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[For the
uninitiated, a 'blog' (or weblog)
is a web journal with links. This gives me a chance to add short, 'off the record' style items that
wouldn't merit a separate article. I try my best to keep entries informal,
frequent, brief and (hopefully) interesting. For more information
about Jamie Goode, see the about the author
section. ]
Thursday
3rd February 2005
Saw the proofs of the
book today for the first time. This is Wine
Science, a very readable account of some of the most interesting
current issues in the world of wine seen through a scientific lens.
People tend to think of wine scientists as pointy heads with a
fascination for obscure detail and a liking for squeaky clean, techno
wines that lack soul. I hope – if you have any familiarity with this
site at all – that you won’t put me in this category, even though
I am, by training, a scientist. I’m hoping this is a book that wine
geeks will enjoy reading, whether or not they have a grounding in or a
liking for science. The proofs (actually, they aren’t yet page
proofs, just the final proposed layout for checking the colour) are
looking really good. The designers have done a fantastic job. I’m
happy.
Anelka has gone. [Sorry non-footie fans, this is a
reference to my team – Manchester
City – and the sale of their ex-star player, Nicolas Anelka.]
Anelka is one of those flawed geniuses with incredible natural talent,
but a temperament that has acted as a barrier to the full expression
of his ability. He was City’s record purchase by far, and is now
their record sale. I shall toast his departure, and the frustratingly
small amount of his genius we saw over the last few seasons, with a
glass of something French. It’s the second half of a bottle of ‘Rendez
Vous du Soleil’ 2001, a wine from Clos du Gravillas in
the wonderfully named VdP des Côtes de Brian. A distinctive southern
red with pronounced roasted character to the nose, together with
earthy, spicy fruit that has a touch of the garrigue about it.
Distinctly savoury in style. It’s fundamentally an honest, hard
working, jeans and T-shirt sort of wine, prepared to get out there and
toil in the sun. Not really like Anelka. Perhaps an expensive, well
bred, underachieving trophy Bordeaux would have been more appropriate.
Sunday 30th January
 As
I write, I’m sipping a bottle of Weninger’s 2002 Veratina. It’s
a reasonably high-end Austrian red. Dark fruits dominate, with a
roasted, tarry edge and lots of freshness from the relatively high
acidity. The Weninger reds are among Austria’s best (pictured right
is Franz Weninger tasting his wines). They are quite modern in
style, but they retain a sense of place and are highly food
compatible. This is a wine that, while it’s drinkable now, is saving
its best for last – or at least another five years.
When it comes to deciding what wines to drink, I’m
often at a loss. I’ve got a reasonable stash of wines at home, but
frequently I find it incredibly difficult to decide what wine to drink to
match my mood on a particular occasion. I find it much easier to buy
wine than to drink it. Tonight, I tried a tactic I occasionally
employ. I ask Fiona to randomly select a bottle for me from my stash.
A relatively risky strategy, this, because there are some smart
bottles mixed in among the everyday stuff. But it’s precisely these smart bottles
I
can never find the right occasion to drink.
The Veratina is beginning to open out a bit on the
nose, as wines often do shortly after uncorking. There’s a gentle
herbiness to the fruit, which is becoming more defined, towards the
cherry and red fruits end of the spectrum. On opening, it was more
dark fruits and roasted coffee. The fact that wines do change in
contact with air means that critics have to be careful: you can have
less confidence in a tasting where you are giving wines a quick sniff
than you can in judgments forged over lunch, dinner or casual
reflection. This wine is now much more elegant than it was just after
it was opened. Our sensory apparatus – and the subsequent processing
machinery of the brain – is relatively imprecise when it comes to
flavour. This doesn’t meant that we can’t make reliable judgments;
just that we have to think a bit about what we are doing, and be
humble enough to know that we can make mistakes relatively easily.
Having said this, I’m confident that I do have a bit of a knack for
tasting wine and getting it ‘right’ (whatever that means). If I
didn’t think this, then I’d just give up and do something else. I
don’t want to be one of those wine writers who tries to stick their
finger in the air before nailing my colours to the mast (don’t you
just love that mixed metaphor, folks?); I’m happy to go out on my
own. In writing this I’m recognizing that there are different
cultures of wine (there still exist people who quite genuinely are
horrified by the fact that the Australians are making wine, or by the
sight of the grape variety on the label), and that there exist
individual differences in perception that can render, for you, one critic
useless and another spot on.
Another glass of the Veratina is poured. Franz Weninger named this
after his two daughters. It must be great to be the offspring of the
owner of a wine estate, if, that is you have an interest in wine (and
if the estate is any good). If
you were relatively able and got on with your folks, you might be the
possessor of a dream job. But you’d have to really want to do it, or
life could be hell. Perhaps its healthiest to move on, do something
else, and then if you decide you’d like to, come back to the family
business. Talking about families, regular readers of wineanorak might wonder why I seldom
mention my kids. I have two boys, both under 10. It’s not because
I’m not a devoted family man. It’s because in this day and age it
is sadly inadvisable to put pictures of your kids, or their names, on
a visible website like this; this problem is compounded by the fact
that our boys have been adopted. Much as I’d like to put family
pictures up on the website to convince you how wonderful the Goode
family is, it would be inappropriate and possibly risky. Besides, as
an old friend used to say – kids are like farts: you don’t mind
your own, but you can’t stand other peoples’. There’s some truth
in this, so I’m doing you a favour by sparing you the family photos.
So I return once more to Veratina. [Sounds like a line
from Brideshead Revisited.] Now it’s dark, sweet, chocolatey and
intoxicating. It’s deep, and drawing me further in, like a good wine
should. A wine should invite the drinker into a higher experience; not
changing the identity of the reality, but just opening it out with a
subtly shifted perspective. Wine works best not as an end in itself,
but as an accompaniment to thought or experience. In this case it is a
little like music. Each of us has a soundtrack to our lives – for
some who listen to a lot of music, this is more significant than
others – whereby the tunes that fill our mental space form the
backdrop to our experiences. An aural anchor to reality, that then is
enmeshed in our memory with those very experiences, and acts as a key
to unlock the emotions that accompanied them. If anything, tastes and
smells have a stronger ability to do this. Wine
rocks!
Monday 24th January
Some interesting weekend wines – nothing flash, just nice drinking.
First, a Ch des Tours Côtes du Rhône Reserve 2000, one of a
sixpack bought long ago from Bibendum. The wines of Ch des
Tours
are unusual. Grenache is
the grape here, a variety that I used to scorn, but which I’m
increasingly becoming fond of. I think of it as the Pinot Noir of the
south. It doesn’t make particularly deeply coloured wines, but the
best have an aromatic complexity that you find only if you are looking
out for it. On opening, this Côtes du Rhône is slightly fizzy. A
worrying sign, but common for this producer in my relatively limited
experience. After a while in the decanter, the fizziness disippates
and the fruit begins to shine through. It’s compex and multilayered
with a savoury, earthy backdrop. There’s a slightly wild quality to
this, but you are beckoned in by the sweet, alluring fruit. A
thoughtful wine. Second, I had the 2000 Quinta do Vale D Maria,
a
Douro
wine. This was awkward on opening, but after a while in the decanter
really started to sing. Amazing elegance to the ripe red fruits. This
estate has been on a roll recently – vintages 2001–2003 are all
superb, as well. The price, at around £13, is still sane. It’s a
little bit new world when compared with the likes of Redoma, but it is
still noticeably
Douro
.
Then, third, last night I opened another bottle of Jamet’s 2002
Vin de Pays des Collines Rhodannienes. Savoury, pleasantly tart,
bloody and with lovely fruit freshness. With wines like this, where
I’ve had them a number of times, it’s like bumping into an old
friend.
Watched, for the second time, the wonderful Eternal
sunshine of the spotless mind (www.eternalsunshine.com). A really clever film that’s beautifully crafted.
The nature of memory – and how our memories are an intrinsic part of
our personality – is a fascinating topic. Ultimately, it’s a film
with a message of hope. At the end, he chooses her, even though he
knows that she’s imperfect and that their relationship before was
evidently a troubled one. Why? It is still worthwhile. It still has
meaning.
Friday 21st January
Last night I
went to the Corney & Barrow Comte de Vogüé dinner. It was a very
posh black tie event, with a well chosen five course meal to accompany
some very serious Burgundies: write-up follows shortly. In truth, I
don’t go to many black tie events. My DJ trousers have a waist of 32
inches, which is – how shall we put it – a little tight, but I
managed to squeeze into them and survived the evening unscathed. I
even looked quite smart. A very civilized evening, and it was nice to
see Bill Nanson there (of www.burgundy-report.com),
who, unlike me, can actually afford to buy De Vogüé wines in
reasonable quantities.
One
slightly surreal note about the dinner was the harpist. The location,
food, wines and company were perfect. The harpist, although competent,
tried her best to ruin the evening by playing covers of popular songs.
How very, very cheesy. At one stage she started playing stairway to
heaven. It was wierd, to say the least.
Michael
Broadbent agreed to say a few words at the end. He's entertaining and
pretty sharp for a man of four decades - he gently puts us all in our
place with the casual mention of drinking these wines since the 40s -
and among his comments he expressed a worry of his: 'What concerns me
is this "global taste" being forced on us'.
Is he right? Part of me feels that what is labelled by some as a
'global taste' is actually a reflection of a rather different culture
of wine. In a similar vein, Broadbent reflects the traditional British
fine wine culture (which overlaps with, but doesn't totally equate
with the traditional French culture). If we are indeed dealing with
separate, learned cultures of wine, then it's difficult to say that
one culture is right and one is wrong. We may have a preference for
one culture, but we should respect the cultures of others. For
example, in
Australia
there is a very
different benchmark of what makes a fine wine, which is largely to do
with the different climatic conditions, but probably is also
influenced by the approach of winemakers. It all gets very hard to
disentangle the issues of wine culture, terroir, typicity and
assessments of quality.
So is there a global taste? I'm not sure there is. Clearly, many new
wine drinkers across the globe (myself included) have not learned
about wine the traditional British way, ploughing through all the old
world classics. We tend to start with new world, and only then
discover the old. If anything, though, this makes us more broad-minded
when we later approach the classics and begin to benchmark our
palates. I don't see the wine world rushing to uniformity. If
anything, it's terribly vibrant at the high end, with lots of new
producers (or new generations) revitalizing regions from
Burgundy
to the Barossa. Is
Broadbent's beef with the new shift of power in the world of wine
criticism, away from the untouchable establishment figures? Is he
worried by consumer empowerment? Or does the democratization of wine
concern him? I'm not sure. All I know is that no one has ever tried to
force a taste, global or otherwise, on me. It's an issue I could go on
about at length.
Sunday 16th January
 Sunday
evening, and I’ve just opened a fantastic wine that suits my mood
perfectly. It’s a Gilles Barge St Joseph 2001 – there’s
another bit to the name, which I think is Les Martinets, but I can’t
be sure because this bottle was unlabelled. [St Joseph is pictured
right.] Part of a case I bought en primeur from Bibendum, this
individual was the odd one out, lacking a label. The nose is
wonderfully complex: spicy, savoury and meaty with a dusty, earthy
edge. Quite perfumed, too. The palate is midweight with high acidity
and some spicy tannic structure making it distinctly savoury. A
brilliant ‘food wine’, meaning that this is a wine that some might
find a little challenging on its own in front of the telly, but which
works very well at table. I like it a great deal.
I’ve just had a slice of cheese with it. It’s
Comte, from the Jura, a cheese I like a lot. Remarkably, cheese is
something I didn’t like at all until last year. This is a
confession. As a wine nut I knew I was supposed to like cheese, but I
just hadn’t acquired the taste, despite a willingness evidenced by
some sporadic attempts. Learning to appreciate it – a process that
is still ongoing for me – is proving a fascinating journey of
discovery. What first turned me on? In Portugal in March and May I had
a number of encounters with the wonderful Queijo de Serra, a mountain
cheese from sheep that’s soft and runny on the inside, with a firm
exterior. Then, in September, I tried two fantastic Italian cheeses
with Domenic Torzi in the Barossa, Grana Padano and Pecorino. I’ve
added to this list Parmegiano Rozzano and Comte as particular
favourites. I’m still learning to like other styles, but it will
come. I tried an aged Manchego but couldn’t get past a rather musty,
almost ‘corked’ edge it had from the microbes that had been
growing in the rind. Tips on what to try next from cheese experts out
there are welcomed.
Friday 14th January
I’m enjoying life with my mobile phone. I haven’t taken any
calls on it yet, though; I have so far only given a handful of people
my number. Instead I’ve been enjoying the world of predictive
texting. It works pretty well, but wine terms such as Chablis (‘put
the Chablis in the fridge’ was a text sent yesterday evening) have
to be keyed in separately. Texting is fantastic – it makes you think
about words and their meaning. Writing tight, as all journalists are
urged to do, takes on a new meaning in text messaging. Maybe I should
try writing an article by mobile text? Relatively few words are needed
to convey meaning, but writing well requires more words, carefully
chosen, to add colour and balance. A facet of good writing that is
commonly underrated is verbal rhythmn – how the words of a sentence
scan. We often don’t recognize really good writing. It just sounds
right. Bad writing, in comparison, is tiring to read and something
feels wrong about it.
The Chablis did go in the fridge. It was a 2002 premier
cru Mont de Milieu from negociant J Moreau – a gift from a couple of
months ago. Nice enough and textbook flavours of savoury, slightly
herby fruit with a lemony/mineral streak. Tight but full flavoured
with it. It was joined at table by another Caves Pyrene wine, a 2002
Frontonnais from Ch de Plaisance, which showed a nice depth of dark,
minerally, almost animally fruit with a gravelly edge.
Earlier on I’d been at an interesting customer
tasting put on by David Motion at The Winery at Liberty. This famous
Regent Street department store opened a wine department, run by
independent merchant The Winery, late last year. Motion sources all
his wines directly, without using agents, and the list is full of
unusual names. This is a breath of fresh air. While everyone sings the
praises of independent wine merchants, a lot of them have very samey
looking lists that don’t show much imagination or creativity. The 20
wines being poured last night were a really interesting cross-section.
I’ll write them up in due course, and I’ll be popping down to
Liberty from time to time to stock up on some interesting bottles.
Wednesday 12th January
 On
the way back from Bibendum’s
Burgundy 2003 en primeur event. It was primarily a consumer do, but
there were quite a few press present. Consumer event means very small
pours (I guess this is because most people aren’t spitting, but
it’s also intended to make the wine go further), and people crowding
round tables without stepping aside once they’ve got their sample to
let others in – not ideal conditions to work in, but you can still
do a sort of job. At least no one was wearing strong perfume, a
perennial hazard at this sort of event. I don’t want to sound
ungrateful to Bibendum, though: the invite to an event like this is
always appreciated, and I don’t regard it with a sense of
entitlement.
So, what did I make of 2003 in Burgundy. I went in
expecting the wines to be very ripe, given the hottest growing season
since Joan of Arc was busy bashing whoever she bashed (was it the
English? Can’t remember). I was expecting New Zealand Pinot Noir and
Californian Chardonnay. I know it’s hard to make generalizations
about a vintage from a limited sampling of a non-homogeneous bunch of
wines, but my impressions were rather different. Yes, there’s a lot
of pure, ripe, sometimes sweet red and black fruits defining the reds,
and soft, rich toasty fruit the prominent feature of the whites. But
many of the reds had a sting in the tail: firm, tight, sometimes hard
tannic structure. I guess the skins got quite thick in the heat and
many winemakers have made wines that show on the one hand very ripe
fruit but, on the other, tight tannins from those thick,
polyphenol-rich skins. This makes them a little paradoxical: the fruit
says ‘drink me now’ while the tannins say ‘stay away’. In
addition, there’s a hint of bitterness in some of them that I
suspect is contributed by high alcohol levels. Some nice wines, but
overall, not one I’d rush to buy en primeur. Full notes to follow
very soon.
Tuesday
11th January
The Burgundy 2003 season kicks off this week, with en
primeur tastings galore. I’m just taking in one, the Bibendum gig
tonight. I suspect that many of my readers won’t be buying Burgundy
2003 en primeur, and those that are will likely have a chance to taste
for themselves (unlike with Bordeaux, where consumers have to buy
before they try). So I don't feel the need to trudge round all the
tastings and spend hours writing them up for the benefit of very few.
I’ve mentioned my dissatisfaction with the way
Bordeaux is sold before – it seems to stack the deck in favour of
merchants and producers and against the consumer. I don’t think
things are going to change, and while I am in the current situation of
not having large stretches of time to waste, it’s better that I
concentrate my efforts on informing wineanorak readers about regions
where I can make a difference, rather than being one of many repeating
the same things about the March Bordeaux tastings. Having said this,
the Union des Grands Crus tastings two years after the vintage in
October are definitely worth reporting on, because now the wines are
in bottle. I suspect some wine writers who attend the March fiasco
(these wines will have only just finished malo, and aren’t yet
blended) have rather tied their hands a bit by having to glance
backwards at their previous pronouncements - often rather dodgy data
points based on dodgy cask samples.
But this is a bit negative, isn’t it? Concentrate on
the positives. Bordeaux aside, I’m very enthusiastic about the world
of wine. Of course, sub-£5 supermarket wine doesn’t excite anyone,
and I wouldn’t expect it to. But at the top end, there’s more
interesting wine being made than ever. Look at the Languedoc and the
Roussillon. Some fantastic wines being made there now that didn’t
exist a decade ago. Look at the Douro: 15 years ago it was a table
wine desert – now it’s emerging as a fine wine paradise. Austria
is making some fantastic wines. The Southwest of France is a rich
resource of characterful, affordable wines that are laregely neglected
by wine nuts. The new wave producers in the Barossa are raising the
standard ever higher, revitalizing the scene there. You won’t read
about all these in most UK wine magazines and newspaper columns, which
are rather stuck in a rut. But you will find out about them on the
internet, where exchange of information is freer and horizons are
rather broader.
Wednesday
5th January
Reasons to be cheerful. (1) It’s the start of a new year,
which means new opportunities. (2) I’ve got a good pile of
commissions to keep me going over the next few months, but I don’t
feel at all pressurized. (3) My book comes out in the summer, and I
think it’s going to be OK. (4) City are doing OK – drew with
Arsenal at Highbury last night and played really well. (5) The days
are getting longer and I can’t wait for May, my favourite month of
the year.
Reasons to be down. (1) I’m mildly ill (chest,
cough, throat) and feeling knackered. (2) We’ve got a good few
months of the grey, damp English winter ahead of us. (3) My tax bill
needs paying. What do the government spend it on? (4) Apparently our
new GP is a complete nutter, who probably isn’t even qualified. This
is according to my wife who took one of our sons to see him yesterday.
A drugs rep was discussing how to get an appointment to see him with
the receptionist. She was told to buy some sandwiches for him, and the
receptionist. And have some goodies handy, because he likes presents.
While my wife was in there he took two lengthy phone calls during the
consultation. He changed his mind about the prescription twice when
questioned… We’ve decided that our best bet is not to get sick. If
we do get sick, we’ll have to diagnose ourselves and get to see a
specialist, pronto.
Being a wee bit poorly I can’t really enjoy wine, but
I’m due a break. I had planned a wine clear week to aid recovery,
but I’ve been slightly dissuaded by something that arrived in the
post this morning. My father sent me a cutting from the Telegraph
– it was an article by Jonathan Ray, the new wine correspondent,
describing how he has a month off booze every January. Apparently, his
GP has told him that it’s no good abstaining for just a week: a
whole month is needed if the hard-working liver is going to benefit at
all. Three questions are prompted by this. (1) How can a wine
correspondent do without wine for a whole month? That’s a twelfth of
the year. How could I serve my readers properly if I wasn’t actually
drinking wine for a month? There’s a difference between tasting and
drinking, and the two need to occur in tandem. (2) Where’s the
evidence to back up Ray’s GP’s assertion that a whole month is
needed for any benefit? If I was Jonathan, I’d ask to see the
evidence. A proper peer-reviewed study is needed. GPs aren’t always
right, and when it comes to booze health professionals have an
annoying habit of lying in the cause of promoting public health. As a
result, they assume you are lying when you tell them how much you
drink. (3) How many readers are going to read this, and then promptly
bin their plans for a week on the wagon? I could manage a week, but a
month? No chance, mate. It isn’t going to happen.
Confession time. After years of holding out, I now have
a mobile telephone. It was a gift. I actually quite enjoyed being hard
to contact – calls, unlike email, are intrusive. They force me to
let you have some of my mental space, when you
want it. My reluctance to enter the mobile age met with bemusement by
most people under 60. ‘You’re a dinasour’, Dirk Niepoort once
told me when I was unable to give him a mobile contact number. Of
course, I’ve been too busy to read the manual, so it’s taken me
ages to work out how to text by trial and effort (RTFM, you might say
by way of advice). I still don’t know how to use the address book,
or the camera. I’m not a technophobe, just a bit stubborn, that’s
all.
Saturday
1st January 2005
New year. Where did the last one go? I’ve got a good
feeling about 2005. No resolutions for this year, other than to work a
bit harder and at the same time maintain a healthy balance in my life.
I’d also like to keep enjoying wine, and learn some more. Once
I’ve managed to earn enough to kick our finances back into shape –
their current malaise is the result of an enormous tax bill that needs
paying by the end of this month – then I think we’ll have a good
time as a family in 2005 - we might even manage a holiday (we had two
good ones in 2004). I find people are curious about how much wine
writers earn. I can’t really answer on other people’s behalf, but
unless you are one of the top four or five, the answer is probably
less than many of one’s readers. Let's give you a feel for the sums
involved for a newbie like me. With regard to my book, I got an
advance of £5000. This isn’t much considering how much work goes
into it, but if the book sells well then there will be royalties on
top of this. Articles typically pay £250 per thousand words. My
website makes some money from advertising – if you want to know the
rates, you’ll have to drop me an email. So, you can see from this
that you need to be fairly busy if you are faced with a London cost of
living and two expensive children to keep. This said, writing about
wine is tremendous fun, and I enjoy it to the extent that I still feel
a bit guilty being paid for it.
 Cameras.
A while back I announced how I’d gone digital. I shot 150 pictures
in Australia, and another 150 in Austria on my 5 megapixel HP
Photosmart 945. I’m happy with it, but to be honest the quality
isn’t as good as my Pentax SLR. So I’ve been buying on e-bay,
replacing my defunct SLR body with various manual focus and autofocus
bodies. I love the 1980s Pentax SLR cameras: I’ve now got an MV1,
and MV and an ME (pictured). Of course, it would be nice to have an MX
and in particular an LX, but all the quality is, after all, in the
lens. The body just has to give the right exposure, and with the
latitude of colour film, my old bodies do a fine job. I like the feel
of them. I’ll still be using my digital camera, but I’ll also be
travelling with a couple of SLRs in the future.
Tuesday
28th December
We’ve had a good Christmas so far, albeit a little
chaotic. It’s been fantastic to have so many of my family visit –
yesterday, with some 11 adults and 9 children for lunch, was great fun
– yet at the same time I’m pleased to be able to take things a
little slower now our guests have left. Frankly, I’m exhausted after
an action packed year, and this week will be one of rest and
reflection, preparing for perhaps an even more activity-filled 12
months in 2005. I like it that we just don’t know what the next year
will bring. I’m the opposite of a control freak in personality. What
happens will happen. I’ll try to make the most of the opportunities
that come my way next year (I’ve had some superb ones in the last
year – more than I ever could have hoped for), but I’ll be happy
with my portion. I can only do so much, but that will be enough. For
me, the best thing about being taken somewhat seriously by the wine
trade is that I get the chance to meet some fantastic people. I like
to give everyone I meet a chance: it’s almost always a mistake to
judge by first appearances. After a while, you get a feel for people.
Whether or not they are genuine is very important to me. There are
some frauds and BS merchants in the wine trade, but what impresses me
is how many earnest, genuine people there are, and how many really
interesting folk I’ve been lucky enough to interact with. There’s
some money to be made from wine, but it’s testament to the special
nature of this drink we write about or try to sell that there are
surprisingly many in the wine trade driven not by the desire to make
money, but foremost by passion. There’s nothing wrong with making
money, but there’s a world of difference between wines made or words
written by someone whose primary driving goal is money, or excellence.
Motivation matters.
I’m currently drinking another fantastic Marcillac
– Jean Luc Matha Cuvée ‘Pèirafi’ 2000. Deep coloured,
this has a fantastic nose of ripe, well defined red fruits with a
lovely minerally, wet rocks edge. It’s very fresh and intense. The
palate is savoury and very minerally with very bright, fresh red
fruits backed up with good tannins. The structure is earthy and firm.
It’s a bloody, intense red wine of great definition. I’d give this
92/100 (another purchase from Les Caves de Pyrene). I haven’t yet
had a Marcillac I didn’t like a great deal.
I’m going to do a wines of the year feature this
year, but it won’t be a boastful tour of my great wine drinking
experiences of the year. Instead, I’ll list some wines that have
taught me something new. I’m always looking to learn – it’s the
only way I feel I can approach wine. In fact, commitment to being a
lifelong learner is a valuable characteristic in all walks of life.
This afternoon a quick family shopping trip turned into
a marathon session that ended up costing the best part of £200. We
got back at about 3.30 pm only to find that our key didn’t work in
the lock. After 20 minutes of trying we realized it wasn’t going to
happen. Another 10 minutes of casing the joint made us realize that
out home really is reassuringly secure. There’s only one window we
could have broken (the only one that isn’t a modern double-glazed
unit), but this would have meant demolishing the frame, too, because
it’s a non-opening window. So we called a locksmith, who earned £188
for 10 minutes work replacing the lock barrel, when he arrived about
an hour later.
Monday
20th December
I've begun writing up the philosophy of wine conference,
mentioned here on this site. I'm not sure I'm up to the task of
understanding everything that academic philosophers have to say, but
my attempts to understand the presentations and then translate them
for a broader audience will be posted on this site. I've begun with Roger
Scruton's opening paper. Among the many hats he wears, he's also
wine critic for the New Statesman. He writes very well, although the
role of a critic in a magazine like this is to endorse wine for sale
directly. As an example of one of his columns, here's an excerpt from
a beautifully written piece (the full version is here,
in Google's cache):
“Wine, for me, has the character of a reward. I turn
to it at the end of the day, and it rushes to meet me like a bride.
Most delightful are the times when, after a prolonged period of work,
I rise above the scene of my labour and take stock, counting my
blessings and making half-serious plans for the future, with a glass
before me and a warm glow within. The best place for these moments of
moral recuperation is an aeroplane, which removes you from routine and
lifts you high above the clouds, in a dream-world painted by Tiepolo.
Your thoughts are borne aloft with your body, and the distance between
the brain above and the ground below is amplified by the genie in the
glass.
The health fascists tell us that we should not drink
alcohol when flying, that only a constant intake of water will
counteract the dehydrating effects of a pressurised cabin. They
threaten us with headaches, cramps, sleep disorders and thrombosis;
and they seriously believe that the slight risk of these things so
outweighs the enormous likelihood that we will actually enjoy
the flight and be granted celestial visions as to tip the balance
decisively in favour of abstinence. Rational beings, however, who know
that health is only one good among many, and worthless without the
gift of thinking and feeling, have learned to disregard this stunted
reasoning and to see life as it is. And when seen at the bottom of a
wine glass, life appears as it truly is.”
Thursday
16th December
Not many shopping days left until Christmas, a period which for
those of us with nippers is just about salvaged by that bit of magic
that helps us over the crass materialism that blights this holiday
period for many. I'm enjoying my wine a great deal at the moment. I've
been working my way through a 30 bottle purchase from Les Caves de
Pyrene and tonight it's another fascinating Marcillac (Jean Luc
Matha Cuvée Laïris 2002). This wine is the antithesis of the
big, anonymous, fruit-forward, oaky, faux international style that's
all the rage these days. From the Fer Servadou grape, it's intense
with brooding, bloody, pure fruit. Startling intensity. The palate is
all wet rocks, damp pavements and it's vivid with its high acidity.
It's a wine that makes you think. There's something profound about it,
but I don't know exactly what. It's cheap, too - substantially less
than a tenner (I can't remember exactly how much). It's one of those
wines that makes me want to work the soil and make wine. How much for
a few hectares in Marcillac? But then part of my heart is still in the
Douro, where I'd really love to have some vines. It's a dream, I
guess, but there's something special about wine that inspires
otherwise rational people to want to get involved at the business end
- growing grapes and making the stuff.
Saturday
11th December
One Friday I attended the wonderful Philosophy
and wine: from science to subjectivity meeting. I have to
admit to knowing relatively little about the academic discipline of
philosophy, but it’s a subject that interests me a great deal. I’m
still trying to digest the presentations, and when I’ve thought
things through a bit more I’ll write up my report (at great length,
no doubt) here. The organizers kindly invited three of the wine
journos present – Andrew Jefford, Malcolm Gluck and myself – to
lunch at the nearby British
Museum
restaurant. This was the first time I’d had a chance to speak to
Malcolm, although I’ve seen him around at many a tasting. He was
very friendly, and we had a good discussion. I also enjoyed speaking
to Paul Draper, who was presenting a paper, for the first time. Paul
comes across as a very intelligent, thoughtful man. He makes good
wine, too.
Now with all this philosophy under my belt, I’m
beginning to approach my wine tasting slightly differently. Tonight
I’ve opened a rather unusual wine – a varietal Alicante
Bouschet 2003 from Ollier Romanis in the Languedoc. Is my experience of this wine a private, subjective, once only
experience? Or is my attempt to describe it by means of a tasting note
indicating that there is something objective about the process of
tasting? I guess by writing a note and sharing it with wineanorak
readers, I’m suggesting that while I don’t expect we’ll all be
having exactly the same perceptual experience drinking the same wine,
there is something objective about my note. I’m going after the
‘taste’ of this wine; I’m trying to reach it; I’m trying to
get my note as accurate as possible, and communicate it by means of
words that mean something to you, the reader – that help you share
in my own private experience. This wine is a deep, almost opaque
red/black colour. It’s one of the darkest, most impenetrably
deep-hued wines I’ve seen in a long time. But on the nose it is
friendly, forward and inviting, bursting with ripe blackberry fruit.
The palate is dense and full with lots of summer-pudding character,
and under the sweet, thick fruit is a spicy, almost roasted core.
It’s not too tannic. A delicious, forward, bold wine of some
personality. I like it a great deal. This was another of those Caves
de Pyrene wines, and I’ll be going back for more. Very nice with my
supper of bread, olive oil and cheese.
Tuesday
8th December
Had another of my Caves de Pyrene wines last night, a really
interesting wine from Carignan experts Domaine de
Gravillas. This producer came
onto my radar screen when they contacted me about a Carignan
association they were part of. I must admit that anyone forming an
association around a reviled, unfashionable grape variety gets my
attention (except I guess for Pinotage, which is rightly reviled -
actually, this comment is tongue in cheek - a wind-up). My note is as
follows:
Domaine
de Gravillas ‘Vous en Voulez en Voilà’ 2003 Vin de Pays des Côtes de Brian,
Languedoc
,
France
This elegantly packaged wine is a blend including a third Carignan from Nicole and
John Bojanowski in the Languedoc’s Minervois region. It’s a fairly serious, brooding red that needs
some time to show it’s best. The tight, deep nose shows hints of ripe
raspberry and blackberry fruit, with a liquoricey, mineral edge. The
palate is savoury and dense with lots of ripe red fruits cloaked in a
rather minerally, taut structure. It’s got lots of appeal but not in a
forward, showy style: it’s more guarded and beguiling. Very
good/excellent 90/100 (£7.50 Les Caves de Pyrene, www.lescaves.co.uk)
Just
posted a book
review of Monty Waldins doorstop work on Biodynamics. Here's a simple
was to spot immediately the critics who aren't worth reading. While
most wine sites don't have affiliate links to wines that are reviewed,
almost all of them have links following their book reviews. I do.
Someone clicks a link to purchase the book, you get some dosh. So read
the reviews: are they appropriately critical, or do they sound like
sales pitches? Of course, if it's the latter then we can't assume that
the £££ or $$$ has made the reviewer lose their critical faculties.
They might not be influenced by the £££ or $$$ - they could
genuinely be dopey enough to not find any fault in any of the books
they review. Either way, they're probably not worth reading.
Sunday
6th December
A busy, wine-full weekend is finishing. I'm currently sipping the
fantastic Clos Roche Blanche Touraine Côt 1999 - a Loire red bursting
with minerally blood-and-iron rich red and black fruits. It's a
wonderfully savoury, fresh red, with a exciting degree of wildness. A
bargain at £6.99 from Les
Caves de Pyrene. I visited the retail outlet of this wonderful
importers, located in Arlington (near Guildford), for the first time
on Saturday. They started out in the South West of France, and since
have branched out sourcing wines from all over the world - still,
though, their strengths lie in regional France, where they have some
fantastic listings. I spent a lot of money and came back with almost
30 bottles. I've got wines from Marcillac, Irouleguy, Gaillac,
Fronton, Touraine, Corbières, Minervois, Monbazillac and Gascony,
among others, most of which I can't really get elsewhere. It's a
breathtaking shop.
On
Friday night we had dinner at my sister and brother in law's, and
between the four of us we had two vintages of Ch Margaux, two of
Suiduaraut, a Montrose and a Gruaud Larose, a La Tour Blanche, a
vintage Champagne from Drappier and a couple of other whites. It was
fun, and I'll report back in detail later. Last night I was doing a
tasting for 40 or so mostly newbies in Laleham, near Staines, which
went pretty well. It was a favour, for a friend, so I did it for free.
I enjoy doing these sorts of tastings because it puts you in touch
with how normal people respond to wine. Always helpful. I like to feel
that by encouraging people to think a bit about what they are tasting,
in some small way I can give something back to an industry that has
been very good to me. It wasn't terribly long ago that I was listening
to idiots like me talk about wine and just beginning to see wine as
something more than just a delivery medium for C2H5OH.
Friday
3rd December
Mondovino, a film all about wine, opens a week today.
It’s a film I’d like to see but haven’t yet – although I’ve
already turned down two previews and an interview with the director,
Jonathan Nossiter, simply because of time pressure. Whether the movie
is any good or not, it’s a great thing that someone is actually
making a film about wine, and it’s also encouraging to see some of
the important themes in Mondovino stimulate broader discussion (on of
the themes to the film concerns the sorts of arguments put forward in
the two cultures debate
on this site). I’ve read some interesting articles based on the
movie, most notably a very good piece by Alastair
McKay in The Scotsman. Quoting from this:
‘Never
before, says Nossiter, have there been so many wines that express a
sense of terroir. Never before has there been so much good wine: not
just technologically good, but good in the sense of having a
distinctive character. Sadly, there is a catch. The problem is that
this river of fine wine can’t reach the marketplace, because never
before has there been such a concentration of power in the
import/export of wine, in its distribution and at the point of sale. I
think we’ve reached a stage where what you buy is a political act,
whether it’s a pair of shoes, a shirt, a bottle of wine, or your
children’s education," he says. "My sense is that people
are sophisticated and are more aware that they’re being lied to,
institutionally, in every field. It’s dangerous what’s happening
in
Britain
with the influx of, basically, alcoholic grape
juice from
Australia,
California, and South Africa.'
Food for thought? I also liked Jancis
Robinson’s review of the film.
For
more reviews of Mondovino, see:
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