Here is a little something I came across…

Hitler has a problem with his Burgundy allocation

I have just set two dates in January for wine tasting sessions for confused wine lovers: The London Wine Workshop Group. Take a look at: www.meetup.com/the-london-wine-workshop-group. Check it out, join, and come along!

A short post this time (the last on on fizz ended up far longer than I expected), and this time to rather shamelessly promote my new venture! I have just set up a group called, rather appropriately, The London Wine Workshop Group. So, if you feel my tirades about Champagne, Italian, and Chilean wines haven’t sated your thirst, why not join my workshop group and learn all you can in a day of wine tasting on the 14th January, with a group of fellow wine lovers, in a trendy pub in Westbourne Park, The Metropolitan?

Click here for more information: The London Wine Workshop Group

It’s Christmas again, and people start to think about drinking cold fizzy wine again, for the first time since the summer. If you wonder why this seemingly inappropriate, summery sort of drink should be chosen in the middle of winter (I do sometimes), the answer is to do with the festive fizziness of the style outweighing it’s coldness. Here, therefore, is my view on Champagne and alternatives, with as little boring history, and as much balanced insight as possible (always difficult on this rather emotive subject).

What’s all the fuss about, and why does it always have to cost more? The answer is integration. If you used what I call the Tesco sparkling water technique, and carbonated some wine from an ugly great gas cylinder (which, incidentally, you can do; the French even have a quaint expression for it, ‘pompe bicyclette’), you would end up with much the same result as the water: it fizzes for just about the amount of time it takes you to pour it into your glass, then goes flat, and you are back where you started. So you generally don’t do that, rather opting for a variety of more involved techniques, usually, but not always involving a secondary fermentation to create the gas which is then trapped in the bottle. And yes, by more involved, I do mean more expensive as well. The pinnacle of these methods is what used to be rather self-explanatorily called the Champagne Method, now called Traditional Method. Most of the more expensive fizzes (including, of course, all Champagne) use this method, and a great result is achieved. Incidentally, to try to lead seamlessly into the next part of the article, it has become widely accepted now, even by the French (vive l’entente cordiale!) that it was an Englishman, Christopher Merret, who devised the basics of this method, not Dom Perignon, a French monk, as previously thought.

So there is the technical background (with a little boring history, sorry). Now, the options. First, you have Champagne. It is more expensive both because of prestige (whatever that is), but also because of quality; they have been making and refining this for longer than anyone else (even if they didn’t invent it), and they make a great, and reliably good fizz. Pick your favourite Champagne House, and impress your guests. They all make a version in their own ‘house style’. I don’t have space to go through all the different Houses and their styles. The internet, the source of all knowledge, should yield the secret with a little searching. In fact, there is a link for your enlightenment: Tom Stevenson, the Champagne expert, has very generously donated to the interweb an admittedly old, but still very useful, 2003 edition of his Champagne and Sparkling Wine guide. It is on Tom Cannavan’s site at:  http://www.wine-pages.com/guests/tom/fizz2003.htm. It’s not every day you get a free book! Just before I leave this, though, let me answer the point about Blanc de Blancs, because this is usually, but not always, used with reference to Champagne. This means quite simply that it is a white wine made from white grapes. You may wonder why that wouldn’t always be the case, and the answer is that Champagne can be made from three different grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. Chardonnay is, as everyone knows, white, the other two are red. So when a Champagne is Blanc de Blancs it is 100% Chardonnay, simple as that.

Talking of which, here is the first recommendation: Tesco, a company not universally loved by all in the trade, because of their aggressive purchasing strategies, nevertheless have some gems in their range. One such, I believe, is their Tesco Champagne Vintage 2006 Brut. This is a terrific buy at just over £18 on offer at the moment

Then, I want to revisit the relationship we English have with the French, which I sometimes describe as love/hate: we love their wines, but we hate them! Not content with inventing the stuff, we now seem to be rubbing salt into the wound by making fizzes which beat Champagnes in competitions for sparkling wines. Camel Valley in Cornwall has just won the Sparkling Rosé Trophy for its Pinot Noir Rosé 2009. Other estates in England to watch out for are Nyetimber and Ridgeview, both in West Sussex, who have also won numerous awards; I also like Denbies Whitedowns Sparkling from Dorking, and Chapel Down’s version, from Kent. None of these are cheap (they are on a par with cheap Champagne, in a range of about £18-£30), but they are good, and it gives a patriotic glow to drink them; I don’t know how much that is worth!

Camel Valley Pinot Noir Rosé is available direct from the vineyard at www.camelvalley.com  (£24.95), Various Cuvées of Ridgeview and Nyetimber are available at Waitrose, as are Denbies Whitedowns (£16.99) and Chapel Down Reserve Brut (£17.99)

Finally, we have all the other versions. Every wine-making country in the world makes fizz, a lot of it pretty good. Cava, from Northern Spain is passé (isn’t it?), but still pretty good, except for the cheap ones, and that last proviso applies to all sparkling wines, especially and including Champagne. Prosecco (along with Pinot Grigio) has resuscitated the Italian wine industry. Is it getting passé too? I still like the style; David Beckham and I (without once discussing it) both accepted our feminine side several years ago, and Prosecco sure displays a feminine side with its fruity semi-sweetness. The better ones like Bisol, Ruggeri, and many others, are drier. Again, price is usually a good indicator: the more expensive, the drier and better. Other regions in France compete with Champagne. I have always liked Loire fizzes like Vouvray and Saumur. Made from the Chenin Blanc grape, these have the profile of Champagne, with a lean citrus mineral core (usually), but, I think, with the bonus that they have a fruity, grassy side not often seen in Champagne, which makes them more interesting in some ways. Plus, of course, they’re cheaper. Further afield, to make a huge generalization for which I will be shot down if any wine buffs or particular country specialists read this, New World versions like Australia and Chile tend to be more fruit driven, and richer. There’s a lot of wine out there.

For Prosecco, I would recommend a good one like Ruggeri’s Argeo Brut, which I can personally supply at £14.99 a bottle (it’s not cheap, but it is very good), or Majestic’s Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Extra Dry NV, at £9.99. I also like Majestic’s Bouvet Ladubay Saumur NV (£9.99), and I had a fruitsome bottle of Isla Negra Sparkling Brut, from Chile, a while ago. This is available at Tesco; pricewise, to give you an insight into their unpopularity in some trade quarters, this is listed at a ‘normal’ price of £12.99. Bought on promotion (which it regularly is), it goes for just £4.99. Who’s for buying it for £12.99?

I’ve certainly only scratched the surface with this, and missed whole swathes of exciting places: Luminaries like Michel Rolland, Randall Graham, Steven Spurrier, and I all see great potential in the Black Sea area. The Caucasus region is one of my favourites, and of course India (there are more exciting drinks than Omar Khayyam, believe me), not forgetting Canada, and, last but maybe not least China may be the next big thing in fizz. But still, this is a snapshot of my thinking, and I hope it is of use. Merry Christmas, with plenty of fizz; there’s enough choice!

Two wine tastings yesterday: A Wines of Chile tasting titled “Emerging Classics, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir” during the day, and some samples of southern Italian wines, in the evening. It’s a tough life, eh?

Let me dust off my violin for you for a minute, though: to get to the Chilean tasting, I had to travel from Ealing to Borough through the worst of the Friday afternoon traffic. I admit it was on the bike, which is more fun than any car or tube, and I did have another appointment in the City, so two birds were killed with the one stone (what sort of an expression is that, anyway?), but it was a lot of driving. Because of the driving, and also  to maintain my professional integrity, I do have to spit them all out, so it isn’t as much fun as it sounds. So shed a little tear for your stressed wine taster…

Wine Regions of Chile

The Chilean tasting was a little rushed, so I only tasted Pinot Noirs. On the whole I would say that the Chileans have, by and large, started to master the making of this difficult grape. I didn’t taste any of the boiled, soupy, sweet concoctions that used to be Chile’s offering. Instead, we had mainly clean, bright, fresh strawberry fruited wines, which is what Pinot Noir is all about. Highlights were a lovely Tabali Talinay 2009 from Limari, in the North, a terrific Kingston Family Vineyards Alazan 2010, reassuringly expensive (now there’s a good salesman’s pitch!), from Casablanca, an a fresh and clean Anakena Single Vineyard 2010, from Leyda. Bio Bio, in the south, is supposed to be cooler (although many would disagree, saying that the climatic divide in Chile is East-West, depending in how high up in the Andes you are), which should make it more suited to Pinot Noir, but the two on offer yesterday didn’t make it into this article (which isn’t a good thing)!

Italy's Wine Regions

In the evening, an Irpinia Aglianico 2006, and two vintages (2006 and 2003) of Taurasi, all from a grower called Guastaferro. Never heard of these wines? No surprise, they’re regional Italians; so many names, so little time… no-one can keep up. These come from Campania, home of Naples and pizza, and are made from the Aglianico grape, a typical dark fruited, rich, acidic, and tannic southern Italian grape. Lovely wines, though, well-managed tannins, mature, and full of Mediterranean warmth.

Not a bad day; I got to moan about the stresses of wine tasting, too. We drank the Irpinia (well, it was open, it had to be finished…) with dinner of home-made pizza, to keep it regional, and it was a match made in heaven.

Sedlescombe Vineyard on a beautiful November 13th

Yesterday’s visit to Sedlescombe Organic Vineyard must have been well viewed by whoever is in charge of the weather, as we had a day of uninterrupted glorious November sun; a little chilly, sure, but as clement as we could have hoped for. I know that Oscar Wilde has said that “Conversation about the weather is the last resort of the unimaginative”, but it is important if you compare the appeal of a rain-soaked tramp through a sodden English vineyard (which had been my experience up till then) to the pleasant autumn glow of “the awesome countryside of the Sussex High Weald”, (to quote Bill Green of Slow Food, my fellow organizer) that we got yesterday.

The lovely Susan with her vines

Our hosts Irma and Susan were welcoming as anything, and the tour and tasting were well appreciated. We even managed to fill the coach exactly (not an easy task, with people joining and cancelling right up to the evening before), which made it as cost-effective as possible, and went back with the coach clinking occasionally from the purchases of various member of the group.

Not everything was perfect, though. Our coach driver had had his mobile stolen the evening before (by someone in a party of rugby players he was chauffeuring, of all people; shame on you)! Still, we got there using alternate navigation (my phone), with the customary detour down a wrong turning, which, I feel, adds spice to all successful vineyard visits!

Animated discussion, a feature of every good lunch

The tour around this tiny artisanal organic, and in part, biodynamic vineyard was charming, and instructive, but it was the tasting which surprised. I know several of the wines well, and have, on past tastings, found them bright and alive, full of vibrant, lively fruit, balanced by moreish ripe English acidity. Yesterday the wines tasted OK, even good. Nothing wrong, sure, they all had a harmonious, and pleasant expression, but I found them a little flat, and muted. Even the Sedlescombe First Release, their inaugural biodynamic wine, seemed to lack the clarity of citrus fruit compote I found on previous tastings. This was the wine that introduced me to the estate. The first time I showed it at a biodynamic wine seminar I was presenting last year, it blew everyone away with is exuberant quality; yesterday it was appreciated.

Perhaps here is the answer: I am no die-hard zealot of biodynamic viticulture above all others, nor, infectious though it is, do I share Doug Wregg’s or Isabelle Legeron’s unequivocal enthusiasm for ‘Natural wines’, but I am certainly very appreciative of natural ways of making wine like biodynamic, and organic, and I do have a little booklet called “When wine tastes best. A biodynamic calendar for wine drinkers” in my office. Consulting this today, I find that yesterday was a root day, all day. Root and leaf are the days in the biodynamic calendar on which wines are supposed to taste flatter, while flower and fruit days invigorate aromas and flavours.

So there it is: The biodynamic calendar really is the new wine drinker’s bible! As a scientist

So many bottles, so little time!

by education, I will say, though, that I am impressed with this empirical endorsement of the calendar. Ideally I would have arranged the visit on a fruit or flower day; practicalities like Slow Food’s calendar also have to be taken into account, though, and yesterday was the day decided on. At least the 13th didn’t fall on a Friday; who knows, that might have caused other problems.

I still consider Sedlescombe Vineyard’s wines to be some of the best around, and we had a fantastic trip and superbly hosted  tour of an unique English vineyard. We learned about organic and biodynamic viticulture, and more than we were expecting about biodynamic wine tasting. The calendar tells me Advent Sunday, the 27th November is an especially good fruit day. Let’s go to Sedlescombe again then and see the difference!

I have organized a visit to Seddlescombe Organic Vineyard in Sussex for Sunday 13th November. For details please go to the Winfield Wine Workshops facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/winfieldwineworkshops
I hope to see you there!

I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for what has been a fantastic series of evenings. The feedback has been great from everyone here they’ve all learn’t something and had a lot of fun doing so and that is mainly down to you. You are definitely Razorfish’s cup of Tea (or appropriately glass of wine I would be massively suprised if their wasn’t huge interest in continuing the sessions next year and will certainly be in touch to discuss options for 2012.
Rob, Razorfish