A mountain white and three Pinots

It's been a nice day here at the Goode residence, as I end week two of my freelance life. I confess: Fiona and I took another long Friday lunch together. This time we went to Richmond and ate at Wagamama, which I think I'm slightly addicted to. We both ordered no. 42 - yaki udon (£7.25) which consists of: teppan-fried udon noodles with curry oil, shiitake mushrooms,
egg, leeks, prawns, chicken, chikuwa, beansprouts and green and red peppers, garnished with spicy ground fish powder, mixed sesame seeds, fried shallots and pickled ginger. It's fantastic. I had a beer and Fiona had a glass of Chilean Sauvignon.

Tonight, three Pinots (what a fickle grape) and a mountain white. Tomorrow I'm going to Twickenham for the rugby.

Blanc de Morgex et de la Salle 2006 Vallee d'Aoste, Italy
From the Cave du Vin in Morgex, this is a pure, fresh mountain wine that's part of the Vini Estremi group (http://www.viniestremi.com/). Weighing in at just 11.5% alcohol, it's delicate and minerally with a subtle apple and herb flavour and high acidity. There's a lovely bright savouriness to it: remarkably refreshing stuff. I do like mountain wines. 88/100 (Les Caves de Pyrene)

Parducci Pinot Noir 2006 California
Mendocino-based Parducci are these days riding the sustainability wagon (I haven't used the perjorative term 'bandwagon' here) - see www.parducci.com/sustainability. I remember Oddbins used to stock a Parducci Charbono a few years back; now they are stocking this Pinot Noir. By Californian standards this is an inexpensive wine, and it certainly tastes like Pinot, although at this price point it's facing strong competition from the cheaper NZ Pinots. The nose is quite sweet, with bright berry and cherry fruit, but there's also a savoury green herbal streak. The nicely balanced palate has a bit of this sweet and savoury thing going on, with sweet berry fruit countered by a spicy herby savouriness. It's not quite elegant enough to be a must buy, but it's certainly acceptable at this price, and avoids being confected and forced. Reminds me a bit of the Cono Sur Pinot. 86/100 (£8.49 Oddbins)

Domaine Mas Viel Pinot Noir 2006 Vin de Pays d'Oc, France
Sealed with ProCork, a natural cork with a special membrane attached to each chamfered end, to prevent any risk of TCA transmission from the cork to the wine: I haven't seen many of these around. It has a ripe, forward sweet berry fruit nose that's richer than you'd expect from Pinot. Quite dense on the palate with some firm tannins, ripe fruit and a herby tang, together with some sweet vanilla oak notes. It's attractive, in a flirty sort of way, but this doesn't really taste like Pinot. Still, it's quite cheap, and I suspect that if it was from Chile or California, it would have its fans. 81/100 (£6.95 http://www.therealwineco.co.uk/)

Blason de Bourgogne Mercurey 2003 Burgundy
This is bright and quite tart, displaying cherry and raspberry fruit with some stern, savoury earthy undercurrents. It's lean, a bit acidic, and ungenerous. There's also a rustic herbal streak. It was just a shade under £10 from Tesco and Asda a couple of years ago, and I think it was a bit overpriced. It would work well as a food wine, I suspect, but it's a bit severe on its own. 80/100

Some nice wines with friends

I have a few nice wines to report on, from a dinner last night here chez Goode, where I was joined by David Bueker (visiting London from the USA) and Greg Sherwood MW (of Handford Wine). I'd never met David before, but I have communicated with him over a period of years on internet wine bulletin boards. Sounds weird, I know, meeting up with people you met on internet boards, but all the 'real life' interactions I've had with fellow wine nuts have been positive ones, and last night was no exception.

Three is a nice number for a wine dinner, and we had some really interesting wines. David brought along a Schloss Gobelsburg Riesling Heiligenstein 2006 Langenlois, Kremstal. I love Austrian Riesling, and this is a really superb example of dry Riesling at its best. It's rich and mineralic, with plenty of weight and a nice texture. Drinking very well now, but good for another five, I reckon. I'd already opened a Reinhold Haart Riesling Piesport Domherr Spatlese 2005 Mosel Saar Ruwer, which was nowhere near ready to drink. It has the richness of an Auslese with lovely spicy apricot, honey and citrus flavour. I think it's a superb wine, but not for broaching now. Another Riesling I opened by way of comparison, Torzi Matthews Frost Dodger Riesling 2005 Eden Valley, was very reductive, with lots of burnt match character and a rather grippy mouthfeel. I wonder whether this was because of the tin-lined screwcap.

A fourth Riesling we tried was Dr Loosen Beerenauslese 2006, in 187 ml bottle. It was sweet and rather simple, lacking complexity (this is now in stock at Waitrose). Greg brought a couple of bottles. The first, Chateau de Donos Corbieres 1989 was still alive and had some evolved earthy complexity. The second was probably the wine of the evening. Louis Latour Chateau Corton Grancey Crand Cru 1990 was just singing. It's one of those rare wines where you feel you are drinking it at its peak. Smooth, mature and really elegant, I'd rate this at 94 if you forced me to put a score to it. I really liked the next wine, but it had its work cut out following the Burgundy. It was Domaine du Gros Nore Bandol 2000. Spicy and dense, as you'd expect from Bandol, but with fantastic purity of fruit, too. I have 11 more bottles of this, and I'm pleased about that.

Finally, Tamellini Vigna Morogne Recioto del Soave 2003 is sensational. Deep coloured, it is a thrilling viscous sweet white with complex apricot, honey, peach and vanilla notes. I guess for me this would tie for wine of the night. It's amazing stuff (another gem from Les Caves de Pyrene).

DRC 2005

The new release tasting of DRC's iconic Burgundies is one of the most eagerly anticipated dates in the wine calendar. It's not every day you get to taste wines like these. I'm not sure of the prices yet, but expect the top wine, the Romanee-Conti, to be over £1000 per bottle on release (and even at this price, you'll have to join a very long queue).

So I popped into Corney & Barrow this morning to try the 2005s. A lot of familiar faces were there, including the triumverate of Neal Martin, Bill Nanson and Linden Wilkie (who made a whole morning out of it, sitting down, taking extensive notes, trying the wines, sitting down, chatting and so on). I also saw Tim Atkin, Natasha Hughes, Anthony Rose, Harry Gill, Serena Sutcliffe and Jasper Morris (who at one point dropped his glasses into a spitoon as he bent over too far).

My report on the wines is posted on the main site here. You can compare my notes with those of Eric Asimov of the NY Times, who also tasted the wines recently here.

A good red Burgundy

I don't drink enough Burgundy. Trying to redress this balance, I opened one this lunchtime. A village Gevrey, it's quite elegant and understated, but at over £20 it feels a little on the expensive side. Perhaps I'm being unrealistic, but if I shell out £20 on a bottle of wine, I want something exciting. It's not that this wine is expensive by the standards of the region - it's actually one of the best £20 red Burgundies I've had - and I suppose this is the reason I don't really drink a lot of Burgundy.

Albert Bichot Gevrey-Chambertin 'Les Corvees' 2004 Burgundy, France
A light red in colour, this is a really pleasant, elegant red Burgundy with restrained cherry fruit and a pleasant earthy, spicy structure. It's got an almost weightless quality to it, with all the components working in harmony. There's a supple, slightly green quality under the fruit, which makes this quite savoury. If it just had a little more richness and fruit sweetness, it would be really top notch. Satisfying drinking now and for the next couple of years. 89/100 (£21 Soho Wine Supply, Harrison Vintners)

Burgundy 2006 with cheese

This week sees the 2006 Burgundy en primeur tastings in London. There are a lot of them – I've been invited to at least eight, and there are others, too. I'm not sure whether there's a lot to be gained from spending a whole week of my life tasting barrel samples from just one vintage...it's not that I'm widely regarded as an expert on the region's wines, after all. I reckon that I can spot decent Burgundy when I see it, but I don’t have the breadth of experience to be able to give ‘expert’ buying advice across the appellations.

Indeed, such is the complexity of Burgundy, with its terroir-based patchwork quilt of vineyards that are shared among many growers (in most cases), if you want to be a real Burgundy expert you have to devote most of your working life to this region.

So what about the 2006s? I went along this afternoon to the Berry Bros & Rudd tasting in the splendid setting of One Great George Street, near Westminster Abbey. I didn't spend an awful lot of time tasting, so I can't really give the definitive answer on the vintage. But I did have a nice time catching up with colleagues (I spoke with Joanna Simon, Tim Atkin, Charles Metcalfe, Victoria Moore, Neil Beckett, Anthony Rose, Natasha Hughes, Jane MacQuitty and Jasper Morris among others). It was also nice to bump into Francis Percival, the food writer, who was there to demonstrate a couple of Neals Yard cheeses for the private customers who were soon to arrive (pictured). I tried a Berkswell, which was made with late lactation milk and is therefore a bit funky because of the high solids, and a really lovely Montgomery Cheddar that was complex, spicy and delicious.

Jasper's take on the 2006 vintage seems a fair one. ‘It’s totally different to 2005, which was a truly great year’, he began. ‘This was a nice year, producing some stylish wines that show perfume and which taste like Pinot Noir and Burgundy.’ He anticipated that customers would taste through the wines and find many that they liked. ‘There is variation here’, Jasper cautions. In terms of pricing, the reds are stable or down and the whites stable or up from the previous year, ‘but Burgundy doesn’t move a lot’, he said.

The wines I tried were exclusively red, and were at the light end of the spectrum. Some were showing firm tannins. They seemed a bit expensive, on the whole. It was really nice to have a chance to chat to newcomer David Clark, a Scot who has recently established himself as a Burgundy grower with 2 hectares of vines in relatively lowly appellations, which he’s farming with meticulous care, producing some really nice wines. More on him later.

Not so humble humble red Burgundy

A fine way to cap a weekend is to open a bottle of red Burgundy. But only a relatively humble one - a Bourgogne Rouge. This humble bottle turns out to be more than respectable though. It's from Boisset's super-domaine, Domaine de la Vougerie, which was created in 1999 (for background the reader is directed to a typically good article by Bill Nanson).

Domaine de la Vougerie Bourgogne Pinot Noir 'Terres de Famille' 2004 Burgundy, France
Made from a blend of grapes from the Cotes du Beaune and Cotes de Nuits, this is a wine that punches above its weight. The grapes are destemmed and left without crushing in the cuve, to which no yeasts are added. It's not too dark in colour, which is often a good thing for Pinot. The nose has quite classic cherry, herb and earth characters, combining sweet fruit with more savoury notes. The palate has elegant sour cherry and herbs with some sweetness as well as a bit of savoury, earthy tannic structure. It's a very expressive, natural tasting wine that is drinking very well now. A brilliant, affordable expression of Pinot Noir from what was a difficult year in Burgundy. It would be interesting to put this into a blind tasting with some more esteemed peers. 89/100 (£12.95 Berry Bros & Rudd)

A Burgundy lunch

Had lunch today at St John, with a very pleasant group of people who I'd not met before (this was one of those 'offlines'), with the theme being Burgundy. St Johns is good for wine dinners because the food is so great, and the service is superb. But the wine glasses are really bad. Your local corner bistro has better glasses. And the decision to have rubbish glasses, apparently, was made right at the top. We asked for their better glasses, but this was a bit of a problem as they were short of them (we were a party of 8), but after a while they appeared. They could only spare one each, though. And these were like slightly over-sized ISO glasses, which if I encountered in any other high-end restaurant, I'd ask if they had any better glasses. I'd brought along a couple of Riedel 'O' Syrah glasses in my bag, so I used one and donated the other to my neighbour. Enough about glasses. What were the wines like? My notes below. As an aside, my neighbour commented on the route many wine nuts take. It begins in Bordeaux, goes to the Rhone, and then finishes in Burgundy.

Burgundy lunch at St John, 4 October 2007

Fontaine Gaignard Chassagne Montrachet 1er Cru Les Caillerets 2004
Very bright, lemony, toasty nose is quite aromatic. The palate has a creamy, toasty richness. It’s broad with some bright lemony freshness. 90/100

Bonneau du Martray Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru 1994
Initially this is amazingly youthful, and a little mute, but it begins to express itself after time in the glass. Fresh, tight minerally nose with a stony sort of character. The palate is tight and minerally with nice pure fruit and a rather reticent, elegant personality. After a while, this wine begins to show itself with some complex minerality emerging. Serious stuff in a rather lean, tight style, with the potential to develop further. 93/100

Dominique Laurent Nuits St Georges 1er Cru Les Damodes 2000
Aromatic, open, slightly funky nose reminds me of some ‘natural’ wines, with its meaty warmth. The palate is open and elegant with warm, spicy, open fruit. It’s a very attractive style of wine, but perhaps a little unusual. 90/100

Fourrier Griotte-Chambertin Grand Cru 2003
Deep coloured. Open, sweetly fruited nose is quite dark with a hint of tar and some slightly funky notes. The palate is full, spicy and quite elegant with sweet dark fruit and a bit of tannin. It’s not really giving a great deal at the moment. 89/100

Armand Rousseau Ruchottes-Chambertin ‘Clos des Ruchottes’ Grand Cru 2003
Lovely aromatic nose with forward ripe fruit and a hint of meatiness. The palate is beautifully expressive with sweet fruit – almost like a very elegant New Zealand Pinot Noir. Quite expressive and fruity, this is delicious, but perhaps atypical? 93/100

Armand Rousseau Chambertin Grand Cru 1997
This is more evolved than you’d expect, with a distinct brown tinge to the colour. It has a warm, deep, spicy nose with a tarry, fudgey edge. The palate is dense, spicy and full with some nice spicy tannins. Quite expressive, warm and complex. The fruit has faded, though. 91/100

Armand Rousseau Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru 1997
Open, expressive, elegant nose is beautifully perfumed with lovely aromatic red fruits. The palate is open and has lovely fresh, expressive red berry fruits together with some cherry notes and some spice. Supremely elegant: this is what we come to Burgundy for. 94/100

Faively Corton ‘Clos des Cortons’ Monopole 1990
Slightly medicinal, spicy nose is quite savoury. The palate is still quite tannic with some medicinal, spicy notes, but these tannins are beginning to soften a bit. I can only guess that this was once a big, chunky, tannic wine. Now it’s evolving: it isn’t particularly elegant, but there’s some real appeal here. 91/100

Rioja and cricket

I really enjoyed my visit to Rioja Alavesa, despite the punishing start and the 22 hour day it necessitated. I was visiting Bodegas Palacio in the Rioja Alavesa, who are achieving great success with fruit-dominated Riojas aged in French oak, as opposed to the more common oakier, American oak-aged style that this region has become well known for.

We began by looking at a range of white Riojas. They are keen to produce a high-end white Rioja, and in order to have a clearer idea of where they should go in terms of style they opened some of the better-known examples and we had a discussion. Then we tasted through their current range. After this, it was time for a lunch and more discussion, with a bottle of 1964 Glorioso Rioja Gran Reserva to help us. Lunch was followed by a trip to visit some vineyards; primarily, two that have been earmarked for an icon red wine project. The first was old vine Tempranillo, the second some 80 year old Graciano (pictured). As is common in the older vineyards here, the vines are trained as bushes, with two or three main arms which are then pruned back to a couple of short spurs each. These vineyards just look fantastic.

We then returned to taste samples from these vineyards made in the 2005 vintage. In short, they were great. The Graciano was amazingly fresh and vibrant with great density, good tannin and high acidity. Unoaked. The Tempranillo had been oaked and showed fantastic richness of fruit, yet still retained freshness. Blended together the result was superb: intense but fresh and with great definition. Much better than many of the inky, soupy, oaky high-end newwave Riojas on the market at the moment.

Woke up this morning feeling fresher than I should have done, perhaps because it was my first game of cricket of the season, for the Wine Trade XI captained by Nick Oakley, versus the Gents of Essex, held at Coggeshall's fine ground. It's normally a batsman's track, so bowling can be quite hard work. Last year (reported here) I had figures of 7-0-42-0. This year, though, it clicked. I opened the bowling, and with the fourth ball cleaned out Coggeshall's overseas professional with a ball that swung in and then straightened out. The next over I got another wicket. And one more two overs later. My figures of 8-2-31-3 would have been a lot better but for the final over where I conceded one more run than the previous seven overs together. Chasing 231, we went on to win the game with 7 down and a few overs to spare.

Tonight I'm drinking a very nice affordable white Burgundy: Albert Bichot Bourgogne Domaine du Pavillion 2005 (Oddbins £8.49). It's fresh and bright with a really nice reductive edge, which, in the context of this wine, works really well.

Pinot Noir

DRC fascinates me. It’s Pinot Noir, and there’s nothing magical about the way it is made: just solid traditional winemaking. Yet these wines are astonishingly expensive, to the extent that the price bears little relation to the production costs.

Look, there’s some margin to be had here. I’m sure it’s not cheap to make DRC: the vineyards need to be tended carefully, and there needs to be rigorous selection of fruit after harvest. But it’s not as if the guys there have secret knowledge that no one else does, nor that they have skills that are unique (although they are evidently on top of their game). It’s something about the place that sets DRC apart. If other people could make wines as good as DRC, then they would, because whatever effort it took they would be able to recoup the cost many time over because their wines would be highly sought after.

OK, let’s add a bit of perspective. I concede that some people may be making wines as good as those in the DRC line-up. Domaine Leroy springs to mind. Perhaps a few others. [How do we define ‘as good as’? That’s an additional complication.] Also, even if a newcomer performed to the same level as DRC, would the market reward them the same? Probably not. There’s something special about the DRC brand; it has a magic of its own. It’s also likely that as we taste DRC the label does influence our perception in a positive way (I’ve only once tried a DRC wine blind; on all other occasions the label has been seen).

But having said this, wouldn’t it be wonderful to find other patches of land that yielded such magical Pinot Noirs at prices normal people could afford to drink? This would be a nice discussion topic.

So where makes really good affordable Pinot Noir? I’m not necessarily talking about sub-£10, which restricts the field a little too much, but more sub-£20. Currently, New Zealand would be my first choice, and particularly Central Otago and Wairapa (Martinborough), although Marlborough isn’t doing too badly. Here’s one that has recently impressed:

Waipara Springs Premo Pinot Noir 2005 Waipara, New Zealand
Destemmed, cold soak, minimal plunging, wild fermentation and extended skin contact: the result is a lovely Pinot Noir. It has a powerful, aromatic nose showing ripe, sweet and smooth berry fruit with a touch of coffee-ish roasted oak and some sweet spices. The palate is smooth and elegant with a lovely texture to the sweet fruit, which is backed up by some spice and silky tannin. I think this is a baby that will need a little time to show its best, but there's real quality here and the oak will be absorbed nicely. Very good/excellent 93/100 (Hellion Wines)

If you have to ask the price...

Friday was the Corney & Barrow DRC tasting, of the 2004 vintage. It's rather nice of them to let us try these wines each year, at an event which runs from 8.30-12.30 (most arrive before 10 to avoid the risk of the wines running out - I don't know whether they do). There's an atmosphere of hushed reverence; Aubert de Villiane is in attendance, hovering in the background - he's very approachable and welcomes questions, and I had a productive few minutes with him. We taste out of Riedel Burgundy glasses, with a carefully measured pour that is just sufficient to taste, but allows for no waste. The 2004s are pretty impressive. The Echezeaux stands out as being fantastically perfumed, while the RSV and La Tache are more structured. There's just the faintest hint of green in a couple of the wines, but none disappoint. The Romanee-Conti itself is the most complete wine, but all are sensationally good. As for the prices, projected final per bottle tab ranges from GBP121.96 for the Echezeaux to GBP979.71 for the Romanee-Conti. And they'll still all sell out in a flash.

Back to the wine...

Feeling great today. After a remission of my vicious gastric disorder on Boxing day (thus no wine, hardly any food), I awoke feeling physically sound for the first time in ages. I actually felt like drinking wine!

It was a good job, because we were off for a family get-together at the Beavingtons (my wine-bibbing brother-in-law's pad), where food and wine were on the menu. It was the first time all four of the Goode children (myself, my twin sister Anne, younger sister Hester and younger brother Arthur) had gathered in the same location for ages and ages. We all brought our kids (12 in all) and a merry time was had. The wines included:

Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port 1966
This old Port wasn’t decanted, and so needs a little air to open up. It has a mellow, soft spicy nose that’s initially a little spirity, but becomes a quite fruity and fudgy. The palate is soft and complex with mellow red fruits, yet still has a bit of spicy bite. Rich, intense and drinking very well now. I reckon there’s no hurry to drink this up, although it’s probably not going to get any better. Very good/excellent 91/100

Château Suduiraut 2001 Sauternes
This is fantastic. Wonderfully intense, full nose with apricot, lemon, spice and vanilla notes. The palate is broad and super-concentrated, showing complex, viscous apricotty, marmaladey fruit bolstered by good acidity and with some honey notes. Even at such an early stage it’s already a first-rate example of Sauternes and is potentially immortal. Excellent 95/100

Francois Mikulski Meursault 2002 Burgundy
Good yellow colour. Rich nose showing some evolution, with nutty, toasty fruit. The palate is quite rich with toasty, spicy notes and some lemony freshness to the fruit. A delicious, modern-styled white Burgundy that’s drinking well now, but which I wouldn’t age too much longer. Very good/excellent 90/100

JP & JL Jamet Côte-Rôtie 1999 Northern Rhône
Another crack at this wine, which I’ve now had several times. At an en primeur tasting many years ago I described this 1999 as possibly the best young wine I’d ever tasted. It’s now approaching a rather savoury phase, now that the puppy fat is shed, and it shows itself as a classically styled Côte-Rôtie. Perfumed nose has spicy, animally, meaty characters alongside the fruit. The palate is savoury and intense with lots of fruit but also a distinctive meaty spiciness. I’ll not be opening my remaining few bottles for a while. Very good/excellent 93/100

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!