thewinesinger Blog

Strange day! I decided to go to a Nicolas press tasting, held between 10am and 1pm, before the opening of the Nicolas Wine Fair, for consumers, at Lindley Hall, one of the Royal Horticultural Halls. Had to collect a car from its winter check-up before I went to London, so I arrived at the tasting at 10.45am.

There were lots of stands, with encouraging-looking exhibitors. The first familiar face I saw was Joelle Marti-Baron, standing behind some appealing bottles of Henriot Champagne. I was welcomed like a long-lost uncle by the two Westbury PR greeters. 'You're the first person' was the line. What? No one else here? Yes, but only exhibitors. At about 11.30am, Claire Hu from Harpers Wine & Spirit turned up, did some interviews, and went.

Apart from her, I was the only press person. There were good wines to be sampled, good people to talk to, and no press takers.

Why? The last time Nicolas hosted a tasting was some two years ago (might even have been three). They hired the upper room at the White Horse on Parsons Green, and showed wines from Oddbins (this was before they sold it) and from Nicolas. We tasted Oddbins wines first. Pretty forgettable French wines, but more interest from everywhere else. Not like the old Oddbins, but not bad.

Then came the Nicolas offerings. There were about three that were positively recommendable, a Madiran, a rosé and something else. And there were the rest, depressingly lowest common denominator wines. The right appellation names were there, but bought at what seemed like the lowest possible level. If they were indicative of what was on the Nicolas shelves, it had been a wasted trip.

Maybe my colleagues had not recovered from that experience. But today was different, with interesting wines and very good suppliers. All standing behind their tables waiting for tasters.

I stayed till about 4.30pm, tasting with pleasure. Most of the afternoon visitors seemed to be staff from Nicolas shops. Maybe things got livelier when I left.

Anyway, if you're at a loose end tomorrow (whoops, today), and feel like tasting some good French wines, get along to Lindley Hall. The Fair starts at 10am, and finishes at 5pm. The Nicolas website says you have to buy tickets at one of their shops, but that the cost (£15) will be refunded with a £15 gift voucher.

There are lots of top spirits as well, and even some non-French wines. If you enjoy good French wines, it's an opportunity not to miss.

MULLED WINE (OR ANY OTHER DRINK)

(The reason for making the spice tea is in order to avoid having to heat the wine (or cider, or beer) to extract the spice flavours, and losing all the alcohol in the process!)

First, make the ‘spice tea’. You will need 100ml of spice tea per bottle (750ml) of red wine.
1 pint cold water (568 ml)
1 cinnamon stick
5 cloves
¼ level teaspoon each of ground ginger, grated nutmeg and mace
¼ of the pared rind of an orange and of a lemon
Bring this to the boil, and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. It reduces down to about 450ml spice tea. Strain and reserve.

To make the mulled wine (cider/beer), take inexpensive red wine (southern French vin de pays is good, or Spanish or Argentinian red, but steer clear of wines made of the ‘Bordeaux varieties’ - Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc or Merlot). If using cider, it can be inexpensive, but should be dry. For beer, ordinary bitter. Bring to serving temperature, and add 100ml of the pre-prepared spice tea and one heaped tablespoon of sugar per bottle of wine. Stir to dissolve the sugar. If you like, you can decorate with halved slices of orange and lemon.

Well, I wish I had made it to the conference earlier, but I was shepherding the charming (really) folk of Tiffield around some of the high-spots of the Douro Valley.

A fun tasting on Saturday evening, and great to see so many tasting comments on Twitter. Glad that some of the wines got really good reactions. And sorry about that corked bottle of the Alvarinho fizz. I arrived too late to check bottles. After my attempt to sing a verse of fado at the end, a delightful Portuguese lady asked me what language I was singing in. Ah, well...

And a good day in the Terras de Sado/Peninsula de Setubal yesterday. Brilliant reception and wines at Bacalhoa. Less so at J M da Fonseca. I worry about them, based on that relatively short tasting. The Moscateis (Portuguese plural) at Horacio Simoes were fine, but they have a bit of work to do on the reds.

For those who attended the whole event, it had obviously been brilliant, socially, inspirationally, technically, wineyly, and as an opportunity to learn a little more about Portugal. I shall try to have a better attendance record next year.

Great to meet those I did for the first time, and to see old friends. Well done, Ryan and Gabriella, Robert and the Cable Boys, André (x 2) and Emidio!

Just back from two days visiting six of the seven smaller wineries owned by the Symington family, watching the progress of the 2009 Douro vintage, and listening to winemakers telling the story of the 2009 vintage.

If ever a European wine family has put their money where their mouths are it’s the Symingtons. Out of the 950ha of Douro vineyards farmed by the Symingtons and their company, 164 ha are on estates directly owned by members of the Symington family. And as Paul Symington pointed out vineyards up and down the banks of the river, I soon realized that if he told me the name of an owner using only a first name, the default family name was always Symington. ‘That’s Ian’s’, ‘that’s Johnny’s’, and so on.

Seeing these six small wineries working has driven home the message that the ports and wines from the Symington empire aren’t all made in industrially-sized ‘wine facilities’. The wineries at Quinta do Bomfim and Quinta do Sol are large (I’ve visited both in the past). The seven others are medium-sized to frankly small, each with a supervising member of the Symington technical team responsible for all the wines produced at his winery.

And all seem pretty happy about the quality of the vintage, after a cool June and July and a sizzling August. Quantities are down, anywhere between 15 and 30%, but colours are good, even from the hotter vineyards and the normally lighter Barroca grape. The higher, cooler vineyards haven’t been picked yet, but the grapes there look great.

Most importantly, nothing seems rushed. The sun is shining, no rain is threatening the health of the grapes still on the vines, and the reduced quantities means there is no rush to move grapes and ferments on to make way for the next lot. There’s enough space and manpower, and the only cloud on my visits was a misbehaving cooler at Cavadinha.
...............

It has often been said that the best ports are made by foot-treading the grapes when they have been picked, to help extract colour, tannins and aromas. The new question is: man or machine? Vesuvio makes port only by treading by human feet, all the others use a mix of methods for their winemaking, pressure-driven ‘auto-fermenters’, steel tanks with rotating cap-plungers, conventional pump-over tanks and wonderful modern stainless steel lagares with robotic ‘treaders’.

These robotic lagares are installed at four of the Symington estates. Cavadinha has six lagars, Sol four, Malvedos three and Senhora da Ribeira three. A row of three of these cost €120,000. That’s quite an investment to replace a team of human treaders. But when you consider those human treaders have already spent a long day in the vineyard picking grapes, and then have to do another three hours’ treading, you understand why the Symingtons have gone robotic in some places. There are no other hours in the day these people could tread apart from the evenings, and some wineries already employ an entirely different set of workers for the evening treading because of transport and accommodation reasons.

And the robotic treaders really do tread. Each pneumatically-operated plunger has a set of food-grade silicone ‘feet’. When in ‘tread’ mode, these make gentle contact with the bottom of the lagar, and with any grape skins under the ‘feet’. Then they bounce straight up, carefully set to avoid crushing undesirable tannins out of pips. And so they continue for four hours, more rhythmically and for longer than any human treaders could manage, even when the latter are encouraged by the shouts of the foreman. While human treaders tread, he keeps up cries of ‘hey-ey, up’ (or the Portuguese equivalent), while short-clad legs rise and fall in rhythm, arms linked in a line. After two hours of this, ‘liberdade’ (liberty) follows, for an hour, where an accordionist takes over, treaders sing, form conga lines, and dance with each other. Female picker/treaders are much in demand at this point, though some ladies stymie male advances by dancing with each other.

At Vesuvio, all this treading finishes at 10.30pm, and the workers are whisked back to their sleeping quarters by lorry, ready to get enough sleep to see them through the next day. But in the morning, the winemakers in charge at Malvedos, Cavadinha, Senhora da Ribeira and Sol can decide whether to give their robotic lagars another hour or so of ‘treading’ at several times through the day. Later they can switch the treader to ‘plunge’ mode, in which the ‘feet’ don’t touch the bottom, but just turn over the floating cap of skins and pips. This keeps the cap moist, and carries on the extraction of colour and flavour. Again, much more efficient than the traditional alternative of stationing a man by the side to poke the cap down with a wooden pole (or have a snooze when the boss is somewhere else).

But it's not all port. Back on Sussex terra firma, I looked for a bottle to share with my 20-year old daughter. She likes reds. I found a bottle of Chateau Bel Air 1995, from St-Estephe. Most of her experience is of fruity, new world wines, so I thought it would be interesting to try her on a claret that should be nicely mature.

The cork was flawless, almost as if it had been recorked a couple of years ago. Her first reaction, 'Is it old?' Then, 'It's not very fruity.' Then she settled into drinking it.

It had a richly earthy nose, with overtones of dark chocolate and old wooden furniture. And perhaps some stewed black fruit. Tannins were still firm, acidity brisk, and it had earthy, woody complexity. Definitely not fruity, but offering different and more complex enjoyment.

She had two friends round who both wanted white wine, but it's good to have a daughter who prefers red. Somehow, it feels like a small achievement. In a week's time, she's off to university. I'll send her with a few bottles of decent red.

I cannot believe I did that! Moments after watching Murray comprehensively beaten by Roddick, I tweeted 'Roddick's out'!

Shows the power of thought. I know that's what I wanted. I wanted Andy Murray to be the first Brit in the final of the men's singles at Wimbledon in, was it 67 years? But he had just lost, not won. Not embarrassingly, just outplayed. He had no answer to Andy Roddick's first serve, and didn't get enough first services in himself.

Huge congratulations to Murray for progressing this far, but he didn't look as sharp today as he had against Walewski. (I missed the quarter-final.) He patted balls back he should have driven, and looked almost awed by the fact he had got this far.

Roddick was definitely the better player today. First serve, slanting cross-court play, and just a feeling of solidity and consistency. But Murray's young. He has improved his strength and serve hugely since I last watched him. He has more to achieve.

Sometimes old bottles just take you totally by surprise.

Event: picnic after son's school prizegiving.
Weather: warm, slightly cloudy, with sun grinning through.
Dish: Sea bass aioli
Wine: Hermitage Blanc Cuvée Marquis de la Tourette 1984, Delas

I had taken a back-up bottle, just in case. (OK, it was a Trimbach Riesling.) The cork of the white Hermitage was not great. Totally soaked and starting to crumble. The wine was deep gold when I poured the first taste. (I eyed the Trimbach.) Amazingly, the Hermitage was still alive! What's more it developed brilliantly as we made our way down the bottle. To start with, it wasn't fruity, but savoury and honeyed, rich and complex. The GLW, who tends to like her wine fresh and youthful, was looking positive and appreciative. The wine became more complex with each glass, adding nuances of almond and apricot kernel, totally dry yet voluptuously smooth, with tangy acidity. The apricotty finish was enlivened by a twist of tannin. Definitely a WOW! wine.

A dry rosé would probably have been a fairer match for the sea bass aioli. And the Trimbach has survived to be drunk another day.

When the hot days of summer finally set in (and yes, British friends, this year they will - I've been told by a little man in front of a summer-house), we eaters of meat will not want to forsake our red wines.

But served at normal, 'room temperature', no, sirree! Alcohol shoots out of the glass, fragrances are quelled and pleasure suspended. What we need in these trying and unusual (British) circs is cool red wine. I'm not saying cold, not even really chilled, but cool, as if from an underground cellar, cooled by the earth.

Some reds don't taste good cool. Others positively benefit. If there's a rule (who needs them these days?), it's that reds with angular tannins need not apply for a space in my fridge. Somehow, any of those lean, slightly under-ripe tannins seem that much leaner and meaner when you cool them down. And so I've always looked for light, low-tannin reds for summer drinking. Loire Gamay, Valpolicella and Bardolino Classico, Beaujolais, Austrian Zweigelt, you know the sort of thing.

But I have just had a vision. Or, more accurately, a revelation. Picture the scene: grey sky, slightly chilly evening. The GLW and I sitting down to a supper of grilled sausages, salad from the garden and a few fried potatoes. What do we need? A light red. The GLW departs to the cellar to fetch a sample bottle. I have no idea what she brings back. It's cool - cellar-temperature - and balanced. I guess. European? No. I think: it's fragrant, with black fruits, doesn't seem too alcoholic, no grating tannins. Light-bulb moment: Argentina? Seems Malbec. Yes. Woww! A lightish Malbec. Er, no. Admits to 14% on the back-label, and that probably means 14.5% as a minimum.

It was delicious, hit just the right note, and that's when the realisation dawned. This is the new generation of reds. Tannins are soft and ripe now. They don't grate any longer when they come out of the fridge. What's more, a red you might struggle with at 'room temperature' slips down with indecent ease when cool. The alcohol is less evident.

I think I'm going to enjoy the summer.

OK, so it was a lunch and a dinner really, but what a way to start last week. Lunch at Chez Bruce, staged by Martin Krajewski and David Fatches, to launch their newish Songlines range. John Duval was also there, as their winemaking consultant, familiar from many years as Chief Winemaker in the glory days of Penfolds. And dinner was hosted by the delightful Roberto Bava, roving ambassador for his family’s Piemonte wines, and by San Pellegrino water, at Bentley’s, where the hugely talented Richard Corrigan is now in charge of some of the best-cooked fish in London.

It was a lesson in how to please a wine-producer client. At both occasions the wines were served with delicious food. Songlines had a pair of whites, a pair of reds, and a three-wine mini-vertical of the top red. The Bava meal was the culmination of a series around Northern Europe, ‘A Journey from Water to Wine’, in which top chefs matched Bava wines with fish. So the Bava/San Pellegrino dinner aimed to match the dishes to both Bava wines and San Pellegrino and Acqua Panna waters. For Songlines, Chez Bruce aimed to complement the wines without specifically matching them.

Which kitchen proved the better partner for the wines? You guessed, Chez Bruce.

Bruce Poole’s kitchen created a meal of style and simplicity that provided an immaculate setting for the Songlines wines. We started with two wines called Bylines, a Hunter Valley Semillon and a Hunter Valley Chardonnay. (Bylines is the mid-level for this range, with the entry level wines called Leylines, and the top wines, Songlines.) The cucumber velouté which bathed a small section of incredibly tasty, meaty grilled wild salmon was brilliant with the lean, bright, very traditionally made Semillon. The salmon itself was also a good match for the subtle, bready, restrained Chardonnay. The ‘smoked trout rillettes’ perched on top of the salmon didn’t help much (but was delicious nonetheless).

The main course was beef, a slice of perfectly cooked (ie pink in the middle) rib eye, served with very creamy polenta, a couple of garlicky roasted baby artichoke halves and two utterly delicious, sticky roasted shallots. And a few thick shavings of Parmesan. The Leylines Shiraz was smooth red fruits with a hint of violets, notes of chocolate and spice. Very easy and immediate, and possibly a tad fruity for the beef. But the Bylines, a much darker, black fruited number, mineral and intense, with dark chocolate and mocha hints, was brilliant with the beef.

The three vintages of Songlines Shiraz followed with a plate of four cheeses, and an Époisses placed on the table at a discreet distance. I tasted the wines first, all from ancient McLaren Vale vines – cheese and red wine are not always easy partners. The 2004 Songlines, from a cool vintage, was minty and toffeed. The 2005 was brilliant, dark and savoury, with fabulous intensity and deep, black cherry, black olive and liquorice flavours. The 2006 was more open then the others, dark and minty, with good savoury intensity, but needs more time.

The Bava/San Pellegrino/Bentleys evening was very different. Here the matching Chez Bruce had done automatically, effortlessly, should have been an inherent part of the evening. Except it wasn’t. The beautifully-printed menu showed the five courses, food and wine, on the right, with fish engravings from Scattaglia’s ‘Histoire Naturelle’ on the left. As we left, each diner was given a complete set of the menus for the whole gastronomic journey. Most of the chefs looked to have made an enormous effort to their dishes to the Bava wines. The Corrigan dishes were delicious, but rarely struck a harmonious chord with the accompanying Bava wine. ‘Hot buttered Kent Asparagus with Cornish Crab’, the first course, made the best match, with a dark, toasty Toto Corde méthode traditionelle sparkler, from the newish Altalanga DOC. The Bava 2008 Cor de Chasse Gavi di Gavi, delightfully fresh and crisp, with a gentle floral scent, was overwhelmed by the ‘Salt Chilli Native Lobster, Coriander and Linguine’, with an intense, creamy sauce infused with seafood flavour. Delicious, but not remotely a match. Dorset Plaice, with Iberico Ham, Morels and Broad Beans followed. None of my fellow diners had ever seen plaice this gigantic, but the dish was terrific, but no way did it match the rich, toffeed, savoury banana flavours of the 2003 Alteserre Monferrato Bianco (75% oak-fermented Chardonnay, 25% steel-fermented Cortese).
As for the attempt at a pairing for the smooth, savoury, raspberry-perfumed Cadodo Monferrato Rosso (Nebbiolo, with a little Barbera and Merlot), the Buffalo Curd with Candied Celery didn’t even come close. We finished with a lovely, fresh, floral Bass Tuba Moscato d’Asti. The lavender shortbread was a subtle and alluring match, but let down by the strawberries and lemon curd that were also on the plate.

Conclusion? Both chefs cooked wonderful food, and the wines shown were likewise excellent. But if I were a producer looking to showcase a set of wines in the context of a meal, I’d be heading for Chez Bruce!

Frédéric Engerer, general manager of Châtour Latour, was in town last weekend. An amazing-sounding dinner at The Greenhouse on the Friday night, then a tasting, mainly for sommeliers, on Saturday morning. And not a bottle of Château Latour to be had at either occasion. Why? It was a celebration of Les Forts de Latour, Latour’s second wine.

But, as Engerer outlined, not so much a second wine as a wine from its own vineyards, made to the level of a Second Growth Bordeaux. If it was virtually a different property, why keep the name? ‘I rather like the name,’ he admitted. (And, of course, it comes with the Latour brand attached. That can’t be bad for sales.) ‘Now I want someone else to represent Forts de Latour, because we’re killing ourselves by presenting Latour and Les Forts together,’ Engerer said. (Applications on a Mouton postcard to Latour will not necessarily secure the job.)

He explained how almost all Les Forts comes from two parcels, Petit Batailley and Pinada, to the west of l’Enclos (nearest the river Gironde, and the home of the vines that go into the Grand Vin). How Les Forts always shows the character of the vintage much more clearly than Latour (whose wonderful terroir enables it to make great wines every year!). And how Les Forts always has more Merlot than Latour, usually about 30%. (If the Cabernet Sauvignon from l’Enclos is ripe, very little Merlot gets into Latour.)

We tasted 10 vintages of Les Forts, preceded by the current release of Latour’s third wine, the Pauillac de Latour. This is always intended to be the early bird from the stable, released purely to restaurant trade (that’s the idea, anyway). And when it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s ripe, smooth and red fruited. Bright and fresh, with soft, silky tannins, a stylish but easy-drinking Pauillac.

Then came the run of Les Forts wines, 2006 back to 2000, then 1996, 1995 and 1990. As Engerer had said, vintage showed. 2006 was first out, a real contrast to the Pauillac before. It’s darker, sweeter-fruited and denser, with firmer tannins, good intensity and bright, red and black fruit. It’s very young as yet (Engerer said Les Forts usually takes 10 to 20 years to show its true character). Then came the 2005, true to the excellent year, a wine that definitely needs the ageing, dark, inky, quite treacley on the nose, with rich, soft, velvety tannins, dense and delicious in the mouth. Fabulous wine, that developed more and more muscle in the glass.

The 2004 Forts de Latour is less opulent than the 2005, with a dark, ripe centre, very much in the black fruit spectrum, with a hint of black olives. The palate has very rich tannins, with mulberry and blackberry fruit flavours. The 2003 was a shade disappointing. It’s certainly true to the year, with baked, soft, sweet fruit through nose and palate. Tannins are quite firm, and it finished a little shorter than others. It’s light, easy and very ripe, but I wouldn’t keep it for long! The 2002 was also contentious, from a less ripe vintage, and showing a grassier aspect than others. But on the palate it has freshness and balance, with leafy blackcurrant length. Everyone liked the 2001, sweet-fruited and elegant. It’s a vintage that was neglected after the hype of the 2000s, but has re-emerged as a delightfully poised, traditionally Bordeaux year. This Forts has lovely, sweet, blackcurrant and cedar aromas, with rich, soft, bright flavours. It has beautiful balance, real sweetness to the fruit and savoury balance. Then came the 2000, Engerer’s favourite wine. It’s very big, opulent and flamboyant, very ripe. Engerer said it needed another couple of years. It’s obviously super-ripe, with firm tannins, but seemed to me to lack density. I went back twice, but remained unconvinced. Good but not great.

The gap between 2000 and 1996 was enormous, the difference between unrealised potential and actual drinkability (it’s served its 10 years plus in bottle). Aromas are sweet and candied, and the palate echoes these, with fresh acidity, firm tannins and lovely, candied fruit. Fresh acidity keeps the whole balanced and elegant. The 1995 is the other vintage (with 2003) that suffered from too much heat. And the team at Latour didn’t have the know-how they do now. Sweet, ripe aromas are followed by quite leafy flavours, with slightly dry tannins. This lacks a central richness and finishes firm, with a leafy finish. The last wine was the 1990, very voluptuous and figgy. It’s very seductive, fleshy and smooth, but seemed rather out of line, inviting but lacking the backbone that the other vintage showed. Lovely today, but maybe fading tomorrow.

A fascinating tasting, as you don’t often get the chance to taste ten vintages of a First Growth’s second wine. Thanks to Frédéric Engerer of Latour and Ronan Sayburn of The Greenhouse for organising it. And Engerer made his point. Maybe not the ‘super-seconds’, but Les Forts is certainly up at the level of some Second Growths.