Day Six - Stranded at the drive-in...

...branded a fool etc. etc. It's not Monday at school, it's Wednesday in Dobcross (home of champion whistler David Morris) and so it's back to Brands - hence the weak 'branded a fool' bit (it's from Grease, for numpties). Tonight it's the second pair from Jacob's Creek. Have to confess to positive vibes for JC. A long time ago, in my transition from electronics engineer to mad, bad, brand-tasting wine writer, I stayed for a week at a place called the Bunkhaus on the main road between Tanunda and Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley, and cycled to several wineries. There IS an actual Jacob's Creek there, even if most of the grapes that go into the bottles don't come from the surrounding district. But I remember writing in the Bunkhaus's visitor's book that JC was one of those rare brands that did the biz with some panache. Monday's whites seemed to bear this out - what about tonight's reds...?

Jacob's Creek Shiraz 2006, South Eastern Australia
This is fresh, spicy stuff, generous in its berry and plum flavours, but with a juicy peppery edge to liven up the finish. Relaxed and tasty, I really like this. Not too big, not too ripe, not too oaky, an honest appealing glass of wine, and although there are no rough edges that need resolving, I'd be very interested to see how this looks with another couple of years in bottle. Speaking of which...

Jacob's Creek Shiraz/Cabernet 2005, South Eastern Australia
...when I lived in London, any major sporting occasion saw several members of the wine fraternity descend on Oz Clarke's house for 'a good time'. For the World Cup, everyone had to bring wine from a World Cup vintage, so you'd have everything from hot-of-the-press Kiwi Sauvignon from a visiting winemaker to weirdies such as 1962 Romanian Cotnari to more conventional fare such as 1982 claret. And on one of these occasions, Oz - a wine hoarder of the highest order - raided his massively disorganised wine cellar to produce a vertical tasting of about a dozen vintages of this wine dating back to the mid-1908s. Surprisingly good they were too, with most years holding up well, and a handful all the better for the bottle age. So how's the 2005? There's some of that fresh peppery edge of the regular Shiraz, but the fruit is softer, plummier - is this the Cabernet, or the older vintage? For me it's not as successful a wine, but it's still not bad, with juicy berry to the fore, followed by a leathery, liquoricey edge.

Day Five.0001

I have a day off in the middle of Brand-fest as I'm in London for a couple of tastings. There's the France Under One Roof bash tomorrow (the Manchester tasting was yesterday) but today it's been the annual Champagne tasting at the Banqueting Hall in London.

Slumming it? Hmmm... Sadly this is the only tasting of the year where I'm made to feel like a criminal. Want lunch? Stand up in line, and even if you have the right coloured ticket, you'll be made to feel guilty. Is it the people at the venue? Is it the people who organise the tasting? I've no idea who is responsible, but the whole approach to the Champagne bash leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, even before you've started.

If there was any French region that could afford to put on a decent tasting, then it would be Champagne - the marketing is fabulous even when the wines aren't, which is why no one bats an eyelid at spending £25 on Champagne when they'd baulk at spending half that amount on Cava of similar quality.

Yet regardless of the quality of the wines - and there were some fabulous fizzes - I left the event with a bad taste in my mouth. Why should we have to pay to check in a bag in the cloakroom? Are they trying to discourage those who come from outside the M25? And why should we tasters be asked to move out of the way of the tasting bottles so that a film crew can film the person in charge of the PR for Champagne doing a frothy bit to camera? Who is the tasting for - the PR company or those who come to try the wines?

Anyway, I'm away from home tonight so no Top 10 brands, A glass of Krug would be wonderful, but the taste left in my mouth by last night's duo from Jacob's Creek is actually better than that left today by the Champenoise.

Day Five - Hey JC, JC you're alright by me

Apologies for the Andrew Lloyd Webber reference in the title of this post, but this is Holy Week after all (check out Mars Hill for more on The Main Man, but be warned that it's subversive). Actually stuff the apology - I have to admit to a sneaky admiration for the podgy titled one. When I sit down at a keyboard, I often flex my fingers with the intro bars to Jellicle Cats. And when I can't sleep, I sing my way through Joseph & His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - if I get to 'Close Every Door To Me', I know it's going to be a long night.

Might do another Phillip Schofield/J&HATD story soon, but back to the title of this post. JC in this instance stands for Jacob's Creek, number 4 in the UK wine brands chart and supposedly Australia's Top Drop. The next couple of postings will see whether it lives up to its billing. Tonight is the night when Alex Woods (aged 7) goes to his swimming lesson, and we slum it with chippie tea. Two whites would seem appropriate...

Jacob's Creek Semillon Chardonnay 2007, South Eastern Australia
After a diet of blobby Californian whites, this crisp youngster comes as blessed relief. It's not amazingly complex, but with clean citrus and peach flavours balanced by a core of zippy acidity, it's a wine of which that I'd happily pour myself a second glass, or at least on a day when I'd not already tried 120 wines - tonight it's only the teapot that gets a second pour.

Jacob's Creek Chardonnay 2007, South Eastern Australia
Those 120 wines were at the France Under One Roof tasting in Manchester (the London bash is on Wednesday). I've tasted a number of Maconnais whites today that bore a striking resemblance to this creamy, nutty young Chardonnay. While it's not a stunna, both this and the Sem/Chard have the personality that the Californians lacked.

Day Four - a great way to finish the weekend...

...would have been to share the delicious Castello della Paneretta Chianti Classico Torre a Destra 2002 that Jill was smiling along with during dinner. She said it was perfect with my shepherd's pie, in which a lot of the meat is replaced with chopped-up mushrooms - don't tell the kids, as they think they don't like them (Does this still make it a shepherd's pie? Both lamb and beef mince appeared in the ingredients, so already we're straying into cottage pie territory. What is the correct terminology for a mashed potato-topped beef mince, lamb mince, mushroom, onion, carrot and garlic-y dish? Reminds me of something Justin Howard-Sneyd of Waitrose told me several years ago about how he could never understand why the non-meat version of Chilli Con Carne at his college canteen was called Veggie Con Carne). Anyway, Jill was on top-notch Chianti, while my tipples were...

Blossom Hill Crisp & Fruity White NV
The last of the Blossom Hill quartet, and not a great way to bow out. With its muddy citrus and elderflower flavours, it reminded me of a slightly podgier Liebfraumilch, complete with the sulphur lurking in the background. 'Perfect for drinking anytime,' according to the back label - a missing coda should have said 'except on days with a "d" in.'

Gallo White Grenache 2006
Yesterday's White Zin was OK, what about this? It's paler and not as fleshy, with plums rather than brambles/berries being the dominant flavour. Yet once again, while it's not my style, it's still not bad for what I call Kiss-Me Kwik wine. And like the Zin, just 9.5% alcohol.

The four days I've spent with California's most visible representatives in the UK has been pretty much as I'd have predicted. Blossom Hill has never frapped my boutons; Gallo on occasion has. What I hadn't expected was that it would be the two Gallo pinkies (priced before discount at around a fiver) rather than the more expensive Sycamore Canyon duo (~£8) that would be my faves.

Day Three - handbags at dusk

White Zinfandel... For a wine enthusiast to confess to drinking it is like a music critic saying they like James Blunt, or for a film fan to put Porky's II at the top of their all-time must-watch list. But it does have its advocates.

Long ago, before he gave up drinking, Tim Hanni used to spin a great yarn about the 100-point wine scale. His line was that all marks ran from 50 to 100 - but what were the first 50 points for? He reckoned for the occasion on which you drank the wines. So, for example, the wine is the legendary 1947 Cheval Blanc, surely a wine that deserves it's full 50/50. But you're drinking it with your bank manager, who has just called in your overdraft - a situation meriting just 2/50. Total score, 52/100. Tim at the time worked for Beringer, from whom he'd get White Zin at an extremely favourable price. And on a summer day, well-chilled (both the drink and the drinker), it merited maybe 20/50. But said Tim. 'I'm drinking it with four Finnair stewardesses - 50/50!' Total points 70/100 - better than the Cheval Blanc, in other words.

Sadly, I don't have a quartet of trolley dollies this evening to help me polish off two best-selling White Zins (indeed, take this pair away, and both rose and American wine sales would plummet). So with just a keyboard and a mouse for company, let's see how they fare...

Gallo White Zinfandel 2006
This is simple stuff, slightly sweet and confected, but there's a gentle bramble flavour (bit like the purple ones in Opal Fruits/Starburst), plus a finish that, while not dry, manages to be sappy and refreshing rather than flaccid.

Blossom Hill White Zinfandel 2006
Paler than the Gallo, but more interesting? Not really. This is more in the fruit jelly mould of wines, with a touch of elderflower, but ultimately it's rather too sweet and vague where the Gallo has some boldness.

However for wines I'm not supposed to like, these are certainly not undrinkable. Match of the Day's on in a couple of hours and you know what, I'm even tempted to chill the Gallo down and have another glass later - in the meantime, I'll just sing along to 'You're Beautiful'...

Day Two - something for the weekend?

It's Friday evening, and I'd usually sign off work early, head for the kitchen and begin cooking, with lubrication being provided by something appropriately soothing yet stimulating. However, today my kitchen companions are the red counterparts of yesterday's Chardonnays....

Blossom Hill Soft & Fruity Red (non-vintage)
'Soft & Fruity' is pretty accurate. Smooth would be another word. But as I've said before, smooth isn't what I want in a wine. This reminds me of Ribena infused with Jammie Dodgers. I said of the BH White yesterday 'This is inoffensive, slightly off-dry wine that tastes like it comes from a factory rather than a vineyard.' I'd say much the same of the red too.

Gallo Sycamore Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon 2006
We don't see enough Californian Cabernet in the UK, largely because the home market guzzles it up with patriotic gusto. The bits we do get tend to be either good but not very affordable, or affordable but not very good. Gallo has some decent Cabs higher up its range, but alas this doesn't give much encouragement to trade up to them. You know that overt vanilla character you get in Vimto, Camp coffee and mint imperials? There's something of the same flavour here. It's rather mushy, formless wine, fruity but not fine, like trying to drink a vanilla-infused duvet.

The good news - for me - is that I'm going out later. And since the Top-10-brand-drinking rule only applies at home...

Day One in the Big Bottle House...

So here I go, how long can I survive on just Big Brand Wine? I'm aiming to pour myself a glass of two different wines each night I'm at home. And yes, it is just me - Jill will be drinking whatever she likes. Tonight she's on Mud House 2007 Sauvignon Blanc which is a cracker - watch out for it in the Wine & Spirit First Taste column sometime soon. Meanwhile, I'm on 2 Californian Chardonnays....

Blossom Hill Chardonnay 2006
They say: 'Melons and apples with a hint of smooth vanilla...this full flavoured white is perfect anytime, or with rich chicken, salmon, or vegetable dishes.' (I love that - 'perfect anytime OR...' - is there some occasion that 'anytime' doesn't cover?)
Anyway, Simon says: actually, it's a struggle to say anything about it. Long ago, I stopped writing notes on wines that didn't want to tell me anything - what's the point? This is inoffensive, slightly off-dry wine that tastes like it comes from a factory rather than a vineyard. I'm not looking for the nearest plantpot, but neither am I looking to have another sip.

Gallo Sycamore Canyon Chardonnay 2006
A little more crispness, a little more fruit (yes, some apples here), a little more character, but again, it's difficult to summon up much enthusiasm. I'll be having another sip of this, but there's not much in my glass, and if/when it becomes empty, I won't be having a refill. But the bottles won't go to waste - my mother-in-law** hoovers up wines like this.

To finish on a more positive note, what I will say in both wines' favour is that neither is oversweet, nor over oaky - I wouldn't have said the same five years ago.


**anagram of Woman Hitler

The Winal Countdown

OK, the Top 10 UK wine brands - here's how they currently stand:-

Rank	Brand	Owner
1	Hardys	Constellation
2	Gallo	E & J Gallo
3	Blossom Hill	Percy Fox
4	Jacob’s Creek	Pernod Ricard
5	Stowells	Constellation
6	Wolf Blass	Fosters EMEA
7	Lindemans	Fosters EMEA
8	Banrock Station	Constellation
9	Echo Falls	Constellation
10	Kumala	Constellation

I look at a list like that with mixed feelings. First the positive side. Somewhere on t'Internet, there probably exists a similar list from the 70s or 80s full of names like Le Piat d'Or, Black Tower, Blue Nun, Hirondelle and so on. Anyone mourn their demise? Thought not. However, the raft of almost exclusively New World offerings that has replaced them (the Stowells range includes some European wines) isn't a cause for prolonged celebration. Sure, the New World has brought a reliability to cheap wines that Europe still struggles to emulate, but with that reliability comes a frequently bland uniformity that is the opposite of everything I like about wine (check out this post for the attributes I'd love to see in a cheap wine).

And so it's with a sense of 'grin and bear it' that I'm embarking on this task. I don't expect undrinkability to be a problem, but I'm anticipating a raft of Sweetcorn wines. You know when you eat sweetcorn, how, a few hours later when you're in the bathroom, you look in the loo and, well, I think you know what I mean. So a sweetcorn wine is one that you might just as well pour down the bog for all the good it has done to your body...

The things we do for love....OK, money

An e-mail from David Williams, editor of Wine & Spirit, that thwopped into my In-Box earlier this year began thus. "We're dong [sic] a 'big issue' in May, a kind of sister issue to our small producers number, focusing on the world's biggest producers."

Since getting married a couple of years ago, David has gained both a beard and a bit of a paunch, but he's still the spitting image of my old schoolmate Morf, who acquired his nickname when Tony Hart's creation of the same name appeared on our screens - a coincidence really as the moniker had nothing to do with Plasticine and everything to do with...well we won't go there.

(Two things about Plasticine. First, I'm reminded of it every time I walk past a field of cows as the smell is close to identical - is there something the manufacturers weren't telling schoolchildren? Second, the Wikipedia entry begins with the wonderful warning 'Not to be confused with the Pleistocene epoch which is part of the geologic timescale.')

Anyway, back to the e-mail "We thought it would be fun as part of this to do a kind of 'supersize me' type feature where a wine writer who is normally spoilt for choice in what they drink, has to drink only wines from the top 10 UK off-trade brands for a limited period. (ideally a week or more). As Kevin Keegan would put it, I'd love it, just love it, if you fancied doing it..."

And so for the next few days, and maybe weeks, my drinking at home (as opposed to tasting) will coincide with that of most of the rest of the country. I looked to sign off this past weekend in suitable fashion with a bottle of 1988 Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle. Sadly it was corked - an omen of the pleasures to follow...?

Striking Gold(water)

Found a bottle of Goldwater Cabernet/Merlot 1996 (from Waiheke Island off the coast of Auckland) murmuring on the rack earlier in the week and stood it up for tonight's rib-eye. It comes from a period where most Kiwi winemakers looking at Bordo styles were OTT with both oak and extraction, but I never found that with Goldwater (that may change under the new owners). This is the sort of wine that shows how well NZ can ape Bordeaux. It's fading now, three hours on from opening, and the acidity is poking out, but it's been in that smoky refreshing Cabernet zone, with the restrained cedary finesse, smoky black fruit and lazy tannic structure that could pass for claret - I'd have had is as something like a 1988 Haut-Medoc.

Also makes me think of how 50 years from now, perhaps the Kiwis will be better known for reds than whites. After all, this is a country initially dismissed as fit only for Muller-Thurgau. Then along came Sauvignon, then Pinot Noir. Syrah is currently hot in the Land of the Long White Cloud - Bilancia is a star - with the best wines having the herbal intensity of the Rhone with more bouncy fruit. Bordo blends have been around throughout these various fads, and have been improving steadily. Don't be surprised when their day comes...

Baffled By Bullshit

On the always-lively wine pages forum, a member recently asked a question that began 'I've been researching wine-tasting terms...' He then asked for opinions on this piece he'd done called 'How to Talk About Wine'.

Let's just take our wine hats off for a moment, stand back, and take a long, hard critical look at ourselves. Now let's rehash these phrases for other genres - 'I've been researching gardening terms' or 'How to Talk About Cinema.' Anyone ever seen articles on such topics? Yet many wine folk insist on using terms to which that the majority of normal people simply cannot relate. Palate. Complexity. Residual Sugar. Finish. Length. Attack. Balance. Terroir. Structure. Fruit-Driven. Etc

Does anyone talk about the complexity of a white truffle? The residual sugar in a ripe mango? The finish on a piece of Wagyu beef? No. If those of us whose job it is to get people enthusiastic about wine can't do it in standard lingo, then we deserve to be dismissed as wine snobs or wine buffs. This doesn't mean dumbing wine down, just introducing it to people in a manner that won't alienate them from the start.

Fill yer boots, correction, boobs...

The totally inspired USB wine tap may have been a work of fiction, but there's nothing make-believe about The Wine Rack. While purists may complain that it doesn't deliver wine at the correct serving temperature, it sounds perfect for Châteauneuf-du-Pap, Brabera d'Asti and of course Bristol Cream.

Bill Baker - RIP

A huge vacuum has been left by the death last weekend of wine merchant Bill Baker. A man who seemed to take Monsieur Creosote from The Meaning of Life as a role model, he packed more life, not to mention food and wine, into his 53 years than anyone else I've ever come across, and despite his larger-than-life, old-school appearance, had a palate that loved the classic yet was as keen and wide ranging as any. I feel privileged to have been one on second-names terms name terms with him - I was always Woods, never Simon - and will sorely miss his garumphing laugh, bizarrely long thumb nail and generously-given advice.

For those who never came across him, Jancis Robsinson's web site currently has the episode of Vintners Tales featuring the man.

Bordeaux, but not as we know it

Holy yum with sprinkles on the top. Apologies for my absence in recent days, but I've been regalvanised by a glass of Chateau Guiraud** 2005. No, not the sumptuous sweet wine from said establishment but the G de Guiraud Bordeaux Sec, available for £8 from Majestic, and more than worth every penny. Heady, rich, with more lemons in there than an X-Factor audition, this is wine to serve to those reared on New World wines who complain that they find European whites either lean and tart, or excessively bland and flabby. This is a wine that is stretching the waistband of its kecks, but by dint of its sherbet lemon intensity manages to get away with it. Lobsters are thin on the ground in Saddleworth, but this is the sort of kit I'd want to roll out with said beasties. In their absence, this is perfect fish and chip wine - hold the vinegar.

** was going to add in a link to their web site, but for English speakers, it's one of those that falls down as soon as you follow a few links - Google it if you want more info, but don't be surprised if it's not very useful.

Montepulciano's Revenge

The Woods family has been laid low for much of the last fortnight by various bugs that have caused problems at both ends of our personal plumbing systems. While I haven't had it as bad as Alex (aged 6), to be honest the thought of tasting the dozens of wines building up on the samples rack holds about as much appeal as a nail pie (when my mother used to catch me biting my nails, she'd say, 'If you like them so much, I'll make you a nail pie.' It used to - it still does - conjure up images of something akin to a miniature cheese and onion pie, and it soon put paid to my chomping).

But my experiences in the bathroom in recent times reminded me of an episode a few years ago in South Africa when...well you'll have to read on to find out more. This piece was never published - the editor of one wine magazine rejected it for being 'too scatological'. I could write that Pinot Noir smelt of horseshit, or Sauvignon Blanc of cat pee, but human bodily products were for some reason out of bounds. Anyway...

**********************************************************

The number of rules by which I run my life has recently increased by one. To 'Never eat at anywhere called Mom's' and 'Never play cards with anyone called Doc', I have added 'Never believe it when a South African says, "Just a light meal" '.

Trips abroad are probably the best part of a wine writer's life. No amount of books read or wines tasted can compare with actually visiting a region and seeing winemakers on their own turf. Tasting from dawn till dusk can be tiring, but the most tiring bit is all the eating. As well as working lunches, dinners and occasionally breakfasts, wine folk adhere to the Pooh Bear school of catering, in that there is invariably 'a little something' lurking behind the spittoon. It may just be a few crackers, or it may be a platter groaning under the weight of cooked meats and home-made Speck. But wine writers never learn. 'Just say "No" to cheese' should be our motto, but we are incapable of following this rule.

So anyway, South Africa. I was invited to be part of the South African Airways panel to pick the wines that would go on SAA flights for 2002, and I thought I might as well tack on a few days of winery visits before the tasting began. The task of organising these fell to the very efficient Andre Morgenthal of WOSA - Wines of South Africa. Andre's programme ran like clockwork but the writing was on the wall from the start. Straight from the airport on the Tuesday morning, Andre drove me down to Constantia where after 'freshening up' (shit, shave, shower, in other words), I went to the first meeting - in a restaurant.

The next few days are something of a blur of wines, meals and more meals, none of them small. I have in front of me the menu from an evening at the delightful Pontac Manor in Paarl (heated floors in the bathrooms - say hello to Stanley from me) with a group of Paarl Vintners. After a tasting of around 25 wines, we sat down for dinner - all six courses of it, including Truffelled Risotto and Lemon Grass-speared Springbok. Mercifully, the portions were actually of a sensible size, and when I'd finished my Baked Almond Crusted Chevin [a goat's cheese] served with Thyme Honey and Grilled Fruit, I didn't feel as Dumbo-like as on other occasions.

Things really got out of hand with The Michael Fridjhon Wine Experience. No, it's not a '60's soul review, but a two-day gastrofest organised by the eponymous Fridj and his sparky wife Janice. Ah, the silky Cheval Blanc 1985, ah, the supremely elegant 1986 Drouhin Marquis de Laguiche Montrachet, ah, the heady 1953 KWV Muscadel Jerepigo. But oh, the rich meals, and in particular aargh, the vast Sunday Brunch of literally dozens of different dishes washed down with nine different Champagnes.

It was after the 'Experience' that my digestive system joined my trousers in mutters of complaint, and these mutterings grew louder as we set into the SAA tasting. Strangely, the wines (150 on Day 1, 130 on Day 2) presented little problem, but as soon as food entered the equation, my digestive system said to any solid matter introduced - 'Reject.' I lost count of the number of times I sat there doing my Neville Chamberlain impersonation ('I have in my hand, a piece of paper etc.'). 'Same thing happened to me last year,' someone said to me at dinner one night. 'Took me a week before I could cough with confidence. Before that, well, every time, it was like a thousand angry sparrows fleeing the nest.' It was at that point that I turned dinner napkin-white and left, with directions of where I could find the strongest medicine in the Cape.

And thankfully it worked, so well in fact that I didn't have need of 'the facilities' until I returned to England three days later. But now I know what Andre and Co. were up too, and I'm being extra vigilant. Christmas is coming and I live in fear of waking up to see a hoard of South Africans descending on me with a large cleaver and an over-sized roll of Bacofoil...

Australia - the country that might not let a Jago buy...

Tesco's wine head honcho Dan Jago recently went Down Under to talk to the Winemakers' Federation of Australia, and found himself ruffling a few feathers. One of his comments was that "Wines with 13 or 14% alcohol just aren't exciting any more and customers are currently looking to the Old World for more refreshing wines. If you don't change, others will change faster."

How you unpack such a comment depends on what you read into it. Is Jago saying that there is nothing exciting or refreshing at such alcohol levels? I don't think so. But his point is that the reliable, fruity, easy drinking fruity wines for which Australia has developed a huge following can now be found in other countries. Moreover, wine drinkers who cut their teeth on such styles are now asking what's next? And since they feel they've 'done' Australia, then they're looking elsewhere for their wine kicks.

While Australia has plenty to offer higher up the scale, it currently doesn't have vast amounts of wine in significantly different styles at supermarket price levels with which to win back such people. Yet with drinkers in other countries still discovering Australian wine for the first time and being prepared to pay more than we stingy Brits, you have to wonder whether the Aussies need to be too concerned about a whinging Pom.

But as soon as winemakers start responding to criticism from major customers in the sort of language used in the Age piece by Bruce Tyrrell and Rick Burge, I get a bit worried. Such a head-in-the-sand, 'the customer is always wrong' approach is not what earned Australia its place in UK wine hearts. In fact, it's more reminiscent of views expressed by many across the Channel in France - and look what's happening to their wine sales...

USB Wine

Stuck for Christmas presents for the wine lover in your life? Then try this fantastic new product developed in France which is sure to revolutionise your wine drinking.



Why bother having a cellar when the great vintages of the world are all available at one click....

I know, I know, I know...

Had an e-mail from my mate, old boss and fellow Taste-In colleague Robert Joseph recently in response to this post. This is the man from whom I learned inordinate amounts, not least the art of missing publishers' deadlines with the maximum of grace, but since neither of us had much in the way of business acumen - great ideas, yes; business acumen, no - then our partnership was doomed to failure. Anyway, the response from Bobby Jo (as some will insist on calling him) was that while he agreed with me both on the packaging and on Oddbins shaky future, he thought that the Cachet wines did stack up as part of the riposte from France to outside competition.

And yes, I realise that France needs to re-establish itself in the eyes of many wine drinkers, especially those who have cut their wine teeth not on the Old World but on the New World. But... And here's where my Latin O Level for once proves useful. I usually approach unknown Australian Shirazes with a suspicion born of too many examples of over-manipulated wines, but The Red Sedan 2005 McLaren Vale Shiraz is going down a storm tonight, perhaps because of the absence of oak, which gives the iron-rich fruit flavours a chance to shine (and it's getting better as I type - I fear for the rest of the bottle).

Anyway, back on the subject, Latin. Correct me if I'm wrong but 'McLaren Vale' means 'farewell McLaren' - quite appropriate for this week. Just as England proved against Croatia on Wednesday that despite the quality of the players on the field, the up-tempo, end-to-end, hoof-it-up-the-field game has had its day, so it might be time for some of the movers and shakers of the south of France to move on from the desire to please the beginner's palate. In other words, they should be looking for life beyond ripeness, fresh fruit and, err, that's it, which is nice in the short term, but a long term yawn.

So sorry Robert, but Cachet is a long term yawn. If all it provides is simple fruit with the right varietal names on the label, then other countries do it cheaper and - vital - more reliably. While I hate the idea of French wine sales remaining in the doldrums, I'd rather they were revitalised by better wines than Cachet.

Getting bladdered....

In this news story from Australia, getting bladdered takes on a completely new meaning. Reminds me of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy where someone says that an impending and not very pleasurable experience is 'like getting drunk'. What's the problem with that, asks someone else. 'You ask a glass of water...'

Wine & Spirit - How High Is Too High?

Just written a piece for Wine & Spirit about High Alcohol wines. I'll update this post when it's eventually published, but in the meantime, here are the wines I tasted for it.

SPAIN
Marquesa de la Cruz Garnacha 2006, Campo de Borja (14.5%)
Juan Gil Silver Label Monastrell Jumilla 2004 (14%)
Bodega Mustiguillo Finca Terrerazo 2005 (14.5%)
Macià Batle Binissalem Mallorca 2004 (14.5%)

FRANCE
La Bastide Saint Vincent Gigondas 2004 (14%)
Domaine Madeloc Collioure 2003 (15%)
Couly-Dutheil Chinon Clos de l’Olive 2005 (15%)

AUSTRALIA
Tullymore Vineyards Merlot 2003, Coonawarra (14%)
Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, Katnook Estate (14.5%)
Jacob’s Creek Reserve Shiraz 2005, South Australia (14%)
Kirribilly Estate Shiraz 2004, Langhorne Creek (14.5%)
Jim Barry The Lodge Hill Shiraz 2005, Clare Valley (15%)
Leylines Shiraz 2004, South Australia (15%)

ARGENTINA
Lagarde Henry Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, Mendoza (14.5%)
Soluna Premium Malbec 2005, Mendoza (14%)
Soluna Premium Organic Malbec 2005, Mendoza (14%)

SOUTH AFRICA
Knockon Wood Reserve 2006, Western Cape (14.5%)
Cloof Lynchpin 2005, Darling (14.5%)

CHILE
De Martino Colluvia Syrah 2006, Choapa Valley (14.5%)

CALIFORNIA
Walker’s Pass Private Bin Reserve Zinfandel 2005, Santa Clara (14.5%)
Ravenswood Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel 2005 (14.5%)

ITALY
Morella Old Vine Primitivo 2003, Puglia (15%)

When is a region not a region?

Ah, regionality and wine, eh? Dontcha just love it? There's a story on Decanter's web site about how the Aussies are struggling with the problem of having a wine blended from different states. The current SE Australia designation only covers the states in the south and east, and means that any inclusion of Western Australian wine is limited to 15%. With WA currently being the one place destined to have a surfeit of grog in the next few years, unsurprisingly those out east are looking at ways of getting their hands on the precious stuff. But there is opposition from some who see the creation of a new designation called Greater Australia or Southern Australia as denying regionality. Get real guys. The whole point of the SE Aus appellation is to produce a cheap homogenous blended wine, so talking of any regional identity is pointless. Terroir? Schmerroir.

Don’t get me wrong, I'm a fully paid up member of the terroir club - where the grapes are grown has a definite impact on a wine’s flavour. But I'm also a realist. The main factor in the flavour of a wine is not terroir, it is human influence. The ways in which grapes are grown and wine is made outweigh the impact of terroir, and this is as much true in Australia as in France. Yet the Australians, or at least those in charge of the wine industry, seem hell-bent on pursuing regionality, even though most of the wines are marked more by winemaking than region. Further proof of this was provided by a tasting of Clare Valley wines last week. Yes, there were some great wines in which the character of the region shone through, but they were outnumbered by ones where the word ‘made’ appeared in my notes.

Look at it this way. Does Clarendon Hills have a following because it tastes of McLaren Vale or because it tastes of Clarendon Hills? Ditto for Henschke, Cullen, Brokenwood, Yarra Yering, Bannockburn and their respected regions. In an ideal world, all wine would be made by great producers in great regions. But it isn’t, so the question we have to answer is this - which would we rather have: a wine made by a so-so producer in a great region or one made by a great producer in a so-so region? Anyone who wouldn’t take the second option every time is deluding themselves.

Wayne, Women and Song

First time I've ever linked to The Sun, but couldn't resist this story about how Wayne Rooney was developing a taste for the grape. Judging by the line up for yesterday's game against Blackburn, he's not the only wino in Fergie's side...

Edwine Van der Sar
Rioja Ferdinand
Patrice Evramoira
Wes Cantenac-Brown
La Mancha Vidic
Anderson D'Oliveira
Owen Haagreaves
Cristiano Ron-Aldo Conterno
Rion Giggs
Carlos Jerez
Louis Saar

Kipper Wines

Not Kipper Tie, as in what Noddy Holder enjoys as liquid refreshment. No, here, I'm talking about those wines that you hardly ever drink at home, but instantly go for when you see them on a list. I can't remember ever cooking kippers in my current abode - I'm married to an anti-kipperite - but whenever I see them on a breakfast menu, I'm straight in there.

So, kipper wines.... For me, they're probably old wines. Not classic old wines, but humble bottles that you wouldn't normally think of ageing. So if I find a list that has old Beaujolais, Muscadet, Valpolicella, Alsace Pinot Gris, Cotes du Rhone and others of that ilk, I'll happily shell out for them. Sometimes they're past it, but a lot of the time they're surprisingly good, and attractively priced too.

However, I'd draw the line at having them with my breakfast kippers...

I Can't Believe It's Not Better

The line-up:-
Robert Joseph – founder of What Wine (which became Wine, Which became Wine International which became Wine & Spirit) and inventor of the International Wine Challenge (he’s also a former boss of mine).
Allan Cheesman – ex-Sainsbury’s guru largely responsible for beginning the supermarket wine revolution.
Neil Tully – a Master of Wine whose company Amphora now designs dozens of the best wine labels in the UK.
Lynne Whittaker – marketing wizard

Surely a dream team to be involved in the creation of a new wine brand. So why have they come up with something as poor as Cachet? I’ve just tasted the range of three vin de pays from southern France – Viog/Chard, a Pinot Rosé and a Shiraz/Cabernet – and they’re just not what French wine is about. Where's the passion, the edge of arrogance, the Gallic charm? The best thing that can be said about them is that they’re not sweet, but when you hear that they’ve been created with the UK consumer in mind, you have to shudder.

They’re from Castel, the French behemoth that owns Oddbins, and of course, the wines are now available in said store on a 6 for 5 promo. Castel may be introducing a little business efficiency to Oddbins, but if it means that stores get overwhelmed with wines like this and the equally dire Oddbins Selection, then bring back the days of bad balance sheets. My only hope (vain, I know) is that the people involved were paid not in cash but in Cachet. A month of drinking this tired trio (and of looking at the pedestrian labels) is what they deserve.

Knives in West 11

A Clash song, for those querying the title. Yes, 1977, the year when I made the fateful decision to study O Level Geography - why, oh why? Our teacher, unfortunately a distant relative, would tell us useful things like 'it rains most in the wet season'. He was one of those pople who was really a sports teacher but got drafted in to teach other subjects - I use the word 'teach' loosely. But the music made up for it. Fond memories of being a Part Time Punk and pogoing in the bedroom to too many bands to mention, including the aforementioned Clash, but the bittersweet Buzzcocks were also close to my heart.

In the world of wine, Europe had a pretty dismal vintage, except in Portugal, where many of the producers trotted out vintage ports that were initially considered to be among the finest of the 20th century. Hmmm. I've done reasonably extensive tastings a few times, and the most recent line-up this week only confirmed my suspicions that this isn't a great year. These are wines that for the most part are already ready (and in some instance past it), and which offer little of the passion I've found in great port.

Here goes...
Taylor - 2 off bottles
Fonseca - clean, supple, figgy, very mature, nice honest flavours but hardly complex
Croft - solid, spirity, has depth and fruit but again rather simple, has length but hints of bandage on finish - brett?
Delaforce - dense, gutsy fruit, still feel young and lively, spicy with potential to improve further. Close to best of the day.
Niepoort - sweetest so far, lots of juicy berry fruit feels young, promising but not huge complexity.
Niepoort Garrafeira (as above but taken out of wood early and stored in demi-johns, apparently) - solid, iron-rich tinges to buxom berry and herb flavours, hints of minerals, v tasty oddity.
Sandeman - feels rather dank (two bottles the same), fruit still alive but again sweet and too simple
Dow - gutsy, very solid, has lots of poke and grip, fragrant spicy finish. Star of the tasting
Warre - rather overblown, bretty, not very enjoyable, nor well balanced, sweet jammy finish.
Graham - lively, tangy, still lots of development ahead, juicy fig, slightly jammy berry, would like a little more complexity but this is still good kit
Gould Campbell - soft, tender, spicy style, plenty of fruit still, now at its peak, but no sign of fading. Surpisingly good
Quarles Harris - rich, sweet, simple but still with a spirity bite, lacks complexity but easy honest drink
Smith Woodhouse - juicy and fresh still, long and balanced, but again I expect more complexity of a supposedly great vintage.

Look on winesearcher for stockists. While the wines still haven't reached silly prices, there's better wine available for the money. Those looking for affordable mature vintage port for this Christmas should look at Marks & Spencer own label 1991 at just £22.99, a gently mature figgy delight - the corks reveal that it's from Morgan, a label from Croft.

Smoooooth....

It happened again last night. Was talking to someone after a wine tasting I'd done in conjunction with Taste-In and Spiral Cellars at the Smallbone Kitchens showroom in Harrogate. The wines had gone down pretty well, but afterwards, someone came and said that they hadn't like the two reds (Henschke's Henry's Seven and Cristia Chateauneuf) - 'I prefer something smoother.'

Smooth. It's a word that lots of people use when they're describing wines they like, and bully boy that I am, I aim to do all I can to eradicate it from their vinous vocabulary. Because when I think of smooth, I think of mustard coloured nylon rollneck sweaters. I think of grey plastic zip-up mens shoes. I think of Cliff Richard. Elevator muzak. Blue Stratos. You get the picture.

When I drink wine, I don't want a glass of Kenny G. I want something with a bit of personality, something with maybe a shady secret or two in its past, something your mother might tut at. So while I don't want wine that feels like a mouthful of barbed wire, I do like a little rough with my smooth.

Scoring, Scoff and Sweetcorn

If you've not come across Scoff, it's a food & wine e-newsletter that brings open-source thinking to the food & wine publishing world. So the contributors and the editors just do it for the love of sharing knowledge - makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The latest edition contains a slightly toned-down version of a posting I did a couple of months ago about scoring wines. Since when, I've been toying with the addition of a new category called Sweetcorn Wines. You know when you eat sweetcorn, how, a few hours later when you're in the bathroom, you look in the loo and, well, I think you know what I mean. You wonder what was the point of actually putting it in your body in the first place - is it just a vehicle for eating lots of peppery butter? I'm yet to decide whether a sweetcorn wine should be one that you might just as well pour down the bog for all the good it has done to your body, or whether it's the sort of wine that tastes like it's already been through someone's personal plumbing. Any thoughts?

Ein Zwei Dry - the battle of the tastings

Like buses, innit? You wait ages for a post and then two come along in quick succession. Don't be surprised to see more of the ammo accumulated over the past several weeks of tasting in the next few days.

Two of the main events of the past fortnight have been generic tastings of wines from both Chile and South Africa. 'Generic' is one of those words that wine folk casually slip into sentences and assume that everyone else knows what they mean. Just asked my wife what she thought a generic tasting was - the silence was deafening... So for all you normal people, a generic tasting is simply one where all the wines are from the same place.

So yes, Chile and South Africa, both countries with enormous potential, rapidly improving wines, increasingly experienced winemakers and - cue several more condescending clichés... I wrote earlier today of how we wine writers are on the receiving end of some rather uninspiring literature from wine companies, but it has to be said that we produce considerable amounts of gumf ourselves.

Anyway, Chile and South Africa. A test of how good someone's wines are is whether you want to rush home and drink more of the same or head for something completely different. I remember going to New Zealand a decade or so ago. When I returned home, the wine I craved most was grungy, feral Rioja Gran Reserva - there's only so much wine nice-ness a man can take... On my first trips to both Chile and South Africa, I came back pining for other people's wines. Having visited both in the last couple of years, I'm pleased to say that's changed. Both make Sauvignon Blanc I want to drink, and have a rapidly growing arsenal of other trump cards, to mix a metaphor or two.

But it wasn't the wines that impressed me at this autumn's tastings - it was the hand-dryers in the loos. The SA bash was at Earl's Court, and those who went to spend a penny found themselves face to face with the XLERATOR. Underneath it's sculpted nozzle was the slogan 'Feel The Power'. Yeah, right, I thought, feel the....WHOOOSH. The skin on my hands actually rippled under the Xlerator's jet of hot air. Any drops of water were blown off in a wave of shock and awe, and if I'd held my hands under the beast for any longer, I'm sure the same would have happened to my fingernails.

The following week, Chile was turning on the heat. The Xlerator was a hard act to follow, but at the Business Design Centre in Islington, they have hand-dryers that were every bit as good in the form of the Dyson Airblade. Yes, Dyson, as in those coloured vacs that people seem to either love or loathe. Where the Xlerator pummelled you into dryness, the Airblade nuzzled with its gentle yet speedy caress. I was hooked. I drank loads of water just so I could visit the gents as many times as possible. Which is why I'm writing this from a rather cramped police cell where paper-towel rationing is in operation...

OK, so I made the last bit up. And I assure you I will not allow the quality of the 'facilities' to influence my critical faculties. But having sampled several red wines at both events, it was surprisingly easy to draw analogies between the hand-dryers and several of the wines. Too many South African reds still seem to follow the Xlerator approach, with brawn rather than brain being the order of the day (even if they don't make your hands ripple). Meanwhile the Chilean reds are quieter and don't come with slogans like 'Feel The Power', but achieve the purpose they've been made for with increasing efficiency and élan.

COMING SOON - A comparison of Australian and New Zealand Chardonnays based on the quality of the bog roll at the generic tastings. A head to head between Tough Tiger Toilet Tissue (smooth on the top, rough on the bottom) and Dainty Double Damask Derrière Dampers (lightly moist for pampered posteriors - those with piles, in other words...)

What women, sorry, wine writers want...

If posts have been scarce in the last couple of weeks, it's because September and October are the tasting season, during which every wine company and its dog seems to want to show of their wares. Attempting to get to three or four events a day is not uncommon, and this of course has its repercussions. If you're sensible, you stand up and spit (ah, whatever happened to The Members?) all day before returning to bed early and not too bloated in order to be up again the following day (and the day after) for more of the same. If you're NOT sensible, then you accept an invitation out for dinner/a BBQ/pisco frenzy or worse. When it comes to post-tasting drinks, the modus operandi is one is just right, two is too many, and three is not enough. Even seasoned wine writers can forget that pouring close to 200 wines into your mouth over the course of a few hours actually has an effect on your constitution. Suddenly what you had talked yourself into believing was going to be a low-key evening has turned into a marathon session. It's two in the morning and you are either on the table or under it. If you're lucky, your clothes are still with you. And you still have to be back at the spittoon in a few hours time.

This autumn, apart from a few fuzzy bits towards the end of a Cloudy Bay dinner, I've erred on the sensible side, but even so, the prospect of a few quiet days off the tasting floor are most welcome - OK, I'm a wine wimp. But today, I'm a wine wimp on a mission, and my target is wine companies who don't understand what wine writers want. I'm not the first person to mouth off on such a topic. Only today, I've seen this piece by Emile Joubert about the invitations and press releases that we're sent. It's positively mild-mannered compared with a major rant from Wine-X magazine, a publication which can/could (it's currently in a strange state of suspension) miss as often as it hits, but which is spot on in this instance. Max Allen also hits the nail on the head with this piece - should be required reading for anyone sending out samples.

While I'm very much in agreement with Max and the others on what they write, none of them touches on my current gripe. Information. I'm not talking here about show awards or cuttings from other publications, I'm talking about the sort of info that wine companies provide that they seem to genuinely think will be of benefit to us.

Not sure what I'm on about? Then let me give you an example from the recent (and otherwise excellent) Waitrose tasting. Torres San Medin Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé 2007 - '100% Cabernet Sauvignon from clay loam soils. Harvested at 10 tonnes/ha. 24 hours skin contact then pneumatic pressing. Fermented over 21 days in stainless steel at 18ºC. Bottled May 2007.' Or how about this for José Maria da Fonseca Periquita White 2006? ‘80% Moscatel de Sétubal, 20% Arinto from the sandy soils of the Sétubal peninsula. Vines up to 50 years old, with low density plantings. Grapes harvested in late Aug/early Sept at approx. 7 tonnes/ha. 12% of Moscatel is oak-fermented, the rest in stainless. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans. Alc 11.8%, TA 7,2 g/l, pH 3.04, RS 5.0 g/l.’ Now for wine anoraks (sorry Jamie), maybe such details might be useful in unravelling quite why a wine tastes the way it does. But among normal people, does anyone give a stuff about percentages and tonnes per hectare?

Good wine writing should make you thirsty; lists of stats just makes you want to turn the page. I'm not picking on Waitrose - their tasting pamphlet was just the closest to hand. But too often, when I ask companies for interesting info on a wine or its producer, this is the sort of tedia they send. I'd much rather hear that the winemaker used to manage the Bhundu Boys (Chapel Down's Owen Elias), why the vineyard has such an unusual name (look at Wooing Tree, for example) or that the winery pet is a 3-legged cat. Alas, Spook, Cloudy Bay's 3-legged feline, is no longer with us. But her name and deficiency in the limb department is often cited when I try to explain to gawping PRs and wine companies that I'm not especially interested as to whether the 2005 has 3% more Cabernet Sauvignon than the 2004 and would rather hear something a little more enthralling.

Can't sign off a blog on tasting notes without a gem from the recent Tesco press tasting. Relating to Tesco Finest* Beyers Truter Pinotage 2006. 'The Tesco Finest Pinotage is a block selected Pinotage: therefore certain blocks of Pinotage were selected for the purpose of making the Tesco Finest.' Quite...

The wife's away, the mouse will play

I'm hoping my lovely wife Jill, set to return from a few days away in France with a friend of ours, doesn't read this. Because it's all about being selfish. OK, maybe not exactly selfish, but self-indulgent - there's at least a finely honed Sabatier knife's-width between the two...

The bottom line is this - which are the bottles I'd like to share with as few people as possible? I know, I know, enjoying wine is all about generosity - I've read those pieces, I've even written some of them. They usually involve a road-to-Emmaus type passage in which the author describes being given a thimbleful of Chateau Latour on his thirteenth birthday/at his first tutorial/just after snorting coke off a gullible groupie's navel before a gig at [insert venue of your choice]. Afterwards, wine suddenly made sense - cue misty images and harp music.

But we don't live on clouds permanently. And tonight, I'm rather glad that there's only me to enjoy what's left of the 1988 Chateau L'Evangile from Pomerol. It's a very good chateau, but not the best, ditto for vintage, but this weekend, it's been a joy to behold - I would have offered Alex (aged 6) a sip, but it would have clashed with his fish fingers and corn on the cob. So I was left alone to bathe in its suave, cedary beauty, its confident yet never brash fruit and its relaxed but not supine structure.

Jill would probably have enjoyed it, but not as much as I have. And so my darling, sorry you're married to such a selfish, sorry, self-indulgent wine snob, I'll leave some of your favourite elixir (usually Grenache but riper Pinots also do the biz) for you the next time I go away. I'm off now to warm the bed for your return...

Wine ‘bad hair’ days

Will report on how accurate my predictions were of the SW France tasting very soon. In the meantime, let's talk about wine ‘bad hair’ days.

Yes, I know it’s just fermented grape juice. Yes, I know that if wine were to disappear, the world would not. And yes, I know that a whole swathe of people drink wine more for its effect than its flavour. But for those sad, sad folk like me – and we are a significant minority – who take serious note of what we are swilling around our tulip-shaped glasses, then let’s talk about something that takes the convoluted world of wine into an even more complicated realm.

But let’s start by taking a look at ourselves. Have you ever had those days when you wake up and the world is just peachy, where you look in the mirror and nod approvingly, where the glass is not just half full, but it’s half full of Krug-flavoured ambrosia? And equally, have you had those days where the world craps on the shoulder of your cream-coloured leather jacket, where all of the 13 massive pustules on your face seems to be throbbing in sympathy with every Wi-Fi signal in the vicinity, where the glass is half empty – and the remnants are three-day-old white Zin, complete with a fag-end?

Well wines have such days. I’ve just been to the Tesco autumn wine tasting. 2007 has seen the wine department of Britain’s largest supermarket revelling in both critical and financial success, thanks to some inspired appointments at the Cheshunt HQ, most noticeably the arrival 18 months ago of Jan Dago, sorry, Dan Jago from Bibendum as Head Wine Honcho. His eyes are too close together, his dancing is questionable, but the man loves wine. At the spring 2007 tasting, he told me that after a year in the job, he’d managed to get the range to a stage where he’d happily take home the majority of the wines they were showing for dinner – and as his wife is an ex-Victoria Wine buyer, then he can’t turn up with any old muck.

So I arrived at the tasting expecting the selection to be as inspiring as that that had been on show in spring. And it wasn’t. But – and this is where things start getting a bit bonkers – it wasn’t the fault of the wines. Nor the tasters. It was just one of those days when the wines weren’t performing as they should have done. Anyone who has children will have experienced one of those moments when you try and persuade your offspring to repeat the enthusiastic rendition of Baa-Baa Black Sheep that so entranced you the night before for the benefit of the assembled relatives/friends/neighbours/whatever. And they don’t. So it was with the wines today. They were sulky children. They were supposed to sing. They didn’t.

Some wine companies – Marks & Spencer is one – now plan their tastings according to the biodynamic calendar. The theory goes that if extra-terrestrial influences can affect the tides, then they should also have an impact on other liquids, including wine. The tasting fell on a leaf day – the sort of day that M&S avoids since it accentuates any green/earthy notes in a wine. And true to form, traditionally-styled, (usually) European wines with firm tannic structures looked rather tough and charmless. Meanwhile, those wines that were on the rather buxom, overripe side acquired a welcome air of restraint. A Masi Amarone looked more like a Ripasso. A Californian Pinot acquired some Burgundian elegance. And Château Musar, a love-hate wine if ever there was one, lost much of its volatility and looked positively well-behaved.

I’m not excusing Tesco for some of the wines on show. There were several that even on a good day would have failed to excite. But overall, I think the wines were suffering a bad hair day – we all have them, even Patrick Stewart. On another occasion, this would have been a far more inspiring event. However, it does beg a question for those of us drinking wines at home – do we need to be looking at the biodynamic calendar when planning to open some of our more temperamental bottles?

A wasted week?

Just preparing for a trip to London for three days of tasting. I'll probably put 300 different wines in my mouth, and I'll probably end up writing about a maximum of 15 of them. In other words, more than 95% of what I sample will go unreported.

Is it worth the effort? And equally importantly, is it worth the people who have invited me to these events inviting me again? Personally, I do find it worth the effort - most of the time. I find tasting and talking about wine to be the quickest way of improving my knowledge. It's like exercise - the more you do it, the fitter you get, and if you stop doing it, you soon run to seed. There are some writers who do taste more than I do - Matthew Jukes gets through phenomenal amounts - but not many. It means that I'm reasonably qualified to give opinions (both to readers and to producers/importers/etc) on what I try, and to compare wines with those of other parts of the world. And obviously, those who invite me wouldn't keep on inviting me if I were just taking the piss and turning up for the free lunch.

And yet... Tomorrow, I'll be spending probably 3-4 hours tasting through wines from South West France. It's an event organised by the French, so there will be little information of use in the catalogue - I may get an importer's name if I'm lucky, but nothing useful like UK prices and stockists. Which will then mean more hours collating info on the wines I'm interested in, a few disappointments when I find that a particular wine is only available by the palate, and several weeks wait while the winery sends me another sample from France - I always try to retaste wines I'm going to recommend in the cold light of my kitchen, away from the persuasive charms of well-dressed young Frenchwomen...

Wouldn't it just be easier to sit on my bum and ring up my favourite importers for some samples? Perhaps. But that's how wine writers get lazy. As I said earlier, there is that danger of running to seed and becoming complacent, being stuck with opinions that were valid five years ago but which are now out of date. So I will be there tomorrow, putting in the hours and hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Expect my verdict on one of the unsung regions of the French wine world here in the coming days.

Manky onions as wine

A split second after the knife descended, I realised I was in the presence of a manky onion. You know the ones I mean, where the knife squashes rather than penetrates, where there's a whiff of vinegar, and where some of the layers have turned translucent. If you're feeling thrifty, you can chop out the good layers and save the rest, but today, said onion was rapidly filed under B (for Bin). If I'd spent more time in the shop squeezing my onions (settle...), maybe I'd not be in such a situation, but I didn't so I was.

And the same is true with wine. Manky onions abound in wine shops and on restaurant lists. Bottles that have been badly stored. Vintages that should have been pensioned off. Wines that quite simply were bad in the first place. And - it's true - bottles that were simply having bad hair days. There's nothing you can do about the last situation. Even Jimi Hendrix went out of tune from time to time. But for the others, you're going to have to rely on experience. The more you taste, the more you should be able to tust your own tastebuds to know what's good and what's not. If you find themes emerging, then vote with your feet - or should that be with your Lafite?

Let's parlais winespeak

They say: We're rationalising our range
They really mean: The labels have changed and the price has gone up.

They say: It's a blend of premium grape varieties
They really mean: Our wine is cheap

They say: We ferment at cool temperature to retain maximum fruit intensity
They really mean: This tastes of bubble gum and sherbet

They say: We left a small amount of residual sugar to lift the flavour
They really mean: It doesn't taste of anything, but it's sweet

They say: We picked early to retain some acidity.
They really mean: It's sharp and tasteless, but the yields were huge.

They say: It's an early drinking light wine
They really mean: It's got no flavour and won't last the year out

They say: The grapes are picked at maximum ripeness
They really mean: The grapes are picked too late

They say: The acidity and tannin will soften with age
They really mean: The acidity and tannin will not soften with age

They say: We are looking to expand into sparkling wine
They really mean: We are looking to make some money from sparkling wine

They say: We are looking to expand
They really mean: We are looking to improve our cashflow

They say: The UK market is very important to us
They really mean: The UK press is very important to us

They say: We've had some interesting results
They really mean: We've had some disgusting results, but Domestos are interested.

They say: The label is a freeform depiction of the sunset over the nearby lake
They really mean: The artist likes The Grateful Dead

They say: Our winemaker trained at Geisenheim
They really mean: We don't make reds

They say: My family have been making wine in California for many generations
They really mean: My grandfather was a bootlegger

They say: Our aim is to educate the wine drinker
They really mean: Our aim is to fleece the wine drinker

They say: We have stopped using lead capsules in order to promote 'green' values
They really mean: Plastic capsules are cheaper

They say: We practice a policy of minimum intervention
They really mean: Our wine is expensive

They say: We are experimenting with Italian and Rhone varieties
They really mean: Our wine is expensive

They say: The winemaker regularly travels to compare notes with producers in other areas
They really mean: Our wine is expensive

They say: This wine is best with marinated swordfish
They really mean: We opened several bottles, and ate several meals, and it went least badly with swordfish.

They say: The perfect partner for raw scallops marinated in dill and paprika
They really mean: Lousy with food

They say: It's an ideal restaurant wine
They really mean: It doesn't taste of anything, but the label's nice.

They say: This usually proves popular with the ladies
They really mean: It's sweet/pink

They say: Our wines are designed to sit on the same table as the top French ones
They really mean: We make ludicrously expensive Cabernet and Chardonnay

They say: We were the first to plant up in these hills back in the late 60s
They really mean: We also grow dope

They say: I’m not sure if I understand what you mean
They really mean: Our wine is expensive, flavourless and too tannic

They say: These are the results of our exciting new winemaking project
They really mean: These are clean but boring wines made to a price point by a foreigner

They say: The ideal partner for fish, chicken and pasta
They really mean: OK, so it doesn’t taste of anything

The Night of the Living Sauvignon....

This really shouldn't happen. I posted 3, three, THREE weeks ago about a South African Sauvignon Blanc tasting I was in the middle of. That night , some friends came round and relieved me of a few of the 90+% full bottles that I'd been sampling. But there were still several bottles hanging around which I hadn't disposed of thoughtfully - that's right, I just don't have enough friends...

Anyway, on return from France, brown and bruised (from overexerting myself on the Jungle Adventure parcours at a ski resort called Les Orres), they were still sitting there in the kitchen. Oh well, in for a penny and all that. So I tried one. And another. And another. And gadzooks, ods bodikins and all the rest, they were still astonishingly fresh. Some of them were actually better than when I first tried them over a fortnight earlier. What's more, there were a couple of older bottles from the excellent Cape Point vineyard in, er, Cape Point (over the hill from Constantia, imported by Yeo & Co), the 2001 and 2003, which had been sitting by the window where they would have had three hours of sun on those days in the last half of August when the sun actually shone. They should have been dead, but no, they were still wonderfully alive and zesty.

Does this mean that I'm going to recommend opening bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and decanting them a couple of days before serving? No, but it does seem to indicate that all those who put Sauvignon in the DYA - drink youngest available - category may not be 100% right. After all, good Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé can cope with bottle age, so why not Cape Sauvignon?

Look out for the picks from the tasting in my piece of Cape Sauvignon in a forthcoming issue of Decanter magazine.

Pink Chardonnay Frizzante

No, the title of this post is not a hoax. Such a wine already exists at £4.98 in Asda. According to the press release from Buckingham Vintners, 'It has been tailor-made for the consumer, with five essential criteria: it is first to market, it's pink, it's sparkling, it's made from Chardonnay and it's less than £5 per bottle.'

I'm not complaining about Buckingham and Schenk Italia for developing such a wine - I'm sure it'll sell by the bucketful. And I'm not going to slag off those who buy such a wine. What depresses me is that package of five criteria. There's nothing wrong with each when taken individually, but together... So, so sad. And we wine writers/communicators are as much to blame as anyone for not getting across the message of wine in a more user-friendly way. Slapped wrists and a bottle of Yellow Tail all round.

So what would my five essential criteria be for a consumer-friendly wine? How about...

1) It has a story to tell. And not one about oak barrels and medals. Weird people, three-legged cats and haunted trees are good.
2) It brings a smile to your face. Could be the label, could be the price, could be the flavour, could be all three.
3) It makes other wines jealous. In the sort of way that you look with a mixture of envy and admiration at someone who does things better than you.
4) It has a slightly warped side. Maybe it's not conventionally attractive, but you keep coming back for another look. Maybe it's a bit lairy, lippy, risque, naughty, but not to the point of intimidation or insult.
5) It makes people want to try other wines. Not because you want to avoid it, just because it makes you want to find more out about wine.

Chances of a press release about such a wine? Somewhere between slim and fat...

In praise of English supermarkets - no, not a misprint

Just returned from several days in the French Alps. In true 'coals to Newcastle' fashion, took along a few bottles of wine. I have rather a lot of the stuff, and I also have several of those purpose-made polystyrene containers that you can check into an airline hold knowing that they have a pretty good survival rate.

The only problem was I wish I'd taken more. Couldn't believe how depressing the range was in the French supermarkets. The Hautes Alpes is not a major wine region and my sole experience with the local vin de pays (Merlot, Chard, Cab S etc seem to be the favoured grapes) was not a good one. But so too were my encounters in Intermarche (the only nearby supermarket of any size) with wines from Bordeaux, the Rhone and the Languedoc - one musty wine is one thing, but a succession of dried out, fruitless wines leads you to think that there's something more than cork taint going on.

No doubt, with more time and effort there would have been a few more worthy wines in the range, but this was holiday, not work, and I just wanted something tasty to quaff while looking at the stars and eating too much. In the end found a decent red, the 2005 Visan from Domaine Bon Rencontre at around €6, and drank it several times.

So to all those who slag off our supermarkets, think yourself lucky. Even with all those bland, branded wines, their ranges are more adventurous, and their QC is very much on the ball.

SA SB

Partway through a mega-tasting of South African Sauvignon Blanc. I love Hugh Johnson's line about Sauvignon - 'it has a loud voice but not a musical one'. In short doses, it can be great, but en masse... New Zealand is probably the source of the shrillest wines. The annual NZ trade tasting used to have a huge table in the middle of the room along which all that year's Savvies (I loathe that term) were arrayed. By about wine 15, boredom had set in. By wine 30, you were beginning to feel somewhat jaded. By wine 50, the emotion was closer to despair, because you were less than halfway through the line-up. By the end, you'd rather rip your toenails off and eat them in a quiche than drink a glass of Sauvignon.

Rather than risk such fatigue, I'm doing these wines in short runs, ordered by vintage and alcohol levels. Just finished the 2007s, which range from bimbo/confected wines to what I call camels - as in tight as said beast's rear end in a sand storm. I've blogged about wines being released too early before - here were several that won't be in their stride for several months. It'll be interesting to see how I get on with the 2006s this afternoon. The stars of the 2007s are Quando, La Motte Pierneef, Raka, Cederberg, Elgin Vintners and Klein Constantia. What marks them out is that there is a little accompaniment to conceal their shrillness - I'd probably be sipping a glass of one of them now, were it not for the fact that I have to taste another 40 wines in a couple of hours. Wish me luck.

PS Just come across a wonderful headline for a wine article in an American paper -

Medley of flavors enlivens halibut

Now why do I find that funny....?

The Godfather Part IV - should I be laying down some Dom. Corleone?

‘I’ve just become a father/godfather – aren’t I supposed to stash away some wine or some port for the little sprog?’

I get asked a question like this a number of times a year, and I still haven’t settled on a definitive answer to the question. The wino in me says that anyone would be overwhelmed with gratitude to receive a couple of cases of something mature and tasty as they pass into adulthood. But then there’s another bit of me that says, ‘Whoa, whoa, hang on a minute, squire.’ It asks me what I would have done had my dad/godfather presented me with a dozen old bottles on my 18th birthday. Yes, I drank wine then, but I don’t think I’d have been too bothered which vintage it was from, as long as it didn’t taste of meths and make me go blind. I seriously doubt whether any would have been left even a week later.

It then starts asking me whether I wouldn’t be better off investing the £250, £1,000, £5,000, whatever sum I had in mind, until a much later date when it became clear whether or not little Janet/John (or Topsy/Tim, if you are slightly younger than me) actually enjoyed wine. If s/he didn’t, then I could buy something else. If s/he did, then I’d have a much larger kitty to play with. Yes, some wines do rise in value over time, but judging by past performance, hardly any will outpace the stockmarket, the price of housing, even a decent cash ISA.

And that’s before you take into account the rather important matter of whether you want to fork out several years rent to a specialist company for storage space in their temperature-controlled warehouse. For those of you in the fortunate position of having suitable space at home, the situation is still not perfect. You have to make sure little Johnny's inheritance is safe from prying hands, and not just those of devious adolescents. Many wine lovers have tales of how they opened that precious bottle of Château Eau de Singe in the wee small hours long after their taste buds and sensibility had retired to bed.

Another thing. Not everyone actually likes the taste of old wine – some do, some don’t. One person’s ‘wonderfully mellow’ is another’s ‘old cupboards’. If you do end up spending the kitty on wine, you can buy a bit of old stuff and some younger stuff too – few wines are better at age 18 than they were at age 8.

I guess that bottom line is that while I don’t want to put you completely off the idea of laying down wine for future generations, just don’t go mad.

Single bottle trauma

Wine is all about pleasure, right? OK, maybe that's a simplification, but the bottom line is that in a world where we don't have to drink wine to
a) get us in such a mood to attack marauding Goths
b) warm our cockles because we live in a central-heating-less yurt
c) warp our vision so that we will procreate with anything with a pierced navel

And yet... Andrew Bajorek who posted this on Tom Cannavan's wine pages forum is not the first worried wino to suffer from single bottle syndrome. I write as someone whose wine cellar consists of serious quantities of single bottles. Wine writers are often sent wines in two-bottle consignments (one of them may be corked), and we don't have the time/inclination/liver to polish off the extras.

But the question remains: you have only one bottle of a potentially very nice wine - how do you ensure that you drink it at its peak?

And the answer remains: there is no definitive answer.

A cop out? No. Think about music. Think about food. think about cars. Do we all go for the same thing? No. And it's the same with wine. And even if you have two people who like wines from the Rhone, or Santorini, or Maipo, you will hardly ever get them to agree on a precise time when a wine is 'ready'. Some like grippy tannins and upfront fruit. Others prefer something more mellow and evolved. The important thing is that no one is wrong in preferring wines at whatever stage of development they are at.

My advice for for single bottle owners? By all means check out what other online drinkers are saying about wines. But if you're still in two minds, open them on a Friday night. If it's ready, you can drink it there and then. If it's not, chances are that it will be starting to shine on Saturday.

Extremely lost in translation

Nothing too wine-y today - gearing up to taste dozens of South African Sauvignons next week, but today's a day when I should be writing and hoping that editors don't ring up saying 'Where's my article on ___?'

But while I'm here, my sister has packed many jobs into her 40-something years, one of which was translating from French and Italian into England. She was always moaning about ambitious companies that would spend heaps on marketing and then blow it all by skimping on translation. I've just happened across a web site for a hotel that illustrates in truly surreal fashion just what she was talking about. Enjoy...

The ten commandments of the wine cellar

1) Thou shalt not kill. If you’re planning to keep wine at home for anything more than a couple of years, you need to give serious thought to where and how it is stored, otherwise you could ruin it. More of that in a future post, but for now, it’s the do’s and don’t’s of cellar etiquette.

2) Never buy a wine you don’t like. Try to taste any wine you’re thinking of buying in quantity, even if it has the pundits raving. If it doesn’t hit the right spots, then just say ‘no’.

3) Don’t buy too much. Resist wine merchants’ ‘vintage of the century’ propaganda, and buy in sensible quantities. Otherwise you’re going to run short of a) space, b) money for other pleasures, and c) lifetime in which to polish off your stash. Similarly...

4) Stock-take. If you’re drinking mostly Burgundy and buying mostly Bordeaux, you’ll eventually encounter stock flow problems. Every six months, check your supplies and adjust your drinking/purchasing patterns accordingly.

5) There will always be another vintage. You missed out on the superb 2005 clarets/Burgundies/whatever (strike out as applicable). But guess what? The 2001 clarets/2002 Burgundies/2003 whatever were also rather good. No vintage is unmissable.

6) Don’t forget those whites. Red wines are generally more cellar-worthy than whites. However white wines from several cooler regions around the world don’t object to bottle age, and many Sauternes, Burgundies and northern Rhône whites, plus Rieslings from almost anywhere, positively thrive on it. If in doubt, ...

7) Experiment. Ten year old Muscadet, twenty year old Beaujolais, thirty year old semi-sweet Loire rosé... Yes, I’ve had them all, and found some not just ‘interesting’, but actively enjoyable. Strange things happen to wine over time, not all of them positive, but you should reserve a small corner in the cellar for experimental purposes. However...

8) Too soon is better than too late. Not all wines can survive twenty years in the cellar, and most will be fading at age 5. So don’t resist that urge to pull the corks on bottles whose progress you’re interested in. If the wine seems too young, just jiggle it about in a decanter for a while and it’ll probably come out of its shell. However, if it’s too old, you’re stuffed. More salad dressing anyone?

9) It’s there to be drunk. Some wines in your cellar may accrue in value. Resist the temptation to sell them. You hear some people say, ‘Ooh, this wine’s gone up so much in price, I really can’t afford to drink it.’ You never hear them say, ‘Ooh, this house costs so much now, I really can’t afford to live here.’ You made a fortunate investment, now enjoy it.

10) Give and it will be given to you (Luke 6:38). Your precious hoard is there to be shared, even with wine plebs. So offer Lieb-loving Auntie Mabel a taste of grand cru Burgundy, and don’t wince too obviously if cousin Kevin mixes your 1990 Barolo with Red Bull. Just mutter under your breath, ‘Serendipity, serendipity,...’ then patiently await the day when one of them wins the lottery and develops a passion for pricey Pomerol.

Too much, too young

I confess, this lunchtime, I had a glass of Pinot Grigio. I know, I know, I'm supposed to talk about wine here rather than Pinot Grigio. A press release came through a couple of months ago from a company suggesting that the southern Italian grape Fiano might be 'the next Pinot Grigio'. Sent them a note saying something like, 'What, you mean bland, with a pretty label, but girlies love it?'

However, here was a Pinot Grigio that actually had a little personality. The wine was the Swan Bay 2007 from Scotchmans Hill in Victoria, Australia (set to be £7.50-£8 from the Wine Society). It had that waxy walnut and apple edge of good examples, and was more buxom than most.

But... Now I realise that wineries need cash flow, but I'm getting tired of tasting wines that have been released while they're still in nappies. And I'm not talking here about nobby clarets that need a decade or so in order to work out what the fuss is all about. I'm talking about normal, everyday wines that need a few months in bottle to calm down. the Swan Bay has all the makings of decent wine, but it's for drinking at Christmas and beyond, not while it's still sucking its thumb.

Don't blame the winemakers. I've had conversations with several in places as far apart as Austria and South Africa who despair of the 'youngest is best' mentality which has people demanding the latest vintage almost as soon as its finished fermenting. No, it's typically their bosses who cajole them into getting the stuff out of the cellars ASAP - and sometimes encourage them to tweak the winemaking to make the wine more forward.

Try this experiment. See if you can find both the 2007 and 2006 vintages of a cheapish southern hemisphere white. Try them side by side - bet you prefer the older one.

Rioja, but not as we know it

There are three empty bottles in front of me. Did I drink the contents of them all? No. Did I drink a glass of any of them? No. But I tasted them several times to see if I could work out what the $*$! United Wineries were thinking of when they created the Marques de Concordia Extreme, sorry, Extrême range.

Not that a normal person would have been able to tell the difference between the three wines. To my admittedly short-sighted eyes, the front labels and capsules are identical, while the back labels are almost identical bar the bottle number and the alcohol level. If the helpful Scott Burton of PR company Cube hadn't stuck on stickers saying which was the Cabernet Sauvignon (13.5% alcohol), which the Merlot (14%) and which the Syrah (14.5%), I'd have had to go off taste. I think I'd have got them right - the Cabernet was leafy and blackcurranty, the Merlot softer and plummier, while the Syrah had flavours of spicy chocolate and berries. But what did they have to do with Rioja? Not much, apart from the thumbprint of American oak. Maybe the overripe 2003 vintage should take some of the blame. Certainly there was very little acidity, plus a fair degree of brett. And they're £13...

Give them a miss and spend your money either on proper Rioja or on better examples of the three varietals from elsewhere. Current faves for the three grapes are Falernia Syrah from Chile (see here), Mas de Daumas Gassac's intriguing Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé Frizant Vin Mousseux (£10.99 Caves de Pyrene, Green & Blue) and - shit, I can't think of a Merlot I like. Let's see what's on the sample rack....

OK, back with a glass of Casa Lapostolle's Cuvée Alexandre 2005 Merlot (I'm sure this used to be mostly Carmenere, but the label says its only 15%). Wine writers aren't supposed to be biased, but my son is called Alex and the wine is usually a bit of a banker. And it doesn't let me down. It's classic Chile, rich, earthy, packed with blackcurrants, big but not too pumped up. The wrong wine for a summer evening, but still pretty good, and with a refreshing tang to the finish that was all too obviously absent in the Concordia Riojas. Wouldn't be surprised to see it blossoming in the next 24 hours.

Socks and Rocks

Click here to be astounded, offended, confounded by Gary Vay-ner-chuk on the Conan O'Brien show in the US.

Not sure whether Jancis Robinson's socks wouldn't be more like pretty floral English wine than feral Fixin...

Glass Act

Being a) clumsy and b) an enthusiastic wine drinker, I'm always in the market for decent cheap glasses. I will never call them stemware - does anyone call mugs handleware? I've been the proud owner of several Riedel glasses and I've smashed most of them, usually when shaking the last drips out after washing them and catching the rim on the tap. Grrrr.... But now I'm the proud owner of six glasses that from a distance could pass for the Riedel Chianti glass, which is one of the best all-rounders in the extensive range. Closer up, the thicker glass and variable thickness tell you it's not the real thing, but it's still a decent shaped and sized vessel. And while a six pack from Riedel will set you back at least £50 - and much much more if you go for the Sommeliers range - this particular sextet was just a fiver. That's 83.3p per glass. A bargain. If you're quick, and you live near a branch of Au Naturale, you might still find some in stock.

In search of gentleness

I've been writing a piece for Wine & Spirit on small (less than 10,000 cases) producers, and as is often my wont, the deadline is somewhere in the distant past. So this morning, I set the alarm for 5:30, got up early and had polished it off by 9. A good job too, as I'd promised the editor I'd eat a copy of the Argentine supplement that came with the August issue if he didn't have it by first thing.

Then I went back to bed for a couple of hours, woke up just as the rest of the family was setting off up to Pots & Pans, and decided I'd have an early lunch rather than a late breakfast. Having written 1500 words by 9am, I felt just a bit smug and figured I deserved a glass of wine. A trawl through the sample rack revealed five wines with screwcaps, so feeling lazy, I thought I'd just try these. Any half-decent wine writer never has a shortage of wine to taste, but usually they're not always the wines you want to drink. Expressed mathematically...

A = Enthusiasm of PR Company OR Budget of Marketing Depertment
B = Quality

A x B is a constant

So there I was, lunch ready to go, but unable to find a wine I wanted to drink. Yes, all five were OK, but there's a cheesy old adage that says 'Life is too short to drink bad wine' and like many cheesy old adages, it's true. I didn't mind tasting these wines, and if someone had given me a glass of any of them at a party or over dinner, I'd have drunk it. But given the choice, I wanted something more stimulating. I ended up pulling the cork on a more ambitious Portuguese red, Quinta da Romaneira from the Douro. I can't fault its concentration, nor its complexity. But a nice gentle lunchtime quaffer? Dans mes rêves...

Wine films

I wish I'd thought of that... Just had a press release from UK supermarket Morrisons for the Casillero del Diablo Reserva Privada headed 'The Devil Wears Privada'. Good one whoever thought that up, and curses that I didn't include it in the wine films I did for Wine & Spirit magazine last year, which featured some of the following...

The Savennières Itch

Something About Maury

Friuli Madly Deeply

Nyetimber on Elm Street (with Freddie Krug)

Ruedas of the Lost Ark

A Bridge Too Far Niente/A Ridge Too Far

Some Like it Huet

Coteaux du Layon The Pig Farmer

Rebel without a Cos

La Tâche aux Folles

Women on the Verget of a Nervous Breakdown

Carillon Camping

The Good, the Bad and the Ugni

Borba the Greek

Nevers Say Nevers Again

I’m Alright Dujac

When Harry Met Skalli

And so on...

Sekts and the City, sorry, Syrah

Consumer tastings keep me sane. Well not so much sane as in touch with how normal people think - that's 'normal' as in those who don't spend all day spitting into buckets and sinks (note to self to post soon about spittoon nightmares). For pro spitters, it's all too easy to forget that many folk go for immediate impact in wines, rather than looking for life beyond the first few sniffs and sips. For example, I was tasting with a group of locals last night, and we tried two Chilean Syrahs. The Viña Falernia Syrah 2005 from the northerly but chilly Elqui Valley (£5.95 Tanners) was lovely gentle fragrant wine, more like Crozes Hermitage than anything from the New World. Yum, and a bargain to boot. Then came the Pangea 2004 from Apalta (£25-£30 Harrods, Roberson), which is a joint venture between Viña Ventisquero and Aussie Shiraz maestro John Duval, the ex-Penfolds winemaker. This was much more a bruiser, albeit a classy bruiser, with the rich oily texture and roasted notes you find in many Californian Syrahs. Both very tasty wines, and I expected a split panel, but no, virtually everyone preferred the brawn of the Pangea to the more subtle charms of the Falernia.

But the surprise of the evening for many was a German Sekt, the Solter Rheingau Riesling Brut 2004 (~£13 The Winebarn). I can count the number of times I've ever enjoyed Sekt on one hand and still have enough digits left to pick both nostrils. And Riesling with bubbles can be just OTT. But this was a very tasty, punchy wine, full of fruit but not too aggressively so, and with fresh acidity to keep your mouth clean. Not as good as 1996 Krug, but a fraction of the price