Author Archive
Keeping Warm
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Murky East-Anglian skies and extremely chilly days call for robust warming reds. We like them with a bit of age. After rummaging in the cellar I found a glorious bottle of 1997 Flaccianello and a cheering 1990 Crozes Hermitage Thalabert.
Giovanni Manetti’s Flaccianello (we list the 2008 at present) is one of Tuscany’s finest wines and was a real treat. It tastes good after five years but better still after 10 and it can clearly last 20.
The 1990 Thalabert (the 2005 and 2006 are available from us currently) has now long lost its baby fat and initial fruit but has a wonderful mellow roasted quality. No point in hoarding longer.
It also served as a reminder to put in my order for 2010 Rhônes (offer closes at 9pm this evening). The inexpensive Villages mixed case is a no-brainer and Marcel tells me that it was an exceptional year for Côte-Rôtie. With some of the most hard-to-work slopes in France, and planted with vines since Roman times, Côte-Rôtie does not succeed fully every year, but when it does, you have something very fine.
Sebastian Payne MW
Chief buyer
A Good Week
Posted by: | CommentsI particularly enjoyed two member tastings in London last week.
First we displayed Pierre Mansour’s new range from New Zealand to a full house in RIBA. Particular highlights for me were the ranges from Hunter’s, Kumeu River and Prophet’s Rock.
I love Hunter’s food-friendly dry riesling, and our own Exhibition Marlborough Sauvignon which Jane Hunter supplies for is tasting particularly delicious. Pierre has done well to persuade the Brajkovich family of Kumeu River, chardonnay experts, to produce our own-label chardonnay too. Prophet’s Rock have made a pinot gris with real depth and flavour – the secret simply low yields, maturation on lees and later bottling. Their pinot noir is outstanding.
Steve Farrow being presented with the WSET's 'Gruppo Italiano Vini' Scholarship by Hugh Dupre and Jancis Robinson
The growers went on to a tasting in Harrogate. I went on to watch Steve Farrow, well known to members who visit The Cellar Showroom, receive his scholarship prize for passing his Wine & Spirits Education Trust Diploma with flying colours – a surprise for him, but not for us.
Later in the week, 100 members and guests were lucky enough to taste 10 vintages from 10 different châteaux from the commune of Margaux. As Charles Metcalfe pointed out, Margaux is a very diverse commune spread over quite a wide area with different soil types, and several of the classed growths have altered their vineyards since 1855. The château is just the brand name. It proved to be a vivid example, the diverse qualities, different years and properties. My notes are as follows:
Château Angludet, 2007:
Excellent healthy fruit and subtle palate. Good now.
Château du Tertre, 2006:
Particularly fragrant and delicious now, the property next to Château Angludet has a higher percentage of cabernet franc than other classed growths.
Château Durfort-Vivens, 2005:
A cabernet-based wine from a keeping vintage showing the bright vivid fruit, great perfume and length of flavour of the vintage, but still very young.
Château Kirwan, 2004:
Modern-style late-picked Margaux: generous flavour and enjoyable but less fine.
Château Rauzan-Segla, 2003:
A great vineyard in an exceptionally hot year, which burnt off some of the finesse. Spicy, rich, ready.
Château Giscours, 2002:
A vintage that needed time but the true Margaux fragrance grows in the glass. Lean, more old-fashioned Claret, but distinguished.
Château Prieuré-Lichine, 2001:
Full and generous and spicy. Excellent to drink now.
Château Ferrière, 2000:
A tiny vineyard but a superb, full, fine Claret. Delicious now but with a future too.
Château Palmer, 1996:
Not as rich and full as some recent Palmer vintages, but exuding class and quality.
Château Margaux, 1989:
Still a giant of real first-growth quality and many years ahead of it.
What a treat.
Sebastian Payne MW
Chief Buyer
Vin Santo and Stilton
Posted by: | CommentsI have just been finishing up the Christmas Stilton with a glass of Fontodi’s luxurious Vin Santo.
Barrels at Fontodi
Minuccio considers Stilton to be much better than any Italian blue cheese to accompany his concentrated Vin Santo, aged 7-10 years plus in small sealed barrels. Though Vin Santo is traditionally offered at family celebrations and to special guests at festivals, ‘santo’ is unlikely to be derived from the word for ‘holy’. Wine during the Turkish occupation of Greece, and earlier, sweet white wine used in Russian orthodox and Greek churches, came from the island of Santinori, and this is thought to have given the wine its name.
Sebastian Payne MW
Chief Buyer
Two of the very best: an inspirational day
Posted by: | CommentsTwo of the world’s great winemakers came to The Wine Society this week. Chief wine buyer Sebastian Payne MW reports on one very special day.
Paul Draper, CEO and winemaker at Ridge
Paul Draper came to Stevenage to talk to 60 eager members of Wine Society staff about Ridge, the remarkable Californian winery, high up on the San Andreas fault at Santa Cruz, whose reputation he has established over 40 years.
After Stanford he became a sort of undercover roving ambassador for Jack and Bobby Kennedy in South America. With his fluent Spanish he kept open lines with the USA by listening and talking to leaders of rival parties in several volatile countries. (It would be encouraging to feel the USA had a similar policy today in the Middle East.) At one stage, because of his beard, he was even mistaken for Che Guevara and nearly blown up. He then moved to Chile working for a foundation that was developing various agricultural projects including wine making.
The Ridge story began when he was invited by three brilliant Stanford friends who had bought the vineyard to help them by making the wine. He was convinced because he had seen the potential of old vintages of cabernet and chardonnay made in the 1930s pre-Prohibition.
Ridge’s international reputation was made when its Montebello vineyard wine outshone top Bordeaux wines in Steven Spurrier’s Judgment of Paris tasting in 1973. Paul’s philosophy is that wine is made in the vineyard and should express its origin above all, not to be created to a formula in the cellar. “If you haven’t tasted great wine, how can you make it?” Good bottles were his mentors. The enemy is ‘consensus’ wine-making.
Though his zinfandel-based wines are usually 14º, the level at which the grape becomes fully ripe, he abhors the high alcohol levels so commonly found in Californian wines and Montebello cabernets have similar levels to Bordeaux. The proof is in the wines which have been consistently the most complex and delicious to be made in the USA over the last 40 years.
Candour, integrity and passion
Jean-Philippe Delmas’ story is quite different. He was practically born in a vat of Haut-Brion, where his grandfather made the wine for the family till 1961, when his father Jean-Bernard took over. Jean-Philippe worked for ten years alongside his father until 2004, the first vintage for which he was solely responsible.
The quality of the 2004, set beside such great vintages as 2005, 2000, 1998 and 1990 was a revelation, making one realise that Château Haut-Brion, the most senior of Bordeaux’s first growths, is also possibly the greatest and most complex of all. Jean-Philippe modestly says that his grandfather and father had to contend not only with many cooler vintages but also much leaner resources. The fact that Haut-Brion made no money between 1935 and 1975 shows a long-term commitment from its owner, Clarence Dillon and his family, unusual in a banker! His challenge is that he has no excuse. All of us 240 members and guests privileged to be at Merchant Taylor’s Hall were, I believe, convinced by Jean-Philippe’s candour, integrity, passion and deep understanding of this great vineyard which was reflected in magnificent wine.
Pleasures Unforeseen
Posted by: | CommentsThe greatest pleasures are often unexpected.
We had agreed to baby-sit our granddaughter (a predictable delight) while our daughter and son-in-law were at a friend’s wedding.
Our daughter and son-in-law booked us a room in a hotel, but the website was confusing and the place they thought they had booked knew nothing about it. The one with a similar name, and where we were booked in, looked at first sight distinctly unpromising, and in need of a good refurbishment.
But soon after we arrived and were about to regroup, a man arrived who changed our first impressions completely. He was carrying a tray of glistening Mediterranean fish, sweet-smelling lemon and tomatoes. It turned out that he was a born Sicilian, a trainee chef, had just taken over the hotel, and sensibly gone down to Portsmouth to meet the boat from Sicily (we were in Hampshire) and buy fresh produce for supper. My eyes lit up.
We discussed what fish we would eat for supper. We talked about the important subject of ripeness in lemons and tomatoes and later on we ate like kings. Our granddaughter slept with a seraphic smile on her face.
If the ingredients are fresh, ripe and good, and beautifully prepared, what more do you need?
So it is with wine too.
Sebastian Payne MW
Chief Buyer
Biodyvin
Posted by: | CommentsBiodyvin is a wonderful, eccentric, eclectic mix of growers who cultivate their vineyards biodynamically. Its aims are wholly admirable: to produce wines that reflect their origin in the most natural way possible – a concept all Wine Society members should applaud.
Naturally they have mixed success. Nature can be cruel. But at last week’s tasting the fruits of their hard work and passion were a joy. Alsace was well represented particularly by Josmeyer and Zind Humbrecht but I would like to commend particularly three brilliant producers from the Loire and the one and only, but quite outstanding, producer from Germany, Bettina Bürklin Wolf.
Bürklin Wolf have holdings in the heart of the great vineyards of the Palatinate, once the most highly valued white wine in the world. Wachenheimer, Deidesheim and Ruppertsberg make lovely, individual wines but their single-vineyard from Forst are among the greatest long-living white wines of the world.
My earliest baptism into the wines of the Loire came from Jean Vacheron in Sancerre and Gaston Huet in Vouvray. Jean Vacheron had a remarkable palate and understanding of the quality that different soils of Sancerre could produce which he passed on to his sons and to his neighbouring producers. On my first visit with Wine Society buyer John McLusky, we went with Jean on a leisurely Sancerre vineyard crawl of all the cellars of growers who might have been considered his competitors to discover the true nature of Sancerre. His childern and now his grandchildren always ploughed back the money they made into buying good vineyards and better cellar equipment. His particular favourite (and mine) is the Sancerre produced on silex (flint).
John McLusky’s predecessor, Christopher Tatham MW, introduced The Wine Society to the Vouvrays of Gaston Huet at the same time as Vacheron. Gaston had an outstanding record of resistance in the war and was mayor of Vouvray from 1947 to 1993. He also alone was able to resist the French government’s plans for the TGV which now not only did not cut through his vineyards (as the government planned) but also do not disturb the subterranean cellars because the tunnels lie deep below on specially cushioned rails. His son-in-law, Noel Pinguet, is an agnostic believer in biodynamism and his wines have a parity and longevity that would make his father-in-law proud.
The new Loire eccentric is Eric Nicolas who cultivates 14 hectares of abandoned vines of Jasnieres and the Côteaux du Loir north of the larger Loire: dry white wines from chenin, quite different from Vouvray, but with amazing personality and length of flavour.
Why don’t you try some of these wines below:
Germany: Forst Pechstein Bürklin Wolf, 2009
Loire: Sancerre La Reine Blanche Vacheron, 2010
Jasnieres Premices Domaine de Belliviere, 2009
Sebastian Payne MW
Chief Buyer
2010 Bordeaux: some good buys and the first sign of silliness
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The barrel room at Château Palmer
We are currently putting together a tasty selection of 2010 Clarets at affordable prices that will provide drinkers with plenty to enjoy over the next 20 years. This, our first Bordeaux 2010 Opening Offer, will be mailed and available online in early June.
Our selection of classed–growths will take longer to finalise. We had the first sign of silliness today when Château Beychevelle announced a 22% increase in its price, even though the wine is no better than last year. This is largely because the Chinese market knows the brand and likes the dragon and boat label.
But for drinkers this is a bad buy and we have refused it.
Prices of the more famous, highly priced Clarets are slowly being released. We will judge each wine on its merit and finalise a second offer as soon as we can.
Bordeaux 2010: Take Two
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2010 is shaping up to be one of the top three vintages of an exceptional Bordeaux decade. As with all great years, it has a personality of its own. In some ways it lies between the seductive charm of 2009 and the intense, vibrant fruit and length of 2005. The extremely dry growing season and poor flowering, which reduced yields and intensified ripeness, tannin and flavour, also allowed the grapes to retain essential fruit acidity which gives wine its life. The best wines have the remarkable complexity for which Bordeaux is famous.
An exciting result is that there are some outstanding wines at even modest price levels because the concentration of flavour helped growers all over Bordeaux. The key, as ever, is good balance.
Joanna Locke and I choose our wines as seriously as Society members expect and are spending another fully-charged week tasting and comparing at Châteaux and with merchants around Bordeaux, to fine tune our selection. First prices of some wines have emerged and we will be buying the best of these in large quantities but many class growths will take their time. We plan, therefore, to make a broad first offer in early to mid June to enable you to make a balanced selection. The most expensive wines which are likely to be released late will form a second offer when all the prices are out. This second offer, including the more famous, higher-priced Clarets and Sauternes will be delayed until late June early July. We still expect prices to be high and supply to be limited but, thanks to The Society’s long relationship with the region’s suppliers, we are in a strong position to source as many of these wonderful wines as we possibly can.
I should add that the Wine Society selection will be based on our own independent judgments, not on anyone else’s scores. I have experience of visiting and selecting Bordeaux every years since 1981 and have seen young wines develop and mature over the years, and knowing members’ reaction to them. However skilled a taster may be, giving scores out of 100 or 20 to young unfinished wine is rather haphazard and limiting. We prefer just to choose very good wine and describe the different styles of each.
Prosecco DOC Treviso Frizzante: back under cork
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By popular demand, we are reintroducing this Prosecco with a cork. Members were quite right to point out that the screwcap version, which we had hoped would be easier to handle, does not keep the delightful freshness of the wine for so long. This is a pity as the quality of the Adami family’s wine, which comes from the heart of the best Prosecco vineyards (unlike so much on the market) is outstanding.
In the short term, we will be cutting the price of our remaining stock under screwcap from £8.95 to £6.50 to clear, and at this price, for quick consumption, we think it’s a snip.
Meanwhile, fresh stock with driven cork in the attractive skittle bottle is on the way. Samples were delicious, and we strongly recommend you give it a try when it arrives in the middle of May. Salute!
Thanks to all members who fed back on the screwcap version. Please keep telling us what you think – good and bad!
Sebastian Payne MW
Chief Wine Buyer
Bienvenue au Cirque de Bordeaux
Posted by: | CommentsSpring sunshine and temperatures of nearly 30*C brightened the mood during the annual circus when all Bordeaux châteaux display the new vintage for the first time. We have found some outstanding wines and many good wines in 2010. The best wines are intensely flavoured with great keeping potential.
The bad news is that the top names have mostly made as much as 20% less wine than in 2009 and international interest in buying them is as strong as ever, so prices are unlikely to come down. Some will increase from the all-time high levels of last year.
The good news is that, if you look hard enough as we do, there is absolutely no need to pay top prices. We found excellent Claret to drink over the next 5 to 15 years among the properties with less fancy names.
We will return to Bordeaux later in May, when the world has gone away, to double-check the quality of our favourites and give you the lowdown in more detail.
