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2003 – the season

Everyone knows that 2003 was an exceptionally hot year in Europe.  Janet and I spent a small part of that summer working in the large garden of friends and found ourselves having to adopt habits more typical of Mediterranean countries – get up early and work outside until late morning, have a long lunch break, and resume the campaign in the early evening.  In the wine world, after the great success of the much more typical 2002 vintage in Champagne and elsewhere in France, the question was could great wine be made in the hot year of 2003?  Nine years on at the launch of the 2003 Dom Pérignon, chef de cave Richard Geoffrey, was, unsurprisingly, upbeat: yes, we did make the 2003, and we always thought we would – it is like 1947, 1959 and 1976 … Unfortunately he did not bring along a bottle of any of these vintages to prove his point!

But it was not just the heat that made 2003 a very demanding year.  The season started with severe spring frosts which led to a loss of viable fruit buds so that in parts of the Côte des Blancs eventual yields were down by up to 75% at 20 hectolitres per hectare.  As a result of this and the summer heat, there was a very small, fast ripening crop.  In line with their usual practice the ripeness of the fruit was carefully monitored in the final weeks of the year. As the thermometer reading soared above 40°, the vines shut down, so no further sugars were made, but the phenolic ripening of the skins and seeds continued.   As the the wine maker told his story he got limited sympathy for having to interrupt his holiday in San Tropez in order to return to the Champagne area for a harvest which started on 25 August, at the time only the second ever August harvest since 1822.  There were many technical challenges for wineries more used to dealing with the harvest of a cool and damp climate – the temperature of the grapes, the choice of when to pick, issues to do with skin contact and then clarification – but they were by no means insurmountable.  It was fine if you were open-minded enough, says Geoffrey with a knowing smile.  The challenge in wine making was to turn strength into intensity.

2003 – the wine

The 2003 wine is remarkable if unusual.  It starts with a fine floral note but this quickly gives way to a range of components – ripe if muted exotic fruit, honey, currently noticeable oak, some herbiness, an intriguing bitterness and a notable minerality.  The palate is currently moderately intense and the acidity, not surprisingly given the heat of the summer, very low by Champagne standards.  If the mark of outstanding wine is its complexity, then this stands out – even if it is right up one end of the spectrum for cool climate wine.  Richard Geoffrey is adamant that there is no basis for the commonplace that wine needs elevated acidity to age well. It is the flavour intensity that matters.  He is sure that the 2003 will age for decades … ending the debate by his assertion that Dom Pérignon 1976 is a now a monument! 

2003 – the colours

So much for the season and the wine, how do Dom Pérignon wish to present the wine?  After the introduction and simple tasting we were treated to an interactive, almost theatrical experience.  In darkened rooms – DP believes in the eternal chicness of black – we are assigned a sommelier and a tasting bar, and led (very willingly) through the colours of white, gold, hibiscus red and blue-black … four colours, four micro dishes with exquisite tasting combinations.  Let’s do the photo blog first:

You can’t accuse of Dom Pérignon or their chefs of not trying!  This was a spectacular line-up of colour, the non-colour of black and flavours.  If the idea was to broaden our concept of ‘what goes’ with vintage Champagne, it certainly worked.  For me the most remarkable combination with the wine was the very first – a cream and egg yolk ‘egg’ with cinnamon, a coarse black salt and just a touch of the luxuriant sweetness of maple syrup.  In a ‘like with like’ match, the indulgently rich texture of the dish brought out the richness of the wine, cream meets cream, while in a cross current, the cinnamon brought out the fruit and the whole was livened up with the hit of salt.  This was more than a taste, it was a unfolding series of rich textures punctuated by hits of cinnamon, salt and sweetness.  Remarkable.

The two middle dishes, were very good, but tasting-wine combination were not on the same level.  In the gold dish, the La Mancha saffron was certainly warm and powerful and the Livorno  risotto rice, called Acquarello, holds its marked firmness while being cooked.  The dish was finished off with the intense bite of four year old Parmesan. Despite being a classic combination, I felt the dish stood side by side with the wine.  Similarly with the red number: all the fireworks were from the low salt farmed caviar from Aquitaine on its bed of hibiscus reduction, rather than its interplay with the wine.   However, the textural pyrotechnics returned with the final ‘black’ dish, foie gras and a 40-ingredient mole sauce, including the key contributions of chocolate and mild chilli.  Whatever the colour, richness is the key to 2003 Dom Pérignon. 

The Bring a Bottle Club was in a rather different format for its late January tasting, or rather a refinement of its format.  We already have ‘BBC1’ which is ‘bring an interesting/good bottle of any sort’, while ‘BBC2’ has a theme, on this occasion, white Burgundy. The refinement was that one of our number offered to liaise with members before hand so that we didn’t end up bringing the same wine – a particular problem given that just about everyone in the group has a strong connection with Caviste in Overton. It was just as well that there was this level of organisation as the wines posed the usual challenge in terms of identification.  The region and the colour had been fixed and there is a very strong likelihood that we were going to be tasting Chardonnay in its various guises.  We started with a pair of wines.

	This first wine opened with a powerfully oaky nose, some good lime and peach fruit, sophisticated oak again on the palate, altogether a very polished performer. Nobody spotted that it wasn’t Chardonnay, not even the person who brought it. This a very fine wine made from the Aligoté grape variety, normally the source of thin, acidic wines best made into aperitifs.  Arnaud Ente, Bourgogne Aligoté, 2009.  I had thought about bringing Sauvignon de Saint-Bris to complete the set of possible grape varieties.
By contrast wine number two was unoaked and full of green apples and lemon, showing vibrant fruit but with a taut, mineral, even seashell, undertone – which sent us all off in the Chablis direction, wrongly.  In fact this was Simon Bize’s ‘Les Perrières’, a lieu-dit (named vineyard but not a cru) in Savigny: a fine wine trading simply as Bourgogne 2008, with the racy acidity of that cool year.  2-0 to white Burgundy.
	There was a strong connection between wines three and four, with wine number three showing particularly well.  Pale lemon in colour and medium intensity on the nose (as most of these were) this had fine, subtle fruit, balance and was very attractive.  Eventually its importer recognised Sur le Mont. Domaine Cheveau, Mâcon Solutré, 2010.
Something had gone wrong here: a heavily oaked wine with caramel and nut notes, a bit dried out if with continuing acidity: Aux Bouthières, Pouilly-Fuissé, Domaine Michel Cheveau, 2006. Same family of producers as the previous wine, but an earlier generation.   The only spoiled wine of the evening.
	The next mini-flight was three wines with a connection of some sort.  By this point in the evening, I had the advantage of knowing  that the two wines which Janet and I had bought had not yet appeared.  Wine number one was delicate, with pleasantly spicy oak and a fruity palate that was more intense than the nose.  Number two had good lemon notes, good sharp grape fruit (that’s fruit of the grape rather than grapefruit), and eccellent acidity, classy.
Wine number three was all toffee apples and oxidisation; someone else suggested marshmallow – something of a marmite wine.  And the connection – all three were from the most northerly part of Burgundy.  The complication was that they weren’t all Chablis – after a few moments it came to me. Wines one and two were the wines we had brought: Cuvée
	Louis Bersan, Dom. Bersan, Bourgogne Côtes d’Auxerre 2008 – next door to Chablis and great value and Chablis 2008 from Vignoble Dampt, ‘Vielles Vignes’. Number three was Patrick Piuze, Chablis Premier Cru Les Fourneaux, also 2008. Time for some food: a superb chicken dish from the Red Lion, Overton.
Having done Chablis, Mâcon and some outstations, the final line up of four wines had to be from the Côtes de Beaune, from the great white wine communes – and indeed they were. Sorting them out and distinguishing between village level and premier crus was much more challenging.  I got the quality levels right but had no idea about the communes.
All from the same cool 2007 vintage, the Meursault was was fresh and taut while the village Chassagne-Montrachet was powerful, exotic and fatter.  The Chassagne PC by contrast was showing a real complexity on the palate with some more vegetal notes and the Puligny-Montrachet an excellent combination of lime fruit, subtle use of oak and some still vibrant youth.	From the left: Meursault, Maison Sylvain Loichet 2007 Chassagne-Montrachet, Bernard Moreau 2007 Marquis de Laguiche, Chassagne PC, Joseph Drouhin, 2007 Les Referts, Puligny-Montrachet PC, Bachelet- Monnot, 2007

It is easy to knock white Burgundy – you can find more vibrant young wines in Australia and bigger, more powerful Chardonnays in South Africa or California.  But for subtle differences in a range of food friendly styles, you can’t really beat where it all began. 

Burgundy en primeur week in London gives a chance to taste the 16 month-old wines which have been bottled specially for this purpose – see the previous post; this post focuses on the wines.  As Burgundy is a relatively northern location for wine growing, there is  big vintage variation due to the weather conditions in individual years.  2009 and 2010 are perfect examples.  2009 was warm and even for the grower – which meant good quality grapes and lots of them.  2010 was quite different.  The year opened with a cool and wet spring which meant that the flowering and later fruit set were poor, leading to lower yields.  Summer was no great shakes either.  The season was saved (which happens quite often) by three great  weeks in September, including some summer like days.  The overall result was that good wines could be made by good growers/ winemakers but yields were down, between 10% and 50% down depending on which grower you talked to.  Domaine Marquis d’Angerville reported that while they would crop at 40 hectolitres per hectare in a good year, in 2010 they only made 20 hl/ha.  That is an extreme example but it shows the problem – both for the grower and, inevitably, for the consumer in terms of higher prices. 

In a cool year you would expect the white wines to shine – and indeed they do. This piece will pick out some wines from two very impressive tastings at Lea & Sandeman (LS) and Corney and Barrow (CB) – we only like the very best on this website.  (Actually, on a serious note, it is a shame that the Burgundy growers association did not put on their  usual mammoth tasting as that gives you a great snapshot of the general state of the vintage.  The BIVB is promising ‘something better’ than the usual tasting next year.)  For some wines below, I have put in in-bond prices to give an idea of rough pricing levels. 

Domaine Moreau-Naudet (LS)

I love this great value Chablis and it is not just the striking label – I can’t decide whether the drawing is of a hand rising out of the vineyard with a nugget of gold or a piece of the precious earth.  In the end it comes to much the same. 

Of the seven wines tasted I would pick out:

Chablis – there is also a Petit Chablis but otherwise this is the basic wine and very good it is too. Characteristic fresh green apple fruit and typical minerality, good concentration and only  £90 a case in bond (add £22 per case excise duty and then 20% VAT on the total = £134, ie just under £11.20 per bottle).  The freshness of the vintage shines through this entry level Chablis. 

Chablis Vaillons Premier Cru – much broader on the palate, substantial minerality, very long; classic quality Chablis

Chablis Valmur Grand Cru – one for keeping of course but great mineral notes, many years of potential ahead but it should retain the raciness which is the hallmark of Chablis.

Domaine Pierre Labet (CB)

Much further south on the Côte d’Or, Labet produces high quality Meursault, other whites and, from other appellations, reds.

Bourgogne Blanc Vielles Vignes – rounder, riper fruit, with fine acidity, slightly drying oak evident at the moment (and most drinkers are not going to keep this long),

Meursault Les Tillets – juicy palate, very youthful, excellent fruit, pleasant whiff of oak, good persistence

Savigny Premier Cru Vergellesses – a different flavour profile, ripe apple and some stone fruit (peach), refreshing acidity, needs time to develop but very good

Moving to the reds:

Beaune – elegant red fruit, lovely acidity, surprisingly drinkable now but enough structure to develop

Gevrey-Chambertin – superb fresh red fruit, beautiful lines – something about the way that the fruit is followed by the acidity and then the tannic rasp, quite lively tannins

Beaune Premier Cru Coucherias – a more lifted bouquet, then refined fruit, superb

Domaine de l’Arlot (CB)

In a rather different style, the wines of this domaine have a rustic quality.

Nuits-Saint-Georges Premier Cru Les Petits Plets – quite powerful vegetal notes, some lifted aromatics, needs time, difficult to know how this will develop

NSG Clos des Forets – very dense, high impact on the palate, lives up to NSG’s reputation for big, robust wines

Some grand wines

Last year I commented on Corney and Barrow’s top wines from Ch. de la Tour who have, by Burgundian standards, a massive six hectare plot in the Grand Cru, Clos de Vougeot. The 2010s are very promising too: the Cuvée Classique at the moment hits the nose with a great whack of super-refined oak, rich forceful fruit, high acidity and tannins – all the components the wine needs for a long and developing life. The Vielles Vignes is more muted but the palate has an remarkable concentration. 

Over at Lea & Sandeman there were 117 wines if you tasted them all and the final straight groans with great names.  In whites the Henri Boillot’s Grand Cru Corton-Charlemagne (£786 in bond), is tightly closed, fine and concentrated on the palate but with ripe fruit showing through.  In the reds, their Clos Vougeot has super supple and beautiful fruit, managing to combine sophistication with drinkability.  Another step up to Grand Cru Clos des Lambrays with yet greater concentration, quite superb.  Finally, there were three great wines from Thibault Liger-Belair finishing with Grand Cru Charmes-Chambertin – very refined beautiful fruit again, great density and persistence – and Grand Cru Richebourg – old wood clove notes, tight knit, huge potential, not for now.  If you need to know the prices of these wines they are probably beyond your wallet – the last named gets above £2K per case in bond.

2010 is a vintage that Burgundy lovers will cherish.  After the full charm and ripeness of 2009, 2010 is a marked by lovely clear fruit, refreshing acidity and good concentration.  It won’t be ready to drink as soon as 2009 but it is more classic and likely to be longer lasting. From the best growers, there are good wines at all quality levels and the middle to top wines are very good indeed.  Happy drinking … from now or 2013 onwards.  

The first full working week of January is a highlight of the English wine trade’s year.  If you have the stamina you can spend every hour of the working week tasting the new season’s wines.  Jancis Robinson complained and celebrated the fact that her team of three would be aiming to taste and write a brief note about wines at each of 26 tasting this week.  But it is a testimony to her stamina and personality, that at the end of the week I heard her say to a colleague that yes, it had been a long week – and that it was a privilege.  Now that is style.  Her patent stainless steel-like blocky shoes were a sight to behold.

En primeur is a controversial concept in it own right.  The vine grower spends a whole year tending the vine, harvesting and making the wine. But with Burgundy, and even more with Bordeaux, the wine is not going to be ready to drink for a minimum of three years, in the case of Bordeaux up to ten years.  So at what point should the labourer get his or her wages? 

Most wine we buy when it is in the bottle and ready to drink.  But if that were the case, the vine grower would not be paid for three to ten years after the work has been completed – and that takes no account of the long term investment in the land, its preparation and in the winery.  Traditionally, you hang beef for 14 days and then you sell it.  Pickles and Christmas cake you might keep for three months, some cheeses for two years. So you can see that there is a case (pun intended) for the grower getting payment before the product is going to be at its best. 

The down side is that if you buy en primeur you are buying the wines when most of them are still in a barrel or vat. They are not ready to bottle yet and there is a great deal of development to undergo.  The fruit will be very fresh but the acidity should be raw and the tannins untamed; certainly, the various elements of the wine will not have combined into a harmonious whole.  You only need to taste a recently bottled sample of vintage port to confirm this – it will be very fruity, but fiercely alcoholic and acidic, with nigh on undrinkable tannins.  In 20-30 years that will all have come together beautifully.  And even with table wines, many classic European styles of wine need a bit of time.  In turn this means that if you buy wine en primeur you are trusting that the wine will come together in an attractive way.  It is at this point that the quality of the wine merchant and the scribblings of the scribes kick in – the consumer needs a reliable guide, or preferably a range of guides, and then he or she can make up his or her own mind. 

If we are being mathematical about it, the fairest point for the drinker to part with his or her money would be at the half way point between picking and drinking. This would point to the en primeur campaign to be a year later than it is for Burgundy – which would certainly be a better point to judge the wines as they would have been in bottle for some time.  But of course the market is not a perfectly level playing field; it is affected by supply and demand.  For those of us with good or average incomes, it is difficult to remember that it is the top end wines for which there is the most competition. If you have just five barrels, 1500 bottles, of something really sought after, you can name your own price.  Some of the wines on display this week will cost £1000 a case plus VAT and some have not named a price yet.  So the market is intensely competitive for the very top wines, while there is plenty of choice at the £200-250 a case level.  This means that for those who are not bidding for the most sought after wines, the en primeur season is just too early, even if it is fair in principle to pay in advance for wines that are not yet ready to drink. 

And what are the 2010 Burgundies like?  We will save that for the next post. 

 

	One birthday at the Overton blind tasting group, marked by the last of three bottles of a special wine. Lively, bubbles, youngish tasting bright fruit, mild nuttiness, noticeable acidity, balanced and attractive – but not really giving its origins away.  One member in the group in the trade thought it was very, very good Cava – which would make Cava makers very happy indeed: Champagne Dom Pérignon 2000. Very good if slightly underwhelming
My immediate thought on this was ‘Sauvignon Blanc with attitude’ because of its mildly gooseberry fruit, attractive greenness and high acidity.  From the Mont Damnés, Chavignol, Sancerre, this comes from a micro production: La Fleur de Galifard, Thomas-Labaille, Sancerre 2010: concentrated rather than highly mineral, perhaps because it is made with very ripe grapes.
	Not many clues on the nose here but then waxy and full on the palate, medium acidity and good length.  Subtle use of oak to give some structure but not flavour.  This is a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon but not from Bordeaux.  North West Spain was a good punt: more North East: Castell d’Encus,  Taleia, Costers del Segre, 2009, Spain
This is the sort of wine you want in a blind tasting: green apples, lime spritz, petrol notes, low alcohol, off-dry with obvious residual sugar.  German Riesling we all thought rightly (except one experienced member of the wine trade – but that is the joy of blind tasting).  Beautifully balanced and complex: Forsterer Jesuitengarten Riesling Spätlese, Pfalz, 1999.
	This was announced as  ‘light red’ which it wasn’t.  The colour was not that deep, but then good dark plum fruit, coffee and some slight stalkiness on the finish.  Once we established we were were in Australia, the question was: ‘Which island of Australia are we in?’ ‘The big one’ was the answer.  A good quality Australian Grenache from the Barossa: Thiele Road, Schwarz Wine Company, Grenache 2006.
Chakana Reserve Bonarda Old Vine 2009 from Argentina is not a wine or even style I have come across before. As with Malbec, it is an example of Argentina doing something remarkable with a grape variety which is not seen as a major player in its (in this case) north Italian homeland.  In this wine it presents a bit like Malbec – good dark fruit, chocolate notes, the richness offset by by sharp acidity, very worthwhile.
	By contrast, here is a great red grape variety doing what only it can do in its homeland – and living up to its big name:  beautiful richness and balance, complex dark sour cherry fruit, liquorice and tobacco notes, herbs, excellent length and precise reflection of where it comes from: I am delighted to say that some spotted that this was indeed Brunello from the Montalcino plateau, one of the great versions of Sangiovese which (only?) Tuscany does: Castiglion del Bosco 2007.
The key here was the weight – full of rounded, developed fruit but medium in weight, not a really hot climate wine,  In fact with age, this has developed a sort of elegance not often associated with its appellation.  Some experienced tasters even flirted with the idea it might be Burgundy …  but one person was spot on further south and actually named the producer correctly!  Jaboulet, Crozes Hermitage, 1999.
	This is turning into a stream of Syrah … this one showing good red and black fruit, soft tannins, very drinkable … and, big clue (use all the available evidence!) a very heavy bottle.  From California’s Central Coast: Syrah, Bien Nacido Hillside Estate, Qupé, Santa Maria Valley, 2004.
And another … a beautiful young Syrah, old world this time … Terres Blanche, AC Saint Joseph, 2007.  The name comes from the steep, low yielding patches of limestone and clay, which produce greater concentration that the domaine’s standard St Joseph.  Very impressive.
	Definitely not Syrah … gorgeous amber brown, a nose of classy old furniture – beeswax – nuttiness, deliberate oxidation and then searing refreshing acidity on the palate. A bit of a debate on Madeira v. Oloroso Sherry, but he who was certain it was the former was absolutely correct:  Justino’s Malmsey, Broadbent Selection, 10 years old: old school and fabulous.

January’s Fine Wine Supper featured the wines of top Alsace producer, Josmeyer.  It is always worthwhile to taste the wines of the most well-known domaines, to see if they continue to live up to their reputations.  Here they emphatically did.  All six wines were very good, some – in fact the cheapest as well as some of the Grand Cru – were excellent.  But the real star of the evening for me was the Pinot Gris. 

Now that is a sentence you  do not often read.  The reputation of Pinot Gris/Grigio has suffered badly due to the glut of cheap examples which are neutral at best and sometimes just seriously bland – inexpensive wines, inexplicably popular in bars and the supermarket.  Their secret is that they don’t taste of anything … which is a profoundly depressing thought.  And even on this evening of quality wines, the Riesling and the Gewurztraminer were more assertive, more flamboyant, more showy.  But for quality, balance and a subtle complexity, the Pinot Gris outshone their flashier neighbours. 

The evening was based on half a dozen wines put together by the Wine Society to showcase Josmeyer.  Rather neatly, there were two examples each of Riesling, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer.  Each pair showed a good contrast – in quality level, age or between single vineyards. 

After a pleasant glass of sparkling wine, Crémant d’Alsace from Dopff, we began with the Riesling.  If there was a prize for the best wine of the night for quality against price, it would easily be won by The Society’s Exhibition Riesling 2009, made for the Wine Society by Josmeyer at a creditable £11.50.  Beautiful green apple and honey notes, floral, moderate acidity (perhaps lower than expected due to the warm year), effortless balance, superb.  There was, however, a marked step up in quality and complexity to the Riesling Les Pierrets 2004, and so there should be at more than double the price.  The youthful, bright apple notes have transmuted into something profound, a full palate of fruit (apple, quince) and mineral complexity.  The standard ‘petrol, but in a good way’ note won’t quite do: mineral, mildly mushroom and herbal. Magnificent and long lasting.

Then on to the Pinot Gris. It was a risk tasting these between the two aromatic varieties but it paid off.  Pinot Gris Fromenteau 2008 is not a cru, being made from a number of high quality sites, but a quality white pinot which sports the old Alsace name for the grape variety. It is seriously difficult to describe – obviously more neutral on the nose but then a wonderful richness on the palate, some stone fruit, obvious ripeness off-set by perfectly balanced sharpness.   Pinot Gris Grand Cru Brand 2008 was the revelation of the evening.  The Grand Cru system in Alsace is controversial with some growers not accepting those vineyards that were selected. But what ever you call it, this showed it credentials – richer and riper fruit (melon and ripe red apples), lovely spiciness, rich and concentrated (Oz Clark calls it ‘the richness of brazil nut flesh’), outstanding length and overall quality.  Subtle and powerful simultaneously.  Forget every cheap glass of PG you have drunk and taste this instead.

The final pair of wines were suitably luxurious – two grand cru wines made from Gewurztraminer, with a decade or so of bottle age.  Brand (being the vineyard name) 2001 had a superbly fragrant bouquet with the classic rose water and lychee/exotic fruit combination, great viscosity and mouth feel, and very good length. Its partner, Hengst 2002 for me had brighter fruit, the same rich concentration but offset with better acidity.  The group had a long debate about this pair of wines, some struggling with the exotic fragrance (‘air freshener’), while others debated the merits of the two vintages and vineyards. Great wines are wines that promote conversation and opinion. 

That the best producers in Alsace make great wines is hardly a revelation. But as consumers, we can benefit here in that wines of similar quality in, say, the more fashionable Burgundy, would command astronomic prices.  There is great quality and value to be had here.  And the wines, even the simpler ones, age well. Our final bottle, a bonus, from Josmeyer was its Auxerrois (a local grape variety with the same parentage as Chardonnay) 2001 which had nice creamy ageing notes, if modest fruit.  All in all, these wines showed the very distinctive character of the three grape varieties, their food friendliness and their capacity to improve with age. And the star of the show in all these ways was – for me – the Pinot Gris.

That there is a competitive streak among many men is hardly an earth-shattering observation.  Wine tasting can be social, relaxed, erudite and many other things but it also can be competitive.  Ben Llewellyn, MD of Caviste set up Thursday evening’s tasting as a competition – between two of Europe’s best established and prestigious regions.  Burgundy and Piedmont just happen to be among my favourite regions. The tasting focused helpfully on the two most important grape varieties (with apologies to Chardonnay of course): Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo, from Burgundy and Piedmont, respectively.  Ben has been talking for months about having secured some exceptional bottles of Nebbiolo without a thought for the cost, while Mark was assigned Burgundy within a budget … Not that there was any suggestion that this was a fix. 

The idea was to taste six Pinot’s and six Nebbiolo side by side, by category – best wine by a cooperative, from a single vineyard, etc.  This was an excellent approach, made better by the fact that the two varieties share some similarities: pale colour, red fruit (if raspberry v. cherry), medium to high acidity, producing full bodied wines in cool climates and, perhaps above all, ability to develop in very subtle ways with age.  And there are only 225 miles between Beaune and Alba – plus the Alps! – so the climate is not that different. There is one huge difference of course: Pinot is only moderately astringent while Nebbiolo is the king of (pale) tannic wines! 

So how did the competition work out?  Each wine was scored out of twenty and all the scores were totalled.  This ensured a high level of participation on the evening, not to mention the occasional outbreak of barracking.  Janet refused to score on ideological grounds, while I did the same for another reason which will become clear shortly.  But the outcome was interesting. Despite the Burgundies being on the whole much cheaper, they only lost by the smallest margin – less than 2%.   Why was this? Two guesses: people are much more familiar with Pinot Noir than with Nebbiolo and, further, the latter is seriously tannic, even in good examples. One could say that Ben needed much better, more expensive, wines than Mark to make it a contest! 

My aversion to scoring has nothing to do with disapproval of competitive sports.  Scoring has its uses – but only in my view if the wines are in flights of similar wines.  It makes no sense at all to try to score an off-dry ethereally light German Riesling on the same scale as a massive Californian Cabernet.  It is difficult to score Pinot against Nebbiolo – even if we disregard the point that the samples of the former cost 50% less on average than those of the latter.

Let’s ask a completely different question: how good were the wines? There were many good wines in the line up and some really outstanding ones.  G D Vajra’s village level Barolo 2005, £32, from an ordinary year, now has fine balsam, fruit, the smell of cloves from old wood on the nose and fine complexity. Domaine Sylvie Esmonin Gevrey-Chambertin, Vielles Vignes, 2007, £35,  is already singing – again great complexity in the the red and black fruit, superb.  And, I am pleased to say, the great Barolo examples were just that: the 2003 from Monprivato Mascarello and the special treat – though sadly one bottle was corked –  from Giorgio Rivetti.  The name of this wine is so complicated it needs a sentence of its own: Giorgio Rivetti, La Spinetta Campè Vürsù, Barolo Campè, 2000, now just under £100.  The family name is Rivetti (expert makers of Moscato), the company is called La Spinetta Campè and the wine is Barolo from the Campè vineyard near Grinzane Cavour, with the added name Vürsù – which I am guessing is going to be a bit of Piedmontese dialect as 30 minutes of research has not revealed anything!   To all the usual  Barolo qualities this adds rich, developed fruit, probably due to its very modern wine making process – in rotofermenters, which extract a great deal of fruit quickly, and then French barriques. Superb.   

If this is the standard of wines we can expect at Caviste’s future tastings, we will look forward to more – with or without the competitiveness! 

The story of Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne does not need to be retold here.  It is a text book case of excellent marketing (the Feuillatte name) allied to a huge union of cooperatives who are are the number 1 producer by volume of Champagne both in France and the UK.  Under expert guidance they produce a large volume of inexpensive but good Champagne (a really difficult combination) and a range of higher quality bottles.  If Champagne is the wine of celebration without equal, Feuillatte has been helping countless UK supermarket customers, among many others, to pop the cork and feel better about life. 

One secret of Feuillatte’s success is clear enough.   Jean-Pierre Vincent has completed his 35 years as chief wine maker which tells its own story. Continuity is being preserved with David Henault (left in the picture on the left), who having served an 11 year apprenticeship, is now taking up the challenge.

Here are the highlights of a small part of their extensive range: 

Brut Réserve – of course the premium wines are the most interesting but here is part of the standard range: fine bubbles, structured and fine on the palate, lemon fruit, interesting saline  note, quite dry (9.8g residual sugar), a noticeable step up from the basic Brut. 

Brut Rosé – very attractive simple raspberry and strawberry fruit on the nose, good savoury palate, mouth filling (60% Pinot Noir), and a good length.  Quite a deep colour on account of 18% of the grapes of Pinot Noir and Meunier being made as red wine and then blended. 

Cuvée 225 Vintage (2004) – made from 25 Premier Cru and Grand Cru vineyards and given its name, 225, clearly has been in a barrel.  50/50 blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay: superbly rich nose with excellent subtle yeast and mushroom notes knit together with the fruit, rich palate, well integrated (four years and more in the bottle) and very long. With the Brut range you are talking millions of bottles, with this 10-20,000.  Very good value at £40. 

Cuvée 225 Rosé Vintage (2004) – still nearly half Chardonnay but then 55% Pinot Noir of which 18% is made as red wine and blended.  A striking mid-salmon pink, due to this blend, hazelnuts and red fruit on the nose and palate, luxurious on the palate, some pleasant tannins for a tingling finish, would be good with a range of foods including some meat dishes. 

PS Many thanks to the photographer Nigel James for sending me these photos – on the grounds that I was being most serious about the tasting.  This is why it is always important to be holding the camera, not subject to it! 

Asking the owner of an independent wine shop to choose just six wines to show off his wines is definitely mission impossible.  If the shop is a creation of one person, he or she has spent hundreds of hours and selfless tasted probably thousands of wines to pick the stock … and then they have to be whittled down to just six!  But it makes for a good game and the wines should be excellent. And the selection  should tell you a great deal about the owner’s preferences. 

Tim Pearce of Grape Expectations, Andover, was the man on a mission. I had made one stipulation – we must taste his very best Champagne!  And then there were a number of bonus wines too. 

	Pale lemon, fine citrus notes, some melon fruit, sharp acidity and, at least in Tim’s view, some creaminess. We tasted these wines blind – because we like to have a bit of suffering with our pleasure – but this was just too obscure for that game!  This was a north Italian white: Castelfeder, Kerner ‘Lahn’ 2009 which comes from Südtirol or Alto Adige if you prefer, and is made from the Kerner grape, itself a cross between Riesling and Trollinger.  That attractive sharp acidity comes from the 15 degrees of temperature difference between night and day in the area.
Wine number two was straw in colour, quite aromatic – flowers, sherbet and lemon, with moderately high acidity, medium bodied, persistent with a very dry finish.  ‘Fragrant, cool, good length’ was one comment; and ‘great value at £8’.  This is an excellent bottle from an unlikely source: Catarina 2010, Bacalhôa, Setubal Peninsula, Portugal, 13.5% alcohol but very well balanced.  60% Fernão Pires, 30% Chardonnay, 10% Arinto, with just the Chardonnay being fermented in oak.
	Now here is a wine to divide opinion!  The fact that we struggled to identify it told its own story.  It isn’t made from an unusual German cross or Portuguese grape varieties … in fact it could not be more more main stream.  After some initially mustiness had lifted (natural wine making), toffee apple and vanilla on the nose with rich apple fruit, good acidity, no signs of oak on the palate: 100% Chardonnay from southern Burgundy, clearly given the big oak treatment:  ‘Aragonite’, Clos des vignes du Maynes, AC Macon-Cruzille, 2009.  Classic Burgundy isn’t, but it is a wine of real character.
Some wines do deserve three pictures.  A superb vintage Champagne, from Henriot, from the good 1998 vintage: still lively mousse, medium pronounced biscuity nose, full bodied rich fruit, wonderful balance combining ageing notes and remaining freshness, great depth of flavour. As one learned commentator wrote: ‘Yum’!
	Back to the unknown.  Some initial ‘bubblegum’ on the nose led us down the wrong path, then ripe cherries, even cherry icecream.  A north Italian grape variety apparently … we eventually got to Lagrein,  in this wine which I had tasted a few weeks ago.  A red from Castelfeder again: Lagrein 2008. The picture is getting clear: this buyer doesn’t worry about whether the wine is well known or not, he buys what he likes …
And he likes pairs of wines from the same estate: here is the red from Clos des Vignes du Maynes, AC Macon Cruzille 2010. And is there a twist … you bet there is!  Good raspberry fruit, high acidity, medium tannins, some old oak. So what is the one thing you don’t do with the Gamay grape – oak it of course!  Another super low intervention wine, no added SO2, but then 11 months on the lees in oak barrels.
	OK, we did spot this one: Pinot Noir in some form or other, raspberry and strawberry fruit, some attractive farmyardy notes, quite structured with lots of fairly linear fruit on the palate, plenty of alcohol, good drinking.  Tim teased me that I had been to this estate … but as I have not ventured out of Europe recently, this seemed unlikely. Clos Henri, Marlborough, New Zealand 2008. But it is indeed from Henri Bourgeois, who I did indeed visit in cool Sancerre just over a year ago.
On to the bonus wines.  Here is a wine you definitely can’t buy at Grape Expectations, or probably any where else: Borges & Irmão, Vintage Port 1963.  A case of six made £139  in a Christie’s auction of 2001 … a precious bottle from Tim’s own cellar, a minor house in a great vintage.  Pale, spirity, sweet fruit still with us …
	Two final bonus wines: a big, bold South African ‘port’ in all but name first: Axe Hill, Mossops, 2002, South Africa.  And then another sweet red wine, but this just 14.5% alcohol, a great Italian classic, Recioto della Valpolicella 2004 from the outstanding Corte Sant’Alda. Clearly some one knows my tastes!  Dense cherry fruit, nice wood notes, super balance of rich red fruit on the palate with mild tannins and a dry finish.  Marinella Camerani’s wines do not disappoint!

In wine, as in life, it is a good idea to let people with talent express themselves … thanks to Tim and other generous guests for a great evening. 

Blind tasting of random wines again … I think the best thing is to group the wines by type, clarity after the event being so much easier to achieve than at the time. So off we go with a, er, peculiarity:

	It’s definitely red, it’s sparkling, it’s slightly sweet … it’s not Shiraz, it’s lighter in weight, simple, and has cherry-aid and light plum fruit. The combination of being slightly sweet with a few tannins was a bit strange. We did know that its provider has a record of ‘enjoying’ some of the lesser well known German wines:Ferdinand Pieroth Burg Layen Meister Rouge Sekt Rot Mild. This wine comes from the Nahe region of Germany and basically is an inexpensive – and inoffensive – slightly sweet sparker. It was the subject of considerable verbal abuse: ‘not as bad as I thought’ being capped by ‘it’s nice to try a wine you know you don’t want to taste again’
On to a famous name from New Zealand: quite a powerful if restrained nose, gooseberry and some mineral notes, a slightly salty tang – I thought it was Sauvignon Blanc around Sancerre, 50% correct. Superb palate, the raciness of NZ Sauvignon Blanc reined in by the moderate use of oak.  This is from Kevin Judd, erstwhile wine maker at Cloudy Bay, now making excellent wines of his own: Greywacke, Wild Sauvignon, Marlborough, 2009, ie wild as in yeast, rather than rampaging grapes.
	There would have been an fascinating comparison between Mas de Daumas Gassac, Vin de Pays de l’Herault, 1995 and Le Soula, Vin de Pays Côtes Catalanes 2004, but sadly the latter was faulty: not much going on except hints of curdled milk … But the former aged southern French white, an eclectic mix of Chardonnay, Petit Manseng and Viognier (plus 10% undeclared!) was all ripe apricots and dried fruits …. papaya got mentioned in passing.  It was perhaps beginning to fade or at least for there to be a question about oxidation, but it is well into its second decade.
And while we are on the subject of the unusual, what about a somewhat atypical white Burgundy:  Domaine des Forges, Clos sous le Chateau, St Romain AC, 2004?  A slightly yeasty nose, some minerality leading some think about a more famous village such as Puligny, stylish and worthwhile.  Saint-Romain as an AC is a pretty recent invention and well worth it judging by this example.
	Through an unveiling accident of an innocent sort, we all knew this was South African Chenin Blanc … DeMorgenzon, Chenin Blanc, Stellenbosch, 2007. It’s all so easy when you know what it is:  white flowers, citrus, apples, great ripeness, indeed fat and waxy, superb full fruit on the palate and very good length.  Four reds followed, two Italians, both unusual in different ways, and then a Corbières and a northern Rhône.
Italy has many famous red wines and many important grape varieties which are quite widely dispersed. But it also has local specialities like this Nerello Mascalese (and presumably a close relative Nerello Mantellato) which produce find ‘Burgundian’ wines on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily.  Tenuta delle Terre Nere, Etna Rosso, 2009 - pale ruby in colour, rather funky fruit and some green tannins – is produced from vines surviving on their volcanic soils for between 40 and 140 years.
	Further north in Tuscany, the second half of the twentieth century was marked by a great deal of experimentation with French grape varieties, producing the so-called Super Tuscans.  Nambrot IGT Toscana 1998 belongs to this trend and is basically Merlot from an aristocratic estate in the Pisan hills, Tenuta di Ghizzano. The reminiscence of chocolate and balsam on the nose are quite typical, the high levels of tannin (after 13 years) was not.  I am not sure they had quite mastered this style in what was quite a difficult year in the Tuscan Maremma, a vintage rated only 88 by erobertparker.com.
The evening finished with two French wines, one from up and coming Corbières and one from established Cornas.  In Les Clos Perdu, Mire La Mer, AC Corbières, 2005 you could taste the Languedoc sun: ripe fruit, new oak, hints of burning, soft tannins – despite the fact that this is more than half Mourvèdre, known for its tannins.  The blend is 55% Mourvèdre, 35% Carignan and 10% Grenache.
	This final wine was surprisingly difficult to spot given that it is 100% Syrah from a classic region, the northern Rhône: attractive nose of liquorish notes and sweet fruit, ripe red and black fruit on the palate, prominent tannins – but no obvious pepper or spice which might have given the clue:  AC Cornas, Domaine de Rochepertuis, 2003 – all that ripeness was no doubt due the sweltering conditions of that very hot year.
As usual this was a splendid evening, with excellent food from the Red Lion at Overton. The quality of the wines certainly did exceed, or even compensate for, our ability to track them down in a blind tasting.  I think the picture on the right sums this up well: this blind tasting business is seriously overrated!  You can decide if the oddities of the title are the wines or the tasters.