destination. This was also an impeccably cellared bottle, which is so important with older wines. It was so nice to have a whole magnum between the four of us of such a lovely wine.

Got home by bus at about 1.30 am; fell asleep listening to the cricket.

Some celebration wines with Neal

Went to The Arches for Neal Martin's dinner to celebrate his elevation to superstardom. It was my first visit to this hallowed venue (see a nice article by Andrew Jefford on the Arches, and Harry Gill, its proprietor -pictured). There were eight of us, and Neal provided most of the wine, the balance of which we bought from Harry's wonderful list, with Harry joining us and contributing a couple of surprise bottles of his own. Most of these wines were tasted blind. It was great fun, but I don't feel up to submitting a full report just now - one will follow, with some pictures. Until then, a list of the wines:

Lafon Meursault Perrieres 1995
Lafon Meursault Goutte d'Or 1995
Roumier Rouchottes Chambertin 1991
Dugat-Py Charmes Chambertin 2001
Le Pin 1988
Lafite 1976
Sandrone Cannubi Boschis 1996
Sandrone La Vigne 1996
Voerzio Barolo Sarmass di Barolo 1998
Ch Montelena 1991
Jasper Hill Emily's Paddock 2001
Ch Filhot 1935
Zind Humbrecht Herrenweg Turckheim Pinot Noir 1989
Valandraud 1994
Parker Coonawarra 1996
Hallgartner Jungfer Riesling Spatlese 1971 Rheingau (producer??)

A fantastic evening, but a dangerous place to visit!