It pays to drink your wine and keep it

 I have finally got round to buying and drinking some 2019 vintage wines.  I also found a wonderful wine and a not so wonderful one which have been kept for several years.

2019 Merinas White Wine made from organically grown grapes in the Uclés region of Castilla in Central Spain. The wine is made from Airen, Viura & Verdejo white grapes. This is basic quality wine which is good enough to be drunk with food we downed it with roast chicken. The wine is fruity on the nose and palate and for some reason I could taste a hint of bananas again; and at my age I should have grown out of this habit. You can buy half a case of this for £42 so it represents good value for money given the diabolical exchange rate of the pound versus the Euro and US dollar since Brexit; I fear this trend is set to continue - nevermind.

 I recommend this wine as you do not have to delve deep into your pocket and it has not suffered in any way from being released early.

2019 Terre di Faiano Nero d'Avola Organic Red produce in Sicily. Waitrose supermarket where I bought the wine describes the wine thus: "an explosion of juicy blueberries, blackberries and red plums"  They have described this wine perfectly. It is simply gorgeous and it is one of the best wines I have ever tasted and it is being sold at £7.49 a bottle. I am going back for more as the value for money is simply great. A prize should be awarded to the wine producers and Waitrose buyers. We drank a half bottle of this wine one evening with rib-eye steak followed the next evening with roast chicken. 

The wine was produced from dried grapes a process which concentrates the flavours hence the term Appassimento on the label.  I would pay twice the price for this wine and still feel that I had got good value for money. Well done Waitrose supermarket for finding this wine and selling it at such a good price.

https://www.waitrosecellar.com/terre-di-faiano-nero-davola-dop-le-702487

2010 Skalli Terra Vecchia Corsican  Rosé: this wine is from l’île de beauté. Corsica is genuinely a beautiful island with friendly people and wonderful scenery. The seafood is delicious and they make good, if not brilliant, wines to go with it. I was  shocked that it lasted so long and still tasted reasonably fresh even though it was sealed with a plastic cork. The wine had very slightly oxidised after such a long time, but  you might miss this if you weren't looking for it and hadn't swirled the wine in the glass and given it a good sniff. I am not overly fond of Rosé wine as it often has a slightly bitter after taste for me, and this one was no exception. The wine went done well with fish. My wife preferred it. We bought this is a French supermarket at a very cheap price so it was worth the money. I think that it is better to consume wine stoppered with plastic corks within five or six years of purchase. This wine should be drunk young anyway, but it had been hidden away on its side in the dark.

https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/skalli+terra+vecchia+rose+igp+ile+de+beaute+pays+france

https://boston.consulfrance.org/French-Corner-This-spring-discover-Corsica-l-ile-de-beaute

2011 Bordeaux Baron Phillipe de Rothschild Red appellation contrôlée: I was surprised that this wine was stoppered with a plastic cork, but nevermind it made a "romantic" popping noise when I opened it. After all this time, the wine was in perfect condition. It had hardly oxidised but there was soft tannin and the typical Bordeaux smell and taste. The wine had the complexity and concentration that I would have expected from a renowned producer that was acting as a negociant. This wine is probably a blend of different wines from the region. Even though it was not expensive it is still very good wine and well worth the 6 or 7 Euro that we paid for it. We drank it with steak and it went down very well. I suspect that if the wine had been sealed with a composite cork then it would have now been well past its best, as air would have penetrated the cork.  If you suspect that a wine has been stoppered with a plastic cork it might be best to cut the capsule of the top of the bottle and then you can decide if you want to keep the wine longer than the five years recommended. However, who knows how long this wine would have kept with an almost perfectly airtight seal. Probably, top French wines will be stoppered with genuine corks into the distant future to help them age perfectly and I am all in favour of this. For everyday wines why not use screwtops and plastic corks etc. if it helps to substantially reduce the risk of corked wines.

https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/baron+philip+de+rothschild+bordeaux+france/2011/any

So there you have it, it pays to drink most your wine young and it pays to keep it if it is well sealed. If you have paid top dollar for French, Italian , US, Australian or Spanish wine etc. then cellar it.

Cor blimey a bottle of 1989 Mouton Rothschild for 18 bucks

 It was in the news: the New York restaurant Balthazar mistakenly gave a bottle of Mouton Rothschild worth $2,000 to a couple who had ordered an $18 bottle of "Pinot Noir". The wine waiter then served the "Pinot Noir" to some well-heeled businessmen who had sat down to believe they were drinking a top premier cru wine from Bordeaux. The wine waiter had used the same style of decanter for both wines and then mixed  the containers up.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2020/10/ny-restaurant-mistakenly-serves-2000-wine-to-couple-who-ordered-18-pinot/

The businessmen commented on the purity of their wine. Possibly, they were drinking a wine made from 100% pinot noir but I doubt it at that price. The Mouton Rothschild would have been a blend of black grapes dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

I have been in the fortunate position to go to a "business meeting" where the boss ordered a top red Bordeaux; fortunately, he knew what he was doing and none of us was so inebriated that we could not tell that we were drinking a top wine.

The couple joked that they were drinking a top wine but still did not realise the mistake. Perhaps, they had better palates than they thought or they were not letting on.

The restaurant could have let sleepings dogs lie and got away with the mistake. But the owner did not charge the businessmen so he lost a lot of money, but the wine would have been considerably marked up and the restaurant probably bought the wine years ago for a much cheaper price.

The couple had the pleasure of drinking a top wine for a peppercorn price.

It does not surprise me that none of the customers realised that a mistake had been made. The power of suggestion is so strong. The couple would have believed that they were drinking a bottle of cheap wine, and they were not trained to recognise a top-quality one. The businessmen believed they were drinking a top premier cru and judged that that is exactly what they got.

I have been on a number of wine courses where you are taught to identify a good quality wine that is good value for money. It is difficult, but you should be able to recognise a wine that can keep for a long time. A wine that can keep for a long duration and improve in the bottle in a cellar will not be cheap. The wine must be made from the best grapes and by winemakers who know what they are doing. 

The Mouton Rothschild in question would have matured in the bottle and would have become lighter in colour, the tannin would have softened and the wine would have tasted concentrated and complex and the fresh fruit flavours of a young wine would have ripened. Anyone who has experienced drinking or just tasting the best wines, which have aged well, would have recognised that this was an exceptional wine. The businessmen may have been able to spot a good deal but not a good wine. If there was a wine enthusiast present then he or she would probably have been distracted and subject to the power of suggestion.

The power of suggestion is so strong that you should taste wines "blind" to assess them. The power of suggestion can fool anybody, and in my experience, even masters of wine are not immune and they can be fooled just as easily as anyone else. Some red Burgundy wines made from 100% pinot noir are quite light-coloured when young and could appear to have lightened from age - hence the confusion perhaps.

However, one sniff and an experienced wine taster would know the difference.

One thing is certain, you might be able to tell a Burgundy from a Bordeaux or a French wine from a Spanish one. But, identifying a particular chateau and its vintage is nigh on impossible only the actual winemakers and their assistants can do this. 

My wife is from Champagne and she can identify wines from the north of the region as opposed to the south, and now I can do this. Her father was born in Burgundy but in the far north of the region: we have drunk so much wine from this area that we can recognise the wine style but not the producer and the year. 

Wine drinking and identification is a  subjective business, it is difficult to be objective but you can use wine tasting techniques to good effect as long as you keep your feet on the ground. You can be trained to recognise a good wine and better still a fine wine that doesn't cost the earth.

I hope that the couple were able to appreciate their good fortune and are now able to dine out on it. I hope that the businessmen could see the funny side of what happened and that they still enjoyed their wine and their good fortune in securing a good deal. This is what wine appreciation is truly about and it is not about being snobbish or looking down on anybody to make them look foolish.

Château Mercian 2018 Iwasaki Koshu Dry White Wine from Japan

Japanese wine from grapes is almost unheard of in the UK,  although a good number of people would have heard of Sake made from rice. I used to travel a lot with my work and went to Japan in the late 1980's to do IT projects. I must say that I was not too impressed with their wine then and I had little taste for Sake rice wine. I used to drink French wine when I could find it and I had to pay a small fortune for the privilege. Luckily , I was on an expense account. Even so, I stuck to beer most of the time. Several cold beers were needed to counteract the heat of the genuine Wasabi sauce dished up with  the Tempura. The Tempura served in top bars in Tokyo is outrageously expensive but the batter is light and tastes incredibly good and the sea food and vegetables are absolutely fresh. It is difficult to find genuine Wasabi in western restaurants who usually make the sauce from horseradish rather than the Wasabi root.   Genuine Wasabi tastes more herbal than the horseradish variety and it is not as hot but still almost too hot for me.

We found this wine in the Mount vineyard in Shoreham, of all places, near the Kent town of Sevenoaks in the UK.

We drank it recently with some friends before the latest lockdown on a sunny day in the garden.  A couple of our friends were from Brazil and during the conversation the subject of Japan came up. I had a plan to ask my friends where the wine came from and gave them three guesses and some heavy clues that it was from Asia. They were a bit flummoxed and surprised that wine from grapes came from Japan and surprised at the good quality. I had to show them the bottle to prove I wasn't joking.

The three women in the group, including my wife, were more impressed than the two men , including me.

I felt that the wine had strong flavours of tropical fruits and was well balanced for acidity and residual sugar it was concentrated and complex but did not last long on the palate. We drank the wine with shellfish. You could drink this wine on its own but really it should be drunk with food. However, hot sauces would overpower the subtle taste of the wine and I would not recommend it with genuine or false Wasabi - stick to cold beer or mineral water.

The wine is made from the Japanese Koshu grape variety and it is estate produced in the Yamanashi Prefecture on the base of Mount Fuji. The soil here is a mixture of gravel and clay. The climate and weather are perfect for growing wine grapes.

The Mount Fuji location is wonderful and it is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. If you have several thousand dollars nestling in your back pocket then Japan is really worth visiting, not just for the wine but for the culture and the wonderful cuisine.Château Mercian 2018 Iwasaki Koshu Dry White Wine from Japan is not cheap in the UK at over £20 a bottle - less per bottle for a case- but it is really worth trying even if it does not compete on a cost and quality basis with a bottle of Chablis. However, I thoroughly recommend it and it proves that Japanese wine is steadily improving and will become competitive with the best wines of Europe and the New World.

https://chateaumercian.com/en/our-wines/index.html

https://www.kwoff.co.uk/products/chateau-mercian-iwasaki-koshu-yamanashi-12-bottle-case?variant=32449530331229&currency=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gclid=CjwKCAjw5p_8BRBUEiwAPpJO61hhP4XZiT_Huul5Xn7fer4Twc6DRN-OA8vxGWiQWH1cVWXgPeYjFBoCNKcQAvD_BwE

Vino seal glass stopper

 After visiting a restaurant where they served the wine sealed with a glass stopper, I thought what a good idea it was . These stoppers have been around for several years but this was the first time I had noticed it. maybe it's because I mainly drink French wines: French wine producers tend to use artificial corks when they do not use classical cork seals.

The other night I opened a rather nice Macedonian red wine to drink over a really good meal cooked by my wife. The bottle was sealed with a screw cap.  I may be old fashioned but the act of using a corkscrew adds to the romance of opening a bottle of wine even in the house when we haven't  got guests.

The glass stopper is something different and I can't wait to find a bottle that I can open myself.

The glass stopper helps to prevent wines being contaminated with cork taint. The stopper also reduces the oxygen absorbed by the wine so theoretically a good wine can be stored longer. Some producers are happy for oxygen to very slowly penetrate the wine to assist the ageing process. All this is very controversial. I doubt , however, that top producers will all convert to wine bottles sealed with screw caps, plastic or glass seals. As I said, there is something romantic about pulling a natural cork before serving.

Natural corks also promote the sustainable growth of oak trees which is in their favour.

One advantage of plastic, screw cap and glass seals is that you can store your wine bottles upright, but of course you still need to store wine in a cool dark place that is free from vibrations.

Some commentators have noted that bottles sealed with glass and  kept on their side might leak. This would mean that the seal has been broken and too much oxygen has penetrated the wine.

All in all I am in favour of innovation when it comes to the seal on a bottle as long as, occasionally, I can still pull a natural cork when the circumstances are right.

 

 

The Mount Vineyard Shoreham Kent

 My wife and I visited the Mount Vineyard, last week, situated in the small and charming village of Shoreham, in Kent. The entrance to the Mount is on the left side of the road as you walk or drive from the bridge, over the Darent river, towards the parish church. We decided to stop for lunch before taking a walk alongside the river. We just  turned up and did not have to make a booking.

The restaurant is situated right in the middle of 4 hectares of vines. The lunch menu was simple  but our pizzas were excellent. The waiting staff were also excellent and paid us the courtesy of not calling us "guys". My wife hates this more than I do but now we have got used to it. However, it was  refreshing not to be treated in such a familiar way. 

As you would expect the wine list was extensive. We chose The Mount Vineyard's 1918 Pinot Noir, we enjoyed this wine and this was the first time that I judged an English red wine to be of really good quality. I have been enormously critical of English red wine in the past  judging it to be too expensive for its quality. This wine is different and it deserves to be taken seriously. It reminded us of the Coteaux Champenois still reds produced in Champagne region of France - from the Pinot Noir and Pinot Meurnier grapes. Perhaps it is the chalk soil and the cool climate in Kent.  However, whilst the Mount Pinot Noir tastes similar it has a distinct style of its own which is the hallmark of a good wine which has not been produced in bulk in a wine factory. The Mount Pinot Noir should develop in the bottle to reveal more fruit flavour  and softer tannin - it is a wine to be savoured with food rather that be slugged back at a barbeque.

The Pinot Noir is not the only grape variety grown in the vineyards. The Mount also grows Chardonnay and grape varieties such as Seyval Blanc which are suited to a cooler and damper climate. The Mount produces sparkling wine and I expect their bubbly will be delicious. My wallet wasn't bulging after lunch so I did not buy a bottle. The price of English Sparkling wine is almost too much for me at around £50 a bottle. I can buy really good quality Champagne from France for a third of the price. However, most English sparkling wine is of high quality and perhaps it is where the future lies when the weather warms up to provide a good harvest every year. English producers cannot achieve the economies of scale available to French, Italian and Spanish producers to compete on price so they must produce high quality wines which have their own individual style.

Soon the Mount vineyard will tempt me to open my wallet again, so more of this later. The vineyard deserves a bit of support from me and other lovers of good English wine.

The Mount vineyard is well worth visiting and Shoreham station is nearby with trains to London Victoria and Sevenoaks.

http://www.themountvineyard.co.uk/the-vineyard/

1753 Château de Campuget 2016 Viognier White - L'indication géographique Gard protégée

 We ordered this wine in a local restaurant in the Orpington area of London. The wine was superb and went with fish.  Château Campuget is situated near the Rhône valley and not far from Nîmes.

The soil and climate in the Gard is well suited to the growth of the Viognier grapes to produce white wines with their own distinctive style but which reflect the region. Viognier based wines are some of my favourites and this wine is no exception, but it is not a homogenous and industrially produced wine. the wine is fermented  partially in mature oak barrels.

The  Château recommends that you drink the wine young but after four years in the bottle it still tastes fresh. It is a dry wine, but not bone dry, and feels silky and sumptuous in the mouth and has a medium body. I agree that the wine tastes of tropical fruits and it it is complex and long lasting on the palate. It reminded me of a banana taste but perhaps that is just me. The fruit character is balanced by the acidity. 

We paid over £30 for this wine with our meal but you can buy it retail for around £11 - c'est la vie.

The bottle was sealed with a glass stopper which helps eliminate the chance of the wine being corked and perhaps this helped to preserve the freshness. This is the first time I have seen wine sealed in this way: more of this in a later post.

This wine is well worth searching out especially on a trip to the south of France - you could get stuck in a virus initiated lockdown,but what better way to spend two weeks in quarantine than with a case of such good quality wine?

http://campuget.com/fr/vins/campuget-1753-viognier-2/

Puklavec Sauvignon Blanc Pinot Grigio 2018 - Slovenian Dry White Wine

If you are looking for something different, but which is of high quality, then look no further than Puklavec  Sauvignon Blanc Pinot Grigio 2018 - Slovenian Dry White Wine. This wine is produced near Ormož in the Prlekija region of North East Slovenian. Ormož is situated on the left bank of the  river Drava and it is very close to the Croatian border. I am glad that wine from all of the regions of Slovenia are making their way to the UK market. This wine is produced in the beautiful Jeruzalem valley whose verdant slopes support the terraced vineyards. The peace and calm of this area is well worth visiting for a wine tasting and gastronomic trip and you can freely cross the border into nearby Croatia. 

The wine is a prize winner, and it deserves it, as it is well integrated for acidity and it has low sugar. It is very fruity  and tastes of tropical fruits and citrus. It also reminded me of fresh bananas !   My wife did not agree with me on this one. The wine remained long on the palate and was concentrated and complex. We drank it with fish and it goes best with food but you could drink it on its own as an aperitif.

At about £9 a bottle it is really good value for money it is worth searching for.

Ormož is a quiet town but worth a visit to buy some wine and to see the storks nesting on the houses. The Slovenians are proud of their country and its enlightened attitude to the preservation of its wildlife and the environment.

https://www.waitrosecellar.com/puklavec---friends-pinot-grigio

https://www.letsgoslovenia.si/welcome-to-jeruzalem-in-slovenia/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prlekija