Confessions of a Wino

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried.  The Riesling grape, to serious winos, is what Der Ring des Nibelungen is to opera buffs.  If you don’t understand it, appreciate it, enjoy it, you are a mere Muggle.  Muggles merely struggle to consume the enormous contents wondering what type of hash cakes the buffs eat for breakfast.

And like The Ring, the natural home of Riesling is the Federal Republic of Engineers.  But at the risk of you thinking I have Teutonic Plague, my favourite Rieslings have come from Australia so far.  Just don’t tell anyone, please.

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I normally spend Easter breaks punishing my evil liver.  This time I’ve been sharpening the saw.  My third New Year resolution in a row, and most futile yet, to lose weight, has resulted in a lonely and shameless 2 pounds sneaking off disguised as female musicians.  So time for a bit less booze and a bit more exercise and, most incredibly, no chocolate at all.  I managed 492 sit-ups on Easter Monday amongst other exercise – ouch…

But all work and no play makes Wino a dull boy so to brighten my spirits I picked out an expensive bottle from the Combine Harvester to end the weekend.

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My day job takes me to some very ugly places.  1960’s office buildings in Longbridge, Liverpool and Lewisham.  Soulless serviced office space in Southend, Slough and St Helens purporting to be “modern” but with more of a sense of Alcatraz than alacrity.

So it was an extremely pleasant surprise to be involved with an event at the BT Tower in London.

I have been taking the words haute cuisine a little too literally of late following a towering meal at 40:30 on the 39th floor of the gherkin last year, and this year (review yet to be published) Galvin @ Windows on the 28th floor of the Park Lane Hilton.

But there are few monuments, iconic buildings, national treasures, beautiful landmarks, and yet vital pieces of communication infrastructure that match this one.

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There are some cracking wines coming out of South West France, especially Languedoc, right now.  Sadly this isn’t one of them.

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Les Baux-de-Provence is not a place I have ever visited.  But it has just blasted its way up my desirable-where-to-do-dégustation-in-France list, purely based on this wine, which is one of the most delicious reds I have tasted in a long time.

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Seems I am not the only one complaining about wine temperature in restaurants.  I’ve just read this interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen.  Rightly moaning about red wines left on an open shelf for “decoration”.  I hope the writer meant 20° Celsius, not Fahrenheit.  I know Canadians are tougher than most but 12 below freezing is a pretty cool ambient temperature for a restaurant.

Maybe they should join my Facebook Wine At Right Temperature Campaign.

I spend far too much of what economists laughingly call my “disposable” income on wine.  I also buy more shoes than I can reasonably polish.  I like to think of it as keeping in touch with my feminine side.

Imagine my delight then, when I discovered that Oliver Sweeney has been bought out of administration!  I haven’t purchased a pair for a couple of years (but still own numerous), so maybe I am in some small way responsible for their near demise.  Mind you my temporary desertion of my favourite footwear brand was not purely for economic reasons.  I thought the designs lost their way.  Brands are about consistency of product, not advertising.  Any clever agency can get you to try a product once but loyalty is expressed in repeat sales and recommendations, which only come from over-delivery of the promise.

You could consider wines to be micro brands and I was not that impressed by the product quality of a 2008 Mahi Pinot Noir.  Will the Sauvignon Blanc resole my trust, or leave me with a hole in my shoe?

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I’ve been exploring the wines of South West France recently.  Well, not so much exploring as gnat’s chuffing.  After being priced out of most Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone “offers” – I can’t work out why prices are still so high despite a decent recession – my bank manager wrote me a letter saying that he didn’t expect to see wine as a line item on my request for an overdraft when writing to explain why my household budget does not balance.

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You have to admire the Kiwis.  They took on the French at Sauvignon Blanc and won.  Then they turned their attention to the battle of the Pinot Noir.  This most fickle of grapes, like Brigitte Bardot, promises so much yet regularly delivers no more than a handkerchief full of jizz.

Realising that Burgundy Pinots have almost impenetrable reputations, New Zealand winemakers took a radical stance.  Screwcap closures combined with young drinkable zingy wines were palatable in both flavour and fashion.  This meant prices vied with Ugg Boots for the captain of the Fashion Victim Rest of the World XI, whilst production and maturation costs were relatively low.  Still innovation pays, or ought to.

The label on this wine explains that it was bottled “unfiltered”.  A better description might be “cloudy” and not in the “bay” sense.

Maybe this is just a faulty bottle.  It didn’t taste awful, but then again it fell way short of remarkable and certainly not worth the £18 The Wine Society sent a congratulatory letter of thanks to my bank manager for.

I have another bottle somewhere – I will try that and report back.

It is reassuring, in a Savile Row tailor sense, to see that after 311 years of tradition, Berry Bros & Rudd is innovating.  There has been a technology EXPLOSION recently with a well constructed and very readable blog, a whizzy website and now an iPhone app.

As an iPhone addict, who gets frustrated at not even being able to delete an email whilst on the tube, it is refreshing to see that the app is available offline.

It’s a must-have for wine geeks.  For example, if you want to check the retail price of an overpriced bottle in Gaucho Grill, you can do so discreetly, under the table, and then argue righteously and indignantly with the waiter about how you object to being fleeced by a two bit South American theme park (that happens to serve great steaks).

Then again, BBR has a disappointing range of Argentineans – a mere nine wines (compared to 190 champagnes and 391 clarets).  And if you actually want to order a wine you have to go to the BBR website – but this is a small complaint that I feel sure they will resolve in good time.  Hopefully not another 311 years.