Confessions of a Wino

Tall and tanned, and young and lovely was the girl from Ipanema.  But I’ve been getting more luck from the South of France recently.  Of sorts.  This young lady, for example, going by the seductive name of Château du Cèdre turned out to have a huge pair of bollocks.  More Manchester Pride than Brazilian carnival babe.

Rich, fruity, yet smooth and soapy.  It is a bit like drinking coffee from an earthenware pot whilst munching on a raspberry teabag.  But if you can stand the tannins, it is conclusive proof that you can build a wine sturdier than a tranny’s thong at only 13° ABV.  One in the eye for Mr Parker?

I would recommend following WART instructions and taking this down from room to cellar temperature, to avoid scalding your tongue.

Available from Costco at £11.73 – this feels like good value to me.

Jersey is the most beautiful of islands but, let’s be honest, it’s a bit Wicker Man.  I feel like I am in a 1970’s time-warp.  Even my beloved and essential iPhone is rendered useless by a lack of suitable networks.  No voice, no data, no life.

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Interest rates artificially low.  Share prices rising.  Inflation a constant news item.  Retailers gloomy.  The price of luxuries like clothing and food are under threat.  Irish banks bailed out yet again.

Could there be any clearer signals that the double dip is on the way?  When it comes to recession theory, I firmly believe in the BIG W.  The other big W in my life belongs to Bacchus.  But how much longer will I be able to subscribe to the President’s Cellar?  Pretty much the only wine I buy from the Sunday Times Wine Club these days, and the only circumstance in which I relinquish the responsibility of choice, delivers 6 secret bottles every 6 months at about £20 a head.

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Maybe this is the future of wine marketing, maybe it is just a bit of fun.  Either way, PR société, Agence Clair de Lune of Lyon, France has created a bit of a stir with its Secret Wine promotion.

85 wine bloggers from around the world have entered a competition to guess the “appellation” of 3 mystery red wines, mailed out over the last week.

There is bluff and counter bluff going on with bright green replacement corks in non-specific bottles, and apparently randomly numbered labels.  The fact that the PR company is based in Lyon might lead one to think that the wines are from the Rhone or Burgundy.  I am not 100% convinced that they are all even from France, but I am making that leap of faith as a starting point.  Even having made that assumption, is it one appellation showing off its variety, or a region showing diversity, or is something more devious going on?

Psychology works.  There is a mood on the Secret Wine website (voters choices are shown on the home page) that tends towards the South of France regions.  The wines arrived with a note advising the correct drinking temperature was 14°.  This smacks of Rhone rather than Languedoc to me, but I am going to try to ignore all the misleading signs apart from the country of origin.

I’ve never done a blind tasting and come out any better than looking a complete fool, but fools never learn to keep their gobs shut, so, with little trepidation, here is my take on the wines.

714 – the petrol and elastic bands smell from the glass is what I always get from Monastrell/Mourvèdre.  Could this be a barking mad Bandol?  If it wasn’t a French PR agency I would have said a Monastrell from Barcelona.

390 – tastes like a classic Bordeaux blend to me – let’s go for Cotes de Bordeaux.

079 – I wondered if this was primarily a tough but flowery Cabernet Franc so I Googled where this grape predominates and randomly chose Chinon as my guess.

I am clearly wrong or I would now be in possession of the prize holiday.  I can’t wait to find out how much egg I need to wipe off my face.

I was mooching through Sainsbury’s wine section looking for something interesting to go with a pork chop dish I have been working on.  I have to say it was a pretty depressing mooch, with very little to trouble the adrenalinometer.  Rescue came in a bottle of Casillero del Diablo Carménère, a wine I have tried before and enjoyed.  It is from Chilean giant, Concha y Toro, the one brand that seems truly capable of producing wines that rise above the lowest common denominator of the North American and Australian market leaders.

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Finding it is a bit like going to a rave.  First, you need to know a local hombre to get the number.  On tinkling, you are directed to another telephone box to wait for a call.  Then, like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, a taxi appears to pick you up from Alicante town centre and you are driven 20 minutes up the coast, blindfolded.

This sort of experience excites the hell out of me and has my salivary glands pissing like a Dutch dyke.

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After a visit to the Wine Gallery in Bordeaux where I tasted some of the best (or in any case, most expensive) wines in the world, La Brasserie Bordelaise was the destination for a bloody, but fatty, grisly and tough, entrecôte steak.  What could match the power of Château Latour or Cheval Blanc to accompany such a dish?

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Tucked away in a place so secret that only the French Foreign Legion knows of its existence, this place is more charming than Dartagnan and better for juicing up a hot date than a pair of George Clooney’s underpants.

You can expect French service, though, which is the exact opposite of New York service.  That is to say, friendly but slow.

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In what turned out to be the fortunate circumstance of a cancelled flight, I found myself in Bordeaux for an unexpected extra night.  This gave me the opportunity to fulfil a bit of a dream.

Entering through the unassuming entrance of Max Wine Gallery you could be forgiven for thinking that you are entering a posh handbag or clothes boutique.  But, inspect further and inside you will find not Chloe or Hermès, but brands a bit closer to my heart, and liver.

Bottles of various top growths from Médoc, St Emilion and Sauternes are imprisoned within glass cases but with tempting little spouts indicating a tad of promiscuity to willing punters.  A wino heaven, although at a price.

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Where better to try a Bordeaux Grand Cru than in its home town?  Problem is pecuniary.  Although restaurants around Bordeaux ask reasonable mark-ups, this still involves voluntary surgery.  To keep my arms and legs intact, my cunning plan was to buy the wine from a local shop and take it to the restaurant which, for convenience, was Le Savoie, bang in the centre of Margaux.

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