Moroccan Wine - Sidi Zahia Vin Rouge AOG Beni M'tir

On our last trip to France we bought some Moroccan wine in Intermarche and it cost about 3 Eur a bottle.

For such a low price I was impressed our bottle of blended non-vintage Sidi Zahia tasted really good and it was exceptional value for money. The wine was Appellation D'Origine Garantie from Beni M'tir which is in the hills above Fez.

Moroccan wine producers learnt a lot about wine making from the French who planted vines in the sandy soils in the hills of Northern Morocco.  The sandy soils protected the vines from the Phylloxera insect pests that ravaged Europe in the late 19th Century.

Sidi Zahia is a light body red wine made  from black grape varieties common to Southern France. The wine is fruity and well balanced for tannin, acidity and sugar content. It is rather reminiscent of wines from the Languedoc but it has a flavour of its own.

We drank the wine with Merguez sausages from France and it went well with the spice. The wine would go down well with any grilled meat.

I would gladly have paid 6 or 7 Eur for this wine. It competes well with standard French wine. It also competes more than favourably with English red wines costing 10 pounds or more. It just goes to show how a favourable climate is conducive to quality wine production. The English climate still has a long way to go before English red wine makers can compete with Mediterranean producers.

Three cheers for Intermarche and their wine expert club. At about 3 Eur a bottle why not buy some Moroccan wine when you are in France next. Drink it at a barbecue for what passes for an English summer, it is so cheap you have got nothing to lose.

Blind Tasting Competitions- Good fun unless you lose

I think that wine tasting competitions are a complete waste of time. The object of a wine tasting is to determine the quality of the wine and its fitness for purpose. Can the wine be kept for several years to improve in the bottle? Is the wine a true investment wine?  Should the wine really only be drunk with food. Is the wine a fake? You also want to find out if the wine is good value for money.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2016/10/chinese-blind-tasting-team-claims-shock-victory/

 A blind tasting is organised to make sure that the power of suggestion and brand reputation is eliminated from the taster's judgement. It should not be a competition to determine who is best as guessing where a wine comes from, what grapes it is made of and the year it was produced etc. You can easily find out this information from the bottle so why put yourself to all that trouble?

There are literally tens of thousands of different wines. If  you try and show off how knowledgeable and skillful you are then you can easily become a cropper in a blind tasting.


I know only one of the wines tasted in the competition - the Jurançon from Domaine Cauhapé: this wine is top quality. We have friends who live in the area which we visit regularly. My wife and I would have difficulty distinguishing this wine from other top quality wines from Jurançon. It would be down more to luck than judgement.

Under wine tasting or examination conditions stress can play tricks on you. On my wine courses I got acquainted with a professional wine taster who was spot on, when blind tasting in the classroom, but who confused port with a fortified wine from Australia under examination conditions.

Wine tasting competitions are good fun and help with publicity. They are not to be taken seriously.

Anyone for a white port and tonic?

There is supposed to a new trend for a summer drink of white port and tonic. All sorts of trendy people are supposed to be raving about it.

http://www.instyle.co.uk/lifestyle/white-port-tonic-london-drink-of-the-summer

Up until this summer most people couldn't have cared less about white port. White port never excited my taste buds and I refuse to get excited because something is trendy. Just because Portugal is a lovely place to go it does not mean that white port is a wonderful drink: it is not and it is not improved by adding tonic water to it.

What next, will Babycham comeback into fashion?

http://www.babycham.com/

London is a "hip" capital but that fact does not make jellied eels any more palatable. Why not wash down a plate of jellied eels with some white port and tonic? In this way you can be a real double trend setter.

The only mixed wine based drink that I can stand is sangria, in Spain, and then only after a decade or so of a break.

If you want to drink a really good white wine from Portugal, why not try a glass of cool alvarinho
straight and untainted by additions. It may not be trendy but you won't regret it and you will show that you are a wine drinker of distinction.

http://www.winesofportugal.com/en/food-and-wine/grape-varieties/white/alvarinho/

People rate wines higher if given elaborate descriptions

"The Independent" newspaper has published this rather interesting article which deserves to be read.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/wines-elaborate-descriptions-taste-better-appear-study-labels-a7776966.html.

This short article confirms my suspicion that the power of suggestion has an undue influence on the opinion of a wine. If a wine is elaborately described with positive comments about its flavour, smell and structure, along with exciting descriptions  about the location of the vineyard etc. then it will be rated more favourably than the same wine tasted under "blind" conditions. The same applies when a wine is believed to be more expensive than the same wine tasted under "blind" conditions. All this is a marketing ploy.

This same principle applies to the other industries especially the hi-fi industry and the cosmetics industry. This is why some hi-fi manufactures can sell enthusiasts cables, which cost thousands of pounds per metre, that do not perform any better than well constructed ordinary cables which costs no more than a few pounds per metre. They have no scientific evidence to back up their claims. No results of peer reviewed double blind listening tests are ever revealed to the public.

I was once in a cosmetics shop in France with my wife. Part of the advertising campaign was for a face lifting cream which would defy the laws of gravity. Newton and Einstein might have had something to say about that but such claims are believed and make cosmetic manufacturers a fortune for creams and lotions that are produced in huge vats in a factory for a few pence a litre. Once again, no results of peer reviewed double blind tests are ever revealed to the public.

I have probably been a victim of the power of suggestion regarding wine myself. But, after attending wine courses and blind tastings I have taught myself to do my best to ignore the power of suggestion, and I endeavour to do this is these pages to the best of my ability. I also endeavour not to be prejudiced. If you do not take an objective and scientific approach to wine tasting and selection you can quite easily be fooled into buying a wine that is not worth the money - caveat emptor.

Le Domaine de Trépaloup Mourvèdre 2015 Pay's D'Oc

On a recent trip to the South of France we discovered some wonderful wines from Le Domaine de Trépaloup. The vineyards are located about 30 miles north of Montpellier in the village of Saint Clément near the small town of Sommières. The scenery is lovely in this area and the soil and climate are so well suited to viticulture.

Since 2002 Rémi et Laurent Vandôme have been making the finest wines using organic or bio-dynamic techniques. The Domaine produces Appellation d'Origine Protégée Languedoc wines within its range. The Mourvèdre 2015 dry red is, however, of Vin de Pays status but this does not detract from its quality. This wine is a fruity red which can be consumed on its own or with food:preferably. It is perfectly balanced for tannin, acidity, sweetness, fruit flavour and body and it rests long on the palate.

The wine is superb value for money. I doubt that you would ever find this wine in the export markets or even in French supermarkets or wine merchants outside of the area. You really have no choice but to go to the region, and there are plenty of flights to Montpellier. Just allow yourself a little time to explore the surroundings to take in some sun and good food as well as perfect wine.

http://www.domainetrepaloup.com/

http://www.montpellier-france.com/

Bad Weather in France and the UK

The recent bad weather in France has almost devastated the vine crops in the Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux regions. In some areas up to 50% of the crop has been lost to frost. Similarly, late frost has damaged much of the vine crops in the UK.

Winemakers in France can survive a bad harvest but in the UK wine producers cannot benefit from large economies of scale as the vineyards are small and production is therefore limited. UK winemakers have to charge more per bottle and therefore they are not as price competitive as winemakers in France, Italy, Spain, California and Australia.

Taittinger is to become the first Champagne House to invest in sparkling wine production in the UK, with their partners they have acquired a multi-hectare site in Kent which was formerly an orchard.

They hope to produce their first bottles of English Sparkling wine from chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes in five years time. Let's wish them lots of success even though the weather in Kent can still be very unfavourable for wine production.

English Sparkling wine is perfectly capable of competing with sparklers from all over the world including Champagne. Taittinger will have plenty of room to grow vines, so let's hope that the price will be kept down a bit.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/champagne-taittinger-to-produce-english-sparkling-wine-in-kent

Wine apps

I downloaded a wine app onto my android phone and used it to identify three wines. All three were favourite wines of mine, two French and one Spanish. The Spanish wine is internationally famous. The wine app failed to identify all three.

Of course you are at liberty to enter the wine details into the the apps wine database. You are then providing the wine app developers with information for free.

You can easily buy a wine hand book which you can carry around in your pocket or handbag. Hugh Johnson produces a great one. You don't have to buy it every year. It gives you valuable information on all of the world's wine regions and their wines. It also has vintage charts and a wine and food matching section: it is a veritable encyclopedia. Other wine writers do something similar. I find that the wine descriptions and quality assessments are very good.

I have no objection to using the internet to educating yourself about wine.  However, a good wine handbook combined with a short course in wine and wine tasting will stand you in much better stead than a wine app gimmick. You can even write down your own tasting notes and there is nothing to stop you from sharing your observations and opinions on the web; very quickly you will be able to trust your own judgement rather than those of an automaton.