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Jamie's
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Wednesday 11th September 2002
There’s a bit of a problem with Chilean wines. They all taste
the same. OK, I exaggerate. But only slightly. As I write I’m on my
way back from the wines of Chile annual tasting, at which I tasted
from a central table of some 70 wines representing the best that Chile
has to offer, plus the full ranges of several leading producers. I
encountered very few poor wines, but then I tasted very few really
good ones. Chile's strength is its inexpensive commercial wines.
Chilean Merlots, Carmenères or Cabernet Sauvignons typically offer
pure, sweet berry and blackcurrant fruit flavours, together with
perhaps a dash of oak. Very approachable, and good value for money at
around a fiver a pop. If you spend more, the wines tend to get more
concentrated and perhaps a little oakier, but it is the same pure
fruit flavours that predominate. That’s it. Chile’s a one-trick
wine country: pure, sweet primary fruit, and that’s your lot. You
can imagine the effect of tasting perhaps 130 of these concoctions,
all pretty much the same. What of the whites? I hear you ask. Well,
they’re mostly variations on two themes: crisp Sauvignon Blanc and
slightly nutty, buttery Chardonnay. Other grapes are planted, but
these are rare – in my sampling today there was one Chenin Blanc,
two Rieslings (one sweet), one Gewürztraminer and a
Semillon/Chardonnay blend. I suspect this homogeneity has its roots in
the commercially driven nature of the Chilean wine industry. Making
wine is purely a business, and there aren’t many visionaries driven
by passion and a respect for terroir. There’s presumably no market
niche for high-end small production wines, so in the absence of
demand, no one makes them. The result? Chile is a bit of a desert for
wine geeks.
Tuesday 10th September
Terrible news from the Rhône. Apparently, sustained heavy rain
over the last few days has led to severe flooding, bad enough for rail
and road networks to be closed. The Southern Rhône vineyards have
been badly affected as this has happened at the worst possible time,
just when the 2002 vintage should have been harvested. It sounds as
bad as it can get, with almost the entire crop being lost. If these
reports are accurate (and there is every reason to believe that they
are), this is a disaster on an almost unprecedented scale for the
region. As for the Northern Rhône, it seems that flooding is less of
a problem, although the rainfall has been enough to ruin prospects of
a good vintage. As yet, it is unclear whether the Languedoc and
Provencal appellations to the South have been affected. Let’s hope
that too many livelihoods in the region aren’t threatened. It makes
last week’s wineanorak piece on vintages
seem a little prescient… On another note, this day a year ago the
world seemed a much safer, less turbulent place when I attended a
blow-out wine nut dinner at Launceston Place. The write
up that appears on my blog is dated September 11th, but was posted
just before news of the dreadful events of that day broke. It seems a
long time ago.
Monday
26th August
Cork taint is the issue that won’t go away. It’s also an
issue that’s been covered so extensively that everyone’s
completely bored stiff with it. So if you’re still reading… How I
feel about the issue seems to change depending on how frequently
I’ve encountered corked wines, and whether the bottles concerned are
easily replaceable. Last night I had my younger brother and his family
staying over. It was his birthday, so I thought I’d open something
reasonable, but also something I knew he’d like (he’s not a geek,
but he likes wine). I found a bottle of 1993 Penfolds Bin 407, which I
though would do the job. Current release is 1999, but the 1993 with
several years’ bottle age is probably peaking right now. I popped
the cork and poured us both a glass, but it was corked. Nasty. The
shame of it is that bottles like these, while not expensive, can’t
be replaced, and it has ruined a potentially good experience. I opened
something else decent and we had a nice evening, but I really don’t
like the potential for severe disappointment that cork taint provides
whenever you are opening a nice bottle. Of course, screwcaps could be
the answer. There’s a vocal element among the wine press who are
campaigning in favour of this already. But they’re letting their
emotions get the better of their judgement, though, because we need to
see how fine wines develop sealed with screwcaps first, and we don’t
have these data yet. Although there’s a strong ‘anti-science’
sentiment in society these days, science is the only way of providing
the evidence that could settle these issues once and for all, so any
independent, credible attempts to study the effectiveness of
alternative closures has to be applauded.
Friday August 16th
Regular visitors to Malcolm Gluck’s superplonk site will have
noticed that he’s now begun charging
for content. The cost? £14.95 per year. Like Jancis Robinson’s
Purple Pages, which have now been going for some time, one of the key
benefits you are offered is the chance to get close to your mentor by
asking them personal questions (or should that be by asking them
questions personally?). Malcolm suggests, ‘Like most things in life
the more you learn about wine the more you get out of it, and
hopefully by gaining better access to me you'll be able to pick up
some of the knowledge I've acquired over the many years that I've been
pulling corks and sniffing, glugging and (sometimes) spitting out the
contents.’ The pay section of the website will also offer exclusive
articles from the pen of Malcolm, special offers on wine, a better
search engine, an earlier viewing of the tasting notes and the odd
competition. All in all, it’s not a lot of extra content, and it
seems that regulars will still be getting what the site already
delivers for free. The only people I can see splashing out on this pay
service (and it would be fair to say that Malcolm’s USP is that he’s
appealing to bargain-hunters who don’t like to part with their cash
to easily) are the die-hard Malcolm junkies who have a strong desire
to get close to their mentor. Elsewhere on the web, there’s been a
fascinating thread of late on Mark Squire’s Robert Parker-branded
wine discussion board. The thread
in question tells of a Danish wine nut’s hunt to acquire every
single bottling from Burgundy’s famous Montrachet vineyard in the
1999 vintage. It make’s fascinating reading. I visited this hallowed
vineyard for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and some photos of
it can be found here.
Friday 9th August
Thank goodness for La
Vigneronne, one of London’s most
interesting wine shops. I was there for the first time in a while
yesterday evening, and it was like bumping into an old friend: you
only have to be with them for a short time to enjoy a cosy familiarity
and to be reminded of just what it is you liked about them in the
first place. What’s so refreshing about La Vigneronne is that it is
evidently driven by passion for the product it is selling. The range
makes no efforts at comprehensiveness, but instead is vastly and
wonderfully overweight in the regions favoured by owners Mike and Liz
Berry. Most of the stuff here you won’t find anywhere else, and the
buying is remarkably consistent. The tastings program – last
night’s event was Spanish whites – is simply the best in the
country, both in terms of scope and also frequency, with at least a
couple of tastings most weeks. If all this praise sounds a bit
effusive, let me reassure you that I have no commercial connections
with La Vigneronne, that I pay my way for most of the tastings, and
they don’t advertise with wineanorak. It’s just that the people
out there doing good work deserve plugging, and my job is in large
part to steer readers to the sorts of places where they’ll have the
most fun.
Thursday 8th August
Very sad to see that the Evening
Standard (London’s daily paper) has dispensed with the services
of wine writer Andrew Jefford. Andrew is a writer I admire immensely,
and for as long as I’ve been a wine nut his graceful, insightful,
civilised prose has been essential reading. Apparently, he won’t be
replaced, and the move is a policy decision by the paper. The news has
sent tremors through the wine writing community (several on the Circle
of Wine Writers e-mail forum have rather touchingly called for a
campaign for his reinstatement), with the unspoken sentiment being
that if Andrew – who must rate among the leading half-dozen wine
writers in the world in terms of ability -- can get sacked, what
security have the rest got? Some are suggesting that this is another
symptom of the imminent death of wine writing as a genre. Jefford fans
should be cheered by the
news that his new mega-work, the 200 000 word The New France,
will be published by Mitchell Beazley this Autumn. I’m looking
forward to it. And far from being dead, I think wine writing has a
very strong future, although it does seem that in the print world
it’s going though a rocky time at the moment. More on that subject
another time.
Saturday 3rd August
It feels strange to be sitting in front of a laptop again. For the
last fortnight I have taken a complete break from e-mail, internet,
phones and computers while I've been travelling. No, this move was not
inspired by some neo-luddite anti-technology backlash, but rather was
designed to give me a healthy break, so I could come refreshed once
more to the serious (?) business of keeping wineanorak current and
hopefully interesting. Well, here I am, refreshed, if a little jaded
by a day's hard driving. The trip in question was actually a family
holiday, not some glamorous wine jaunt, but I did manage to squeeze a
good bit of wine-region-hopping in on the side. You wouldn't have
expected any less, would you? The first week was with friends in the
Dordogne, which presented me with the chance to take a look at Cahors,
one of the South West's better known appellations. The second week was
spent camping, first in the Languedoc (another exploration of the
beautiful Pic St Loup region, making increasingly impressive reds),
then Mâcon (which allowed me to investigate Beaujolais and Burgundy),
and finally at a lakeside site in the Champagne region. En route
I also spent a couple of hours in the Northern Rhône, driving through
the different appellations and gawping at the terroirs. More later. I
find actually seeing the vineyards -- the soil, layout, aspect and
scale -- tremendously helpful in understanding the wines that come
from them. For me, the key fascination of wine is probably the link
between what is in the glass and the geographical location of the
vineyards where the grapes that made it came from. Bung in the human
element, and there you have the beguiling complexity that is
wine.
Wednesday 10th July
My Harpers feature on hi-tech wine manipulations (discussed in a previous
entry) is now out, and it’s also feature of the week on the Harpers
website. It’s a piece I enjoyed writing because the subject
fascinates me. With a topic like this, very soon you find yourself
asking philosophical-sounding questions. How much winemaking
manipulation is acceptable? Is it OK to concentrate the grape must
before fermentation? Is it OK to take alcohol out of the finished
wine? While for some these manipulations are always wrong, for others
anything goes. My thoughts? Whether technical interventions are
acceptable or not really depends on the circumstances, and I don’t
think there’s an easy answer to these questions. What might be
acceptable for a £4 commodity wine may be inappropriate when we are
talking about a fine wine costing 10 times more. What I didn’t
mention in the feature is that I think the key issue here is really
the motivation and the philosophy of the producer. An example. It’s
possible to take the established, accepted technical innovation of
ageing in oak barrels, and abuse the wine by inappropriate or
heavy-handed oaking. Lots of people do it, for a variety of reasons
ranging from incompetence to a misguided notion of what wine should
taste like. Untrustworthy or poor producers will tend to abuse
whatever technology they get their hands on, whereas principled,
competent producers who respect their terroirs stand a good chance of
using even the most hi-tech of wine manipulations, such as reverse
osmosis, in a responsible way that results in improved wines. I’d
say removal of excess rainwater from the must is a responsible use of
reverse osmosis, whereas deliberate concentration of the must to
produce a thicker, soupier, points-winning wine is abusing the
technique. You can’t legislate to prevent this; you just have to
trust the producer.
Tuesday July 2nd
Now is a good time to catch the anorak in print. Two breakthroughs in
the last week: my first Decanter feature is out in this month's
magazine, and I've also had a piece in the G2 section of the Guardian.
You can read the Guardian piece here:
it's a short 250 word 'expert view' section on how to buy wine (scroll
down to find it in the middle of a longer piece). The Decanter feature
is a regular 1000 word job, but it doesn't appear online: interested
readers will have to buy a copy of the mag, or else thumb through one
at the newsagents. It's nice to get published elsewhere. Although most
of my energies are devoted to this site, people don't tend to take you
as seriously unless you've written for established publications. It's
a shame, because you have much less freedom when you are writing for
someone else's readership to an editor's brief, but that's the way it
is.
Thursday 27th June
Off to Sevilla today for a plant biology conference, hence it's
unlikely I'll be updating the site again before Monday, which is when
I return. Looking forward to some Andalucian cuisine and, of course,
sherry. Let's see how one of the world's great wine styles tastes in
situ. Full report to follow.
Tuesday
25th June
| Gorgeously
sunny day today in London. Not a day to be stuck in doors. In
fact, over the last week or so we’ve had the first prolonged
spell of good weather since April. It’s well timed, because
my vines are now almost all flowering, and this is one of the
critical times of the year if I’m going to get a decent
crop. Regular readers here will be aware that I have this sort
of 'vigneron fantasy': I started growing vines in my back garden
four years ago, and for the last couple of years I’ve been
developing a small vineyard on my allotment in Twickenham.
It’s coming along well, with six rows of eight vines, and
another 30 or so vines ready to go into the ground in the next
few weeks. I haven’t harvested any grapes yet. It takes
three years for the vines to produce in any quantity, although
some will produce a small amount of fruit in the second year.
Nonetheless, it’s a tremendously satisfying experience and a
great way to relax, pottering around weeding and tending the
vegetables I grow between the rows. You never know, I might
even learn a thing or two about viticulture, or at least have
some sort of perspective on what it’s like trying to grow
grapes. For those interested, the varieties I grow are Bacchus
with a bit of Huxelrebe, Madeleine Angevine and Pinot Blanc
(white) and Pinot Noir (red). I grow them on a simple Guyot-style
trellis in the allotment, and spur pruned in the garden. It is
not all plain sailing, though: while the back garden Pinot
Noir is now well established, the last couple of years I’ve
lost the entire crop to powdery mildew (oidium). |
n |
Vines
grown from cuttings and ready to be planted out |
This
year, I’ve decided to spray using a systemic fungicide and to dust
with sulphur (I can’t get wettable sulphur, which would be the ideal
treatment). Later, to control botrytis, I’ll probably use Bordeaux
mixture (copper sulphate and lime). I feel tremendously guilty about
my spraying regime on the allotment: one set of neighbours are
slightly hippy types who probably think I’m an evil person. But it
has to be said that even practitioners of biodynamics are allowed to
spray with sulphur and Bordeaux mixture, and if I could get wettable
sulphur I’d be happy to drop the systemic fungicide. Interestingly,
the sheltered location of the garden means that the Pinot Noir there
is some weeks ahead of its allotment peers, with flowering finished
and small berries beginning to swell. I’m not expecting to get
enough grapes to do anything interesting with this year, but next year
I’ll turn my hand to winemaking. The chances of me making something
drinkable are fairly slim, but in case of success, suggestions for
what to call the wine are welcome.
Sunday 23rd June
I’ve been putting together a piece for Harpers over the
last few days looking at some of the novel winemaking technologies
that allow producers to reduce the alcohol of the final wine or
concentrate the grape must before fermentation. As part of my research
I’ve been chatting to some winemakers about how much intervention
they feel is appropriate. Randall Grahm, of Bonny Doon in
California’s Santa Cruz mountains, made a very interesting point. He
thinks it’s a question of context: ‘If a producer produces a vin
d’appellation, there is an implicit contract that he enters into,
whereby he effectively promises a wine of some degree of typicity,
which I suppose would include the characteristics of the vintage. If
he utilizes certain techniques in the winemaking process to wipe out
vintage characteristics, even though he is perhaps producing a wine
that most punters would prefer, I believe that he is acting in bad
faith.’ Grahm continues, ‘If he is producing a vin de table, vino
da tavola or producing wine in the new world, I think that a different
set of criteria apply. His contract is simply with the consumer to
make the best wine that he can and that will offer the consumer vinous
jouissance.’ I also had a useful conversation with Ernst Loosen of
the Mosel (and lately also the Pfalz), in which I quizzed him about
the increased use of must concentrators in European wine regions. He
was quite clear: ‘In my opinion it’s an awful development. How far
can we go before wine then becomes artificial?’ Increasingly, he
says, machines are taking over and wines are losing their
individualism. ‘It’s already starting to get boring, with all
these overextracted wines that lack any edges’. In 20 years’ time
he fears that wines will all look the same, and he can see a situation
where the wine world becomes divided over issues like these. Loosen
likes vintage differences and believes there’s no substitute to
working hard in the vineyard, and then taking what nature provides.
What do I think? You’ll have to wait until the Harpers piece comes
out.
Friday 7th June
First an apology for not updating this site for the last five
days. I’m just back from spending five wonderful days in the Douro
valley, and I simply had too much to see and do to devote time to the
site. A full report will follow in stages over the next few weeks, but
I’ll just try to give a brief overview here. The week before last I
was invited to a dinner with Dirk Niepoort, arranged by his UK
importers, Raymond Reynolds. For those of you unfamiliar with Dirk
Niepoort, suffice to say that he’s a genius who is making the most
exciting table wines in Portugal. During dinner I chatted to Dirk and
asked him far too many questions, and he asked me whether I would like
to visit the Douro. What do you say to an invitation like that? So I
flew out on Sunday evening to Porto, and took a cab to Dirk’s
parents’ apartment where he had gathered a group of wine people for
dinner. Good cooking from Dirk and some stunning wines, all served
blind. Next day, after watching the Brazil/Turkey game with Dirk, he
showed me the Niepoort lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia, we grabbed some
lunch and then he put me on the train for Pinhão, in the heart of the
Douro. It’s a long journey, but once you get near Régua (about 2
hours from Pinhão) the views from the train are spectacular, with the
track running alongside the Douro and terraced hillsides rising
steeply on either side. This was my first time in the Douro, and I was
overwhelmed. It is truly one of the wonders of the wine world, and
probably the most impressive aspect to it is the scale. There are what
seem like endless interconnecting valleys of steeply terraced
schistous vineyards. It’s hard to get your head round it at first. I
was picked up by Dirk’s number two, Jorges Serôdio Borges, who
took me to the Passadouro estate after showing me some brilliant cask
samples of Pintos, his own project in conjunction with his wife Sandra
Tavares, who is winemaker at Christiano Van Zeller’s Quinta do Vale
Dona Maria. I’ll have to be brief in my summary, because the next
few days were packed. That evening I stayed with Tomas Roquette at
Quinta do Crasto, then Sandra picked me up to take me to Quinta do
Vale Dona Maria. Next, Christiano Van Zeller took me to see Vallado.
That evening I went to see João Roseiro of Quinta do Infantado, and
he kindly invited me to dinner at his apartment. On Wednesday Dirk
came from Porto and a group of us, including Tomas Roquette’s
brother Miguel from Crasto, Jorge Serôdio de Borges, Jorge Moreira
(talented winemaker at Real Companhia Velha who is also making his own
brilliant wine called Poeira) and American journalist Ray Isle went up
to Dirk’s property Quinta de Nápoles to watch Portugal play USA. Oh
dear. We feared for Ray’s life when Portugal bizarrely went 3-0 down
to a well organized if not exactly over-talented USA side. A
wine-tasting lunch was followed with a trip up to see the work at
Lavradores de Feitoria, a very promising alliance of 15 Quintas to
produce top quality table wines and also a good quality but less
expensive wine called Tres Bagos. From here we returned to where we
were staying for a special tasting and dinner that Dirk had arranged.
Present were many of the current pioneers and key figures in the Douro,
about 30 in all. We began tasting at about 5 pm, and I worked solidly
through to 8 pm. I ran out of time, but this was such a great
opportunity that while everyone was clearing up for dinner some of the
winemakers were kind enough to let me taste with them outside. In
addition to the people I’ve already mentioned, other projects
showing here included Bago de Touriga, CARM, Francisco Olazablal (with
his new ‘cult’ wine Q de Vale de Meão), Q de Baldias, Casa
Amarela, Q de la Rosa and Domini. Some spectacular wines served at
dinner, and I was glad to have the chance to chat to David Baverstock,
who’s an influential figure in the Alentejo (he runs Esperão), and
also dabbles in the Douro as a consultant. On Thursday morning Dirk
took me to the spectacular Casa de Mateus (there’s a winery here
involved in the Lavradores de Feitoria), and we returned to Porto
where he took me to a stunning fish restaurant (the best fish I’ve
every had) before I caught my plane home.
I hope I’m not
overstating the case by saying that the Douro is currently one of the
most exciting quality wine regions in the world. There are spectacular
terroirs, brilliant grape varieties, but most of all a talented and
energetic group of mainly young-ish wine makers who are passionate
about making the best wines they can. Dirk seems to be a real catalyst
here. He’s energetic, generous and visionary. Through initiatives
like the gathering on Wednesday evening, he’s getting everyone
talking to each other, tasting each others’ wines, and thinking
about ways to improve. Things are really only just starting here (some
of the most exciting wines are still in cask, or only had their first
vintage in the last couple of years), and there’s a tangible sense
of anticipation for what is yet to come. I’m extremely grateful to
everyone I met: people were unfailingly generous with their time and
hospitality.
Previous entries (some gripping
reading!)
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