Confessions of a Wino

If you want to test your principles to the limit don’t join Opus Dei, simply have a daughter! My wife is Catholic but, less than impressed with man’s (and, in particular the Church Of Ireland’s) interpretation of God’s way, vowed that our darling would not be forced into a religion. What could go wrong with bringing her up to respect life and people and then allowing her to choose her own religion later in life? In a word, schooling.

There are three to choose from in our area. Two are poor to average, according to OFSTED reports, and one is excellent, but is a Catholic school and realistically requires a baptism. Decision unmade but faith tested is probably the best way to describe the current situation.

How does a winemaker cope with breaking principles every day? How to produce wine that is honest and tasty, yet can make money? I’ve long admired Chilean conglomerate Concha y Toro for making very passable wines en masse and to a decent, very drinkable, quality. Errazuriz is almost there but not quite. Take this Chardonnay, for example. It tastes fruity but a bit tinny and sharp. You can get it for about £8 from Majestic (depending on the prevailing discount scheme), so it falls in the same price bracket as CyT. But, despite the overt apple and pear flavours, this is missing a little je ne sais quoi. Errazuriz is lager in a can, compared to CyT lager in a glass bottle. I’m sure they are catching up, though.

A good test of expensive Burgundy wines (white or red) is whether they go with beans on toast.

I paid Virgin Wines £23.99 for this Pernand-Vergelesses, gulp…. If you join one of the opaque monthly payment schemes, you can make it cheaper. Personally, I’m sick of trading £20 per month for a “discount” on wines, so I have stopped all such accounts (including Virgin) and I am sticking to retailers with simple principles: Join up, look at the website, decide whether to buy, secure in the knowledge that you can nearly always find a competitor price in the event of lingering doubt.

Clearly meeting the expensive moniker, this Vallet Frères is rounder than a grapefruit, zingier than a grapefruit, and fruitier than a grape. This is important because to stand up to the shock and awe of (Branston) baked beans requires a good slug of fruit, gentle tannins and battery like acidity. Tick. Tick. Tick.

BRING OUT THE BRANSTON!

Hosting a dinner party? Got a few sample bottles that you’ve been meaning to taste for ages? Want to follow up an amateurish and inconclusive post on Grand Cru Chablis? A perfect storm for a blind tasting. The brief is simple: take a Chablis Villages, a Premier Cru, and a Grand Cru and see if there is a meaningful, that is to say pecuniarily justified, difference. All wines were from the 2010 vintage.

The bottles, elegantly disguised in blue carrier bags whose former contents were the meat for tonight’s main course, looked like three prisoners in front of a firing squad. As the wino of the party, to be blunt, I could feel the rifles aiming in my direction. I was papping myself. Here are my notes in the order we tasted.

Wine 1: fruity but full bodied,very smooth and tastes well oaked. Not so much flinty steely pebbles as rich plummy apricot and honey. I’m guessing this is the GC
Wine 2: bit steelier but lovely acidity, not oaky. Grassy more than fruity and a little bit of afterburn in the throat. This is probably the Villages.
Wine 3: appley, some flint, quite rounded – I think this is the PC.

Wine 1 in the centre of the podium turned out to be Christian Moreau Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos, a deserved winner but at a price. Imported by Thorman Hunt & Co the RRP is £33.80.

Wine 2, on the right, is Vincent Dampt Chablis and a bronze medal winner which might explain the difficulty in differentiating it from the Premier Cru. Corney & Barrow do this at £13.95.

Wine 3 is the Premier Cru, this one a Christophe & Fils, Fourchaume that is imported by A & B Vintners and the RRP is £14.58.

The main conclusion to be drawn is that a blind tasting livens up a dinner party and focuses people’s attention on the wine. It’s a lot of fun. The consensus was that Grand Cru Chablis clearly stood out and is worth the extra for special occasions. Telling the difference between the Villages and the PC was very difficult and the scores were split, which is reflected in the close price range, to be fair.

So, that may be another amateurish analysis, but at least this time, it’s conclusive.

One of the wine guys in Majestic (most of them are pretty knowledgeable in a wonderfully geeky kind of way), recommended this, when I enquired about big Chardonnays. Surely you are just recommending your latest offer? Admittedly buying two bottles to save £12 is a good deal, but it sounds like you are trying to get rid of it. “No I tried some at home last weekend – really fruity, big and scrumptious”.

He meant in a new world style, rather than a classic Burgundy. I’m not sure. The heaviest thing about this wine, apart from the slightly excessive 14% ABV, is the bottle. I know I paid its air freight from Argentina, but delicate petals adorn the inside. It tastes pretty classy. Quite peachy with vanilla and elderflower. The only new world giveaway is a nod towards one of those banana shaped foam sweets from the Pick n Mix.

Regular readers know that I am a big fan of Catena Zapata wines. This one is not cheap at £23, but with a double bottle discount reducing the price to £17, it is well worth a try. Drank mine with a simple pork chop cooked on the skillet at about 12 degrees (the wine not the chop).

Are you a bit snooty about supermarket wines? I am, but I shouldn’t be. After a warm experience with a couple of Asda whites recently, I was intrigued enough to attend a Tesco wine tasting where this Chablis stood out from the “Finest” range.

Steely, minerally Chardonnays from this northern Burgundy region can occasionally taste like putting your tongue across the poles of a 9v battery. Conversely, on opening, this one is full of soft ripe peachy fruit, a bit too soft. But, as the wine warms (best left out of the fridge for about an hour before drinking) the fruit starts sucking on a black Welsh beach pebble. Not at all over-acidic, very classy and smooth and, as a result, better with roast pork than seafood.

If you shop at Tesco, you might be interested in the code XXH4H4 which, when entered into the Tesco website before Dec 31, 2012, will get you a “no strings attached” £5 discount from a case of wine of your choice.

Have a rethink about supermarket wines, some are better than two slaps across the thigh with a wet kipper from the fish stand. Depending on your sexual persuasion, arguably much, much, better.

Anyone who has forked out silly money in a restaurant for Alta, or even Zapata, will know that Catena produces the daddy of Argentinian Malbec.

Feeling a bit silly for never having tried their Chardonnay, I instructed my bank manager to remit 995 new pennies to the Wine Society and this is what I got in return (postage included).

Chardonnay, and in particular South American Chardonnay gets a bad rap for a being a bit passé, a bit Footballers’ Wives. The shout at every wine bar in Peckham in the PPG (Pre-Pinot Grigio) era, might seem a little bit 1980s, but in my experience, most non-winos when questioned, don’t even realise that the finest white Burgundies are Chardonian.

I, for one, would like to see a revival of this classic old world grape, especially when experimented with in the new. So I have high hopes from one of my favourite wine producers, from one of my favourite wine countries (not that I have forgiven Maradona for the 1986 Hand of God incident).

Just as it is a massive error to drink red wine too warm, over-chilling a rich Chardonnay will stifle your enjoyment. If you are going to put your bottle in the bottom of the fridge for 3 days, you deserve all you get and you could save a lot of money by drinking Echo Falls, since it will taste equally bland. About 20 mins in an ice bucket (from room temp) should be more than enough. I like to drink it in a large, wide bowl glass to maximise the nasal intake.

And the aroma is likely to blow your socks off, or make you gag, depending on your taste buds. The Catena is richer than Tiger Woods, albeit more faithful. It tastes stronger than the 13.5 ABV that it is. Pineapple and stewed fruit combine with sautéed flint stone to give a pleasantly warm and buttery acidity.

It’s not going to beat a top Burgundy, but at a third of the price, it doesn’t have to.

Catena is available widely so if you have some weird vendetta against The Wine Society you can find it at Bibendum, Winedirect, Slurp.co.uk and others.

I’m a massive fan of Frog’s Leap Merlot. Although a Stateside virgin by comparison to most oenophiles, my early experiences of Californian wine massively dispel the myth that they are over-alcoholic, overpowered and over here. And I consider Chardonnay to be a sadly and mistakenly forgotten, and under-rated grape. The chances are better than a plebiscite’s at the Whitehall Main Gate that this will be great.

Sadly, I am left disappointed. There are bags of fruit, and the finish is longer than a John Holmes video. But the acidity is stark. Long finishes are fine on the casting couch, but nobody really wants the climax to taste of a poorly constructed French dressing.

Maybe I got a bad bottle. I have a couple more to try (£17 from The Wine Society). But, barring a U-turn of Mark Thatcher proportions, I’m going to stick to the Merlot (at £22 much better value IMO)….and the Pedestrian Gate.

I’ve had many warm intimate moments with 2007 white Burgundy. This is another sexy beast. Rich and buttery, it brings to mind one of those glazed fruit tarts that are rarely found outside high end French Patisseries. Almost certainly involving blackberries – I found myself picking imaginary seeds from my gums.

Wine Society £18.50. Not cheap, but one for that L’Oréal moment.

From Domaine Collet et fils comes this interesting Chablis, 1er Cru Vaillons “Sécher”. 2009 RRP £21.

Wowzers, I thought Chablis was supposed to be steely, flinty, dry and crisp. This is smooth and buttery honey albeit with an appealing apple sourness.

The normally reliable Wine Searcher iPhone app couldn’t locate a British stockist but I understand it’s available from posh importer, Marc Fine Wines, living up to their claim that they service the on-trade with wines that can’t be sourced elsewhere in the UK. I hope you stumble across it at your local restaurant.

If you do, it’s probably better paired with cheese or chicken than shellfish. Les bourgognes recommend drinking at 10-11 degrees, so ignore restaurant advice,and take it out of the ice bucket if it is served straight from the blast chiller.

Buying wine for laying down is fraught with problems. Aside from the financial investment, and whether it would have actually been cheaper to buy that 1990 claret when you wanted to drink it, rather than cellar it away for 25 years in the hope it’s not oxidised or corked, the storage is a bit of a pain. Also, not all wines age well. In fact, very few should be drunk more than 5 years or so after the vintage date.

I’ve found this out to my cost in a recent exploration and dredging of the nether regions of my wine rack and combine harvester. Over a period of at least four weeks, every alternate bottle has been used to clean the sink rather than rinse my liver. An expensive mistake.

There have been some pleasant surprises. For example, a 2002 Labouré-Roi Meursault tasted of fresh pineapple and lemon despite a recommended drink-by date of 2008.

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