Friday 4th June 2010 17:57pm

THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT - notes from Beaujolais

Back in late March (see the leafless vines below, with their roots deep into the degaded granite so typical of the land in the Cru Villages) I spent a couple of days in Beaujolais.

It was one of the most exciting days tasting I have had in years. The
2009 vintage is clearly good to great over most of France, but in
Beaujolais it is truly extraordinary: some vignerons compared it to 1947, and M. Viornery, our man in Brouilly who is retiring after 35 harvests, said it was the best vintage he ever made. The weather was perfect, with moderate heat (this isn't 2003) mixed with just enough rain and odd cool intervals. The grapes came in perfectly healthy and with superb ripeness (none of the folk we buy from chaptalised). The flavours range from red and black cherry through to black plum and blackberry, with more than a hint of liqueur on many wines, kirsch and cassis. The tannins are there - so 2009 Beaujolias can, and should be, laid down as well as drunk soon - but just so ripe and silky.  And the wines are SO CHEAP.  We will be making a Beaujolais offer in late June, starting with Beaujolais Villages at £8.95 and finishing with a Julienas Vieilles Vignes at £14.50. Unlike those money-grubbing Bordelais, the families who own Beaujolais estates are asking no more for their 2009s than an average vintage. So hats off to them, and reward their restraint by buying their wines.  2009 in Beaujolais is like 2007 in the southern Rhone, a vintage of exuberantly fruited, delicious wines which can be enjoyed immediately or laid down for five or ten years, to subtly transform themselves into svelte and gamey Pinot Noir look-alikes. Cru Beaujolais like this represents one of the bargains of the entire wine world.

Wednesday 31st March 2010 17:15pm

THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT - Notes from Argentina and Chile

I have just returned from a fortnight prospecting in Chile and Argentina - on a schedule which would have tested a man half my age and exhausted me!  It was stimulating though, and if one digs around enough it is amazing what great values one can find, especially in Argentina.  Highlights were..

Reaching Carlos Arizu at Vicien in the Fiambala Valley in north-west Argentina. This involves flying to La Rioja and then a three hour drive into the near-desert of the altiplano, before one reaches Carlos's vineyards, over 5,000 feet up, glowing green in an inhospitable, lunar landscape

..but it was worth it: for Carlos's gentle hospitality; for the delicious wines, all jellied fruit and vivid hues (from the extra skin pigment generated by altitude and clear skies); for seeing the new harvest being brought in; for the simple pleasure of lounging in the rock-pools of the local thermal baths; for the satisfaction of paying less than £9.00 a night in the municipal hotel; and for the unusual sight of vultures in the vineyard!

Second: lunch with Walter Bressia (and his daughter Mary), perhaps the top winemaker in Argentina, in Azafran, the best restaurant in Mendoza; enjoying Walter's new Pinot Noir with very rare tuna (see left), followed by Conjuro, a huge but elegant Malbec blend (not sure if we can afford either of these amazing wines!) with mountain lamb (on right).

Third: tasting at Tabali, northern Chile, in the surreal, but amazing, subterranean hall - somewhat reminiscent of a James Bond film set. 

The wines here are superb: young Felipe Muller is the current Chilean winemaker of the year: that he won this award is amazing given that the most expensive Tabali wines are currently only £11.50 or so here. Almost everything he touches is superb, but especially Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Fourth: a tour of the new hillside vineyards at Luis Felipe Edwards. Nicolas Bizzari took me in his 4WD nearly 2,000 feet up from the valley floor in Colchagua to see the 100 hectares of vines his father-in-law's family have planted over rolling hills. These, which must represent one of the most ambitious vineyard projects anywhere in the world, are some of the most beautiful vineyards you will ever see - see the snowy peaks of the Andes in the background.

It's still early to see the expected uplift in wine quality here from the fruit of these vineyards - but we are shipping some splendid wines from Luis Felipe Edwards and look forward to watching developments here. 

Fifth, and on my last day in Chile, a very informal lunch with one of the country's top winemakers, Alvaro Espinoza. 

Alvaro is now Chile's leading wine consultant, with a particular focus on organic wine. We were tasting the two wines he makes from family-owned vineyards in Maipo, the superb Carmenere/Cab./Syrah blend Antiyal; and Kuyen, based on Syrah. Both are fantastic. Whilst the 1998 Antiyal was lovely, with cooked mulberry fruit spiced by savoury and coffee notes, one of the stand-outs of my whole trip was the 2007 vintage of Antiyal - so we have snaffled the last remaining stock!  Arriving late summer - a delicious, hugely impressive and elegant wine.

Monday 23rd November 2009 18:05pm

We just had a good look at some of our more tasty wines, so I thought I would share some brief impressions of those which showed really well.

First, Jacquesson Cuvee 732.  Jacquesson is a small but perfectly formed Champagne house with moderate prices - we have been selling previous releases of this superbly light and elegant Champagne for the same fair price, £29.95, for over 18 months. (An aside - when I pick up the morning newspaper I get enraged by half-price offers of champagnes in the supermarkets, when the supposed starting price, for some second-rate champagne, is usually £35-40!). Second pleasant surprise was the Bernhard & Reibel 2005 Riesling from the famed Weingarten vineyard in Alsace; both intensely grapefruity and bone dry, a text-book example (£15.95).  

Among the reds, first a pair of Pinots: very different but both excellent. The 2008 Creation Pinot Noir (which comes from just higher up the Hemel-en-Aarde valley than the better known wineries of Hamilton Russell and Bouchard Finlayson) is really coming into its own, with the oak integrating well and generous layers of black fruit. By contrast Jean-Marie Fourrier's Gevrey-Chambertin Aux Echezeaux was delightfully red-fruited and fresh, with true Pinot aromatics and terrific length. Further on the pure Graciano (which is unusual) 2002 Rioja from Valserrano was outstanding - youthful, very perfumed and refined. The final reds offered a flight of contrasting Syrah/Shiraz - from the lovely, cherry-toned Foundry Syrah made by Chris Williams in Stellenbosch, to Yann Chave's 2004 Hermitage, now really coming into its own, and showing secondary notes beside its power and length, via the highly promising 2007 Tabali Reserva Especial Syrah from Limari, all cassis and mocha, with hints of eucalyptus - a wine which would embarrass many Aussie Shirazes at twice its modest price of £11.50.

Friday 23rd October 2009 15:38pm

Tasted last night, the 1999 Felton Road Pinot Noir from Central Otago. So, a 10 year old Kiwi Pinot - and still very much alive and kicking: smudge of brown at the rim; really attractive mushroom and cooked fruit aromas; sweetish attack, mildly jammy - but balanced by some very correct acidity. So aromatic, and much more enjoyable than many Burgundies of similar age which cost a lot more...

....and if that was then, see what English exile Nigel Greening can do now with vines that much older. Our tiny allocation of the 2008s has just arrived, with most of the cuvees - Calvert, Cornish Point and Block 3 - available in very small quantities, so unlikely to be on the website. CALL US for prices if you fancy some of the best Pinots coming out of New Zealand! 

Friday 2nd October 2009 15:04pm

..and now for something completely different

Domaine de Lavasoa, Vin Gris de Besileo, Non Vintage
This vaguely pink wine looked pleasantly coppery, but the colour was actually the best thing about it. It smelled like the worst South African wine, a noxious admixture of old vegetables and burnt rubber - and sadly its flavour was wholly consistent, thoroughly dirty, as if rotten green peppers had been put in a blender. So sad, I really had high hope of Madagascan wine - after all the French ran the place from the 1890s until the 1960s - but after this experience I will be reluctant to touch another drop....

Here, for those who are interested in the lacunae of the world of wine, is a small Madagascan vineyard.

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Friday 2nd October 2009 14:34pm

Apologies for long absence. A dalliance with flu (porcine or other), and trips to the Rhone and a holiday have taken me offline...

Two Syrahs

A couple of Syrahs tasted side by side recently, and both impressively powerful and rich, in different ways.

First the northern Rhone model, the bio-dynamically farmed, St. Joseph Les Serves, from Domaine Monier in the heatwave 2003 vintage (so 14.3 degrees): opaque; scents of cooked black fruit and grilled meat; first impression is all dense texture (yields were only around 12 hl./ha that year), but behind is a less black-fruited palate, with hints of redcurrant. Not in the least sweet, but very concentrated and finishing with black pepper. Aas ever with Monier, both the oak and the tannins are handles with such suavity.

This was followed by Tabali's new Reserva Especial Syrah from Chile, which we have in both bottles and magnums. In the fascinating, limestone-rich terroir of the Limari Valley, supercool (and apparently very popular with the ladies) young winemaker Felipe Muller is beginning to specialise in superb coolish climate Syrah and Chardonnay.  You could argue that this Syrah is a bit over the top, with its extravagant cassis and woodsmoke tone. The alternative view is that this is one of Chile's increasingly successful efforts to make Hermitage-like Syrah, with interesting mocha and roasted notes, and offering some medium-term ageing potential. Make your own mind up!

Saturday 22nd August 2009 10:17am

Our Biggest Ever Bin End and Stock Reduction Sale Starts 9.00am Monday 24th August. For various stock control reasons these wines are not available to buy online. Please call 01962 712351 for details.

Friday 14th August 2009 09:51am

Two terrific New World wines tasted last night. First, with prawns and scallops, our own 2007 Meerlust Chardonnay from Stellenbosch. Scent of cream and caramel, followed by an already surprisingly complex palate (oops, warning, I am about to go all Robert Parkery here) showing woodsmoke, caramel, lime, fennel and an oatmealy element. Only 13 degrees of alcohol, and perefectly balanced. This youthful and so promising wine isn't given away at £16.50 a bottle - but as that sum buys increasingly little in Burgundy, I do urge Burgundy lovers to try it. Leave it six months to a year, decant it, and just show it to people: let them guess what it is and its price: I am sure you will be gratified by the response.

Second up, with sweetbreads and mushrooms (both perfect accompaniments for Pinot Noir) was a bottle of 1998 Saintsbury Carneros Pinot Noir from California. Still exhibiting some lovely berried fruit, fragrant and charming, this offered more evidence for my continuing campaign to age decent New World wines.

Wednesday 15th July 2009 17:06pm

Tasted last night - the Troisième Mi-Temps, Pic St. Loup, 2007 from Saint Daumary, which arrived yesterday. Of course it's infanticide - this lovely wine will drink for years - but we wine professionals like our meat rare and our wine vital. The colour is sumptuous, and if you decant it the perfume is sensational too, ripe blackcurrant with malted touches. Plenty of mocha oak up front, and lush fruit, but what really marks this wine are those indefinable, lifted aromatics that only wines grown on limestone show. Truly fine, ageworthy wine, with a real sense of terroir, for £11.25 a bottle - so some is going into my cellar immediately.

Friday 10th July 2009 15:07pm

Where does one start? First, this blog will be wine related - I undertake to stay off politics, the state of the world, young people today, the cost of petrol, and all the other mundane subjects which might provoke a bilious rant.  Instead, fine wine will be at the forefront. I will cover:

*  interesting tastings, both those held at SVS and elsewhere
*  memorable food and wine experiences
*  old vintages of wines we stock revisited
*  the occasional rant (can't help it, better to let the gas out of the bottle) on wine matters

I open with a couple of recent tastings, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

5th May 2009

First, the sublime: the most recent visitation (to London) of The Berlin Tasting, an event which began in 2004 and which now moves around the world pitting the top wines from the Chadwick family of Chile - Errazuriz's Don Maximiano, Chadwick and Sena - tasted blind against grand Cabernet-based wines from Bordeaux (Margaux, Lafitte and Latour 2005), Italy (Sassicaia and Solaia 2005), and California (Opus One 2005). 

I spotted five of the six Chileans in the tasting - that eucalyptus/menthol note usually gives them away - but failed to identify the sixth, Chadwick 2006. This showed both cassis and red fruit and appeared so refined and classy, with lead-pencil and lightly savoury notes. I loved it. Everyone in the room picked their favourite three wines from the twelve tasted, in order. The Chadwick was voted 5th equal overall, surprisingly (to me) behind the 2006 vintage of the Don Max, which came 4th, highest of the Chileans, and, at £30ish, by some way the cheapest wine on show on the day

Well, the Hatch Mansfield team, who arranged the event as the agents for Errázuriz, would have been proud of me...in a puppyish, Pavlovian knee-jerk I added plenty of both these splendid Chilean reds to our next shipment from South America. Some of you will be able to taste these on September 7th (see events and tastings in due course).

30th June 2009

Now to the ridiculous. On the last day of June my colleague Gordon Coates and I sat down in the office to taste about twenty samples of 2007 red Bordeaux. I will spare you the names, but not all were cheap wines - some would have retailed at over £10 a bottle. Rarely have we had such a dispiriting day - the wines appeared variously lean, charmless, stalky, drying, harsh and dull. Oh well, the lesson of this is to wait for the next 2005 and buy lots then - we still have plenty of the excellent Château La Plaige 2005 in the pipeline at £7.50 a bottle.

The good news was that we found a couple of cracking 2005s - which will arrive in August: look out for Château Grand Maison, Côtes de Bourg and a terrific Fronsac, Château Beausejour, plus some excellent white Graves.