Jamie's Blog...archive
Sunday
26th May
The London International Wine and Spirits Fair is one of the
key events in the wine trade calendar. This year was the first at
ExCel, an impressive new venue way out in Docklands. It’s a real
improvement on tired old Olympia, but a bit of a trek from central
London. Mind you, the amount of moaning there was about this venue
change on the Circle of Wine Writers forum, you’d have thought
they’d moved the event out to Norwich. No, despite the extra travel
(with the Jubilee Line working it’s pretty straightforward) and lack
of local eateries, ExCel is a far better venue for this event. My
rather screwed up diary meant I could only manage one afternoon this
year. For those of you who have never attended, the trade fair is a
huge event, with many hundreds of producers and agents flogging their
wares. It’s massive. You could spend all three days working hard
here and still not see everything, although it has to be said that
there’s a lot of ‘commercial’ wine on show that’s not
particularly exciting. Faced with this daunting vinous array, my
approach is to focus on just a few stands and do them thoroughly, and
this year it’s a strategy that proved productive. The South Africans
have a very strong presence at the fair, and I chose two producers to
focus on: Warwick Estate (Mike Ratcliffe was very helpful here), and
Delheim. Then I stopped by Portuguese specialists Raymond Reynolds to
try the impressive madeiras from Barbeito (including one from 1900), and re-tried the Niepoort Ports. Next
on my hitlist were the wonderful Austrian wines from Bründlmeyer in
the Kamptal, followed by a productive 40 minutes tasting through the
CVNE and Contino Riojas, with the Contino winemaker. To finish off
with I had a quick chat to Lisa, one of the Calatrasi winemakers (new
wave Sicilian, Puglian and Tunisian wines), and then tried a whole
batch of high-end California wines. The benefit of an event like this
is that you can get the cellar door experience without the travelling,
and it’s a rare chance to chat to winemakers and producers who
don’t always make it to other trade shows. For the wine journalist,
it’s a real feast.
Wednesday 22nd May
Last night’s dinner with Dirk Niepoort, held in the private room at
Alistair Little, was one of the most enjoyable wine evenings I’ve
had in a long time. Not only was I lucky to be among the 20 invitees,
but also Danny Cameron, who organized the event, was kind enough to
seat me next to Dirk. The wines were superb, verging on the
sensational in places. Full notes to follow. We kicked off with two
whites: the Redoma Branco 2000 and the Reserva 2000, both full
flavoured, elegant and with good acidity and well integrated oak. Dirk
says that he’s ‘not keen on fruity wines’, and avoids malolactic
fermentation to keep the wines fresh. Then the Rosé 2001, which is an
unusual, full flavoured concoction. Unique. The first of the reds was
the taut, focused Quinta da Napoles 2000, which we tasted alongside
the richer, more fleshy Redoma 1999. Both were superb. Up a notch yet
further in quality, we moved to the two new flagship wines, the 1999
Batuta and 2000 Charme. I’ve written about Batuta before: this has
to be one of most exciting table wines yet from Portugal, and looks
set rub shoulders with the wine world’s elite. Only 3000 bottles are
made, so you’ll need to be lucky to get hold of some -- it’s
already changing hands for silly money on the domestic market. The
Charme is fascinating, and an example of Dirk’s passion for
experimentation and pushing back boundaries. He says he’s sort of
aiming at a Burgundy style here, with the goal being ‘finesse,
finesse, finesse’. The wine is fermented in lagares with the stems
to add some structure and character, and in this inaugral ‘experimental’
vintage Dirk also used 200% new oak (the wine was racked from new
barrel to another new barrel). Just two barrels were made. Apparently
the 2001 vintage will see further refinement and livelier acidity. We
also tried cask samples of the 2000 Redoma and 2000 Batuta, which were
huge, vivid creations, hard to assess so early on in their lives.
Then, as if this were not enough, came the ports. First, the 1970
Vintage Niepoort. It’s hard to be objective about a legend,
especially when I hadn’t been spitting a drop all evening. But this
is drinking perfectly, and the few who were left by this stage enjoyed
a few glasses… Dirk then poured three 2000 ports, all blind. All
were brilliant, but I was completely smitten by the first poured,
identified as number three. This turned out to be the 2000 Vintage: a
full, structured, impossibly intense effort with huge concentration
and class. By this stage, it was late, and I had to tear myself away
to get the last tube home. The 4 mile walk back from Richmond (the
buses had finished) was a pain, but it was well worth it.
Tuesday 21st May
It’s the start of a busy week. Over the next three days
thousands of wine trade people will be converging on the London
International Wine and Spirits Fair, one of the pivotal events in the
wine trade diary. Tonight I kicked off with an ‘offline’ dinner in
Notting Hill, where I finally got to meet Stuart Yaniger. Those who
are veterans of the online wine discussion scene will probably already be
familiar with him, and his unique blend of online humour (see the blog
entry for 17th April). He’s the co-inventor of one of the leading
synthetic corks (see www.neocork.com),
but is also famous for his role in creating one of the classic Côte Rôties.
For it is Yaniger who persuaded the Ogiers to produce ‘La Belle Hélène’,
a vieilles vignes cuvée from the famous Rozier vineyard that has been
aged in 100% new French oak. The latest release of this wine scored
100 points from influential American critic Robert Parker. Yaniger
brought along the 1995 vintage of this wine, which he helped make.
It’s sensational. To be honest, I was expecting not to be wowed by
this wine: normally the 100% new oak treatment puts me off. But it had
that trademark nose of complex liquoricey, meaty fruit with just a
hint of green olive that really grabs me, together with a full bodied
meaty, spicy palate. It was just brilliant, showing lots of typicity
without in any way being oaky or modern. Lovely. Plenty of other
interesting wines tasted tonight, which will be written up in full
later. Tomorrow night is a very promising Dirk Niepoort dinner, which I’m very much looking forward to, and
then on Thursday I intend to visit some key producers at the wine
fair.
Tuesday
14th May
I’ve decided that, much as I love it, cricket is a game
based almost entirely around fear. Although I enjoyed playing for the
Wine Trade XI last Friday, my perfomance was decidedly mixed. We were
playing against the Gentlemen of Essex, which consisted almost
exclusively of members of Coggeshall Town cricket club, whose ground
we were using. Apparently it’s a satellite ground for the county
side, but Nick Oakley, our captain, assures me that I won’t be out
of my depth. I’m horrified to discover, though, that Coggeshall have
an overseas player, a young Australian plying his trade during the
Aussie winter. If a team is serious enough to have an overseas pro,
then, I figure, I’m out of my depth here. Worse is to come: Nick
thrusts the new ball into my hand and asks me to open the bowling. Is
he mad? I’m not one to shirk back from a challenge, but the only
emotion I’m feeling is fear. I haven’t played properly for more
than a decade, and I’m bowling against guys who, if I should pitch
it just a little short or full, will smack me around the park.
Fortunately my four overs cost a semi-respectable 21 runs. Then, we
take a wicket, and in comes the Aussie. He’s good. He blasts the
ball everywhere, taking 22 off just one over. Then, when I’m
fielding at a rather deep mid on, Aussie boy takes a big whack at a
slightly underpitched ball. He doen’t quite judge it properly, and
it goes soaring up into the air. The ball hangs there for what seems
like minutes as I realise that I’m the nearest to it. Fear. I move
into position, but get it wrong and don’t even get a hand to it.
Silence. Humiliation. A few overs later I get another chance when the
other batsman dollies one up for me to catch. If I’d missed that it
would have been bad. A boozy lunch follows – we each had to
contribute a match fee supplement of two bottles of wine – and then
Coggeshall complete their innings, declaring at 285 for 6. In response
we did rather well, until a mid order collapse saw me going in at
number 10 with some 70 runs required off seven overs. I guess the
sensible thing would have been to block out everything for a draw, but
I don’t get to bat very often, and the bowling was inviting. My
first ball I whack for four, the second for two and the third is a
straight one, which I miss. I hear the death rattle behind me. A brief
but enjoyable innings, and we’re all out for around 230 a few balls
later. Despite the fear, it’s still a great game.
Wednesday
8th May
An interesting couple of days coming up. Tomorrow, I’m
tasting at the International Wine Challenge, the world’s largest
blind tasting event. It’s the competition with the most significance
for the UK wine trade, so even though I’ve been a bit critical of
the results in the past, it’s only fair that I get to see behind the
scenes – this will be my first year tasting at this event. Hard
work, though, by the sounds of things. I have to be there by 8.30 am,
and it’s over in Docklands, a bit of a trek from just about
everywhere. I’ll write up my experiences on this site, of course.
Please don’t let me be faced with 200 sub-£5 Chardonnays to wade
through. It’ll put me off wine forever. Then Friday is a potentially
more enjoyable day. I’ve been selected to play for the Wine Trade
Cricket XI against the Gentlemen of Essex (yes, they managed to find
11 of them in the end…). For ‘selected’ read captain Nick Oakley
was desperate for an 11th hour replacement and rang round his address
book. But I do fancy myself as a handy sort of cricketer, Boycott-like
with the bat and Hadlee-like with the ball. Well, we’ll see how
Friday goes. The match fee is two bottles of decent wine.
Friday 3rd May
Nice to get a mention in the Telegraph magazine last week (click
here to see it). These events do increase traffic a bit, but
there’s nothing you can do to encourage them. You just have to do
your best, keep putting up the best content you can, and hope that it
gets the recognition you feel it deserves. And while we are on the
subject of recognition, those of you with access to this week’s copy
of Harpers
(the wine trade mag) should turn to page 34 and study intently the
feature titled ‘systems making sense’ that you’ll find there.
Feedback welcome. On a totally different subject, I was in Oddbins
last week and a punter rolls in. Middle aged, quite posh, well spoken.
He goes up to the two chaps behind the till, and without a hint of
irony or embarrassment asks the following question. ‘Have you got
any Cloudy Bay?’ I have to say, the staff were very patient
explaining why they hadn’t, and why he probably wouldn’t be able
to get hold of any. (For those readers not familiar with the Cloudy
Bay phenomenon, visit here.) Anyway,
yesterday I wandered into my local Threshers for a look round. I do
this occasionally just to stand amazed at how bad the selection is
these days (mostly big brands) and how high the prices are. I was
browsing the shelves and to my amazement, there it was. They must have
had at least two cases of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2001: six on the
main shelf, six in the fridge, and a dozen on a separate display
shelf. Yours for £15.99. I confess, I almost bought one out of
surprise. You just don’t see this on the shelf in the UK, and
particularly not in May (it’s released in October/November). But I
didn’t. I’ve tried the 2001 three times, and while it’s a good
wine, I’d rather have the brilliant Seresin 2001 (£9.99 from Noel
Young) or the Isabel Estate 2001 (£9.90 Noel Young). But if any
readers absolutely must have Cloudy Bay, e-mail me and I’ll tell you
where to find it…
Sunday 28th April
Yesterday was an enjoyable day spent with friends Nick and
Susan Alabaster. As you’d expect when geeks like Nick and I get
together, we had some interesting wines with dinner, but it all
started off with an unusual experiment. Nick presented me with two
Riedel Syrah glasses loaded with equal measures of what looked to be
very similar wines. I took a sniff of each and they appeared to be
identical, with a wonderfully complex gamey, spicy nose and some deep,
meaty fruit. Clearly a bit of evolution here, but still quite firm
spicy tannins on the palate. Was it my imagination, or was one of the
wines just a little fuller and tighter than the other? Whatever, these
were both very hard to tell apart. Almost certainly a top-notch Châteauneuf
du Pape with a few years bottle age. Nick confirmed that both glasses
were in fact the same wine and that I had some in my possession, at
which point I guessed correctly that it was the 1995 Vieux Télégraphe.
But why the two glasses? Nick explained that this was because he was
serving from two different bottles, one of which had been stored
horizontally for five years, the other upright. Conventional wisdom is
that wine should be stored lying on its side in order to keep the cork
moist, but here was an experiment (albeit with an n = 1) showing that
with young wines it really doesn’t matter at all. I inspected both
corks, and after seven years in the bottle they are still very
elastic, and it is clear that there’s no danger of them shrinking
and letting air in over this sort of time scale. Of course, with this
tiny sample it’s very difficult to conclude anything: if one of the
wines had been oxidised, this could simply have been bottle variation.
But the fact that they were very nearly identical shows that we
needn’t worry about storing relatively young wines upright, even for
fairly long periods. Unless you are cellaring elderly bottles, it’s
also probably a bit unnecessary to fuss about the humidity. For the
record, the other wines we drank included a wonderful 1995 Ogier Côte
Rôtie, a delicious 1999 Roc d’Anglade (Langeudoc wine made by Remy
Pedreno and Rene Rostaing) and a rather disappointing 1996 Girardin
Santenay 1er Cru Les Gravières.
Monday 22nd April
I’ve mentioned before how much we Brits like to talk about the weather.
Well, in Twickenham it’s been a remarkable April so far, with a
stream of bright sunny days and virtually no rain. Today in London it’s
sunny and 20 °C, with a light breeze. Perfect. Late spring is one of
my favourite times of year, bursting with potential and freshness, and
it’s usually at this time each year where I vow to play more golf.
This year, I say to myself, is the one where I unlock all my latent
talent, and get my handicap down to single figures. I have visions of
myself as a sort of maverick genius, a bit like the young Seve
Ballasteros, blasting balls around and making miracle recoveries from
seemingly impossible lies. Hitting some balls on the range at the
weekend, though, the truth slowly dawns on me that while one shot in
ten I play is staggeringly good, it’s the nine that aren’t
(including one or two truly dreadful ones) that let me down and keep
me hovering around the nineties. The key to golf is consistency and
accuracy, and this takes hard work and dedication, in addition to any
natural ability. Still, as long as I hit a couple of great shots each
round, and sink one or two long puts, I usually go home happy. I
digress, though. The focus of this blog is wine storage. In the UK we’re
blessed with a fairly benign climate. This makes passive wine storage
– keeping wine without any active cooling – an option for those
who have a suitable space. This could include a north-facing room with
the central heating turned off, a cupboard under the stairs, or a
proper cellar even. At home I’ve created a space under the
floorboards in one of our downstairs rooms, which is about 4 foot
high. There’s room for a couple of thousand bottles, although access
is tricky. The temperature reaches about 18 °C in the hottest part of
the summer and dips to about 5 °C in the winter, so it’s not ideal,
but it won’t kill the wine. But passive storage is a risky bet for
long-term ageing of fine wine, especially as the ambient temperature
begins to creep up to the early 30s. For those with the resources and
space, there are three serious options for storing wine at home.
First, the wine fridges made by the likes of Eurocave,
Transtherm, Miele,
Norcool and Vintec.
Best are the first two, which are designed with wine bottle storage in
mind. The others are cheaper and based around standard-sized
refrigerators, so space usage isn’t as economical, but they still do
a good job. Damage is upwards of £800, depending on capacity. Second,
building your own insulated cellar space (in the garage?) and
installing a specialized air conditioning unit designed to keep the
room at a steady 11-12 °C. A good option, but not as straightforward
as it seems. Budget required: upwards of £1500. Some guidance is
offered here.
Finally, for the relatively well heeled, the spiral
cellar, a French invention now taking off in the UK, is worth
considering. You’ll need about £7000 for this, which seems a bit
steep for the work involved. I wonder how much they cost in France...
Wednesday 17th April
Slightly sad news for London-based wine lovers is that St James’
Street merchants Justerini
& Brooks are to close their London shop. This has been a happy
hunting ground for me, with its mouthwatering selection of fine wines
at tempting prices. The ability to order from the full list and then
collect by hand has made it possible to buy odd bottles rather than
full cases, and it will be a shame to lose this facility. Neighbours Berry
Bros & Rudd are still there though, and I’ve made recent use
of their website to order single bottles and then specify London shop
pick-up, thus avoiding delivery charges and the need to buy in case
lots. I was in there earlier picking up a couple of bottles for
tonight’s wine anorak Côte Rôtie tasting, and was horrified to see
a collection of rather pricey magnums of Bordeaux displayed in the
window, sitting there in the glare of full sunlight. Hmmm. Talking
about Côte Rôtie, one of the best websites for information on these
wines – Stuart Yaniger’s ‘the
stupids’ site – is inexplicably offline at the moment. For
those not familiar with the Yaniger style, here are a few of my
favourite quotes. On Ogier: "For whatever reason, Ogier's
Côte-Rôties seem to hit me right in that part of the brain
pleasure-center that they used to wire up in rats to get them to
starve to death from being too busy pushing the stimulus button to
bother doing things like eat or drink. " On tasting the wines
at a visit to Gallet: "From a 10-year-old barrel, grey with
experience, the fruit is just pure, flowery syrah, perfectly focused
and firm, the wee-est bit reduced. It gave me a stiffie. " On
St-Peray: "My happy exception to the ‘Sparkling St-Peray
sucks’ rule has been Darona. I've passed many a bottle of their NV
Brut through my corporeal filtration system. But they've dropped the
NV from the line-up, and the vintage stuff is quite mediocre. Even
worse is the flabby Demi-sec, a wine that brings the image of Roseanne
to mind. " Finally, on Lezin-Lagnier: "I'm always
curious about what Lezin-Lagnier will do. Their Condrieu is legendary,
some of the most foul fluid to ever be sold for human consumption.
This years version is reminiscent of two-week-old road kill marinated
in rubbing alcohol. Yum! And their horrible Condrieu has been joined
by an equally horrible '98 Côte-Rôtie. Lord knows how this is made,
but it doesn't even vaguely resemble a grape product. Buy all you can
for the sheer novelty value."
Previous entries (some gripping
reading!)
Back to top |