Serious Rosé can still be fun

I enjoy drinking a good rosé and enjoy its versatility – a nice rosé is fun on its own and can often be an inspired choice with food, especially the sort of things that I eat in the Summer.

What’s more I get a little tired of people claiming not to like rosé – what’s not to like exactly? I also find it a trifle annoying that quite a few people are somewhat disparaging about rosés, ‘they’re neither one thing, or the other’ is a refrain that I often hear. That is right, they are not white wines, they are not red wines, but something different – that is the point!

However, much as I enjoy them, I hardly ever think of them as being complex or great wines. Every month in London I present tastings to a group of tasters who are really interested in wines and I love showing them different things that I find on my travels. Well recently, just to see what people thought, I put on a tasting of rosés that were a bit more serious, and potentially more complex than the normal examples that people buy.

I had put the tasting together over several months, based on wines that I found in all sorts of different places. They were all made using the skin contact method – meaning the colour comes from the skins of black grapes as with a red wine. I wondered about putting in something like a Sauvignon Blanc Rosé from South Africa or New Zealand as those are made from blending a little red wine into white to give the colour, but I couldn’t show everything.

The tasting went well and surprised a lot of the tasters, so I decided to share the best wines with you.

The wines

2014 Txakolin Gorria
Txomín Etxaníz
PDO / DO Getariako Txakolina
País Vasco
Spain

Oh I do like Txakoli (or Txakolin they are not consistent with the naming). It is pronounced Chakoli and hails from the far north of Spain – you can read all about it in an article I wrote for Catavino. There are actually three Txakoli DOs and this wine comes from DO Getariako Txakolina, which is around the lovely fishing village of Getaria just 30km west of San Sebastian – which currently is my favourite place on earth! Txomín Etxaníz is widely considered to be the best producer of this beguiling wine. Formally established as a company in 1930, the family have been farming these hillsides and making wine since at least 1649.

Wine map of Spain showing DO Getariako Txakolina to the East of Bilbao – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

The beautiful bustling fishing village of Getaria. The streets are full of bars and fish restaurants, while Txomín are just a couple of kilometres away on a hillside overlooking the village.

This rosé – the Gorria on the label strangely means red in Basque – is a blend of the two most important grapes, 60% Hondarrabi Beltza – a black grape – and 40% Hondarrabi Zuri – a white grape.

This was the lightest of the rosés, but a firm favourite with some tasters. The colour was pale, with a light cherry, strawberry, rose petal hue. The nose was delicate and restrained with that pure, seashore, salty and mineral Txakoli thing. It is bright, fresh and thrilling with lots of ripe cherry acidity, the merest sprinkle of pepper and some softer riper strawberry fruit too. It is light as sea air, but the flavour is deep and wonderful, so the wine feels elegant and satisfying. Perfect sun drenched terrace drinking, with the merest hint of something not quite bone dry – 91/100 points.

Also remember the Txomín white Txakoli is just about the best example of the type that you can try, it is available from The Oxford Wine Company for £15 a bottle.

For UK stockist information contact Moreno wines.
For US stockist information click here.

2013 Mazza Bastardo Rosé
Mazza Wine
GI Geographe
Western Australia

Bastardo is a little used and somewhat unloved grape variety from Portugal, but David Mazza has found a way to make a lovely wine from it, by making a rosé. David is one of my most exciting discoveries of the last year or so. He is a lovely guy who farms a tiny estate in Western Australia, only grows Iberian grape varieties and makes superb wines – you can read more about him here.

Wine map of Western Australia, Mazza are to the south and east of Bunbury, roughly where the G, in Geographe, is – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

David Mazza showing me his wines at Berry Bros. & Rudd, London.

The nose offers rose petal aromas, some strawberries and cream notes, mineral earthy notes, some herbs and some pomegranate too.

The palate has lovely weight and a creamily ripe texture that caresses the palate with soft red fruit with an underlying orange acidity with red fruit highlights. There are some light spices and Mediterranean herbs too. The acidity is perfectly judged, making the wine fresh, lively and clean without being in the least bit tart.

There is a fair bite of tannin for a rosé, just enough to give some elegance and structure, and a long finish that delights with redcurrant and cranberry fruit. This is a really satisfying and fine rosé of exceptional quality, it is not exactly light weight, but neither it is it heavy, but it is refreshing and lively. A fine and complex rosé – 92/100.

Available in the UK from Berry Bros and Rudd for £17.50 per bottle.

2015 Majioli Rosato
Tenute Sella
PDO / DOC Coste della Sesia
Piemonte
Italy

Tenute Sella from northern Piemonte – Alpine Piemonte if you will – is still run by the family who founded it in 1671. They farm in the DOCs of Lessona, Bramaterra and Coste della Sesia and their buildings, cellars and vineyards are spectacular as you might imagine. They have a beautiful palazzo style building, while the Alps provide a stunning backdrop to the vines. Their main grape is Nebbiolo, but they have Vespolina, Croatina and Erbaluce too and make brilliant wines, including the best Nebbiolo rosé I have ever tried, so I put it in the tasting.

Wine map of Piemonte in my new cleaner style – click for a larger view. Non watermarked, high resolution versions are available for a fee.

Tenute Sella.

This rosé is pure Nebbiolo and from 45 year old vines, old vines helps give depth and concentration to the wine. The vineyards are in the two ‘Cru’ appellations, Lessona (95%) and Bramaterra (5%), which is why the wine is labelled Coste della Sesia, as that is the wider area. The Bramaterra component is made by bleeding some juice off their red wine while it is fermenting. The Lessona component gets 36 hours cold soak pre fermentation to help extract flavours and complexity. The wine has malolactic fermentation and has a 6 month ageing on the lees in tank.

This has real Nebbiolo character on the nose, with earthy and rose petal notes, blood orange, cranberry and spice too. The palate is quite full, with some weight and intensity and texture – those lees? It is also very tasty with lots of rich red fruit, that twist of bitter orange, some spice and a good fresh acidity and minerality making it lively. This is a fine rosé – possibly my favourite on the night – and it would go with all manner of dishes from salads and fish to veal and pasta dishes – 92/100 points.

I would also point out that everything I have tasted from Tenute Sella is of very high quality.

Sadly right now there is no UK representation for Tenute Sella – come on wine trade, snap them up!
They are represented in the US by Rosenthal Wine Merchant / Mad Rose Group in New York.

2014 Chêne Bleu Rosé
Chêne Bleu, Domaine de la Verrière
PGI / Vin de Pays de Vaucluse
Rhône
France

I love showing wines from Chêne Bleu, because they are always so very good. It’s a beautiful estate in the rugged and isolated Mont Ventoux area just a few kilometres north of Gigondas and east of Séguret on the borders between the Côtes du Rhône and Ventoux. The whole project has been a labour of love for the owners Nicole and Xavier Rolet and I would recommend that you read the story in my post here. The estate is farmed organically and in conversion to biodynamic. The secret is the height, the vineyards – there are only 30 hectares of them, sit at between 550 and 630 metres above seal level – very high for Europe – where the hot Mediterranean air is cooler and the nights are distinctly cool, which makes the wines fresher than you would expect – so finer. On top of all that they hand harvest and sort the grapes meticulously – their attention to detail shows.

Wine map of the Southern Rhône – click for a larger view.

Nicole Rolet.

Their rosé is a classic southern Rhône blend of 65% Grenache, 30% Syrah and 5% Cinsault and it spent a very short time in oak barrels to add complexity.

The colour is lovely, not deep, not place, but bright and appealing. The nose offers some delicate spice, rich citrus and pungent red fruit, while the palate is pretty full, with rich soft red fruit, refreshing acidity, concentrated fruit, a light spicy oak character and a silky, textured mouthfeel. Again perfect as n aperitif or with any Mediterranean style meal – 92/100 points.

Available in the UK for around £19 a bottle from Waitrose Cellar (online)
For US stockist information click here.

2013 Château Brown Rosé
Château Brown
Graves / Pessac-Léognan 
PDO / AOC Bordeaux
France

I visited Château Brown once, it is a star estate in the Graves region and always delivers great wines and value for money. It has a checkered history though and was going through a bad patch in the 1950s – in fact there were no vines then – which is why it is not a Grand Cru Classé de Graves. Since 2004 the estate has been run by Jean-Christophe Mau and the quality of the wines has improved dramatically. There are 29 hectares of vines on the famous gravel – Graves – soils and nowadays they use sustainable viticulture to ensure balance and biodiversity in the vineyard – so much so they even keep a colony of bees.

Wine map of Bordeaux – Pessac-Léognan is just south of the city itself – click for a larger view.

Jean-Christophe Mau at Château Brown.

They make lovely reds and a lot of their reputation has been built on their fine, rich, barrel aged white wines – both of these are AOC Pessac-Léognan. The rules of the appellation do not allow for rosés though, so this has to be labelled simply as AOC Bordeaux, but the quality is far higher than this relatively humble provenance would lead you to expect.

This rosé is a 50/50 Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blend, hand harvested, de-stemmed and macerated on the skins for 4 hours, which gives the subtle and pale colour. After a cold fermentation the wine was aged for 4 months in second use oak barrels with some lees stirring for extra texture and complexity.

The colour is more peach than pink with redcurrant fruit notes and something nutty and mineral too. The palate is seductively textured and promises a great deal, but the wine has to be treated more seriously than rosé normal are, serve it lightly chilled rather than cold and open it in advance – perhaps even decant it, all things I found out by mistake as the wine really only started to show its form after everyone had gone home!

Available in the UK for around £33 a bottle from Hedonism Wines.

2011 Chivite Colección 125 Rosado
J. Chivite Family Estates
PDO / DO Navarra
Spain

All  my working life I have been fond of the wines of Navarra, there is great quality there and great value too. I never really understand why they are not more widely available in the UK. It is a beautiful place, full of passionate wine producers. Production is nothing like the scale of neighbouring Rioja, so it remains attractively rural and the producers are essentially farmers – read my piece here for an overview and here, here, here, here and here about specific producers.

Map of Navarra – click for a larger view. High-res non-watermarked versions of my maps are available by agreement.

D. Julián Chivite López, the 11 th generation of his family to produce wine in Navarra.

The Chivite family have been growing grapes and producing wine in Navarra since 1647 – which as I often joke to my students, is just before lunch in Spain! They are without doubt the most famous and leading estate in the region and are still owned by the founding family – indeed the current Julian Chivite is the 11th generation of the family to run it. They produce several ranges of wines, all good, even their more entry level Gran Fuedo wines from the warm deep south of Navarra. In recent years though they moved production of their top wines to their Finca Granja de Legardeta in the cooler Navarra Tierra Estella sub-zone – just a little bit south of Estella on the map. This area is influenced by the Atlantic and is pretty high too, so is cooler than further south, which gives a nice long ripening season to allow the grapes to develop complexity, while maintaining freshness.

The Coleccion 125 range – which are all superb – was originally created to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the original Chivite winery in Cintruénigo in the south of Navarra, but is now a separate range from their own family vineyards. This rosé is made from 100% Tempranillo grapes, aged for 12 months in French oak barrels with occasional lees stirring.

The colour is amazing, like wild salmon, while the nose is quite lifted with red fruit, smoke and spice. The palate is quite textured and rich with lots of ripe cherry, strawberry and spice and light tobacco, together with some rich orange character. The acidity keeps it all fresh and juicy, while there is a touch of tannin. A fine, rich, dry rosé that needs food – I would love to try it with suckling pig, but can assure you that it’s marvellous with paella – 92/100 points.

So you see, rosé wines can be fine, they can be complex and they can be serious and when they are they can be delightful and great fun to drink too. All of these were dry, although the Txakoli had a tiny touch of fruit sweetness which made it rather gorgeous actually, and on the whole would be better with food than without. The next time you cook Mediterranean style food, be it paella, tapas, meze, slow cooked lamb or some grilled fish – try one of these wines, or something similar, with it. I think you will enjoy the combination.

Happy New Year & 3 Wines of the Week…

Well, here we are at the start of 2015 and still not a jet pack, hover mobile, silver jump suit or meal consisting solely of pills in sight. How wrong all the soothsayers were!

I hope your Christmas and New Years were relaxing, fun and memorable and that you enjoyed plenty of good food and wine. I’m sure you noticed that I took a bit of a break from writing these pages, I hope that you didn’t mind or begrudge me the time off.

Like you I drank a fair amount, mainly good sparkling wines and half decent Champagne if truth be told, but I did indulge with a few select bottles including the 3 that I am about to mention to you. Indeed if I had not taken a break from writing they would have been my Wines of the Week numbers 31, 32 and 33 – so here they are, better late than never eh?

Wine of the Week 31

Christmas seems to be a time for indulgence, when we consume the sorts of things – and the sorts of quantities – that we deny ourselves the rest of the year. Certainly as soon as the grind is over – about halfway through Christmas Eve I find – I do relax more and start drinking at all sorts of odd times of day that I just would not normally. Nothing gets me into a Christmas mood as much as a Panettone and a bottle of a light Moscato for an early Christmas tea – fine Prosecco is also superb with Panettone and I did indeed drink a superb Prosecco just the other day, but you will have to wait a while to hear all about that magnificent wine.

 

Moscato vines growing on Piemonte’s rolling hills.

2013 Elio Perrone Sourgal Moscato d’Asti
Casa Vinicola Elio Perrone
Castiglione Tinella, Piemonte, Italy
D.O.C.G. Moscato d’Asti

Moscato d’Asti is less fizzy than Asti itself, but tastes very similar and is similarly light light in alcohol – 5% in this instance. This very lightness makes it a gentle way into the indulgences of the Festive season as it doesn’t make you too tipsy and you can drink rather a lot of it too. That all misses the point somewhat though, I like this style os wine because when they are well made – as this example is – they are utterly delicious. Sourgal by the way is the name of the vineyard, as this is a single vineyard wine.

The wine is very pale, with just a little lemony, sherbet colour and the CO2 gives a lovely lacy look to the surface of the wine – gently frothy is another way of putting it. It is the aromas of these wines that get me every time, they smell of delicate candied fruit, especially lemon peel, with the merest touch of brioche too – yes they really do smell of panettone, which is why they go so well together. There are other gorgeous aromas too, touches of orange, flourishes of acacia and white peach, all of which makes it scintillating and joyous to sniff. The palate is soft and very light, lightly effervescent and very fruity with flavours of grapes, peach and lemon peel. The sweetness is there, but it is beautifully balanced and just comes along for the ride rather than dominating. All in all this is delicious and so, so drinkable, enjoy it on its own or with something lightly sweet like fruit or that panettone – 88/100 points.

If you are labouring under the impression that Moscato d’Asti is an old fashioned wine, or that you won’t like it, just try it with an open mind. These wines deliver pure, uncomplicated pleasure and joy to the drinker, go on, you know you want to try it.

Available in the UK for £7.50 a bottle from The Wine Society.
Stockist details in the US are available here.

Red Bordeaux

Map of Bordeaux – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

Funny thing Christmas. Lots of us are quite happy drinking wines from across the globe throughout the year, but come Christmas we come over all traditional and start thinking thoughts of Claret. I love Claret, red Bordeaux was my second wine love – after Spain – and the wines continue to excite me, or perhaps I should say are exciting me again as I have made a conscious decision to reengage with Bordeaux wines in recent years.

Well over the festive period two rather splendid Clarets came my way, both were from the superb 2009 vintage, so they were probably too young, but that did not stop them from being hugely enjoyable and impressive, so I have made them both Wines of the Week. What’s more I have only ever stayed in 2 Bordeaux Châteaux and it was these two (but with nearly 30 years between each stay) – coincidence?

Wine of the Week 32 – right bank revelry

Saint-Émilion is a delightful town.

In my mind I have always really been more of a left bank, Médoc kind of guy than a lover of right bank wines. Something about the firm tannic structure of the Cabernet Sauvignon dominated Médoc style appeals to me. Or so I used to think, but don’t people always say that we move to the right as we get older? Well I was most agreeably surprised on 2 recent trips to Bordeaux to find myself falling for the fruity charms of the Saint-Émilion style, as well as the place. Saint-Émilion is an utterly gorgeous town to visit, as long as there are not too many tourists and I was with a group that were put up in a charming and very old Château called Cantin. Most of the properties in Bordeaux are nineteenth century confections rather than genuinely fortified residences, so – much as I like the Second Empire architectural style – the seventeenth century Château Cantin was a bit of a delight. Sadly I did not take many photographs of the Château itself, but if you look at the bottle below, see the label? In the picture the Château has a single turret with a window. Well that was my bedroom and I did take some pictures of the view from it.

Château Cantin – the view from the window in the turret that you can see on the label – that was my bedroom.

2009 Château Cantin 
Saint-Émilion Grand Cru
St. Christophe des Bardes, Saint-Émilion, Bordeaux

Although the building is old, Cantin was in the doldrums for a long time and did not really start making any reputation for itself until the Group Les Grands Chais de France took over the management of it and started investing heavily in the vineyard and winery. 2007 was the first vintage of this new regime and the results have been extraordinary. I watched the harvest come in in 2013 and they seem to take the utmost care with everything. It’s all done by hand with 3 selections to make sure only the good grapes get in. The fermentation takes place in a mix of stainless steel and concrete vats and the wine is aged for 12 months in barrel. The blend is something like 80% Merlot with 10% each of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The property was originally built by Benedictine monks as a summer residence for the Canon of Saint-Émilion and the name comes from the Latin word cantio, which means song, perhaps after all the evensong that was sung here?

It strikes me that this is a very modern Claret, the colour is an intense, opaque purply, plum black.
The nose is scented with spice, cinnamon and coffee, with rich plum, blackberry and cooked strawberry notes together with dried cranberry and blueberry too.
The palate is medium to full bodied, dense and velvety with loads of ripe, sweet red to black fruit and supple tannins. It really is wonderfully rich and concentrated while being deliciously drinkable, it’s let down just a tad by the alcoholic heat on the finish – it is 14.5%, but the fruit is so lovely you can forgive it. A terrific wine though with rich savoury development characters just beginning to emerge through the puppy fat of its ripe fruit, more complexity will emerge if you age it for another 4 years or so – 90/100 points.

Available in the UK for £24.99 per bottle from Waitrose & Waitrose Cellar.

Wine of the Week 33 – left bank lusciousness

My other Christmas Claret came from Bordeaux’s left bank and more specifically the famous commune / village of Saint-Julien.

The Haut-Médoc’s gravel soils and the Gironde estuary in the far distance.

2009 Château Lagrange
Troisièmes Grand Cru Classé
Saint-Julien, Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux

I stayed at this beautiful, and more classic Second Empire style Château on my first ever trip to Bordeaux back in 1986. In those days I stayed in the grape pickers dorms, whereas nowadays I get a proper bedroom, so some things are looking up! The winery was extensively modernised from the 1980s onwards – when the Japanese Suntory Group purchased it – and this has resulted in the wines becoming brighter, bolder and better in my opinion – I have been fortunate to taste vintages back to 1970.

The blend is 73% Cabernet Sauvignon with 27% Merlot, fermented in stainless steel tanks and then aged for 20 months in oak barrels, 60% of which are new.

I was very impressed by this wine, the colour was deep, crimson-black and opaque. The nose had lifted sweetly ripe cassis, blackberry, black cherry and blueberry as well as smoke, cedar and espresso notes. There was even a fresh floral quality to it which lightened the load somewhat and gave balance. The palate is concentrated sure, but medium-bodied. The fruit however is very concentrated and would easily satisfy those seeking full on full-bodied wines. Clearly there is plenty of oak – the oaky / espresso quality follows through on to the palate – but there is so much ripe fruit – blackcurrant, blackberry, black cherry – that they balance each other beautifully, neither dominates the other. The tannins too are very ripe and seductive, so they do not seem astringent, but they are there, so the wine will age. There is a little of acidity and minerality too, which also show that it will age if you want to keep it and which freshen up the palate and stop it cloying. Right now though it that richness and softness and sweetly ripe rich fruit that the wine is all about and it delivers almost sensual pleasure and delight. A terrific Bordeaux that is joyous now or will repay cellaring for a good number of years – 92/100 points.

Available in the UK for £39.99 from Lidl.
US stockist information is available here.

Both of these Clarets were a real treat and put a smile on the face of everyone who tasted them, so if you need something a little special, Bordeaux can deliver the goods at prices that are not too outrageous – leave a little space for the Moscato though…

Happy New Year to you all and let’s hope that 2015 is a good one with peace breaking out everywhere and a modicum of sanity returning to the world.

 

 

 

 

Wine of the Week 21 – blast from my past

Saint-Émilion with vineyards in the background.

Long ago when I was just a boy I was a trainee wine shop manager. Not knowing as much about wine as my miss-spent youth had led me to expect – I well remember asking what claret was! – I set out trying all the wines in the shop that I could afford.

It was 1984 and Bordeaux was big. The 1982 vintage was being talked about with reverence and it had a huge positive effect on the Bordeaux trade. My shop was awash with impressive looking clarets in wooden boxes. Not all of them were silly money either, we had the 1982 Sarget de Gruaud-Larose and 1982 Connétable Talbot for sale at £4.99.

Eager to try this famous vintage I splashed out on a swanky looking bottle of Saint-Émilion Grand Cru called Château du Cauze. It was £3.99 and I was very proud of it. It seemed such a lot of money for a bottle of wine,  my father and brother thought I was mad, although I seem to remember they both helped me drink it! Sadly I did not write tasting notes in those days, merely kept labels, so I do not know what it tasted like, but I do remember that I loved it. It was a life changing moment as I felt that I had tasted good claret. The cases it came in were even those posh wooden ones and I still have a wooden 1982 Château du Cauze box that I use for tools all these years later.

Saint=Émilion really is a beautiful town and well worth visiting.

As the song says, I have often stopped and thought about Château du Cauze, but have never actually seen it for sale since. Until the other day, when I thought I should really get down to Lidl and check out their much vaunted new range of wines French wines. The range focuses on Bordeaux in some detail, but also includes wines from the Loire, Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, the Rhône, Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon and the South-West. The idea, it seems, is to wean the wine buying middle classes away from Waitrose and get them coming to Lidl and certainly the range looks interesting and we are promised more to come this month too.

Well, blow me if one of the wines wasn’t Château du Cauze, 2011 this time though, not 1982. ’82 was, of course a great vintage of legendary high quality, whereas 2011 is much more mixed, but I just couldn’t resist buying a bottle just for old times’ sake. What’s more, I liked it so much I made it my Wine of the Week.

Saint-Émilion vineyards.

2011 Château du Cauze
Saint-Émilion Grand Cru
Bordeaux, France
A proper Château graces the label and it actually looks like that in real life too. It is built on the sight of a medieval bastide that was destroyed during the Hundred Years War – Saint Émilion was right on the border between English Aquitaine and France. Just down the road is Castillon, which makes its Côtes de Castillon wines in a similar style to St-Émilion. The capital is fittingly called Castillon-la-Bataille as it was the site of the last battle of the Hundred Years War. That was in 1453, the English were defeated and their commander, John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury was killed.
Château du Cauze belongs to the Laporte family who also own another château in Montagne-Saint Émilion. The wine is a blend of 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon and around half of it gets aged in barrel for 12 months.
The colour is pretty deep, opaque, ruby with touches of purple and garnet.
There’s lots of fruit on the nose, plums, blackberry and blackcurrant together with a whiff of pencil lead and cedar. There is rich elderflower too, caramel and a touch of dried fruit.
The palate is soft, with supple tannins just adding touch of structure, while a little acidity cleans it up and makes it fresher than the colour suggests. Nice weight of fruit and concentration, fresh acidity and layers of flavour make it seem quite complex for the price.

While I wasn’t as bowled over by it as I seem to remember I was by the 1982, I still think it is a good wine – I am a great deal more experienced and knowledgeable than I was then, so am probably assessing it more accurately. Perfectly nice to drink now, I think this could age nicely for 4 years or so too. I am sure it is plusher and more fruity than the 1982 and at 14.5% it’s certainly more alcoholic, but it carries this very well thanks to the freshness and balance – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK from Lidl @ £11.99 per bottle.

I was very pleased to discover that this is still a good wine, what’s more it is sensibly and honestly priced. It seems to me that this wine has a lot more to it than all those £12 bottles which are artificially discounted down to £8 or £6. If you fancy a bottle of claret at a good price then this fits the bill perfectly and is lovely with a slow cooked shoulder of lamb.

Wine of the Week 19 – a superior Bordeaux Supérieur

Vineyards in Entre-Deux-Mers.

I’m not a great one for the cheaper end of Bordeaux, the sort of wine that was described as ‘luncheon claret’ when I joined the wine trade. Red Bordeaux more than any other type of wine really ought to make you stop, think and smile. Claret – any red Bordeaux – can be the most thought provoking, elegant and refined wines in the world, but of course wine like that costs money. Sad to say that cheaper Bordeaux only hints at what is possible, while downright cheap Bordeaux almost never has anything about it to suggest how good the wines from this region can be.

I say almost never, because I think I have tasted an exception. I was tasting an array of value for money claret and this was by some distance the best of the wines at under £10 a bottle – no mean feat when you consider that if you strip the retailer’s merging, excise duty, VAT, packaging costs and transport out, this wine cost something like £1.70!

Behind the scenes at an Entre-Deux-Mers Château.

2011 Château Darzac Cuvée Réserve
A.C. Bordeaux Supérieur
Vignobles Claude Barthe
76% Merlot, 13% Cabernet Franc and 11% Cabernet Sauvignon partially aged in oak barrels for 8 months. The Château has been owned and run by the same family for generations and although they are white wine specialists – Darzac is in the Entre-Deux-Mers appellation for whites and about 8 km south east of Libourne – this is a very good effort indeed. By the way incase you are wondering a Bordeaux Supérier can be produced anywhere within Bordeaux, but is made according to slightly stricter rules that standard Bordeaux. These rules include higher minimal alcohol levels and longer ageing times.
Bright, slightly purple, but basically ruby red.
The nose is slightly spicy and cedary with plums and red fruit.
The palate is clean and smooth with lovely raspberry and blackcurrant fruit, there is real freshness here from the acidity which gives it a feel of elegance, this is helped by the merest touch of coffee and cedary spice. Smoky tannins dominate the finish at the moment, giving more structure, but they are not aggressive at all. It is a fruity wine, but not in a blockbuster style, indeed it is a classic medium-bodied, dry red Bordeaux.

I drank this over 2 days and it was much better by the second day. I approached this with some trepidation, but it is a nice wine and gives some idea of what claret should be like, albeit in an easier drinking more everyday style. Try it with steak-frîtes, cheese or meat dishes – 86/100 points.

Available in the UK for £8.00 a bottle from Asda.

This is exactly the sort of claret that will win Bordeaux friends even at what passes for a cheap price nowadays, do try it sometime.

 

Bordeaux – much more than just wine

In the world of wine we talk about Bordeaux all the time, we all know what we mean by the word. Strangely though I take it for granted and never think about what we do not mean by it. And we do not really mean the city of Bordeaux at all. I have been to Bordeaux quite a few times over the years, but have hardly ever seen the city itself.

The Garonne in Bordeaux

No, by Bordeaux we generally mean the wines of Bordeaux and the vineyard areas around the city where the grapes are grown and these wines are made. So I was delighted to be invited to spend some time in Bordeaux recently getting to know the city a little and some of the delights that it has to offer the visitor.

Bordeaux’s beautiful La Porte Cailhau.

Of course wine looms large in Bordeaux and is hard to avoid, especially – I suppose – as we were guests of Olivier Dauga the larger than life consultant wine maker, style guru and former rugby player. Yes Olivier wanted us to taste his wines and to understand his views on winemaking, but he also wanted us to experience his Bordeaux, his friends as well as the restaurants and bars that he loves.

The ever colourful Olivier Dauga – I started to wonder if he always matched the paintings?

It was to be a wine visit with no vineyards, wineries or bottling lines. In fact the only vines I saw all trip were the ones that decorate Bordeaux Airport. I had met Olivier before, in London, at a tasting of his Ukranian wines and knew that he was a very interesting winemaker and well worth talking to, so I was really looking forward to the trip.

Our little group was put up in the lovely Maison Fredon, an arty boutique hotel in the Rue Porte de la Monnaie. It is housed in a beautiful old house and only has 5 rooms, but each one has a distinct personality and is furnished in a different and quirky style. The hotel is the latest venture of Olivier’s friend Jean-Pierre Xiradakis who has been one of the stars of the local restaurant scene ever since he created La Tupina – just over the road from the hotel – in 1968.

La Tupina from my window.

La Tupina is a lovely relaxed restaurant that specialises in the flavoursome traditional food of Bordeaux and the Sud-Ouest. This includes foie gras prepared in many different ways and a wonderful array of grilled and spit roast meats.

Spit roast chicken being cooked at la Tupina – photo courtesy of La Tupina.

Apparently when Jean-Pierre started here the area was pretty run down and considered to be far from the centre. Now he has made the area quite the place to go to for good food. In fact Jean-Pierre calls Rue Porte de la Monnaie the ‘Rue Gourmande‘ as over the years he has created quite a few interesting bars and restaurants here that includes the informal wine bar / bistrot Cave Bar de la Monnaie and Kuzina the Greek influenced fish restaurant – after all Jean-Pierre’s surname is Xiradakis! As if that wasn’t enough the Café Tupina is a lovely neighbourhood bar while the delightful Au Comestible is a casual restaurant and fine grocery store – Jean-Pierre is right, this street really is foodie heaven.

Rue Porte de la Monnaie.

Jean-Pierre showing us how to cook asparagus.

La Tupina.

The next morning we were up and ready to explore the city with a stroll around the old ramparts and the lively Marché des Capucins, the historic food market of Bordeaux. The place is a delight to stroll around with fabulous fish stalls, butchers, charcuterie stalls, bakers, cheese stalls, greengrocers, basque food specialists  – and, as is normal in civilised countries, the odd bar to provide liquid refreshment.

Marché des Capucins.

Bordeaux is a terrific city to wander around, the centre is small and so none of the distances seem daunting and there is always something to catch the eye and bring the lovely narrow streets to life, whether its interesting shops, churches, peaceful squares or lively cafés.

Place Saint-Pierre.

Repairing Bordeaux’s cobble stones.

Our wanderings were not just random by the way, we were touring the city centre and stopped off here and there for a tasting of some of Olivier’s wines. Our first such pit-stop was at one of the city’s many fabulous wine shops, La C.U.V. or Cave Utile en Ville or Urban Wine Shop is a great place to while away a little time looking at the array of bottles from all corners of France and beyond. The original branch is situated in 7 Place Maucaillou, very near the market, the little place has that village-like feel of a place where people actually live and work. So successful have these self confessed inquisitive terroirs lovers been that they have opened a second shop in Place Nansouty, which just goes to show – that contrary to what people think – the French consumer is open to trying and buying wines from places other than their own region and country. In fact one of the things that particularly delighted me about Bordeaux was the vibrant wine shop and wine bar scene with the differences between the two often being blurred.

The First Wine Tasting
Here we had our first formal tasting of some of the wines that Olivier makes in his role as consultant winemaker. I had spoken to him a little before this and I was very impressed by what he sought to do. It is his intention to respect the wishes of the owner in terms of style and to faithfully reflect the terroir of the estate. He does not seek to impose his own winemaking style on the wines at all and there was a great deal of difference across the wines that he is responsible for. Often you can tell if the same winemaker has made a range of wines, but in these it was nigh on impossible to detect a common style. There was a common thread though, which was fruit and delicacy – none of these were blockbusters, but none were dusty either – which is pretty much exactly the style of wine that Olivier told me he approves of. Simply put he seems to believe that wine should be approachable and enjoyable – and I certainly think those are laudable aims.

This first tasting was all red wines and, with one exception, they were all from Bordeaux. If you are looking for good quality and value red Bordeaux then you could do a lot worse than try any of these:

2010 Château Les Gravières de la Brandille, Bordeaux Supérieur
65% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Cabernet Franc. I really liked this unoaked, juicy claret and think it would make many friends who want a good medium bodied dry red that has ample fruit and supple tannins. 86/100 points.
2010 of course was a great Bordeaux year of course, but so was 2009 and you can buy the 2009 in the UK from Stone, Vine & Sun @ £9.75. 

2010 Château Roques Mauriac Cuvée Classique, Bordeaux Supérieur
40% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. Another unoaked clare that I enjoyed, it has a freshness and fleshy quality to the fruit that makes it very drinkable and pleasurable, especially as the tannins are very soft. 86/100 points.
I am told that it is available in the UK from Virgin Wines @ £9.49.

2011 Château de Rivereau, Côtes de Bourg
70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon – although Olivier did say there was a drop of cabernet franc here too. This has a little time in oak and it showed with some coffee tinges and fruit cake spice just adding a little complexity to the supple fruit and attractive, clean chalky tannins. 86/100 points.

2011 Château de La Jaubertie, Bergerac
This estate is of course not in Bordeaux, but nearby Bergerac, but this area makes wines in a similar style and offers superb value for money. Jaubertie is famously owned by the Ryman family of stationery fame. 60% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Cabernet Franc, 10% Malbec with 20% fermented in barrel and the whole wine was aged on the lees for 6 months with 10% aged in new American oak for 6 months. I thought this was a nice wine, direct honest and juicy with a slight oak spice tinge and a delicate herbal green edge to the black fruit. Nicely balanced, very drinkable and utterly classic, but well made – 86/100 points.

2011 Château La Pirouette, Cru Bourgeois Médoc
50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot, 25% aged 12 months in new oak barrels. The extra class and complexity showed here. There was a precision to the wine and a structure to it that made it very clean and taut, but still had good fruit and lovely balance. 88/100 points.

Amélie Durand with her Cuvée Amélie red wine in La C.U.V.

2010 Château Doms Cuvée Amélie, Graves
80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot, 25% aged in oak barrels, one third new. This is the top cuvée from the estate and is named in honour of the owner’s mother, while the estate is run and the wine is made – with Olivier’s help – by the owner’s daughter, Amélie. She was there to present her wines to us and what’s more she drove me to the airport the next day when I had been left behind!
I like Amélie’s wines, very much indeed. They have an elegance and a finesse that pleased me, as well as good concentration and balance. The fruit was fleshy and plump while the oak spice was nicely integrated giving mocha notes and complexity. There was a nice cut of acidity too and the tannins were ripe and not astringent – 90/100 points.

The Second Wine Tasting
Having done the reds we set off once more for a stroll through Bordeaux’s attractive cobbled streets to sample some of Olivier’s white wines along with some excellent local seafood at Le Rince Doigt, a casual little place that calls itself a guinguette , guinguette à fruits de mer in fact and it aims to be a seaside seafood bar in the middle of the city. To give that relaxed holiday feel  the whole place was dressed up as though we actually were on the beach, with sandy floors and deck chairs and the simple menu was wonderful with oysters, moules frites, moules farcies, spicy cod fritters and much more.

The indoor beach at Le Rince Doigt and yes that is John Salvi eyeing the table football!

So we settled on to our indoor beach and the white wines started flowing – sometimes my work is just too hard. I really like white Bordeaux wines, I think they are very underrated – like white Rioja – and can be some of the best – and best value – dry white wines around. These were my favourites here:

2012 Château Les Combes, Bordeaux Blanc – although the estate is in Lussac-St. Émilion
90% Sauvignon Blanc and 10% Sémillon – no oak, but 3 months on the lees.
A lovely beautifully balanced and aromatic dry white bursting with elderflower aromas, green fruit, lemon, lime and salad herbs, the lees ageing has introduced a nice layer of complexity too. A very good dry white, much more interesting than budget Sancerre – 86/100 points.
Available in the UK from Stone, Vine & Sun @ £9.75. 

2012 Château Marzin, Bordeaux Blanc
Sauvignon Gris and Sauvignon Blanc.
I liked this bright dry white with its crisp green fruit aromas and slightly fatter smoky palate that reduces the impact of the acidity – 85/100 points.

2012 Château Piote, Bordeaux Blanc – although the estate is in Lussac-St. Émilion
70% Sémillon and 30% Colombard.
Virginie Aubrion makes some lovely organic wines and this relatively unusual white blend is very attractive with real herbal characters, even some lavender, and a nice touch of weight on the palate – 85/100 points.

2012 Château Doms, Graves
60% Sémillon and 40% Sauvignon Blanc.
Amélie’s white wine was my absolute favourite here and really is fine. It is unoaked, but still has lovely weight and creamy texture backed up by fresh, crisp acidity, this really punches above its weight. Right now it is fresh and lean with crisp mineral acidity with the texture just adding some plushness and creaminess. It will age well becoming richer and creamier – 90/100 points.

The Cheese Course
Rather than have dessert we took some of our favourite bottles with us and strolled down to the Fromagerie Deruelle which is an amazing cheese shop in Bordeaux’s Rue du Pas-Saint-Georges. I always love cheese shops, they are truly fascinating places to spend some time – the only problem is they always cause me spend far too much money. Deruelle is one of the very, very best cheese shops that I have ever visited with all the cheeses perfectly stored, all clearly labelled and beautifully presented.

Part of the display at Fromagerie Deruelle.

More of the display at Fromagerie Deruelle.

Here were treated to a taste of 3 different cheeses to try with a white wine, a rosé and a red wine. The cheeses were:
Palet Frais – a fresh goat cheese from Lot et Garonne.
L’Estive – a (semi) hard sheep cheese from the Basque country.
Fourme de Montbrison – is a hard cow’s-milk cheese made in the Rhône-Alpes and Auvergne.

In my opinion the 2012 Château Les Combes white was the best with the cheeses as it went perfectly with the first and second cheese, the Fourme seemed to overpower everything really, so needed a really big red wine with lots of fruit.

Our cheese tasting.

The End of the Line
So we were now approaching the end of this wine trip with no winery visits and we finished in one of this lovely city’s trendy wine bars – La Ligne Rouge. Right by the beautiful La Porte Cailhau, La Ligne Rouge is a great place where you can browse the shelves from around the world and buy a bottle to take home or drink there with some cheese or charcuterie. They specialise in artisanal wines, often organic or biodynamic and have a terrific range from across France, especially Roussillon and the Languedoc – Bordeaux wines would seem to be in a minority in their range. Surprisingly they list more wines that come from places other than France and have a great selection from Spain, Austria, Chile, Argentina and much more, so next time you are in Bordeaux drop into this lovely shop…bar…shop – whatever, it’s a great place.

Olivier at La Ligne Rouge.

This was a wine trip with a real difference and I enjoyed it very much. It was very interesting seeing a totally different side to Bordeaux and experiencing for myself what a terrific place it is to stay, to walk around, to eat in and to drink in.

You could do a lot worse than visit Bordeaux for your next break.

2012 – a look back at the best bits

Me with my favourite vintage of Tsantalis Rapsani, Greece – Photo by kind permission – ©Brett Jones http://www.thewinemaestro.co.uk

2012 was an amazing year for Quentin Sadler’s Wine Page. I tasted some wonderful wines, visited some amazing places, was shortlisted for an award and my readership doubled – all trends that I hope continue in 2013.

Me & fellow traveller Patrick Maclart hard at work on Mount Athos, Greece – Photo by kind permission – ©Brett Jones http://www.thewinemaestro.co.uk

To celebrate all this I thought that I would start the new year with a backward glance at some of my highlights of 2012 – so you can click on the links to read the pieces if you missed them first time around, or just enjoy them all over again.

Those of you who know me well know how much I relish new wine experiences and 2012 got off to a cracking start for me with a tasting of wines from the Ukraine. It was a fascinating glimpse at a fledgling wine industry just setting out on the path to producing quality wines and there was much promise there.

Champagne

Richard Goffrey at the Dom Pérignon launch

Champagne
One of the most sophisticated and stylish experiences of 2012 for me was the launch of the 2003 Dom Pérignon. In many ways the whole piece of theatre of the launch was bonkers, but the wine was sublime and there is no doubt that my sparkling wine of the year was the 2003 Dom Pérignon, it was possibly my wine of the year too – I just wish I could afford it.

2003 Dom Pérignon
The aromas were astonishingly lifted and perfumed with fresh floral notes, lemon zest and lemon peel as well as richer tones of lemon curd and the flaky pastry that shows yeast autolysis as well as pine nuts hinting at a creamy ripeness to come. Running through the whole bouquet were strands of minerality, iodine, saline and wet stones that promise well for the acidity on the palate.

The palate was a revelation, this was not simply fresh and lively, indeed it was subtly the opposite, being textured and intense. The mouthfeel was silky with the merest hint of creamy ripeness, while the acidity was in a supporting role and never dominated. Rather wonderfully there was a twist of deep green olive bitterness to the wine’s finish, even a touch of tannin which accentuated the mouthfeel – those phenolics perhaps? This makes it a real wine to appreciate and enjoy rather than a straight-forward Champagne to frivolously guzzle. It offers soft richness and poised balancing acidity. It has ripe fruit in abundance, but nothing that overpowers or dominates as a single flavour and it has taut minerality – in short it has tension. The competing sensations vie with each other for your attention, which makes it fascinating to drink.

The finish was of epic proportions, I was still tasting it more than 2 minutes after I had drunk it. I would without doubt give it a gold medal in any wine competition I was judging, so cannot help but award it a very high mark – 94/100 points.

English Wine

Vines at Plumpton, Sussex

Even less likely inhabitants of the Sussex countryside!

One of the things I really enjoy about writing my wine page is the scope it gives to stray far and wide. Well in 2012 I used a few chances to taste some wines made nearby, but that in many ways seem off the beaten track – English wine. I have enjoyed English wine on and off for 20 years or more, but I have never been more thrilled by the quality or more confident in the future than I am now. You can read the beginnings of my optimism about English wine here.

Pruning at Stopham – photo by kind permission

This delight in English wine continued with a pair of exciting wines from the Stopham Estate, in Sussex, that seem to be a possible pointer to the future. Their 2010 Stopham Pinot Blanc and 2010 Stopham Pinot Gris struck me as being excellent quality and sensibly priced, so were able to hold their own against wine from anywhere – and indeed they did sell out pretty quick as production is small.

My English experiences contiuned later in the year when I was able to taste this amazing wine:

2006 Eglantine Vineyard North Star

which is a stunning dessert wine made in Leicestershire of all places.

And while Welsh wine is clearly not from England I thought this the right place to mention that I tried some excellent Welsh wines in 2012, read about them here.

Hungarian Wine
My ongoing quest for different styles of wine and unusual grape varieties caused me to try a couple of fascinating wines from the tiny region of Somlo in Hungary and I would highly recommend them as something a little different, but very high in quality.

My Italian Trip

The charming Eva & Leonardo Beconcini

Pinzimonio – one of Eva’s many lovely cats

My first trip of 2012 was a personal pilgrimage to Tuscany to visit an estate that not only makes Chianti, but grows some Tempranillo as well. What’s more it isn’t just a marketing ploy, they have always grown it here. I got excited by this and wanted to see the place for myself and try the wines. In the end I had a fabulous time walking the vineyard and tasting the terrific wines that Leonardo Beconcini makes at Pietro Beconcini Agricola. This was followed by the most glorious lunch made by his charming wife Eva before finally being introduced to their many cats.

Cinque Terre

Manarola one of the Cinque Terre

Cesare Scorza’s shop in Manarola

I was loathe to leave Italy, so took the chance to visit a nearby area that was completely new to me. The Cinque Terre is a short train ride away from Pisa and is an amazing place to visit. I highly recommend it for its wildly beautiful landscape with an air of mystery as well as the incredibly attractive towns that give the region its name, of course it also produces some lovely wines and I was fortunate enough to meet two passionate local wine makers.

My Vinho Verde Trip

Me dressed for the weather in Vinho Verde

In all my years in the wine trade I had never visited Vinho Verde, buts as the sheer quality of the wines had impressed themselves on me of late, I was determined to put that right and in May I was able to do just that. I learnt a lot, not least why that region of Portugal is so green. Boy does it rain there, I was quite relieved that my hotel room was on the twelfth floor as I expected all the lower ones to flood at any moment. However, in the brief moments when it wasn’t raining the scenery was lovely and I visited some terrific winemakers and tasted much more variety in the different Vinho Verdes than most people expect – the place makes all colours and styles.

My Spanish Trip

The Riojan landscape

No sooner had I returned from Portugal than I returned to Iberia with some colleagues for a trip to northern Spain that took in Rioja, Navarra and Ribera del Duero. We were guests of Bodegas Faustino and it was a delightful experience and one of the many highlights was the tapas bar crawl of Logroño, it was a memory to cherish and I enjoy reading about it every now and again.

Stylish pintxos – Basque Tapas – in Bilbao

My Greek Trip

Looking from the Rapsani vineyards east towards the sea

The border between Mount Athos & Greece

In a fabulous year for trips one stood out from all the others. In June I visited the vineyards of northern Greece with some fellow bloggers as the guest of Tsantalis and it was an incredible experience. We visited quite a few regions and beautiful places and had experiences that will stick in my memory for ever. The wines were fabulous, as was the food and the hospitality of the people. The one downside was that it was an all male trip as we went to the closed monastic settlement of Mount Athos and you can read about that here..

New Experiences

George Sandeman – complete with halo

In June I was invited to an amazing dinner that paired Sandeman Tawny Ports with Japanese food. I only went because the idea seemed completely mad and it was hosted by George Sandeman, but it was a delightful experience and really opened my eyes as to what is possible and enjoyable with food and wine pairing. I hope to repeat it with American barbecue food as it seems to me that could be a brilliant match with Tawny Port.

Southern Italian Delights
I have never been to Sicily, but hope to put that right soon, as I have become utterly captivated by the exciting wines of southern Italy, including Sicily. So far I have more experience of the whites and they are so good they deserve to be more widely appreciated. I wrote about some fantastic white wines here.

http://www.domainejones.com

Shades of Grey
In November I was moved to write about some more unusual grape varieties that have ‘gris’ in their name. It seems that most people know Pinot Gris or Pinot Grigio, but I have become very excited by Sauvignon Gris and Grenache Gris and decided it was time to speak out about some of the lovely wines made from these grapes – you can read the piece here.

Chile Branches Out

The wild side of Chile at Luis Felipe Edwards 2003

This year I was delighted to be able to taste some really excellent Chilean wines made from blends and slightly more unusual grapes, so Chile remains a wine producing country to watch – read about some of the wines here.

Classic French Regions

My Loire Valley Trip

Angers from the Castle ramparts

The Loire valley personified

It was quite a year for trips and one of my unexpected highlights was a visit to the Loire Valley. I visited the area around Angers with a group of fellow bloggers and we tasted some fabulous wines and enjoyed some superb meals, but for me the centrepiece was a visit to Savennières whose wines had never really impressed me in the past, so I wanted top see what I was missing.

Burgundy

The delights of Beaune

Aloxe-Corton

In my rush to experience the new, I didn’t leave the classics behind though and in October I presented a sumptuous tasting of red Burgundies from the house of Louis Jadot. It was aterrific experience and a wonderful insight into how these great wines develop. Read about it here. I also enjoyed a wonderful visit to Burgundy as a guest of the Discover the Origin campaign and I shall be writing about that soon, however I did taste my white wine of the year on this trip:

2010 Bourgogne Blanc Cuvée Oligocène
A.c. Bourgogne Blanc
Patrick Javiller
Do not be misled by the humble appellation, this is a great wine. The vineyard –  les Pellans – is only not Meursault by a technicality, in fact half of it is within the appellation as this piece of land is in the village of Meursault, but not all of it has the A.C., which is why this wine comes in at a fair price. This really shows what white burgundy is about. It illustrates terroir and offers plenty of richness as well as elegance and tension. What’s more it is absolutely delicious and great with almost and elegant fish dish or white meat. 91/100 points – it gains points though for being stunning value for money.

Available in the UK from James Nicholson and Goedhuis & Co at around £20 a bottle.

Bordeaux

As French as tarte aux pommes

As if that wasn’t enough, I was then invited to Bordeaux as the guest of Yvon Mau and was able to visit a great swathe of impressive Châteaux and try some superb wines that made me finally realise that there is some wonderful wine from Bordeaux available at non stratospheric prices. I will write more about some of these soon, but this piece gives you some of the flavour and tells you about a stunning wine from Montagne-St Émilion that has my vote as my red wine of the year, if for no other reason than it so exceeded my expectations of what a wine from this appellation can offer:

2009 Chateau Guadet Plaisance
Montagne Saint-Emilion
The colour was an intense opaque purpley black that managed to be vivid and bright as well as dark.
The nose was dominated by cedar, spice & singed meat aromas, together with brooding deep plum and fresher redcurrant and a touch of a ripe sweet, almost creamy note.
The palate was luscious, round and concentrated with a smoky sweet ripe fruit quality together with sweet ripe tannins and firm oak structure, all balanced by a taut freshness. All this gives a gloriously succulent texture and a spicy bite to the palate. Even the oak tasted nice, like mocha mixed with toasted coconut. There is an attractive and elegant opulence to it and I suspect it will age superbly, but it really is delicious now too. I consider it deserving of a gold medal if I was judging it in a competition, so award it 91/100 points – it gains points for being great value and seductive.

All in all 2012 was a great year for Quentin Sadler’s Wine Pages. I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts and that you found it useful and some of you tried the wines that I wrote about. Please keep coming back in 2013 and do leave comments – it is always nice to hear from you.

 

Bordeaux Wine Guide – a user friendly reference book

Like many people who enjoy wine I’m a real hedonist. I like the good and sensual stuff of all types. Wine of course figures very high on the list – it’s how I make my living after all. Food is pretty important too though – in fact I hardly ever eat anything else. Like wine the love of food incorporates so much about culture, travel and history that enjoying different food helps make sense of the world and makes other people interesting rather than alarming – I often wonder what people who don’t like food actually do when they travel – answers on a postcard please.

If I can’t actually have some wine and food or travel somewhere interesting, then the next best thing is to read about it, so I love books. As a consequence I own a lot of books about exotic places, books about food and books about wine. I need a lot of wine books too as I constantly have to look things up and check facts and I don’t like to just rely on Wikipedia!

With Christmas coming I thought it might be nice to tell you about some books that I am enjoying and that all you other hedonists out there might find useful, either for your own pleasure or as gifts for others.

By the way if you were planning on giving me anything, please remember that I already have these!

Three books have caught my fancy of late and I will tell you all about them, but am starting with the one that is purely about wine:

Chris Kissack, aka the Wine Doctor, relaxing with something other than Bordeaux

Pocket Guide to the Wines of Bordeaux
by Chris Kissack
Published by MagBooks at £6.99
Also available from Amazon and on Kindle

I know Chris and like him too, he writes an amazingly fine and encyclopaedic wine website called The Wine Doctor, which I find a very useful resource. Well this is the more portable spin-off – no battery life, wifi or 3G signal required either, just a pocket. Actually my only quibble is with the size of this book, exactly how big are your pockets Chris? At 21 cm X 14.8 cm it doesn’t fit any of mine, but hey I’ll stick it in a bag – or perhaps a Christmas stocking.

Chris does write about other wine regions, but his great speciality is Bordeaux and as it is the largest fine wine region earth and the home of fine wine I can understand why. Just like his website, this book is a labour of love and it shows. Chris is steeped in the wines of Bordeaux (quite literally sometimes) he loves them with a passion so strong you cannot help but be swept along, what’s more he has an incredible eye for detail, so this book is full to bursting with useful information and the odd unexpected nugget. For instance I was unaware that the great Château Haut-Brion have 2 hectares of non-permitted grapes including Pinot Noir and Sangiovese.

In the main I would regard this as a book to refer to rather than sit down and read and I can imagine that it could become an indispensable work of reference for anyone who wants to get serious about the region. The contents are attractive and well laid out with clearly marked sections that have in depth, yet easily digested, chunks on all the topics you need for a working knowledge of the region or for buying Bordeaux wines – whether for drinking pleasure or investment.

Amongst the many good things in here is a detailed look at the vintages from 2003 to 2011 and brief notes on the rest back to 1990. There are profiles and histories of the Premier Cru Classé Châteaux, Chris’s personal selection of the top Bordeaux Châteaux for reds and the great sweet wines of Sauternes as well as his top tips for good value.

As if all that isn’t enough there are sections on how they grow the grapes and make the wines as well as chapters that give you sneaky little insights into all the appellations of the region and the various classifications, from the 1855 (official) to the 2011 (unofficial) along with Graves, St Émilion, Sauternes and Cru Bourgeois.

I had better stop heaping praise on Chris before his head totally explodes, but this is an excellent reference book and I intend to keep my copy handy. It contains pretty much anything you need to make your Bordeaux buying and drinking a less haphazard experience and is a perfect gift for those just starting to get into wine – especially Bordeaux.

I will tell you all about another couple of books very soon, so keep coming back.

Mountains, Saints and Satellites – stunning quality in Montagne-St Émilion

It is so easy to fall into a rut with wine. There is so much wine available from so many different places nowadays that you have to make a cut off somewhere and for many years for me that cut off was the classic wines of France. Only the cheaper versions though, I have always retained my love of France’s great wines.

My focus is always to find really lovely wine that over performs for its price and for many years the famous bits of France usually failed to do that at the cheaper end. Many of the classic regions of France have enormous fame, but the quality of the affordable examples seldom showed what the top end ones were like – and most of us have to drink the cheaper versions. The result of this was that consumers were often buying the lesser examples of Sancerre, Chablis, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, St Émilion and the like and yet they were never truly cheap, so still seen as bit of a treat. Sadly many of these wines were a pale shadow of the wines that have made the name on their label so prestigious and sought after and so for long gave the impression that France offered bad value for money. For quite a long time the affordable versions of classic French wines were dilute, unattractive and uninspiring as well as being more expensive than many good wines from elsewhere.

By the way it isn’t snobbery that made me avoid them, those who know me will know that price tags do not impress me at all. No, it was the lack of character and concentration that made me avoid these wines. Who wants a Chablis that could pass for a Muscadet in a blind tasting, or a Châteauneuf that offers less character than a Fitou or Minervois?

This lack of quality at the lower end was, in my opinion at least partly responsible for the sizeable minority of UK consumers who nowadays claim to avoid and dislike all French wine.

The Story of St Estèphe

One of the complaints I have of most wine books is that they are mainly for reference rather than reading. Of course I have a large library of wine books for when I need to look things up, but sometimes I think how nice it would be to just sit down and read a book about wine that rattles along at the pace of a novel.

David Copp in full wine writer regalia on our trip to New York’s Finger Lakes

There are not many such books, but my friend David Copp has recently added a splendid example to my meagre collection. David is no mean writer and he has three other excellent volumes to his name, Hungary: Its Fine wines and Winemakers, Tokaj: A Companion for the Bibulous Traveller and Australian Wine Walkabout: Notes From Visits To Australian Fine Wine Makers  they are all available on Amazon and I recommend them to you.

Cru Bourgeois – great quality & value from Bordeaux

Cru Bourgeois Clarets – polished and renewed for 2009

Of all the world’s great wine regions it is Bordeaux that is dearest to my heart, for the simple reason that the first really good quality wines that I tasted were from there. Many of you are aware that I love Spanish wines and almost anything left of field, but wherever else I roam I am always drawn back to the red wines of Bordeaux. Sadly I have not been to Bordeaux often enough or, as prices have risen, drunk nearly enough of the stuff and I would very much like to put that right.

Well, recently I was in exactly the right place to start that process. Last year I reported in detail on the new Cru Bourgois classification for the Médoc district of Bordeaux. I attended the first unveiling of the new classification last year and the explanation of the new selection process as well as the principals behind it. If you need to catch up on the background my article from last year explains all – read it here.

That first vintage of the newly revamped Cru Bourgeois was the 2008, the new one is the much more exciting 2009. The tasting panels have now done their work and the results are in and 246 wines have achieved the coveted Cru Bourgeois status for the 2009 vintage – three more than last year’s tally. Having seen the unveiling of the new classification last year I was anxious to see how things were progressing. I had a favourable view of the wines last year, but was slightly concerned that as Cru Bourgeois is a guarantee of a minimum quality that it might lend itself to a sort of general sweeping up of otherwise unclassified wine. So I was pleased to  be able to taste a good representative range of these wines.