Are you a member of The Society with a particular interest in digital communications (either professionally or personally)?

If so, we would be particularly interested in hearing from you.

Several times a year the Committee arranges informal meetings with groups of members. These provide a great opportunity to hear what a sample of members think about The Society and for members and Committee to meet one another – both highly appropriate functions of a co-operative organisation owned by its members.

Our digital offerings constitute a large part of our current development plan, and we would like to gather as many members as possible to discuss them (be it our website, app, social media presence and potential other channels) over a glass of something interesting.

The meetings will take place on the 5th and 9th July in Central London in the early evening.

If you would be interested in taking part, please contact us at tylerg@thewinesociety.com, quoting your share number and which of the dates you could make.

If you can’t make it but would like to send your views on our digital future, please also send an e-mail to the address above with your thoughts.

Sarah Evans
Chairman

Spring has sprung in the Roussillon, prompting Katie Jones of Domaine Jones to share her enthusiasm for the season of renewal. Hers is a pocket handkerchief estate making three lovely wines. Her white is outstanding and is made from the Grenache gris, locally prized for its ageing capacity but unknown anywhere else.

‘The more I work with this grape variety the more I like it. It is a little frightening though as the grapes are pink and the juice when the grapes are pressed is bright orange, so I am always amazed by the lovely pale colour of the final wine. Grenache Gris makes some of the best white wines from this area of southern France and is often blended with other local grapes. Mine is not blended but exclusively Grenache Gris.

Not on your nelly, Monsieur Bourrell.’

Here at The Society we still need to wait for the 2011 but a small quantity of the 2010 (ref FC22301) is still available to order. To do so, please call Member Services on 01438 740 222.

Marcel Orford-Williams
Society buyer

Our wettest spring in years may have blunted the only green shoots we are likely to see here for a long time. Nevertheless, enough plucky bunches have made it through the rain to get Britain shaking the dust off its steamers and trawling the rack for the right white for asparagus, recalling, perhaps for the first time since last year, how devilishly tricky that can be.

Kiwi sauvignon blanc, a popular choice, often has a leguminous touch, but generally, I find it too trenchant to do anything but clash with the differently green spectrum of the vegetable. Not for nothing is it called a/grass by London’s fruit and veg community, whose members often display it alongside the contrasting glossy purple of a stack of obo’s (sic).

Like English straws, home-grown sparrer grass achieves a unique balance of sweetness and acidity. For that, I want a not-quite-dry, grapy northern hemisphere white. Quirky English wines sometimes work, and dry Alsace muscat is a sublime, if extravagant match. A third option, unveiled too late for last year’s crop and only now put through its paces, is – wait for it, I had to! – Prince Stirbey Tamâioasa Romaneasca Sec.

Tamâioasa (pronounce it támmy-wássa) is an indigenous Romanian variety bursting with the aroma of fresh grapes and punchy on the palate with that vital bit of subtle sweetness in the background. At £9.50 it’s not as cheap as I feel such a tongue-twister should be, but it’s under a tenner, which the best Alsace muscats are not.

It can also absorb the extra ingredients that TV chefdom, in its restless wisdom, deems necessary to help asparagus along. For all I know, the predictable litany of pancetta, parmesan shavings and, Lord help us, blue cheese, tomatoes and anchovies, may transform Peruvian imports. For me, though, anyone who complicates our most glamorous product with anything other than heat, lightly salted butter and freshly ground white pepper deserves banishment to the Tower of London, or, better still, somewhere very gothic and scary in Transylvania.

Janet Wynne Evans
Specialist Wine Manager

Society Grapevine has been up and running since 2009. During that time we’ve used it to update members on all manner of wines, vintages, regions, tastings and other developments at The Society during two busy years – all in a more personal and immediate way than we’d have been able to do in our other online and printed communications.

What we would love to know is what you would like to see, or see more of, on here.

Are there any wine styles, countries or regions you think we’ve overlooked? Any people from or areas of The Society you’d like to hear more from? Perhaps you’d like to see us doing more with video, spend more time discussing wine news, or offer more wine-related advice?

Whatever your thoughts are, we would like to hear them. The Wine Society exists for its members, and giving us your opinions would help us know what you find the most interesting and relevant.
Whether a regular reader or first-time visitor, we welcome any feedback you may have.

The Languedoc is a big place – the largest single wine region on earth, according to some. It certainly feels like it, with over a thousand miles clocked up in less than a week.

Mont St Baudile with the vines of Montpeyroux in the foreground

I shall take nothing away from the Rhône, which has brilliant wines; but the Languedoc does too, and what was remarkable about this trip was the sheer quality of what was on offer and especially from the 2010 vintage.

The Rhône of course is not that far away and so seems reasonable that vintages should follow. The Languedoc being so large however, this is not always the case. 2008 is a great example: average in the Rhône but actually very good in the Languedoc.

Anyway, this is not about 2008 but rather about 2010: sublime in the Rhône and just as good in the Languedoc.

What makes 2010 special? The answer is that 2010 has everything. The wines are very dark, very fruity – satisfyingly full bodied yet without any of the aggressive tannins that are often present in good vintages. There is nothing baked or raisiny in these 2010s; the relatively cool but dry summer prevented that and indeed allowed the grapes to preserve acidity. The weather was perfect and allowed growers to wait and pick when they liked. The grapes were fully ripe.

There are several 2010s forthcoming in the July List (Montpeyroux la Pinpanella from La Jase Castel is one of many favourites) but otherwise there will be a very full listing in a Languedoc offer which will be published in the autumn.

Marcel Orford-Williams
Society Buyer

There’s a lot of good wine out there. Missing out on a great one is understandable – particularly in the case of the Loire Valley’s wines, boasting as they do an extraordinary array of grapes and styles – but none the less tragic for it.

Society buyer Joanna Locke MW’s latest efforts to bring members the cream of the Loire’s remarkably varied crop can be found in our current offer, and it has been heartening to see the UK wine press giving plaudits to several of the wines therein.

Grapevine readers may already have seen the praise given to Mourat’s wines; to ensure that no other gems slip under your radar, we include below an assortment of other Society Loire offerings to have been given favourable mentions. Please note: our current Loire offer closes on Sunday 20th May.

Jancis Robinson recommended a further four Loire wines (‘VGV’ and ‘GV’ meaning ‘very good value’ and ‘good value’ respectively):

Robert Sérol, Vieilles Vignes 2011 Côte Roannaise 16.5/20 Drink 2012-2013
Lively and lifted. Rather stylish label. Light but true and savoury. Quintessential French country wine made with great facility. Silky texture, great persistence. Troisgros house wine by the way. VGV 12% £7.95 The Wine Society

Frédéric Mabileau, Les Rouillères Chenin Blanc 2011 Anjou 17/20 Drink 2012-2016
Lovely pure, fresh, appley aromas. Lots of tension and terroir. Finishes dry. This wine has just so much energy and typicity. Great stuff. Whistle clean. GV 13% £10.95 The Wine Society

La Claux Delorme 2011 Valençay 16/20 Drink 2012-2013
Very fragrant and floral. Gentle and off dry. Nice texture. Firm spine. Long. Well constructed. Good value. 13% £8.95 The Wine Society

Huet, Le Haut-Lieu Sec 2010 Vouvray 16+/20 Drink 2014-2018
Deeper flavoured than the Chenin des Rouillères 2011. With more honey and more wet wool. Lots to get your teeth into but awfully young for the moment. 12.5% £14.95 The Wine Society

Antony Rose (The Independent) included a nod for the following wine in his article about The Wine Society:
‘Frédéric Mabileau’s 2011 Chenin des Rouillères Anjou Blanc, £10.95, is a terrific expression of Loire Valley chenin blanc combining vivid appley freshness with a mineral-dry finish.’

Last but not least, The Wine Gang, made up of some of the best palates in the UK wine press, reviewed a ‘budget selection’ of Society wines. The Gang gave a timely reminder of the virtues of Muscadet, recommending a Society favourite in the process, as well as a relative newcomer to our range:

Domaine des Ratelles Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2010
Muscadet doesn’t get a very good press these days. In fact it doesn’t get much press at all and its grape variety, Melon de Bourgogne, gets even less, but a good Muscadet – the antithesis of a showy wine – is a useful thing for washing down simple fish, seafood and salads. This one, with its delicate salted-nut and zesty citrus flavours, is as brisk as a swim in the Serpentine but much less masochistic. £6.75 at The Wine Society

Domaine de la Semellerie Chinon 2010
Youthful Loire Cabernet Franc with the signature sweet whiff of potato peelings, juicy raspberry and blackberry fruit and touches of spice, leather and liquorice. Light tannins and a nip of acidity complete the medium-bodied picture. £8.50 at The Wine Society

The Society Bordeaux buying team of Sebastian Payne MW, Jo Locke MW and myself has recently spent a second week in Bordeaux, retasting many of the 2011s that we had sampled a fortnight previously during the annual ‘en primeur’ bunfight, and tasting many other 2011s for the first time. It is remarkable how in that short time many of the wines have evolved, and the week proved invaluable in helping us to distil down our selection for the main en primeur offer that we will be sending out next month. Over the course of our two sojourns in Bordeaux we have tasted several wines three, four and occasionally five times, so we feel we are well placed to put together a coherent and considered offer for members.

Week one had been a whirlwind, visiting some of the best-known wine names in the Bordeaux firmament, with one day that involved visits to Châteaux Léoville Las Cases, Lagrange, Pontet Canet, Mouton Rothschild, Lafite Rothschild, Latour and Ducru Beaucaillou – and that was just in one morning…

Our second week was, with one or two exceptions, more modest in terms of the global renown of châteaux visited and wines tasted, but no less interesting or enlightening. The vast majority of châteaux that we have followed for a number of years have made fresh, attractive and classically proportioned red wines that we have no hesitation in recommending subject, of course, to the wines being sensibly priced. Examples include Château Le Conseiller, Château Bouscaut, Château Belgrave, Château d’Angludet, Château Cantemerle and Château Batailley, to name but a few. 2011 was also an excellent Sauternes and Barsac vintage, with consistently high quality across the board, and we will be offering several of our favourites in our main Bordeaux opening offer.

Week two was also an opportunity to taste at the esteemed premises of JP Moueix in Libourne. Having “extinguished” our mobile phones [see above], we were treated to a procession of delicious merlot-dominant right bank wines in the splendid Moueix tasting room – a cavernous but tranquil setting for the Society tasters [right]. We also paid a visit to the strikingly Burgundian-looking cellars [below] of François Mitjavile at Château Tertre Roteboeuf in Saint Emilion, our annual opportunity to shoot the breeze with one of the most cerebral winemakers in Bordeaux, and taste the delicious fruits of his labours.

Our week ended with a visit to Château Reynon in the Premières Côtes de Bordeaux to see our old friend Denis Dubourdieu, wine guru, lecturer and oenologist to some of France’s most famous names; and a tasting at Château Climens in Barsac with owner Bérénice Lurton. Bérénice took us through no fewer than nine different barrels of 2011 Barsac, each cask containing the production of a single-day’s picking last autumn – the later the harvest day the sweeter, more lush and complex the wines tasted. The 2011 Climens is a true labour of love.

All that we are waiting for now is for the châteaux to release their prices, and we are hoping that the owners and decision makers will take a pragmatic view this year and release the wines at sensible prices. We are expecting a flurry of activity from the Bordeaux négociants in the coming days, although the profusion of public holidays in France this month may hamper the process somewhat.

Tim Sykes
Head of Buying

The Society has put in place new procedures for ordering Bordeaux 2011 this year. The first of our two 2011 Bordeaux Opening Offers, containing 30 of the most sought after wines of the vintage, requires members to pre-order the wines before the prices are confirmed by the chateaux. The remaining, generally less expensive, wines will be offered as normal, in print and online, in June or July.

Ewan Murray wasn’t the only Society taster putting his palate through its paces recently. Last week others were judging too. Here’s what happened on one of those days.

Tim Sykes

Some of the wine trade’s finest palates, including those of four of The Society’s buyers, were out in force last week as judging took place at the annual Decanter World Wine Awards. Thousands of wines from hundreds of viticultural regions were sniffed, swilled and spat over the five gruelling days of assessment and analysis.  Judges were faced with the olympian task of sorting out the top wines into the customary Gold, Silver, Bronze and Commended categories, with the best of the best being put forward for regional trophies.

Michael Schuster

Having been invited to judge on the Friday session at this year’s event I was delighted to learn that not only had I drawn one of the longest straws possible, tasting on the Burgundy panel, but also that I would be sitting next to Michael Schuster, Society Committee member and stalwart of the Decanter Burgundy panel for many years.

Michael assured me that he and the various Burgundy judges had, earlier in the week, awarded several Gold medals, so I sat down at 9.30 on Friday morning almost salivating at the prospect of blind tasting over 80 white and red Burgundies.

Come 4.30 in the afternoon, my enthusiasm had completely evaporated. Of the many wines we had tasted, from Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Beaune to Premier Cru Meursault and from Bourgogne Pinot Noir to Premier Cru Morey St Denis, just two wines had, in the judges’ view, merited a Bronze medal. No Silvers, and certainly no Golds. “The most disappointing day’s tasting I have had in the ten years I have been judging at Decanter” was Michael’s bleak assessment.

My fellow judges and I were baffled as to the reasons for this lacklustre showing from one of the greatest wine regions of the world. We were tasting Burgundies mainly from the excellent 2009 and 2010 vintages, so how come the wines didn’t shine? One reason could be that barometric pressure was very low on Friday and that wines often fail to shine in such conditions. Our only other explanation was that few of the top producers in Burgundy enter their wines in competitions because demand for their wines outstrips supply several times over, particularly in a small harvest such as 2010. The great and the good of Burgundy will have sold out of their wines some time ago. However, as we had no idea whose wines we were tasting we could not verify this assertion. What remains clear is that earlier in the week many Burgundies were awarded Gold and Silver medals, so our day’s tasting was not representative of the week’s overall quality.  Thankfully, at the end of the final session our faith was restored when we were treated to six Gold medal winning wines from previous days’ judging, all of which merited their award and indeed two of which we selected for regional trophies.

I retired to a local hostelry at the end of the day with some of my fellow judges for a well earned pint of ale. The general consensus was that a good pint of beer was infinitely more appealing than an average glass of Burgundy.

Tim Sykes
Head of Buying

Members will be aware of the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) and the International Wine Challenge (IWC) – two major wine competitions that take place in the UK and that The Society regularly does well in as a merchant.

Before the great days in May when the results are announced and September when the results are celebrated, there is a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes to ensure wines are blind tasted, retasted and judged on their merits. Several of The Society’s team are judges at these prestigious competitions. I am lucky enough to be counted among the judges for the IWC and this year have judged for six days out of the eleven that it takes.

This annual competition is co-chaired by 6 members of the Who’s Who of the wine world: Tim Atkin MW, Oz Clarke, Sam Harrop MW, Peter McCombie MW, Charles Metcalfe and Derek Smedley MW. This year the venue was the Nursery Pavilion at Lord’s Cricket Ground. Our time there was so wet that only 2 hours of cricket were possible, including Andrew Strauss dismissed for a second-ball duck batting for Middlesex against Durham. So other than the persistent precipitation hammering on the Pavilion roof, there were no distractions from the job in hand.

Just a few of the 100 judges in the Nursery Pavilion on the first day of judging

With over 12,000 wines tasted by 23 panels of 5 judges, the logistics pose significant problems. All of these were admirably overcome by Chris Ashton and his excellent, hard-working team from the IWC, delivering flight after flight of wine. In total I personally blind-tasted 585 wines from 21 countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United States and Uruguay. My tasting panel leaders included ex-Tesco buyer Helen McGinn, ex-Sainsbury’s winemaker Clem Yates MW, Oregonian wine writer Lisa Shara Hall, Aussie wine critic and winemaker Nick Stock and wine author/blogger Jamie Goode.

Fellow judge Tamara Stanfill (left) & panel chair Helen McGinn evaluating Portuguese reds

The first 5 days are spent tasting and deciding simply if the wine should go forward to the medal tasting, be commended or rejected. The next four days see the medal-worthy wines re-tasted and bronze, silver or gold medals awarded, with the final two days set aside for re-tasting the gold medal winners and deciding which should be awarded the prestigious trophies.

Each day ended with a refreshing beer or two in the Mound Stand bar. The last thing you want after tasting 100 wines is … wine!

It’s a meticulous, challenging and tiring process, but worthwhile for the tasting experience, the educational side of things (I can now perceive and identify more degrees of reduction, oxidation, cork taint, brettanomyces and geosmin than I ever thought possible) and the networking with the great and the good of the industry (winemakers, estate owners, communicators, competitors).

And before you ask, I promise that I spat everything out (well, maybe a little vintage Champagne and Bual Madeira remained in my system at the end of one or two of the judging days); here was one sober judge!

Contractors have stopped work on Mosel bridge

Members may remember the tale of the 500ft-high bridge and four-lane motorway planned to pass through some of the Mosel’s most prestigious vineyards and the lobbying and campaigning that has taken place, not just by locals but by wine-lovers and wine writers the world over.

Despite fierce protest, legal challenges and political wrangling, construction had started on the new route. However, the latest news from Pro-Mosel, the body set up to channel support against the so-called B50 project, gives fresh hope though, as the construction company involved in the development has stopped all activities until further notice:

‘Construction cranes have been dismantled, demonstrably angry workers have been sent away. According to witnesses, the building company Porr have suspended their activities on the construction of the Mosel bridge until further notice. It has been reported that static calculations are missing, and that only the measurements for the first bridge pier have been reliably calculated. Officially, the contractors refuse to confirm this information.’

Apparently, similar problems have already been cited by critics of the project. Last year, a report was produced which criticised a lack of exploration of the subsoil, in particular in the area of the bridge. The Mosel region is susceptible to landslides and with supporting piers designed to reach a height of 160 metres, there is a particularly high risk of instability.

You can read the full press-release and find out more about the bridge and the campaign to stop its construction on Pro-Mosel’s website.