tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74974522350987243502024-02-19T17:35:33.399-08:00Hugh Johnson's BlogPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-40204353816927379522009-04-15T06:10:00.000-07:002009-04-15T06:24:54.498-07:00Bordeaux 2008In the soft spring light on the plane trees and willows, the Médoc doesn’t seem a place for hissy fits. The British, though, like to show their love for claret by sounding off about the price. One of the biggest London importers said in March that he wasn’t even jolly well going to taste the 2008s unless the proprietors of the châteaux pretty much halved their prices from the year before.<br /><br />More fool him, I thought. How is he going to know what they are like, or what a fair price would be? He had an answer to that: he would wait to see Robert Parker’s scores. I have to admit I rubbed my eyes when I read that. So the London wine trade, pretty much the creators of claret, hands over its independence to the …….. I’d better not go on. Thank goodness only one merchant said that. I’m not sure how many did turn up in Bordeaux, but I gather it was a pretty full house Anyway, much more important, the wines are lovely and the price is considerably lower than last year.<br /><br />In justification of the hissy-fitters, it must be said that in 2007 Bordeaux charged far too much for an indifferent vintage. There is apparently an awful lot of stock hanging around. The First Growth prices were seriously speculative.<br /><br />This week I was delighted to hear that Château Latour was the first to announce its price for 2008 (usually it’s one of the last) at over 40% less than the 2007 – a straightforward acknowledgement that its clientele of bankers and suchlike have had a glimpse of ruin. I went to Latour to taste: 2008 is absolutely for me: deep, firm, very ripe and wonderfully austere, linear, structured, classic – the sort of wine that will last 30 years. I wasn’t so keen on the second wine, Les Forts, which was uncharacteristically plump, as though overdosed with Merlot. But the third, the Château’s Pauillac, was every Pauillac-lover’s dream.<br /><br />My judgement of what I tasted (which was fairly restricted; not the great circuit which is the fashion these days) was overwhelmingly positive. The summer may have been mediocre, but spring last year got the wines off to a flying start. The grapes spent much longer than usual hanging on the vines slowly building up their flavours. By October they were in the beautiful state of balance between sugars and acid, and flavoursome compounds, that makes good Bordeaux the world’s greatest drink with food. This year my name is down for buckets of it.President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-5030200757818328412009-02-05T05:58:00.000-08:002009-03-25T09:01:34.628-07:00Friday's tasting - how was it for you?“Let’s have a wine-storming session,” said Dan. We do these tasting room get-togethers regularly but the team has new members, and a new leader - that’s Dan Snook – and a new supremo – that’s Simon McMurtrie. It was time for the old hands – that’s Tony Laithwaite and me – to see which way our future drinking is heading.<br /><br />The answer is upwards, and on to pastures new. We’ve always enjoyed teasing wine club members to taste their way into the unknown. Where did you first taste Australia, Chile, Bulgaria, many parts of Italy and Spain (and France, come to that)? If your memory goes back far enough, the answer is here. My excited return from Australia in 1974 with the first cases of Grange Hermitage to see these shores is ancient history now. Is it possible, after decades of discoveries, to coin new wines that cap the old? If I had doubts they disappeared last Friday.<br /><br />So what did we taste?<br /><br />To start with, dazzling whites that blow away the problem of Sauvignon surfeit. Aromatic freshness, zing and follow-through without images of cats and stinging nettles. First a complete novelty from Hungary, a new grape called Zenith, dancingly light, then scenting your palate with something more subtle than Sauvignon. Then a new creation to make Pinot Grigio look out of date; a blend not only of three grapes (of which P.G. is one) but of two countries, Collio in Italy and over the border Slovenia. Brussels, bless it, will only allow a border-breaker like this to be called (put on your stuffy voice) a blend of products of more than one member country of the European Union. Do I get arrested if I call it terrific, with fruit and pizzazz enough for three countries?<br /><br />We are not losing identities here; we are creating them. Puglia, the heel of Italy, is only supposed to do white wine as the base for vermouth. Our friends at Farnese Vini, on the Adriatic, know that we like the honeyed warmth of southern whites, the sort that feel half- (or perhaps a quarter-) way to solid ripe fruit, but without sweetness. This is the first blend of Puglian Chardonnay (yes, it works there too) with the local champion Verdeca. Another seducer.<br /><br />Grillo is a white grape that spurns blending, one of the secrets of the emergent Sicily. Young winemakers are capturing fresh-grape crunchiness that used to boil away even in these high-altitude Sicilian vineyards. You don’t expect scouring sharpness here in mid-Med; you hope for softness on the palate with a distinct outline, profile, well-cut shape in your mouth. Fresh Grillo does this, fills and satisfies your palate and lingers aromatically.<br /><br />And for those seduced by Kiwi Sauvignon with its faintly sexual pheromones (‘armpit’ puts some people off – but it turns others dangerously on) Clare, our linchpin in Bordeaux, has conjured a saucy rendering of the south-western Gros Manseng, unblended, from the celebrated Cave de Plaimont in d’Artagnan country.<br /><br />It goes on and on. Jean-Marc, our not-at-all tame French winemaker, is a seasoned rule-stretcher. He was almost deflated when French law changed last year to allow you to blend Vins de Pays from more than one region – more the rule than the exception in Australia. He calls his first essay, matching Colombard from Gascony with Sauvignon Blanc from the Midi, La Belle Saison. Unpretentious? Oui. Aromatic, delicately penetrating? You bet.<br /><br />But remember, you need to know how to do things properly before you throw convention out of the window. To excel within the old Rules is, or can be, even more satisfying. You take a slightly jaded appellation controlée, Saumur for example, and select the devil out of it. Helen ferrets around in the deep stone caves, among tanks and barrels of pure Chenin Blanc, twitching her nostrils for an example that sums it all up. Inevitably it’s a limited-yield gem from a single performing vineyard. Les Carrielles is exactly that: pure, fresh, sharp, stunning.<br /><br />If this first flight of wines was meant to give Sauvignon Blanc a break, the next brought it back to pole position. S.B.s from Jean-Claude Mas in the Languedoc (stingingly lively, with less flesh than a Kiwi but more zing), from Pierre Degroote in the same region (gunflint and pears, a look-alike to Sancerre), from Tony Jordan in Western Australia and even from the luxurious St Supéry in the Napa Valley. There is no mistaking the Margaret River: more stylish wines are hard to find. To find a Sauvignon / Semillon blend like this, all milky purity, grassy and creamy at the same time, for under a tenner is, frankly, what we’re all about. And the Napa Valley? For Sauvignon? Forget grass and nettles. Think golden pears and vanilla custard. Under a tenner, too.<br /><br />Our tasting went to New Zealand for a deliciously soft, rose-petally Gewurz from our old (and now highly distinguished) friend Jane Hunter O.B.E. (for wine-making). It stopped in Germany for the sort of feather weight Riesling only the Moselle (and especially the Kesselstatt estate) can pull off. To my utter delight (and amazement) it even went to Andalucia. I’ve been a not-at-all secret sherry drinker all my life. There is a flavour and a satisfaction, a really sharpening of the palate and rumbling of the tummy, that sherry brings on more than any other wine.<br /><br />You don’t want the strength of fortified wine? Not compulsory. Helen McEvoy has prevailed on the famous house of Domecq to make us a table wine in the style of a bone-dry fino. I can’t imagine anything more redolent of the Andalucian seaside and the prawns I shall drink it with. It will be my wine for smoked salmon, even oysters - and come to that with cold ham and anything else savoury and salty. The secret is umami, the Japanese element of flavour that can only be described as savoury – and that the palomino grape somehow conjures out of the chalky vineyards of Jerez. Being a table wine, and only 14% alcohol, no more (and probably less) than a big Chardonnay, it will arrive on our tables in a few month’s time. At an incredible £7.49.<br /><br />That was the white wine session – or part of it. The reds were, if anything, even more exciting, and of course more varied, as red wines are. There is a much wider palette of good dark-skinned grape varieties than green and golden ones.<br /><br />We started with a startling novelty: a sparkling red burgundy, something I’ve never seen before. Discussion followed. What’s it for? Someone thought charcuterie. Jambon persillé perhaps. Fizz and tannins together (though not too much tannin) seem made for fat meat. Meanwhile we had finished our glasses - something tasters should never do.<br /><br />We bounced on from Barbera d’Asti to a supertuscan, I Pini from Paolo Masi in Chianti. From the Southern Rhône, with the fabulous vintage of 2007, to a 2005 Chinon, from Pomerol to the first generic red Bordeaux (the 2005) produced by Tony Laithwaite’s new négociant enterprise on the Dordogne, Le Grand Chai at Castillon. If the other wines are up to this standard (and the wines I’ve seen certainly are) the price of truly classic Bordeaux is going to stay extremely competitive. £9.99 for mature classic St Emilion?<br /><br />We tasted a knock-out Fronsac, Château Richelieu, Pauillac from the very top address, a new breed of Cahors, Malbec drawing inspiration from Argentina. We tasted Roussillon as good as it gets, Corbières ditto (nostalgic stuff, this, taking us back to the beginning of the Club, but how much better now). Then Châteauneuf du Pape, Domaine de Nalys in the super-vintage of 2007.<br /><br />From Spain we tasted Jean-Marc’s first Rioja vintage and a Carinena chosen by King Carlos; from Portugal Cristiano van Zeller’s new Quinta de Roriz from the Douro; from the Adelaide Hills a remarkably delicate Pinot Noir … and another from Central Otago that I reckon will cause a stampede.<br /><br />Then we tasted Australia’s first, as far as we know, only Aglianico, from our old mate Bill Calabria. Aglianico makes Elba’s sweet red wines. Bill makes it aromatic and dry. Two Napa Cabernets put the Valley’s two warring camps, which for brevity I’ll call the sweet and the dry, head to head. I’ll leave you to guess which I preferred: its name is St Supéry Edward’s Block. We’ll let you know when it arrives.<br /><br />No, we didn’t leave out Argentina or Chile or Barossa. I thought almost all the samples rated in what Robert Parker would call the 90s. There’s a lot to look forward to.<br /><br />And finally, before Andresen’s 40 year old tawny port (you imagine!) we tasted something I’ve never seen before, and nor should you have, as apparently its illegal, even between consenting adults, until an expected change in E.U. law. Sweet botrytis Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough. The best use yet, in my view, for those outrageously tasty grapes.<br /><br />There’s no rest at HQ these days. Wine glasses at the ready please!President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-86010125970274560572008-12-08T02:42:00.000-08:002008-12-08T04:06:54.487-08:00Siege supplies for ChristmasWith all the wagon-circling that’s going on these days, and so many redskins pouring off the ridge to get our scalps (or at least make us redundant), better not lose sight of the need for proper provisioning in times of siege. The troops must be fit and cheerful, think positively, and keep their muskets oiled. I need hardly say that wine supplies are cardinal. And of course at Christmas time pretty nearly routine; original comes second to convivial under the mistletoe. Have you opted for a Thai Christmas? Then you probably know just what to drink with it – and I don’t envy you.<br /><br />Routine in recent years has meant spending more money every time: notching up the claret to a cru classé, the champagne to a luxury cuvée, the Chablis to a Premier Cru and the port to vintage. I’ve loved every minute.<br /><br />Must plan B, Siege Christmas, be a miserable hairshirt exercise, I ask myself. Far from it, I’ve concluded. Follow intelligent value instead of splurging, revert to a few old customs we all thought we’d grown out of. It’s a plan.<br /><br />Mulled wine is one of the best economies, I find, because no one else realizes that’s what you’re doing. A couple of steaming glasses is enough for most people; you know they loved it because they ask for the recipe – and the cost is minimal. The secret? Not second-rate wine, but lots of sugar and spice and quite a lot of water. It should be heady rather than strong. My recipe uses almost a teacup of caster sugar dissolved in two or even three of boiling water to every bottle of red wine. I am lavish with orange juice and orange peel, cloves and cinnamon. I add a coffee cup of brandy per bottle to the first batch and water down successive batches progressively. Piping hot is the secret – and my wrinkle: to keep a bottle of Grand Marnier handy. The best gin and tonic has a fine layer of gin on top: the best mulled wine the slightest slick of Grand Marnier.<br /><br />That was cheaper than a champagne party. My other wholly authentic Christmas champagne saver is sherry. Forgetting for the moment what is the cheapest and most versatile fine wine in the world these days, consider what warms the cockles, tastes like Dickens, sips impeccably with smoked salmon and nuts and cheery bites, not to mention oysters and shrimps. Yes, dry sherry. Either the pale/fragile fino/manzanilla version or the more manly, deep winter amontillado/dry oloroso model. My choice this Christmas, in fact, is a wine with the virtues of both, a <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?id=73037"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Manzanilla Olorosa from the Lustau Almacenista Collection at £11.49</span></a> – a conversation-piece in itself. Spring the bottle fresh from the fridge, use small glasses, repeatedly, and Christmas is well away.<br /><br />There are people who will simply ask for white wine and expect one of the usual suspects; either a glass of Sauvignon Blanc that tastes, frankly, a bit too garden-fresh for a winter’s day, or a Chardonnay with more weight but probably less cheeky life. Originality is a virtue here: an unexpected aromatic glass, fresh but quite punchy, is not a bad formula. Two suggestions: we have a new creation, a <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?id=27063"><span style="font-weight: bold;">2008 Riesling-Viognier blend from Clare in South Australia at £8.99</span></a>, or my own candidate in the Christmas list, <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?id=26808"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Royal Tokaji Dry Furmint 2006</span></a>. Dry Furmint is something new. People who taste it often think Viognier, but its crisp sprightly aromas (they go bang on the mid-palate and last and last) are unique to the amazing Furmint grape. <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?id=26808"><span style="font-weight: bold;">We have a few bottles left at £10.29</span></a>.<br /><br />People who ask for red at Christmas expect a robust round mouthful with a bit of grip. Where to start? My investigation of what I call the New Old World (ie well-learnt modern wine-making on classic European soils) keeps finding plums in the Languedoc. Some of the best comes from the unique limestone massif right on the Languedoc coast, La Clape. It seduced Eric Fabre, who was leaving Château Lafite after his years as technical director and looking for a new challenge. Chateau d’Anglès ‘Terroir’ 2005 takes the big three grapes of the south, Grenache, Syrah and Carignan, and reveals flavours that add up to something more: the modern ideal of richness in balance, polished and layered for £12.99. Call if you’re interested.<br /><br />And you’ll need port. Everyone loves our ancient Andresen Colheitas. Even more Christmassy to my mind, though, is the silky softness of a 20 year tawny, a confection of raisins and old oak like nothing else you can buy. <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?id=73083"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Andresen version is £25</span></a>.President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-41718842968814795242008-11-04T01:27:00.000-08:002008-11-04T01:45:48.557-08:00Bordeaux 2006 – showcased in Covent Garden<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62WDLjKPRpqHAPAktvehkYLtVeUoI2Karq2eul_w0Hs6a5zD5HVtdPIMiySFNhENvUFJrBXWiT7NUus7qLimIjI6Z556J9FR0b0V3G37AogpmxPWWsvJByMtkQkmEQPkm3QRscYB-02v0/s1600-h/hugh+blog+pic.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62WDLjKPRpqHAPAktvehkYLtVeUoI2Karq2eul_w0Hs6a5zD5HVtdPIMiySFNhENvUFJrBXWiT7NUus7qLimIjI6Z556J9FR0b0V3G37AogpmxPWWsvJByMtkQkmEQPkm3QRscYB-02v0/s320/hugh+blog+pic.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264736115689716770" /></a>Every October Bordeaux’s Union des Grands Crus, the 100-odd top chateaux of the region, hire what used to be called the Floral Hall at Covent Garden (now the Paul Hamlyn Hall – wouldn’t just Hamlyn have been enough?) to give a tasting of the latest vintage they are offering in bottle.<br /><br />A member confided in me the other day that they consider this the most important of all their tastings: the opportunity to share impressions with the greatest gathering of informed palates to be found anywhere. It wasn’t just flattery. 750 professionals of the British wine trade, their traditional and still their best customers, turn up. They are carefully vetted, they come on time and they work hard. They are faced, across the long tables, with the proprietors or at least the managers of all the chateaux. Frank discussions take place about quality and price, about the style and relative merits, the durability and prospects, short term and long term, of the vintage. This is the cockpit for some intense exchanges.<br /><br />The good news is that <span style="font-weight:bold;">2006 is a lovely vintage for the sort of Bordeaux most people really want, not for investment but for enjoyment.</span> 2005 was so perfect, obviously a great classic for long maturing, that whatever came in its wake was bound to suffer by comparison. But for those who love fresh, brisk claret to help them digest their meals (its first function, surely) 2006 is gong to be pretty much a model. Some of the lighter wines were already tempting to swallow then and there.<br /><br />I spent a good share of my time tasting the wines of <span style="font-weight:bold;">Pessac-Léognan</span>, the best part of the Graves. I needed a refresher: I am helping with a new book on the region. It is the only part of Bordeaux with both red and white wines of top quality, in several cases from the same chateaux. The whites, Sauvignon and Semillon grapes mixed in differing proportions, always make me think how simplistic, however striking, the big-flavoured Sauvignons of the New World tend to be. Why don’t they add the gentle texture and breadth of Semillon too? When they do (as some Kiwis are learning) it can work beautifully. <br /><br />It sounds too obvious, I always think, to describe the reds of the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Graves</span> as gravelly. Too auto-suggestive by half. But texture plays a big part in their special style; a sort of grainy mattness as against the high gloss and brilliance of the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Médoc</span>. Merlot is dominant in most of them, but gravel-grown it has a different effect from its <span style="font-weight:bold;">Pomerol</span> persona. Mature it can recall warm bricks and honey. Do you want to drink that? With a rib of beef there is nothing better.<br /><br />2006 is a vintage that lets the terroir show. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Pauillac</span> sassy and vital; <span style="font-weight:bold;">St Estèphe </span>sharper and more earthy, <span style="font-weight:bold;">St Julien</span> smoother with rounded corners … The biggest differences show, of course, between chateaux rather than between communes, but district style gives a framework to help understand what’s going on. I am fond of the rustic edge of the wines of <span style="font-weight:bold;">Listrac</span> and <span style="font-weight:bold;">Moulis</span> in the middle of the Médoc, just as I am of the yeoman wines of <span style="font-weight:bold;">Fronsac</span>. They stand apart from the glossed, bevelled, suave and elegant productions of the famous classed growths, as starred-restaurant cooking with carefully-reduced sauces does from a country meal. <br /><br />Everyone in the Paul Hamlyn Hall knows the hierarchy, and helps its practitioners define their places in it. Generally, prices reflect differences in quality and style with practised precision. <span style="font-weight:bold;">It’s a long game, already centuries old – and fascinating to see it being played at Test Match level.</span>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-35645593545861146122008-10-15T01:50:00.000-07:002008-10-15T01:55:07.649-07:00A noisy working breakfast<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigy-hCF2TFaot7ZPjVDc66Qp1x38A2AdLGiHT9tM5tHUq09Er_3UUTYxf_ZFKlZjhckbTanGq8arzCIhpXzDNysc9tjKnxox8hxQQVJG1n7FjMOZP6amYO29M-90crxrNSkboVRAQoPtf_/s1600-h/hugh+blog+pic2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigy-hCF2TFaot7ZPjVDc66Qp1x38A2AdLGiHT9tM5tHUq09Er_3UUTYxf_ZFKlZjhckbTanGq8arzCIhpXzDNysc9tjKnxox8hxQQVJG1n7FjMOZP6amYO29M-90crxrNSkboVRAQoPtf_/s320/hugh+blog+pic2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257301401635842002" /></a>You might think people who taste wine for a living would become blasé and pampered – and in a sense we do. Pouring half a bottle down the sink is not a thing many mere mortals would ever contemplate: it happens all the time when you are assessing far more wines than you can possibly drink.<br /><br />A bunch of us had a working breakfast today, though, that reminded me how very un-blasé, how clear-eyed and mustard-keen, professional wine-sleuths can (and must) be. Time: 9.00am. Place: the Wolseley Brasserie (but this was exceptional; more typical would be a room at Theale with car park view or at best the Buffet Gare of a sleepy French station).<br /><br />Topic: wines to pep us all up without overwhelming the credit card at the start of next year, when we celebrate Tony Laithwaite’s first 40 years of selling wine. Fresh after 40 years? That’s the point. The wine business is a sort of worldwide student body with individuals making their own discoveries, getting excited about them and passing on the buzz, all the time.<br /><br />So: watch out for passionate advocacy. Anne wants you to share the new Southern Italian delights she has just found, Abi has cracked the Sonoma Coast, Thomas can’t contain his glee over this cache of treasure from high in the Andes and Helen’s secret smile tells me her new Rioja from Carlos Bujanda is going to be another bestseller.<br /><br />The drill is that our buyers take soundings among contacts here. They look at lists, trail though samples and taste everything on offer. Then they high-tail it to their area of responsibility, anywhere from Chile to Champagne. They spend a furious few days eliminating all but a dozen or so strong contenders for the list, then whiz home to sell them to their peers. The argument has to be convincing, and the wine conclusive. It all makes for a noisy breakfast.President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-899678190152198232008-10-10T06:38:00.000-07:002008-10-10T07:03:31.695-07:00Dinner at Le Manoir aux Quat’ SaisonsThe wonderful thing (or one of them) about wine and food is that there is always room for experiment. It is by definition a moveable feast. Little changes of mere seasoning can produce dramatic differences of appreciation. A different vintage of the same wine can add satisfaction or diminish it. But put one of the Philosophers of Phood, or Laureates of Liquor, on the job and you can have a life-changing experience.<br /><br />Once a year or so we organize a fine wine dinner at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, Raymond Blanc’s resort hotel just south of Oxford. There is always a waiting list: Blanc and his chefs perform as utter professionals, impeccably, ingenuously, unpredictably – and our cellar-master is no slouch. We take the wines from the deepest, coolest corners of Château Theale and try some impeccable, ingenious, unpredictable match-making.<br /><br />Here is the menu of our September dinner. Gary Jones was the chef, and the sommelier Arnaud Goubet.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=26320">Dagueneau Pouilly Fume Blanc 2005</a><br /><br />Cornish crab, mango puree; grapefruit jelly & Foie Gras; ginger bread, Yuzu<br /><br />……….<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=26781">Domaine G. Thomas Meursault Premier Cru Blagny 2006</a><br /><br />Risotto of wild mushrooms, truffle cream<br /><br />……….<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=35669">Domaine de la Vougeraie Nuits St Georges Premier Cru Les Damodes 2001</a><br /><br />Skate with bacon and red wine sauce<br /><br />……….<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=34784">Monteillet Fortis Cote Rotie 2001</a><br /><br />Roasted Anjou squab pigeon; coco beans and foie gras sauce, vintage Madeira<br /><br />………..<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=32352">Château Margaux 1998</a><br /><br />Cheese course (unpasteurised hard cheeses)<br /><br />…………<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=25295">Château La Tour Blanche, Sauternes 2004</a><br /><br />Lemon Croustade<br /><br />…………..<br /><br />Routine, given fair weather, is to start with champagne in the private garden of the private room at Le Manoir. In this case a character champagne that was new to me: <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=50458">Renaudin Blanc de Blancs 2002</a>, very evidently oak-fermented, oddly savoury, even salty. The manzanilla of champagne, I thought – and rather enjoyed it.<br /><br />Didier Dagueneau was the prophet of Pouilly. It is very sad to report that he died three weeks after this dinner, piloting his light plane in the Dordogne. He looked the prophet, profusely hairy and bearded, and held almost religious views about his extraordinary Sauvignon Blancs. His aim was Pouilly Fumé as rich as possible in flavour and texture but as light as possible in power and weight. Every good producer of Pouilly and Sancerre respects his example, above all in low yields – even if few truly follow it.<br /><br />The object this evening was to demonstrate the versatility of Sauvignon Blanc, partnering it with the lightest of fluffy crab meat, then the richness of foie gras. The first was a lovely marriage, helped along by the flavours of mango and grapefruit, two tastes you could easily associate with the wine as well. I was less sure about the second: fat foie gras makes anything less than a boldly sweet wine retreat into its inner dryness. Besides, one wine over two courses is usually more interesting in theory than in practice. A second one of Didier’s creations would have given us a clearer idea of his genius,<br /><br />It would never have occurred to me to partner a young white burgundy with a rich dark mushroom risotto. Raymond Blanc and Gary Jones knew better. This was comfort food after the nibbled luxury of the first courses; warm mouthfuls of damp truffly forest-floor flavour. The brilliance of Blagny came in utter contrast: clean fresh draughts with a lemon bite and enough body to accompany fat food, Blagny, high in the Meursault slopes below the crowning woodland, is one of my favourite burgundy addresses.<br /><br />More rich dark food with the skate in a sauce of bacon and red wine; a lighter texture and a different sort of savoury tang. The idea of a tannic Nuits St Georges to clear the palate and ‘elevate’ (as a true burgundian would say) the salty fish and bacon was inspired. Les Damodes is one of the best vineyards of Nuits, 2001 is a vintage now opening up its perfumes, Domaine de laVougeraie is a consistently excellent performer. All the elements were there: savoury richness, palate-clearing bite, salt, sweet and a touch of sharpness. The result? Even keener appetite for the course to follow.<br /><br />In an ideal menu one course sets up, as it were, a question for the next to answer – and the wines do the same. The skate was tangy, the Nuits crisp with a bite. So here comes fat yielding pigeon and soft deep-fruity Côte Rôtie. Very fat, the pigeon, and sauced with foie gras and Madeira to make it sumptuous. The Monteillet family’s Côte Rôtie was new to me; for some reason I rarely buy this fashionable appellation, the Rhône at its most claret like. I corrected that when I tasted this 2001: my order went in the next morning.<br /><br />All this, of course, was a mere roll of drums. The Château Margaux was still on the sideboard. I could see Arnaud, the sommelier, giving the gleaming ruby of its decanter an amorous stroke. It is asking a lot, even of a First Growth of a good vintage, to keep it as the main event after such a comprehensive warm up. Hard unpasteurised cheeses were to be its simple accompaniment.<br /><br />Is it the anticipation that gives great wines their impact, like the soprano’s first aria? It always takes me a few sips and a silent pause, my nose deep in the glass, to focus and find the measure of the highest quality. Description involving currants and tobacco and tar and strawberries are rubbish when you meet the sheer rightness of great claret reaching maturity – or in this case not yet reaching it (10 years is no time at all for Château Margaux in a firmly-structured tannic vintage like 1998). It flowed across the tongue like that Chinese silk they used to call Shantung, sheen and grain combined. It filled the nose, the mouth and the throat for minutes between sips. It did all the wonderful things wine promises; far more than you could anticipate in advance.<br /><br />Dessert, however perfect, is never, at least to me, more than refreshment after the heights of savoury pleasure. Of course Le Manoir’s Croustade is as good as they come. Of course the 2004 La Tour Blanche is a fine Sauternes brimming with youth. If I was nursing the last glass of Margaux it was just that I can’t bear such good things to come to an end.President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-7288795253585346742008-08-19T07:35:00.000-07:002008-09-01T08:34:21.750-07:00Revival and revolution in Bordeaux … Hugh Johnson visits Le Chai au Quai<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04tYZ0LC0Rw9yV6M1JKrkccE6CX91wrttpNxj1NN99r6MaVyqaevdOkj9sSVk9T-O3yToh7usn5mup8PPZAAKUkbnRWielhbOBDvQSbO-HaQzhcEJsJziEx_dSjyU1N1Jx4q_iXW_FbG7/s1600-h/image.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236239491041713810" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04tYZ0LC0Rw9yV6M1JKrkccE6CX91wrttpNxj1NN99r6MaVyqaevdOkj9sSVk9T-O3yToh7usn5mup8PPZAAKUkbnRWielhbOBDvQSbO-HaQzhcEJsJziEx_dSjyU1N1Jx4q_iXW_FbG7/s320/image.jpg" border="0" /></a> A scatter of skiffs, drifting disconsolate in slanting rain is the only shipping on the broad Dordogne. This was where barrel-barges tied up three-deep on the wharf, where wines from twenty villages started their voyage to the sea. There has been nothing in the warehouses of Castillon for decades, but there is action now. The broad pedimented front of Le Chai au Quai is once again open for business, with oak and wine, busy with courtiers and oenologists, reviving the era of the traditional quayside négociant.<br /><br /><br />I went over last week to taste the wines in their warehouse, half from different parts of Bordeaux, half from up-country, the rocky hills of Roussillon or even from Spain. The new concept is to have a central collecting, maturing and bottling warehouse for wines created by our wine makers. This was the first group assessment, to see what was working best, and what was missing, in a range of wines we will all be seeing in the months to come.<br /><p>I was specially pleased to taste a line-up of what in the past was a négociant’s main standby: wines selected as typical of Bordeaux’s best-known communes. We worked down a line of the historic names: Pauillac, Margaux, Pessac-Léognan, St Emilion, Pomerol. </p><p>In the old days these were blends of small lots surplus to châteaux’s requirements. Le Chai au Quai has taken a different approach, working with hand-picked estates and bottling their wines unblended, with all their character intact, under the name of the appellation they represent. Selling us half their crop in barrel benefits their cash flow and gives us the chance to mature, finish and bottle the wine precisely as we like it.</p><p>Certainly I have rarely seen a set of generic wines so convincingly encapsulate the tastes and smells, the mouthfeel and liveliness, that makes Pauillac and Pomerol, Margaux and Pessac-Léognan legendary names. </p><p>Will we ever get back to using barges?</p>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-53528722657186603512008-08-01T08:25:00.000-07:002008-08-01T08:40:39.470-07:00Hugh visits Burgundy to find growers are raising their game …<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_WaeL8r9fYzkNNdrtn5rpBlVZCf3ga4eyC6klD90bcSFszQQl-yJgifSNpowIbEDvXZXyJ7zseD08VOSg3IYWj8l-AAATEJWuxahs7UCglyfF2pELaYY228-_aTDNRJ4JoyfEAh_d2o3p/s1600-h/image.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229574287957907026" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_WaeL8r9fYzkNNdrtn5rpBlVZCf3ga4eyC6klD90bcSFszQQl-yJgifSNpowIbEDvXZXyJ7zseD08VOSg3IYWj8l-AAATEJWuxahs7UCglyfF2pELaYY228-_aTDNRJ4JoyfEAh_d2o3p/s320/image.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:georgia;">We all need white Burgundy, or so we think. Red Burgundy is more of an option: there are so many serviceable reds out there that the precious pleasure of Pinot Noir is a special-occasion thing. If I’m right it may partly explain a phenomenon I noticed on a brief visit to Burgundy last week. The reds are becoming more interesting, more satisfying and more sharply defined. Every tasting from a line of barrels poses more intriguing questions: terroir, ripeness, flavours of toast or caramel from the barrel, depth of flavour (where from?), a singing cherry note in one sample and an earthy beetroot one in another. The winemaker finds them: he doesn’t put them there. How come he is finding more of them, liberating (it seems) tastes derived only from the grapes, therefore only the ground? It feels as though sensitivity is growing; as though farmers are waking up to subtleties they never noticed. Going easy on the sugar has something to do with it. It was routine to chaptalize: sacks of sugar went in the vat whether they were strictly needed or not. When farmers sold everything in barrels to merchants they were hardly even curious about what they were making. It would scarcely affect the price, and the merchant took the responsibility.</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br />Now they bottle everything themselves they meet their audience face to face; have to answer questions that never occurred to them before. The wine, like the transaction, becomes more immediate, more transparent - for better or worse. Inevitably the grower raises his game – and we are the beneficiaries.<br /><br />2007 was not a great Burgundy year. I found some good fresh wines for drinking soon, and some for 4 or 5 years away, but nothing much of real resonance to keep for your bairns’ bairns. The old growers’ routine would have been to bluster your way through, denying the difficulties. I still heard some curious statements about exceptional soils and miraculous escapes from rot. When you are eyeballing the guy, though, with the sample in the glass beside the barrel, there is nowhere for him or his wine to hide. You admit its imperfections and (if you are wise) learn to look for virtues. No virtues, no sale.<br /><br />I’m not finding quite the same thing with white Burgundies at the moment. I remind myself how majestic they can be – sailing into the future with the assurance of the great reds. I drank a bottle of 1990 Corton Charlemagne recently which was still cruising. Not so many seem built to do that these days; the word plausible comes to mind too often. We need them, though; we’ll buy them.</span><br /></span>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-69661456058033794992008-07-11T04:59:00.000-07:002008-07-15T03:32:46.231-07:00HMS Warrior Wine Tasting<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNfrLmx5JIZXiBf1ol2R-eNC9rOx4lH1UIHISKtabJSDOHnB3bN7ME59rFKUs7-0FB0kcdsA5pNraYJdzR-vww64T9AhUMxgMcqDZUoNaABACZ68AcTb6O09_8wwx8HsoIVn-pJ0txte-/s1600-h/image1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5221747605818896770" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNfrLmx5JIZXiBf1ol2R-eNC9rOx4lH1UIHISKtabJSDOHnB3bN7ME59rFKUs7-0FB0kcdsA5pNraYJdzR-vww64T9AhUMxgMcqDZUoNaABACZ68AcTb6O09_8wwx8HsoIVn-pJ0txte-/s320/image1.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">There is probably an ancient link between gun-decks and spitting, I thought, as we milled around HMS Warrior’s mighty cannons, tasting a summer selection of Club wines. Not that Members were spitting much. With me it’s a reflex; I sometimes have to restrain myself at table. You can taste so many more wines if you stop yourself swallowing.<br /></span><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">On the face of it it’s an odd connection: wine and a warship. But since the Warrior, the first great ironclad sail-and-steam battleship of the Royal Navy and the nuclear deterrent of its time, was rescued from being an oil jetty at Milford Haven, restored and brought to Portsmouth four years ago, she has been an irresistible attraction. And you can’t hold wine tastings on HMS Victory.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">Her gun deck is enormous. There is room for 26 of the biggest Nelson-style cannons and hundreds of people. The crew lived round the guns, slung their hammocks above them and messed at the tables between them which we covered with bottles and glasses. We also took breaks from tasting to explore the decks below: the titanic engines, the stokehold with ten boilers and the vast store of ammunition. Victorian engineering is awe-inspiring. A propellor is a brake on a sailing ship. When she sailed it was hauled out of the water; all 34 tons of it. By hand: a job for 600 men.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">We were a mere 250, Members and crew. A good number of us, I discovered (and might have guessed from their clean cut jaws and trim rig) were retired sailors who can’t get Portsmouth out of their systems. There is nothing very systematic at Club tastings like this, though: just a freewheeling browse through 40-odd wines picked for variety and value.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">We had two visiting producers on board. The young Bernadetta Fabretti, vivacious in the Italian manner, persuaded everyone in range that her Verdicchio and Sangiovese from the Adriatic coast are the world’s best. I thought her <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=38824" target="blank">Rosso Piceno with Conti Leopardi’s</a> very smart label pretty amazing value: full smooth grippy red for £6.29.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Laurent Onillon (how do you pronounce it so it doesn’t sound like onion?) brought the range of summery bubbly made in <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=50441" target="blank">Anjou by Langlois-Chateau</a>, part of the Bollinger family. You get a lovely breezy draught of fruit from the Loire for a tenner. I specially liked the bubbly red, <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=50345" target="blank">Carmin Rouge</a>, made of Cabernet Franc. The Aussies make sweet sparkling Shiraz. This is altogether lighter, combining fizz and tannin to make a really crisp drink. Laurent suggested strawberries as the match; I would think in terms of charcuterie.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">New Zealand, nestling between two great black guns, had a zippy Sauvignon Blanc from the <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=26052" target="blank">Plane Trees Estate</a>, Hunter’s very aromatic Riesling and <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=39875" target="blank">Stonewall Pinot Noir</a>, which at £11-odd is modest for such a fashionable wine.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The French Classic table showed <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=25822" target="blank">Chablis from Dampt</a> (I’m almost tired of people telling me it’s their favourite wine), the very different <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=25869" target="blank">Condrieu</a>, all southern warmth and spice, from Domaine Monteillet, and a super-typical 2005 Pauillac from our own Grand Chai in Castillon, Tony Laithwaite’s model winery on the Dordogne. Nothing could be more classical than 2005 Pauillac.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">There was a BBQ table (Italy’s <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=39527" target="blank">Grande Pavone</a> for refreshment, <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=39880" target="blank">Patagonian Merlot </a>for authenticity, and <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=60208" target="blank">Black Stump Durif</a> for exactly what the name conveys). I gather Black Stump outsells all other wine in the tasting. On a table of mixed whites I was surprised by the open cheery style of an Argentine newcomer, <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=26632" target="blank">Prickly Pear</a>, at a fiver a bottle. I was assured it was made from grapes: ripe and fruity ones, with just enough fresh acidity. On a table of rosés I was much taken by something called <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/article.aspx?product_code=40379" target="blank">Frizzante de Bomberosa</a> from Carinena, dark for a rosé, flavoury and ticklingly half-fizzy.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">To top it all off, while we were there the flagship of the modern fleet, HMS Ark Royal, raised steam and sailed from the berth next door. She’d been in Pompey for the signing of he contact to build two more, much bigger, aircraft carriers. So the Navy is sailing on after all.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I’d do it again any time; spit on the gundeck. I’m sure we’ll be assembling there for another session next summer.</span></div>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-90390403680550023012008-07-03T01:53:00.000-07:002008-07-03T02:32:16.803-07:00Out of Africa ...<strong><span style="font-family:georgia;">It has been a while since the Club President has graced South Africa, much has changed.</span></strong><br /><div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitrSvGUdShhDFcE3Q9AySiT_0PI5MxWaYXcQFF_dSwaH2Nj9tJ__Hk7MOGchV9W4GNoP66bWooJBRBY1MJvpPhk0JxvRFUb1j4aMXDq_gvC2ChWisxRxh-EPWAbmnAoyAeKmuaGFb8ALH0/s1600-h/image1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218713984140445202" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitrSvGUdShhDFcE3Q9AySiT_0PI5MxWaYXcQFF_dSwaH2Nj9tJ__Hk7MOGchV9W4GNoP66bWooJBRBY1MJvpPhk0JxvRFUb1j4aMXDq_gvC2ChWisxRxh-EPWAbmnAoyAeKmuaGFb8ALH0/s320/image1.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Drinking South African wine used to feel almost like a charitable act. In apartheid years it was competently industrialised, but no one drank it in this country for fun. To celebrate liberation we tried to overlook earthy reds and fairly fresh whites in the name of progress. The white wines, all agreed, led by Sauvignon Blanc,crept ahead of the reds. Then in the mid-90s came the shock (I can still remember it) of a totally convincing Chardonnay. Then more surprising still a Pinot Noir better than California’s. Then a series of Cabernets cleansed of earth and iron, juicy, full of ripe currants: the very thing. </span><br /><br /></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;">I missed the action on the ground, I’m afraid. Shamefully I stayed away for 20 years.I hadn’t much enjoyed my early visits, and there was too much to keep up with elsewhere. South America, not to mention Australasia, loomed larger. I found out just how much I was missing in March this year.</span></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBV8hcVtefcey8tbPzCt3mu-gL7T17GlTVFcyhm5TOblPkvyuhLDjm_Z1CkKAWZ9lz15Cd0vWz2N6VZg9KZuE62KeztNnuZGPPL7WKsrUZ6wJrXzQ4oI_rdH4nC2ve8IlgbmI8REhuGGP0/s1600-h/image2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218714576187061970" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBV8hcVtefcey8tbPzCt3mu-gL7T17GlTVFcyhm5TOblPkvyuhLDjm_Z1CkKAWZ9lz15Cd0vWz2N6VZg9KZuE62KeztNnuZGPPL7WKsrUZ6wJrXzQ4oI_rdH4nC2ve8IlgbmI8REhuGGP0/s320/image2.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">We rented a little house on a big beach in Walker Bay, long famous for its whale-watching (the monsters jump so close inshore they can soak you with their splashes) but only recently famous for its wines. The Walker Bay coast, and the Hemel en Aarde valley leading inland, are Africa’s first Côted’ Or: the grapes of Burgundy ripen here, seawind-cooled, to the same racy, pitched-upflavours. Go-faster acidity is the secret; fresh when they are new, long on the palate, and keeping them zinging until mellowness sets in. Few seem to avoid the corkscrew for that long.</span><br /><div><div><div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">My corkscrew was busy day and night. I Googled before the trip to find a wine merchant with a good range and found The Wine Village in Hermanus. John and Erica Platter, who have helped me for nearly 30 years with my Pocket Wine Book (their own annual guide is South Africa’s standard work) came down from Durban to show us the ropes. My brother, son and other friends from England lent their palates to the task. We hardly found a bottle of wine we didn’t want to finish.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMSa34NXtu5vmgVQ09UOQ93grd2_iYYR7LuEwxbtTxi3B9jxf1Vgig0N9CpTKVZqIf3fH-fVeAp5fo9zQssKm5JiYDTrTvfxBu5-hIPXgqNcxljiCeEsKXCF9nIF_N_FDaLXLX7khcRW9I/s1600-h/image3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218713315971283858" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMSa34NXtu5vmgVQ09UOQ93grd2_iYYR7LuEwxbtTxi3B9jxf1Vgig0N9CpTKVZqIf3fH-fVeAp5fo9zQssKm5JiYDTrTvfxBu5-hIPXgqNcxljiCeEsKXCF9nIF_N_FDaLXLX7khcRW9I/s320/image3.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Yes, there are well-established classics. The classic of Walker Bay is Hamilton Russell, the pioneer of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Bouchard Finlay son is equally established and respected and their neighbour Newton Johnson, we found, makes Chardonnay at least as well as either. They have to keep pedalling hard, though, with half a dozen serious challengers on their doorstep. Nor are the Burgundian grapes the only ones to benefit from the sea-cooled conditions.Cabernet Sauvignon finds it too cool, but Cabernet Franc, the key grape of St Emilion and the Central Loire, finds its brighther by/minty flavours here. And one surprise was to find a farmer whose father came from Madeira growing Verdelho to make what almost amounts to Vinho Verde. Super-fresh white with a prickle at a mere 11% of alcohol was precisely what we needed for our lunches in the shade.</span><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">The most famous vineyards of the Cape lie across the mountains inland from Walker Bay, round Stellenbosch (which feels the sea wind from False Bay) and, higher in the encircling hills, the achingly fashionable St Helena of South Africa, Franschoek. Never having crossed the formidable Coast Range before we set out inland in a direct line north for Franschoek, to find mountain mists among crags worthy of Macbeth. The long windingpass brings you steeply down to a settlement devoted entirely to the stomach: cafes and restaurants without number.There is a Napa Valley air about the fields,but the farms, immaculate, their curving gables pipe-clayed like a Royal Marine’s helmet, have no rivals for crisp and seemly beauty. Nor has their setting of raw rock: crags stark against the sky or trailing long tresses of white clouds. Franschoek has a smattering of French names: Dieu Donné, Cabrière, LaMotte, Mont Rochelle, L’Ormarins. The flavour of Stellenbosch is resolutely Dutchand its manor houses earlier in date, most of them, than the châteaux of the Médoc. Meerlust, Rustenberg, Stellenzicht,Mulderbosch, Neetlingshof, Blaauklippen, Rust en Vrede are the future Rauzansand Pichons and Léovilles, I like to think,of the Cape.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbA4sZjOi7v7_cAmC5J80ODEOJqvfSFHrw5o-U8ac_Yi3hyphenhyphenbuuplRArsEgNDG8zOigIzymZg0Bpp3RXoF6dtKm21Ek2Tjnr95q7X0XFbC-7cRiMBs9GkxGhgbleeCMlANWZ7-R98kQGzwq/s1600-h/image4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218713367283384050" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbA4sZjOi7v7_cAmC5J80ODEOJqvfSFHrw5o-U8ac_Yi3hyphenhyphenbuuplRArsEgNDG8zOigIzymZg0Bpp3RXoF6dtKm21Ek2Tjnr95q7X0XFbC-7cRiMBs9GkxGhgbleeCMlANWZ7-R98kQGzwq/s320/image4.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Their destiny, I feel pretty sure, is Cabernet tempered by Merlot: the Médoc recipe. Like Napa wineries they routinely partner it with generous, well-oaked Chardonnay. Somemake fine Syrah; almost everyone feels bound to plant some Pinotage. Pinotage is the Cape’s own cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault, prolific and pungent. One example I tried, expensively pruned for a small crop and raised in French oak, smelt of Turkish Delight, geraniums, ginger… ‘Paint’ is the conventional more humdrum comparison. It has its enthusiastic constituency, certainly,but I fear it does South Africa no favours.</span><br /><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">The other grape that the country can almost call its own, so much has it planted and so thoroughly is it integrated, is Chenin Blanc. As the nation’s workhouse white before more alluring alternatives came along (and before Chardonnay even had an entry visa) it was used for Cape sherry, brandy and brews of allsorts – often under the nom de verre of Steen. Happily there is still lots of it, because a careful winemaker can easily make it into the sort of fresh but four square white perfect with fish, and a talented one canfocus its stony white-fruit character assomething deeply satisfying. My view won’t please lovers of Sauvignon Blanc, but after the nasal assault and the gooseberry acidity of these fashionable creations, Chenin brings you back to oenological essentials: balance, mouth - filling substance, andharmony with food.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYNAKtTw8So19-a1gPvbRXsrfd7dT0BqQLsnDwEFPN2fAzEi4ftdlSUAYVkoSIYo2K7BP1kzXWpMCoYEitNxAuz__Yyh3dugpu-Y7IVXSFMLdvPsuzEt1O0Na2uc1ZvLSise9emfPMfx2j/s1600-h/image5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218713423215246530" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYNAKtTw8So19-a1gPvbRXsrfd7dT0BqQLsnDwEFPN2fAzEi4ftdlSUAYVkoSIYo2K7BP1kzXWpMCoYEitNxAuz__Yyh3dugpu-Y7IVXSFMLdvPsuzEt1O0Na2uc1ZvLSise9emfPMfx2j/s320/image5.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">A surprise, to our party, was how far the Cape has progressed with its champagne method (if I’m still allowed to say that) bubblies. ‘Méthode Cape Classique’ is the official formula. We found at least half a dozen that pressed all the right buttons, a process with no pain at all, either gastronomic or financial. The most we ever paid for any wine, and that a mature vintage of one of the Cape’s finest Cabernets, was £35.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">If there is one iconic estate that every visitor should see it is Vergelegen, one of the closest to Cape Town and the country property of the first Dutch governor, Simon van der Stel. The 17th Century mansion, its furniture, its gardenand park with magnificent trees epitomizes the early civilization of the Cape. The modern winery, sparkling white above its vines overlooking False Bay, epitomise the future.And the wines, from bubbly to Chardonnay to what tastes to me extraordinarily like claret, send out a clarion message: South Africa has arrived.</span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMJZufM8mUqyzG3aiwkdfIVqhMSGeK5SiYxDBKg5xa4mrpKTo5Et4LDvnKoiwnpojCO-QPkSCTORAwvrvxdesBB5u02JtkKqob4vFmwtYgiOqdrZnTWflAbkclAKshP8A9Gk9Yd47Cq8qN/s1600-h/sig.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218717461103284034" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMJZufM8mUqyzG3aiwkdfIVqhMSGeK5SiYxDBKg5xa4mrpKTo5Et4LDvnKoiwnpojCO-QPkSCTORAwvrvxdesBB5u02JtkKqob4vFmwtYgiOqdrZnTWflAbkclAKshP8A9Gk9Yd47Cq8qN/s320/sig.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;">Hugh Johnson,</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;">Club President</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-40483014244309114882008-05-09T07:41:00.000-07:002008-05-09T09:00:31.930-07:00Hugh reflects on the unique attraction of The Club's Vintage Festival<p><span style="font-family:georgia;">When I stopped to think about it (and there wasn’t much time for that) it’s pretty amazing. You invite a few thousand people to come and taste wine at the weekend and they all fall to, totally sorted and in their stride, as though they did little else.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:georgia;">The hall doors open, and within five minutes girls in halter tops are discussing Chianti, blokes in jeans are sniffing away at Shiraz and men in blazers are asking their wives whether they prefer the Gewurztraminer or the Pinot Gris.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:georgia;">It is the ultimate democratic wine discussion, where everyone’s opinion is of equal weight, where you can find the answer to any question, and where a mellow mood allows genial appreciation without pressure.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:georgia;">Our suppliers are as keen as our Members to be there. Pruning your vines or doing your paperwork in a village in France or Spain you feel a million miles from your customers and their expectation. Very occasionally one turns up on holiday and takes half your day – pleasantly enough, but hardly solving any problems. At the Vintage Festival you see precisely who you are making your wine for. You may be surprised by their questions, their knowledge or their lack of it, but you get an unvarnished reaction.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:georgia;">Members can put a face to the wine they like, hear a story to pass on, get a restaurant recommendation or even plan a holiday. The Festival does all the things that a wine label can’t: give a wine context, personality, humanity. When I am faced with a wine list I know the first thing that guides my choice: do I know any of the people whose wines are listed? If not the people, the places? It’s the polar opposite of choosing by brands – and it’s the spirit of our Club. Always has been, always will be.</span></p><p><a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/xsite.aspx?xsite=vf_2008.xml" target="blank"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Click here to discover world-class flavours and superb savings with these exclusive Vintage Festival collections...</span></a><br /></p>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-76585574798204590042008-04-14T16:24:00.000-07:002008-04-14T08:46:21.156-07:00"Vinitaly"Bordeaux has a hypnotic effect on the wine trade. Wine writers too. The first week of April sees scores of scribblers with their noses deep in half-finished claret and their backs to a much more interesting show.<br /><br />Vinitaly, Italy's annual national Winefest, bagged the April Fool's slot 40 years ago. I'm not sure whether Bordeaux never heard of it or decided to snub it, but that's exactly when they decided to mount the quite recent annual Primeur Circus. Let's not go into why the British choose Bordeaux, but English voices at Vinitaly are rare enough to make you turn your head. Last week I felt almost like the sole representative of our island race at a show that offers more new, different, characterful and often bargain wines than Bordeaux can muster in a dozen vintages. My effort at covering them was sadly inadequate. Where do you start when every region of the winiest of all countries has a pavilion like half Olympia to itself?<br /><br />The Fair site is daunting, and frankly hideous, with all the charm of an industrial estate. (You'd think that between bouts they might get round to planting trees). Inside the hangers, though, one trade fair is much like another. It's easy to see which producers, and which regions, have juicy promotion budgets. My prize for style and imagination went to one of the poorest: Campania. Its stands were somewhere between village hall and Vintage Festival. To make up for lavish structures though, the designer has put the Campanian landscape on the ceiling. You looked up and there were the crops, the vines and corn, the rocks and the seashore, upside down above your head, with olive trees hanging down like strange silvery chandeliers. It was the image that I took away with me to sum up the stylish originality of Italian wine – and its makers. <br /><br />After hours, of course, Verona more than makes up for its fairground. It is the perfect urban Italy in miniature, its palace-lined streets and piazzas absurdly rich in history and beauty (and restaurants). You can walk across the mercifully traffic free centre in 20 minutes, taking in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, and ancient Rome in the form of the wonderfully complete arena. In April you can even find a seat unjostled in the Piazza delle Erbe, Italy's most beautiful square.<br /><br />Vinitaly is about exploration. No one claims there is a simple solution to Italian wine. (Perhaps this explains the relative appeal of Bordeaux: a chateau is a chateau and a vintage is a vintage). The easiest way to explore is to go the varietal route: latch on to a grape and keep asking questions about it. Each region has its favourites – not mutually exclusive by any means. You may find, as I did that regional style often wins out over varietal differences. This was the case in Friuli in the north-east, currently Italy's best white wine zone, where Pinot Grigio and Pinot Bianco are just the best known of no less than 17 grapes that go, separately or together, into silky fresh whites. Collio is the zone name of many of the best, but you could go crazy trying to follow the permutations. At a dinner one night, entitled Bianco and Bianchi, the single Bianco turned out to be asparagus and the Bianchi an unending parade of wines aspiring to match it. With 40 different asparagus recipes and at least as many wines the permutations were palate-boggling.<br /><br />Trends, then, in this cornucopia?<br /><br />Good white wines are everywhere in Italy now. Fine ones are rare and great ones probably non-existent, but the old dearth of white refreshment is over, from the Alps to Sicily. One of the big surprises, in fact, is how Sicilian summers can produce such easy wines. We should explore them.<br /><br />Reds? I hardly tasted a bad one. No longer do Tuscany and Piedmont hold all the aces. Grape names we had hardly heard of three years ago have started mini-booms of their own: Sagrantino, for example, in the Centre, Nero d'Avola in Sicily, Montepulciano on the Adriatic coast, Negroamaro down in the heel of Puglia. The old fatalistic formulas are on the way out as these clearer, fruitier, grapier wines become the norm.President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-62330515976440962112008-03-04T07:03:00.000-08:002008-08-29T05:13:38.294-07:00The pick of Chile and Argentina ... side by side!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlEi40WlhvhtdmeSwACx1W2DMe0dtW4j5rV2ylpu7S3yQxw9He49CvjcoMFpk8L0FDvoHroEEByTLmuIiC2ndf9vWzFuNawfc81cn4OXfTL6ASp9VBci4xYnvEGkfs49_m22MOefaNYEU/s1600-h/hjblog_tasting2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174271877851593506" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlEi40WlhvhtdmeSwACx1W2DMe0dtW4j5rV2ylpu7S3yQxw9He49CvjcoMFpk8L0FDvoHroEEByTLmuIiC2ndf9vWzFuNawfc81cn4OXfTL6ASp9VBci4xYnvEGkfs49_m22MOefaNYEU/s320/hjblog_tasting2.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">By teatime', I thought, 'I'll finally know which side of the Andes is which'. I'd held back at lunch to keep my wits about me. I've never seen the pick of Chile and Argentina side by side before (not, curiously, in either country), but the first teams of each were playing in central London: time to memorize the difference - if there is one.<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">This was our buyers' day. In the Chilean corner Vicki Stephens-Clarkson; wearing the Argentine colours Thomas Woolrych. Any hints? If it's white it's from Chile. There was advice I could clearly follow. Chile makes a pretty good show of Sauvignon Blanc, ripe but not so in your face as New Zealand. I liked the Alta Tierra 2007 from the Elqui Valley in the north and the Casas del Bosque from Casablanca; the former almost thick with melony flavour and a touch of grapefruit, the latter more delicately constructed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">Among the reds, though, could I pick them off as right-of-the-Andes or left-of-the-Andes without looking at the labels? For certain mainstream Chileans, yes. Chile gives Cabernet Sauvignon an instantly likeable, fluidly fruity character with an intriguing earthy note. From cooler regions it has a herbal and peppery smell and taste, from the warmest ones a baked berry ripeness; from the best producers a touch of both balancing and lingering deliciously. The national speciality, the Carmenère, follows the same lines with particularly bright and colourful effect. We have a lovely example, the 2007 from Gran Tarapacá, arriving in April.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">Chile's other big excitement is Syrah - the fashion grape of the noughties, it seems, with the Rhône Valley madly modish and New Zealand doing beautifully with what Australia thought it pretty much had to itself. As so often the examples I pick are the less ambitious. Heavy bottles, inky wines and prodigious levels of alcohol are available - at a price. For half the price you can have, for example, the Tabali Reserva '05 from Limari or the Polkura Syrah '06 from Colchagua.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">Argentina holds quite a different card: its Malbec. I remember 15 years ago tasting lines of Cabernet and choosing a Malbec (that was for British Airways, wanting a truly juicy red for all-comers). Malbec has grown up, been perfected, been blended with Cabernet and Merlot, and generally joined the top table. Schroeder Estate (Mr Schroeder had come all the way) makes a good example, intense, smooth, balanced, hugely appealing. Fabre Montmayou is fruitier, less intense, with a nice tannic touch.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8cXn4RsKgPuuk4Dwqz1F495fuDbHlvBmQ9qgPUSx4ZLfyefWxFBJ-cIGyFxatv_w00IUk8HHTFahP3MWN1S2GENAUwqr1bZpkugccHXNSKCcyuN-js7Cu9Wq9WNaCorQocCijb7bwJqi-/s1600-h/hjblog_tasting1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173931686805537602" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8cXn4RsKgPuuk4Dwqz1F495fuDbHlvBmQ9qgPUSx4ZLfyefWxFBJ-cIGyFxatv_w00IUk8HHTFahP3MWN1S2GENAUwqr1bZpkugccHXNSKCcyuN-js7Cu9Wq9WNaCorQocCijb7bwJqi-/s320/hjblog_tasting1.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">Most impressive of all was Malbec blended with Cabernet Sauvignon by a master, the</span><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;"> Catena/Rothschild Reserve that combines the names as Caro. Caro 2004 at £25 was far from the most expensive Argentine present, but to me the most exciting, with the cool-in-the-mouth harmony and fresh, juicy, palate-coating length of a job well done.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">There were three vertical tastings on show to represent the dimension of time: what happens to these wines over three, five, ten years in bottle? The first was a long-established Chilean classic, Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon from Concha y Toro. The 1987 opened the batting. Back then the wines were lighter; a mere 12.5% alcohol. They were elegant, though, and drink sweetly at 20 years. Don Melchor is one of those consistent players, firm in youth, never greatly complex but like a sweet drive down the middle of the fairway, satisfying and lingering in the mind.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">Its stable mate is a joint effort with Mouton-Rothschild, Almaviva, a blend of Cabernet and Carmenère. The early vintages are growing a little gamey, but the 2003 has the fruity brilliance of Carmenère and the depth of Cabernet Sauvignon in lovely proportions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">The Argentine entry in what you might call the Superandean class was Cheval des Andes, Moët-Hennessy's prestige creation in cahoots with Cheval Blanc; Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in partnership. So far, I would say, so splendid. It's hard to mistake the French touch, whichever side of the Andes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;">By teatime I was wondering why the two countries don't team up and call the whole delicious thing Patagonia.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><img height="61" src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" width="125" /><br /><br />Hugh Johnson,<br />Club President<br /><span style="font-family:Helvetica;color:black;"></span></p>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-29935812926366716262008-02-29T06:33:00.000-08:002008-03-28T08:39:04.503-07:00A new partner for Port!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieAtFa2whAkWdTKdK-OZJOi6u2qDYpZC8uANd3L6qIlWSTpnfiMifA4FT2IhRvtYPp51yF0bssR0CoPwHkJ-IzryeVPDsCsLTOJwM80S-KVCzTtjccwDUWyKO1hsG_OCqxZZ1yo20Sw4EN/s1600-h/hjblog_port.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieAtFa2whAkWdTKdK-OZJOi6u2qDYpZC8uANd3L6qIlWSTpnfiMifA4FT2IhRvtYPp51yF0bssR0CoPwHkJ-IzryeVPDsCsLTOJwM80S-KVCzTtjccwDUWyKO1hsG_OCqxZZ1yo20Sw4EN/s320/hjblog_port.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173923577907282722" border="0" /></a>Retro. I don't know who coined the term, but I'm not surprised it caught on. It invites us into life's fancy-dress department. Be sniffy if you must: call it ironic when you wear flares or a topper or back comb your hair. If you're honest, though, you quite like playing a role with preset expectations. Fashion is so relentless: just as you get used to it it's off again. Cuddle up with retro. Play a part. Forget your current habits for a minute and adopt some of your ancestors' ...<br /><br />Drinking port, for example.<br /><br />Our neighbours in the country bemoan the (relative) trickle of after-dinner port these days. Relative, that is, to the tide that flowed on a winter's night after a day's shooting before the hedgerows filled up with policemen. To criticize the drinking and driving laws would get me ostracized: to bemoan their effect on social life in the countryside is another thing. Farmers toddling home after midnight were seldom a cause of trouble.<br /><br />One result is that everybody's port is getting older. A season's supply lasts three or four seasons these days, and those rare sips are correspondingly more appreciated. What is less easy to understand is that sales of port, and demand for the best ports - vintage, but also old tawnies and colheitas - is steady and rising. If not red-faced old sportsmen, who is drinking it? Your modern urban person, that's who. And not waiting for the cloth to be cleared and the ladies to withdraw, either. Port has met pudding, with dramatic results.<br /><br />I first met this modern match in a New York restaurant. I admit it was chocolate on centre stage. New Yorkers make me wonder if chocolate has some Freudian significance. But in the list of wines offered to help the chocolate down port figured prominently. Top vintage port by the glass. I put my hand up for one (and ordered, I confess, a non-chocolate pud). The port, and the blackberry crumble, were a moment of revelation. I had discovered the wine's new rôle, and one of its most perfect partners. That started me drinking port in a different light, as it were, and drinking it much younger. It's not 30 year old crusted bottles that sticky puds call for, but darkly potent, palate-massaging recent issues, intensely fruity and massively sweet. Wow!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br />Hugh Johnson,<br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-83814775262045113872008-01-28T06:31:00.000-08:002008-04-07T03:25:15.667-07:00An early eye on Burgundy 2006<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUv25noNV2wXkuh5uXF57AWLyVWyj_rOhtmw4ZmmB5k5O0L07g_pzsvDVPFaCrpx_j4eYwHQ9O3A03NcQAEGwpyiiSoA_xo8UL8in2wxcw70rjBpqBAVZ3AGSXM2mLmSybcwD9-KRJ2svk/s1600-h/hjblog_burg.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUv25noNV2wXkuh5uXF57AWLyVWyj_rOhtmw4ZmmB5k5O0L07g_pzsvDVPFaCrpx_j4eYwHQ9O3A03NcQAEGwpyiiSoA_xo8UL8in2wxcw70rjBpqBAVZ3AGSXM2mLmSybcwD9-KRJ2svk/s320/hjblog_burg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173915056692167410" border="0" /></a><br />You can get obsessed with the gossip and the day's agenda in any trade. Whether the wine trade is worse than others I don't know, but in the January week when the only topic was the new release of Burgundies en primeur it felt pretty bad. Yes, decisions had to be taken. "Short supply" say the distributors. "You'll miss the best if you don't decide". A few decisions were easy: I went mad on some Chablis (I always do) and some smarter white Burgundies from Chassagne-Montrachet, Meursault and St Aubin. New red Burgundy (and some of these wines, especially the best, are still in their barrels) poses deeper questions. The Pinot Noir is a funny grape: it can gain body, colour, roundness and flavour from what seems a thinnish start - or sometimes go the other way. I look for yummy cherry-brandyish flavours and a long finish in samples of any age. There weren't many (cherry-brandyish flavours, that is), but I suspect there are more to come.<br /><br /><b>"One of the biggest bargains on The Club's list ..."</b><br /><br />'Economic downturn' is the catchphrase of the month. If it makes us look at the right-hand column a little nearer the top it's not all gloom, though. It's when you feel too strapped for cash to go for the safe names (and if they didn't charge a premium, what's the insurance business all about?) that you stumble on bargains. One of the biggest bargains on The Club list (now, for a long time, and I suspect far into the future) is our lightest and driest sherry, Thomas Abad's Fino. How and why does The Club sell a grownup white wine like this, with four times the flavour of almost any Chardonnay and at 15% only a tad more alcohol, for less than any of our amazing range of 40 different Chablis? For a really silly reason. Because you don't buy it. I sometimes wonder if it would move up the charts if we doubled the price. It would still be a steal. Do you ever eat smoked salmon? Do me a favour: give yourself a glass of cold Fino with it - and then another. Mystery: why did restaurants never sell Fino by the bottle? Very suspicious; they make a massively higher margin by the glass, and they know you wouldn't bother with any other white wine once you had a bottle within reach.<br /><br /><img src="http://maindevast/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br />Hugh Johnson,<br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-70115962231612033412007-11-23T06:30:00.000-08:002008-04-10T08:33:40.103-07:00Christmas Drinking 2007<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhMLT6WrTxgpov546X-E2vQupBrLcotIPVe-kmmCDXu2cPBxStktfU-_RsGLbfh5dZ6st9pinO1G1fmGqw-6C7D-qfCK4Y72AitsTxmC5VkwS_l4xCzvbpYMBo8Sfj39wlJTyHgocViKU/s1600-h/hjblog_xmas.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhMLT6WrTxgpov546X-E2vQupBrLcotIPVe-kmmCDXu2cPBxStktfU-_RsGLbfh5dZ6st9pinO1G1fmGqw-6C7D-qfCK4Y72AitsTxmC5VkwS_l4xCzvbpYMBo8Sfj39wlJTyHgocViKU/s320/hjblog_xmas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173921048171545362" border="0" /></a>Do we really squeeze all our serious drinking (by which of course I mean wine appreciation) into the last 10 days of the year? That's the picture you get: wine merchants up all night packing parcels for people who rarely touch a drop until Christmas Eve.<br /><br />And then: the bubbly foams, the richest reds appear in elegant glasses, the venerable port winks ruby in the firelight. Does anyone do avant-garde Christmas? Damien Hirst maybe; the rest of us, it seems, stick with tradition. Why re-invent a formula that works so well?<br /><br />It starts, of course, with Champagne. I've never understood how (or why) Champagne houses consistently threaten us with supplies running dry, amidst cries that the region must expand - and then offer us the latest bargain.<br /><br />Should I worry, though, when the tried and true is offered at less than last time I bought it, just when I need it most? Whether I drink <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=50090">The Club's Champagne</a> (exclamations of delight; how can it be that good), <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=50008">the delectable Haton</a> (glasses stretched out for more) or a glamour brand (nods of knowledgeable appreciation) I have never known it fail to create a buzz.<br /><br />Alternatives? There are lots. Christmas morning sees me sipping glorious dry rich sherry. On Boxing Day it will be English fizz: The Club's South Ridge gets everybody talking. And this year, <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=50403">Sparkling Shiraz!</a> Yes really: deep red South Australian fruit, tannin and bubbles all together reach taste buds you didn't know you had. You'll never know until you try it.<br /><br />This Christmas, even square old claret drinkers have to decide between juicy young wines or something more mellow. A few years ago no one dreamed of drinking two-year-old Bordeaux. Then came 2003 and 2005 with grapes so ripe the wines beg to be drunk in their first fruity bloom. In fact, with claret vintages from '99 to 2005 ready to drink this Christmas - you can hardly miss. Don't open the big-name '05's yet ... oh, all right then.<br /><br />The vogue for big reds doesn't go away at Christmas. <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=39093">Chateauneuf?</a> Absolutely. Fine Australian Shiraz? Why ever not? Or Italy's turbo reds, Amarone and <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=39969">Valpolicella Ripasso</a>. I have Colheita port on my list, once-a-year vintage Madeira, <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=25831">Sauternes</a> and my own <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=26351">Royal Tokaji Aszu</a>. And just to show I haven't been dozing through life's great fashion show, <a href="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/product.pasp?product_code=73011">Limoncello</a>. Last year no one had heard of it; this year drink it or you're nothing. Or so they tell me.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br />Hugh Johnson,<br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-26138595573156164782007-08-20T06:30:00.000-07:002008-04-07T03:24:41.205-07:00The Club CruiseMature clarets. Starboard tack. Course 30 degrees for Portoferraio, three jibs, all staysails, topsails and topgallants. 21° centigrade.<br /><br />Tasting notes starting like this generally have a favourable outcome. They only happen at all, unfortunately, on our biennial cruises on tall ships, but the memory lingers. Some come primarily for the wine and some for the sailing. Don't ask me to choose. The perfect accompaniment for a Sardinian Vermentino? Force seven on the starboard quarter off the Costa Smeralda. It could become a habit.<br /><br />130 of us set sail from Cannes on July 28, supported, if that's the word, by a crew of 75, bound for Calvi in Corsica. You can do it in 2 hours 55 minutes in a car ferry from Nice. Is it a sin to feel toweringly superior? Guilty m'lud, and I want about four hundred similar offences taken into consideration. We were, after all, on our toweringly superior ship for seven whole days.<br /><br /><img src="http://maindevast/images/club/theclub/blog_cruise2.jpg" height="177" width="400" /><br />There is a time-honoured ritual to getting going on the Star Clipper. These are sailing Club President, Hugh Johnson, reports back from another breath-taking Mediterranean adventure ships, remember; the first Sailing Passenger Vessels to be registered for many many years, and some of the biggest ever. You don't just start the motor, ship a pilot and get chugging. With a great deal of uncoiling ropes and looking aloft, the first signs are acres of white canvas unfurling far above your head. You look in vain for mariners bending over the spars, though; the duty officer has a wand with big yellow buttons controlling electric motors. Nor will you be required to suffer for your sense of history either, only to listen once again to a worn out recording of a heroic chant they tell me accompanied the Onedin Line. Suddenly, the sky above you is full of booming rectangles and straining triangles of sail, incomprehensively high. The deck tilts, the breeze freshens, and 3,000 tons of ship (wine-cellar included) is heading out to sea.<br /><br />You are not allowed to forget the winecellar. We could fill the ship with more passengers than the 130 Club members who so gamely volunteer, but only by using the cabins we fill with hundreds of bottles of the best. It's not as though ports of call were bereft of wine. Everywhere we stop tenders seem to surround us with crates of the local creations. Nor are we remiss about appraising them. We send expeditions ashore to scour the vineyards, invite (unreluctant) growers to come and show us their wares and congregate on the Tropical Deck in attentive attitudes, holding out glasses as though there had been weeks of drought. Still the human chain fetching clarets and Burgundies and Kiwi Sauvignons and Chilean Cabernets up from below seems to labour unceasingly. When John Kemp and his staff are not pouring for eager tasters on deck you will find them in earnest session in the saloon, discussing whether the Crozes or the Central Otago is a better match for the evening's duck breasts in honey.<br /><br />Am I painting a picture of excess? It can't be so. 50 chefs and stewards laboured day and night producing every dish you can think of, but up to five people were reported at one (the only) P.T. session squeezed in before the (substantial) breakfast. And no sooner have the tenders touched the quay, wherever we drop anchor, but queues form up to read the menus of the row of restaurants mercifully within 50 metres of the landing.<br /><br />There is an unavoidable tension built into the schedule of a Sailing Passenger Vessel. It is the dialogue between the skipper and the restaurant manager. We have learned over the years, and many happy voyages, that the restaurant manager must be allowed his way. Eager sailors longing to see the ship beating to windward, white water bursting from the bows, decks running with solid seas, must see their dreams for what they are. Heeling at more than 4 degrees makes the cutlery slide about. At 8 degrees it is difficult to hold a glass correctly.<br /><br />The organisers were taking no chances, though. Popular, and almost continuous, as our daily shipboard tastings were, if we were to have a serious session, an epic in the tradition of The Club's Vintage Festival, it must be on land. Cindy-Marie, our travel agent and much more than that, our energizer, our tonic and scourge of the reluctant, had scouted out the ground. She had found the place, the only place, on the whole Tuscan coast where a vineyard overlooks an anchorage for such a ship, a vineyard able to host a glamorous tasting of Tuscany's top wines, to tempt their growers from as far away as Florence, and to feast the whole ship's company in style.<br /><br />Italy seems effortlessly to produce elegantly saturnine young men with large estates and a passion for wine. Also slender women in Gucci with marked views on fermentation and barrel-ageing. Mario Bacci, our host on his hilltop Terre de Talamo, was the epitome of the breed. The typical Tuscan tasting list, at least on the coast, runs Vermentino, Rosato, Morellino (or Brunello or Supertuscan I.G.T., or Chianti). Vermentino cools you, Rosato quenches your thirst and the red makes you seriously hungry. Beside the tasting tent, as an emergency resource, stood an airy pavilion with half a dozen exquisite (and subtly different) prosciutti and a millstone of Parmesan. That prince of the vine, Leonardo Frescobaldi, presided over a table of his magnificent Chianti Ruffina Montesodi and his irresistibly delicious Chianti Tenuta di Castiglioni. The sun beat down on the white tents, the green vines and the glittering water in the bay. It was a scene you were reluctant to leave - until the word went round to repair to another tent sitting among other vines for a sundown collazione.<br /><br />A note, here, on Vermentino, the great discovery of the cruise. Tuscany has always been notoriously deficient in good white wines, and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia not much better endowed. As we found to our delight all three have made impressive progress. Memories of Vermentino are often of a skinny thing getting by just by being cool and sharp. The best modern versions have Sauvignon-like freshness but also a plump middle and a satisfying grip; the very thing with fritto misto di mare. Best of all was the version brought on board by Valentina Argiolas from their family's winery in Sardinia. Poor girl, she had to brave a decidedly frisky sea in a tender to come aboard and show us what Sardinia (or Cerdegna) can do these days; Vermentino of almost nutty richness, resounding red Turriga made from Cannonau and treacle-dense dessert wine from Nasco - two Cerdegnan grapes we will hear more about.<br /><br />The collazione? A multi-part feast, with its climax a barbecue of bistecca fiorentina that involved five chefs, a battery of steel barbecues in clouds of fragrant smoke, and half a herd hung till it was meltingly tender. Elba was our next port of call after the Tuscan coast. The Etruscan Powers made two blunders when they captured Napoleon. They gave him too nice an island to live on - and they let him escape. Elba is peaceful, green with woods, if not oversupplied with memorable wines. We enjoyed, though, the examples their creators brought on board. My choice (Napoleon's, too) is the strange sweet Muscat-scented red Aleatico.<br /><br />Portovenere lies at the mouth of the gulf of La Spezia, on the borders of Tuscany and Liguria. Some of the party took a boat ride up the Cinque Terre coast to see its absurdly steep vineyards on cliffs above the sea. How much of the vintage, I always wonder, rolls off into the waves? Others stayed to explore the old town and swim where Byron swam.<br /><br />For our purposes Portovenere was the port for Piemonte, and half a dozen of the best growers of Gavi and Barbera and best of all Barolo came down to greet us with a noble range of wines. Gavi, I noted, has advanced in bounds since our last visit. You can think Chablis, and Chablis Premier Cru and Grand Cru when you meet a grower like Bereagli. Dr Broglia brought us, besides excellent reds, the sort of one-off cellar treasure you rarely meet, a 25-year-old sparkling Gavi that had taken on the deep nuttiness of old Champagne. Prosecco is all very well, but after a while ...<br /><br />What, I had to ask him, did our Ukrainian commanding officer make of our consuming interest - not to say obsession?<br /><br />A solemn toast, and an unexpected compliment: 'Never have I had such a sober cruise'. Practice makes perfect.<br /><br /><img src="http://maindevast/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br /> Hugh Johnson,<br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-62666893089566505642007-06-22T06:28:00.000-07:002008-04-07T03:25:38.923-07:00The Art of Blending<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuKdMvKVXU4AVU0ZQiAixBCMSPiUkGc_AE9hfZw7ew6TMWLFDBDS0ABPiYuf9DZ_lfnf_xpOzxaH_fMXLsIXP1qwpjMmyevkYJ4FlhhEmfffSpDWoO7QaBQ6DKx9x45L77xYCBxf38GopS/s1600-h/hjblog_blending.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuKdMvKVXU4AVU0ZQiAixBCMSPiUkGc_AE9hfZw7ew6TMWLFDBDS0ABPiYuf9DZ_lfnf_xpOzxaH_fMXLsIXP1qwpjMmyevkYJ4FlhhEmfffSpDWoO7QaBQ6DKx9x45L77xYCBxf38GopS/s320/hjblog_blending.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173919154090967810" border="0" /></a><b>Perhaps it is something to do with bloodlines</b>, the appeal of the thoroughbred, that set people thinking the wine from a single grape variety is somehow more aristocratic. Is this why the word 'varietal' started, in California, as a suggestion, if not a statement, of inherent superiority? 'I'm a Cabernet Sauvignon: no dilution with inferior stuff' was the inference.<p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">And there are wines, and grapes, that are 100% or nothing. The two that lose far more than they gain by any blending at all are Pinot Noir and Riesling. Many would argue that they are, simply, the greatest soloists in the world of wine. Their greatness lies in their purity. </p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">What other grapes usually get all the way to the bottle on their own? Chardonnay, most prominently. It's not that the taste of another variety would sully its particular purity; more that Chardonnay offers such a perfect package of flavour. Oak offers it another dimension, but it can work even better without it. Think of Chablis. As for adding a dollop of Sauvignon or Riesling: ridiculous.</p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">Simple fruity flavours are found more often in white grapes than in red. Hence the familiarity of Sauvignon, of Pinot Gris, of Gewürztraminer and Muscat. Among reds there are fewer. Gamay (as in Beaujolais) is atypical. Red wine is (and usually should be) a more structured drink. When you ferment the skins with the juice you get away from simple (or not so simple) juice flavour. More depends on the judgement, and on the taste, of the winemaker, less simply on the grape.</p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">The world's most famous blended wine - blended in the sense of combining two or more different grape varieties - is claret. The recipe is no secret. Cabernet Sauvignon plus Merlot plus Cabernet Franc is the Médoc version. The Cabernets give the punch, the smell of berries and herbs and the need for a certain age. Merlot rounds it all out, gives depth and softness and its own berry-like smell. The three grapes are close enough cousins to be confused: very far from chalk and cheese, but perfect complements. Merlot covers for Cabernet when it fails to get to perfect ripeness (Merlot ripens two weeks earlier). Cabernet covers for Merlot when it falls short on tannin, acidity and general grip.</p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">Recipes like these have been worked on for centuries. In the past, when a better grape variety came along there was no hesitation in adding it to the mixture. Cabernet Sauvignon was added (and Malbec dropped) from the 18th century on. No one can imagine that happening today.</p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">Even the noblest grapes, the untouchable Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, can be complementary. What is unthinkable in Burgundy is a perfect recipe in Champagne. Chardonnay gives the apple flavours, Pinot Noir the red fruit and the gravitas (and Pinot Meunier, not officially known in Burgundy, more red fruit).</p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;"><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br />Hugh Johnson,<br />Club President </p>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-61686451204906727392007-01-07T06:27:00.000-08:002008-04-07T03:23:43.775-07:00President's agenda 2007<p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">Repeat after me: "Every day and in every way I am getting better and better". The copyright in that famous line belongs to Dr. Emil Coue of Nancy, circa 1922. The funny thing is that it applies to the wines of our time with no autosuggestion at all. Wine is not the only thing that is on a roll - but hey, it makes all the rest feel better, too. We are all emphatically in luck - especially with the 2005 vintage clinking its way into our wine-racks. Wine this good makes you wonder whether growers are all getting better at their job, or their job is getting easier.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's a bit of both. Global Warming (or let's call it Climate Change) is getting a lot of the credit for a string of good vintages. (Logically it will have to take the blame for bad ones too). But sheer know-how in the vineyard and the cellar is at least keeping pace. I would give the Internet as much credit as the climate. Growers are just a Google away from solutions they might have taken years to find on their own.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's happening everywhere. Our problem is to allot priorities. How exciting is it to be first with a Shiraz from India, or are you into new developments in Southern Burgundy? Priority one, of course, is always to deliver a wine with character at a good price.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">So we juggle the hottest new numbers with wines that may have ceased to be news (nobody keeps the headlines for more than a few vintages these days). Often that's when they settle down and really get the gist. Take the Midi, for example, or parts of Australia we were excited to discover only a year or two ago. They have serious quantities of good wine now, and have to be what's known as 'ealistic' about their prices. Better wine and lower prices? It's music to our ears.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">If only we understood how fashions work. What is it about, let's say, Pinot Grigio that makes it an unstoppable bestseller? Simplicity is part of it: an uncomplicated grape mercifully uncluttered by the limitations of geography. A new one from Hungary? From New Zealand? Why not: let's give it a go.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The more varieties that reach that threshold the better. Quite a few are getting there. Viognier is still a bit exotic, perhaps; you either like it or you don't. But Vermentino, Verdelho, Greco di Tufo.... Plenty of the Mediterranean staples now have their fan clubs. As for Chablis, if the Channel Tunnel were a pipeline it could hardly handle the quantities you folk out there seem to get through. It must be Chardonnay's revenge on the New World notion that it needed oak chips and sticky quantities of residual sugar to make it worth drinking.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Often, though, it's a New World producer that brings an Old World variety back into focus. Take Pinot Noir. Since New Zealand began making its super-juicy version, crisp, sweet and perfumey, more people see the point of red burgundy. Take Riesling: since Australia gave it a new spin, with wines more dry and beefy than the German or Alsace version, drinkers have started to trickle back to these European classics. Trickle, not pour, so far - still leaving the Moselles of an unprecedented string of great vintages as the greatest bargains of our time.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Do Chile-drinkers also drink Italian? Do burgundy-lovers also love Bordeaux? Half of you, if my experience is anything to go by, know just what you want: familiarity with a touch of novelty is the ticket. The other half asks the question 'What next?' There has never been a better time to be in either camp.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><br /><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br />Hugh Johnson, <br />Club President</p>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-90731036571973179282006-11-09T08:22:00.000-08:002008-04-07T03:22:58.690-07:00France Fighting Back<b>The wine world hit the ground running as January called us all back to our spittoons. Except that there were so many tastings in the first weeks of the year that ground-contact was optional. And not just tastings, but post mortems, predictions, analyses . . . all very useful and stimulating stuff.</b><br /><br />So where are we? What's in? What's out? Shall we be drinking differently this summer? Will the New World continue its advance, or the old one reassert its ancestral authority?<br /><br />Er, both. Early last year Australia was able to claim it had pretty much caught up with France in popularity on our tables - an amazing achievement, if it's true. It certainly had the French worried - and more divided than ever about the sanctity of appellations and the rigidity of rules. Very reasonably they ask why New world growers can plant what grapes they like where they like, while a Frenchman has to jump through hoops to plant anything at all, and risks both barrels from the law if he dares to experiment with a variety not authorized for his region.<br /><br />But at the same time buyers in Britain were heard asking if Australia wasn't getting a bit too big for its boots. Some of the wines that had made it so user-friendly, the safe-bet oaky Chardonnay or vanilla-and-blackberry Barossa Shiraz were becoming a tad too predictable the fifth time round. Nor were their prices getting any friendlier.<br /><br />Australia's 2000 vintage was not special. South Africa's performance is getting sharper (and the rand dropping). Chile and Argentina are in full cry despite poor Argentina's money trouble, while New Zealand is redefining itself as the chic boutique of the southern hemisphere. Should Australia be worried? Not in the least. 2001 is overall a cracking good vintage. Wine-makers are smart enough to adapt their style to stress its juicy crisp fruit. ('Unwooded' is becoming the same sort of sales tag as 'unfiltered' was a year or two ago.) Riesling is resurgent, with beautiful pure and racy examples from Perth to Adelaide, and the Clare Valley establishing itself as the Rheingau of the South.<br /><br />Australian winemakers are getting more imaginative about blending varieties, too. Adding Sauvignon Blanc to their favourite old Semillon gives it a lift. The fragrant white Verdelho has come out of the shadows to make fresh wines on its own or season a too-solid Chardonnay. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot now marry in South Australia as happily as they do in Bordeaux. I do wonder though, about the prices asked for some of the rum-and-thunder Shiraz from ancient vines in Barossa or McLaren Vale. Sweet and strong is easy: sweet and seductive is something else.<br /><br />Should France really be worried, then? Not in the world market. It's going to take a long time to wean the true devotees of Bordeaux and Burgundy off the wine they worship. They are not always the obvious suspects: Belgium and Switzerland buy heroic quantities of the top wines. And the investment market, based in London but strongly backed by the USA, simply daren't look elsewhere. Futures in Coonawarra somehow don't equate to futures in Margaux.<br /><br />If the battle rages on British shelves it may have something to do with our ambivalent attitude to France, our age-old love-hate relationship that dreams of summers in Perigord but remembers sneers in Paris.We all want Bordeaux and Burgundy to succeed in glorious ripe vintages (Look at the rush to buy Bordeaux 2000, despite outright gouging by top chateaux). Yet we rub our hand at blind tasting results when France is humiliated by a New World (or any other) rival.<br /><br />We should keep open minds. The world is awash with dreary wines, produced in industrial quantities (and by industrial methods), whether in Oz, France or any other country. I am constantly amazed that our supermarkets offer such a range of wines that are essentially the same, wherever they come from. Try the famous appellation wines in a French supermarket, though. You will be amazed how far they dare to stretch credulity - and their wines.<br /><br />Equipped with open minds we can take advantage of the good things coming from alternative sources: grape varieties other than the Big Six and countries and regions that are either overlooked or undervalued.<br /><br />Where am I looking in 2002? Of course while the pound continues so strong against the euro - long may it last - Europe can't help offering us bargains. I'm looking in the east and south of Italy for full-flavoured reds. Not forgetting Sicily and Sardinia - for whites too. In recent regional appellations in Portugal for concentrated tannic wines and Spain for easier riper drinking. In Andalusia, of course, for the wine world's biggest bargain of all: sherry.<br /><br />In France it is the Midi which is least pampered - although most chaotic. But the Loire valley still offers top value for money from Muscadet to Sancerre - via Anjou and Touraine. Alsace would do better, in my view, to make less late-picked stickies at high prices and give us its glorious dry wines. Champagne: how long can the bargain prices last?<br /><br />Look again at Germany (I say this every year) for pure-flavoured wines that go far better with food than you think. Australian Rieslings have overtaken some of Germany's loveliest in price. Can this last? And be ready to go further east - with advice. Austria is a totally safe bet; Hungary packed with promise; Greece more and more intriguing.<br /><br />We already know where we are with Chile and Argentina: more often satisfied than really thrilled to the marrow. The same with California. Its best-known wines are deadly dull - and by no means cheap, while its best rarely reach us: the mighty dollar takes care of that. Washington State bears some study, though.<br /><br />Personally I'm looking harder and longer than ever at South Africa. I've never needed persuading about South African whites. Now the reds are shaking off their traditional earthy dryness to become equally seductive.<br /><br />The doyenne of wine-writing, Pamela Vandyke Price (sorry, Jancis, your turn will come) is famous for her two catch phrases. 'What times!', she cries on meeting. And on parting, 'Prudent be'. These days the first is more apposite than the second.<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br /> Hugh Johnson,<br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-31048220421181700322006-11-09T06:26:00.000-08:002008-04-07T03:23:23.521-07:00France 2005<p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 0px;">We rejoice with you, brothers-across-la-Manche, for your simply superb 2005s. For this is truly a 'year of dreams'. We have started to down them with glee, and look forward to the many pleasures lying in wait for the months, years and decades ahead.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">A few extravagant prices in Bordeaux throw a highly flattering light on good producers, and even well-known producers, offering their claret at one fortieth of the price, or even less. Suddenly £100 a box (plus the duty and VAT of course) looks a complete steal for what may be the best wine in decades from the region that still, in spite of everything, holds the pole position in our national wine-drinking.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Nor is Bordeaux the only region to come home rejoicing after a near-model vintage in 2005. What pleasure we can anticipate from Burgundy as well, from Chablis in the north to the southern Maconnais and Beaujolais; the Loire is on spectacular form, the Rhône too. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">In the south, sure-footed winemaking also means that mouthwatering opportunities for wine drinkers abound.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It never causes the same rush of blood, but the other European region that made some of its best wine ever (and irresistible right away; cellaring highly desirable but optional) is Germany's Moselle. In a way I hope the pfennig doesn't drop too soon, because I have designs on obscene amounts, starting with the most peachy, tingling-fresh Kabinett wines I've tasted in years.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There'll never be a shortage of reliable wines - ever again, it seems. Of truly magic ones, though, nobody knows. Best to fill your boots when you see a vintage like 2005 come in.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br />Hugh Johnson,<br />Club President</p>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-72135718795230166302006-08-07T08:18:00.000-07:002008-04-07T03:22:16.372-07:00A Message from Sicily<b>Back brown and breathless from our Star Flyer cruise: Rome - Ischia - Paestum - Lipari - Palermo - Marsala -Ponza - Rome. 120 members on board. Nearly 120 wines tasted. Nearly 100 degrees in Palermo.</b><br /><br />We had a series of on-deck tutored tastings to show dozens of our favourite wines; they showed wonderfully well; so no doubts about combining wine and the sea. The food on board, too, was even better than in our previous two experiences of the Star Clippers, with unimaginable buffet lunches and barbecues - all done, it turned out, by a team under two sous-chefs, a Philippino and a Jamaican, the chef being on holiday.<br /><br />What did we learn, apart from the fact that Club Members have extraordinary stamina? First of all, that southern Italy and Sicily have to count among the hot spots of New World wine. They have the great advantage over the conventional New World of Australasia and the Americas of having a quiverful of native grape varieties. Yes, they can do Chardonnay and Shiraz, but who else can do Fiano and Grillo and Falaghina and Catarratto and Aglianico and Nero d'Avola and Negroamaro?<br /><br />What were unknown, even barbaric names 10 years ago are now the characters and the rationale behind new-minted delicacies. When they were made under primitive conditions they gave pretty indelicate results. But we, via Brussels, have poured zillions into the treasuries of the Mezzogiorno, have not asked too many questions, and are now beginning to collect our dividend.<br /><br />The evolution of Sicilian and South Italian wine has been fast-forwarded to amazing effect. Natural selection gradually produced vines well-adapted to local conditions. Extreme heat is not the only one. Drought is another, and high on the mountain slopes, extremes of every kind.<br /><br />The new generation of wine-makers has gone straight to the point. Traditional methods, if there were any, were usually hokum. Modern oenology could use the aromas, flavours and structure of these grapes to far better effect. Result: a break-out from the Chardonnay/Sauvignon rut; juicy robust alternatives to Cabernet and Shiraz, Merlot and Pinot Noir. They use them straight or think up blends. In Sicily we even had a blend of Nero d'Avola and Pinot Noir - and rather good it was, too.<br /><br />Two landmark tastings tell the story. Both will go down in history. The first, at a buffalo farm (milk for mozzarella) near Paestum, brought together The Club's suppliers from central and southern Italy, from Chianti to Pescara to Salento to Naples. This was relatively familiar territory seen in a new light, from Farnese's delicate touch with Chardonnay to the sweet thunder of a Selvarossa Riserva from Puglia.<br /><br />The second was in the stately drawing-rooms of the baroque palazzo Malvagna in the narrow streets of old Palermo, on an afternoon when the Celsius thermometer flirted with forty. In the tradition of Club mini-festivals we had invited fifteen different Sicilian producers. The aristocracy of the island were there, their coats of arms flashing proudly on their new-minted labels.<br /><br />The wines were a revelation. Europe has a great new wine country. Most of us have drunk Corvo and heard of Regaleali, but what about Firiaco's Harmonium (all Nero d'Avola)? Or Scyri? Or Planeta's Corneta (all Fiano, like gentle honeyed melon)? Or Vigna di Gabri from Donnafugata (all Ansonica, firm, almondy, big and appetizing)? There was Grillo from Chiaramonte, Insola from Almerita, Cataratto from Rapitalà.<br /><br />Getting confused? Me too. But give us time to sort it out. We have hit a seam of exotic delights none of us suspected - and we shall all be the beneficiaries.<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br /> Hugh Johnson,<br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-57495803818657748922003-06-15T06:53:00.000-07:002008-04-07T03:21:57.077-07:00Clarets with three noughts<b style="font-family: arial;">The reporting season for the 2002 vintage has been relatively muted so far, with sad squelching sounds all we hear from the sunny south. So with fresh memories of a pretty dire summer at home I am delighted to find growers in northern Europe sounding so chipper: satisfaction along the Loire, in Champagne maybe even a vintage, delirium in Germany, with the highest sugar content ever recorded in Riesling (256 Oechsle degrees at Lieser on the Moselle, by Sybille Kuntz), Burgundy pretty content, and Bordeaux rubbing its eyes in near disbelief.</b><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> At the end of August we were getting gallows humour: 'Perhaps I'll make white wine this year' said Anthony Barton of the great claret châteaux Léoville and Langoa; 'the grapes were supposed to have turned red by now'. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> In September they did, far faster than anyone expected. The sun shone, the Merlot sprinted to ripeness and the Cabernets came puffing along in pursuit. By October an uneven crop was more sweet and flavoury than anyone believed possible. The last time the fat was pulled out of the fire so spectacularly was by a late change of weather in 1978. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> There is a good deal of sage head-wagging going on: 'It sorted out the men from the boys; the serieux from the paresseux'. It was the sort of crop that needed hands-on attention right through from the uneven flowering to the laborious vintage triage when undersized and unripe grapes had to be thrown out. So expect mixed reports, but don't discount enthusiastic ones. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Bordeaux 2001 is a mixed-message vintage too. However good its best wines they will always be compared to the 2000s, usually to the advantage of the latter. How is the latter? The Union des Grand Crus did itself a favour the other day ('high time', said many) hiring the splendid Floral Hall at Covent Garden and giving the celebrated vintage its first big public (or at least press and trade) airing since it was bottled. Deliveries to those who bought en primeur (and are still paying off the overdraft) will start in the spring. Are the wines living up to their colossal billing? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Perhaps not for those who are expecting the vintage of a lifetime, powered to run for a hundred years. I found the reds more accessible than I expected - in some cases so pretty and plausible that I had doubts about their durability. But great vintages are good to taste from birth. That's the folklore. Should we complain? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> What I love about these wines is their sheer joyful sappiness. They smell and taste of ripe grapes, sweet - savoury too - with clean fruity acidity and tannins that support the instep without pinching the toes. There are a lot of class acts; the best openly and sweetly fragrant on the palate and at the same time cool, tight and firmly packaged in the flavour department. Examples; from a run of the Graves Chateaux I love and follow, satisfaction ranging from moderate (Chateau Carbonnieux, 'perfumed, floral, even ready to drink') to ecstatic: (Chateau Haut-Bailly; 'Nose fresh and sweet but restrained. Opens smoothly, velvet tannins, then builds intensity to a potent sting. Savoury, coats palate with perfume. Great style, fruit goes on and on. Top wine'. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> I thought the Margaux and St Julien tables were extra good; some of the Pauillac and St Estephe wines less obviously, at least at present. St Emilion and Pomerol (generalizing from a scattered sampling) were everything one could expect, short of a thunderous acclamation of greatness. The First Growths were not present. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> What we have on the present showing, then, is an extremely attractive and very ripe vintage, a vintage everyone will enjoy and feel confident about ordering for at least a decade. No, two. Its greatness and long-term worth, though, let alone its value for the highest prices ever, have yet to be proved. Have another look at the '01s. And be open-minded about the '02s. </span><br /><br /><img style="font-family: arial;" src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Hugh Johnson,</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Club President </span>President of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-70966806792039467172002-07-04T08:58:00.000-07:002008-04-07T03:21:40.574-07:00Corks in the Docks<b>The case for the prosecution is getting stronger all the time. The other day I was at a famous Burgundy domaine, tasting some of the excellent whites of 2000, bottled a year ago. Out of the ten wines from the proprietor's reserve, two were so tainted by cork mould as to be untastable; their quality, certainly high, could not be judged. To most people they would be undrinkable - at least with any pleasure.</b><br /><br />If this was representative, and 10% of the stock of 2000 at the domaine was corky, and the corkiness was recognized and the wine sent back, there would be no margin left and the grower would go out of business. Even if the figure was 5% he would go bust.<br /><br />What will save him - for now - is the near certainty that his customers will not recognize corkiness for what it is. They will 'merely' think the wine is no good, suffer in silence and (if they remember) shun his label in future.<br /><br />The grower told me he already buys his corks from Portugal's three most reputed suppliers as an insurance policy. And bad corks are randomly and unpredictably spread between all three. It is apparently nobody's fault. He is already experimenting with all the alternatives, from plastic corks to screwcaps. For his less expensive wines, he says, he is ready to change closures tomorrow. It is only the conservatism of the customer, sentimentally attached to corks and corkscrews, that holds him back and drags out the inevitable end of the poor primitive old cork.<br /><br />Personally I would like to see screwcaps used on all wines destined for drinking within two years of bottling, without delay. We would all enjoy having guaranteed fresh clean wines, and the corks reserved for the select few wines that may - it is not scientifically certain - benefit from their porosity over years of maturing would be the very best. Anything else, I reckon, is obscurantist nonsense.<br /><br /> If you have a view please let me know, by email, at the Club's web address. <br /><br /><br /><img src="http://www.sundaytimeswineclub.co.uk/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br /> Hugh Johnson, <br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497452235098724350.post-40723668662606888882002-04-20T06:24:00.000-07:002008-04-07T03:20:48.336-07:00Touring Italy's Vineyards<b>Low cost airlines are changing the wine map of Europe. The flight to any except the most mainstream wine regions used to need patient and complex logistics; a travel agent fond of obscure landing-fields. Even Bordeaux had, until this year, the most profoundly inconvenient links with the UK.</b><br /><br />Not any more. Now you can choose Bergerac if that's nearer. Or Limoges, Poitiers, Tours or Carcassonne. They'll fly you direct to Dijon, no problem, to Nantes, St. Etienne for Beaujolais, Aix for Provence and the Côtes du Rhône.<br /><br />The public airport for Pisa is huge: at least two 737s arrive each day even out of season. It was an easy and incredibly cheap jaunt last week to visit one or two cellars in Tuscany on Thursday, drive half a day past Rome on to Pescara, catch some festivities on the Adriatic coast of the Abruzzi and be home for Sunday lunch.<br /><br />We've been talking super-Tuscans for years now, and being sucked into the almost theological wrangles about how much Cabernet says it's not a Chianti. And when is a DOC not a DOC? A discussion made no easier by labels which remain firmly ambivalent on what the wine is actually called.<br /><br />But we've seen nothing yet. The Battle of Tuscany, I reckon, is still only in the skirmish stage. While the players still seem uncertain about the value of Chianti, (famous, yes. But famous for what?) they are camping all round the edge with their heraldic-sounding challenges: Brunello di Montalcino, Vinonobile di Montepulciano (can't you just see their cuirasses catch the sun, their plumes and standards shift in the breeze?). And now Morellino di Scansano, a knight whose beard is still incipient, and cohorts of his from the Maremma coast on still more expensive chargers.<br /><br />Morellino appeals to me. The name - like morello cherry - expresses a character you could, maybe, find in a good example. Scansano, or rather the steep hills round the slightly forbidding little town, is an outstandingly pretty bit of country. None of the urbane style of High Tuscany with its files of cypresses; far less buildings; just serene wooded and grazed hills with occasional farms - and increasingly vines.<br /><br />Now of course the price is increasing too. Residents (my brother is one) are not happy paying three times as much as three years ago for substantially the same wine. Solution: (as always in places where the band-wagon is beginning to roll) stay close to the bottom rung. Avoid bottlings with designer labels. Avoid the tall-shouldered black bottles that weigh as much empty as a bottle should full. Avoid Riserva wines, usually stiff with raw oak. If the fleeting flavour of little morello cherries is what you are after choose the basic bottlings of the best-known local firms. The Cantina Sociale, co-op to you and me, is the first resort. Three bottles for the price of one with international pretensions.<br /><br />Or move on from Tuscany into the relatively primitive Abbruzzi. To confuse everyone the good red grape of this zone between the Appenines at their highest and the Adriatic coast at its sandiest is called Montepulciano. Familiar? It's the name of the hill-town in the south of Tuscany that makes the fancy-sounding Vinonobile. Apparently no relation. My advice: forget the town and concentrate on the grape and its Abbruzzi home.<br /><br />Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is just the hearty, ripe, really red and warming wine that Chianti so often fails to be. It can rasp a bit. Three or four years aging takes care of that, except in extreme cases. There is a summer-weight version, deep rosato, that really can taste of cherries, if not morello ones. The name Cerasuolo is evidence that Italian wine-growers have an inbuilt cherry complex.<br /><br />The festivities last weekend were in Ortona, next town down the coast from Pescara. They centred round the restoration, by the dynamic Farnese company, of a medieval castello on the town walls as their cellars and offices And a very stylish job too.<br /><br />It made an excuse for tastings, a serious conference about reaching world markets with the right stuff, and a gala evening with soprano and all the chefs of the area cooking their hats off. All within a weekend's hop. At a price you can't resist.<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://maindevast/images/theclub/hughsig.gif" height="61" width="125" /><br /><br /> Hugh Johnson,<br />Club PresidentPresident of The Sunday Times Wine Club - Hugh Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535258777923666096noreply@blogger.com0