Tuesday 26th October 2010 16:38pm

Chile tasting at the Hotel du Vin, 25th October 2010

Our new Chilean arrivals showed very well at last night's Chilean tasting at the Hotel du Vin in Winchester.  Winners were (in terms of general approval and sales): the Vina Casablanca Blanc de Blancs (which no-one buys until they taste it - clearly Chilean fizz, however good it is, is barely acceptable to serve yet!); the splendidly open and exotically fruity 2010 Anakena Sauvignon Blanc; the same estate's Leyda Pinot Noir, a supple, early maturing example which should make a lot of friends when we drop it into the Christmas list; Luis Felipe Edwards bold and forthright Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon from Colchagua; Tabali's 2009 Carmenere, inky but with subtle dry-fruited depths; and finally Kuyen, Alvaro Espinoza's second wine, based on Syrah. This last is a deep and well-structured wine with keeping potential too.

Peter Greet from Luis Felipe Edwards was kind enough to say that our Chilean range was among the most interesting in the country (and he didn't have to, as we had already paid his estate!). Top venue, delicious wines, what more could one want....

Friday 22nd October 2010 15:30pm

Basque Hospitality in Rioja Alavesa

I have just returned from three days in Rioja Alavesa (the northernmost zone, part of the Basque region, right up against the Sierra de Cantabria). The landscape looked beautiful - bone dry, with the vineyards beginning to turn orange and red, even though the harvest had not yet finished. 

I tasted at a number of Bodegas, from the small and rustic to big co-operatives.  The locals believe this to be the smartest and finest sub-zone of Rioja, but after this trip I have some reservations.  So here goes:

1.  There's a lot of very dull wine here, at every level, from really simple and lifeless wines at the base to heavy, over-extracted wines further up the scale. 

2.  Who the hell is paying for the architectural ego-trip wineries? Some of these bodegas are like modern-day cathedrals, monuments to the new religion of wine. At Baigorri one can see that the whole winery has been built to work on a gravity fed principal, which is all very worthy, but others are arrogant and brutalist.  They may attract lots of tourists, and get written up in glossy magazines, but WHO PAYS?  At the end of the day even the softest of loans from the Spanish government will have to be repaid, and I can't help but feel that first the wine merchant and ultimately the consumer is being asked to finance these.  I feel very uneasy considering buying from these palaces - give me a peasant with his kit tucked into his farm out-buildings any day.

3.  What does one expect from a bottle of Rioja? I vaguely thought I knew, but after this trip I am confused. I used to think it was a friendly, supple bottle full of ripe strawberry fruit with (usually) a pleasant vanilla note from ageing in American oak barrels. However, now I am puzzled: is it a bottle of confected juice (one wine tasted exactly like pink Haribo sweets), made with carbonic maceration (very much a local speciality in Rioja Alavesa)? Or is it a blackish, chocolatey wine made wholly in the international style, using 100% new French oak barrels, and lacking any discernible local character at all? 

4.  Is a Rioja from 100% Tempranillo really that exciting?  It was noticeable that many of the better wines included some Graciano or Mazuelo - but you usually can't tell from the label....

5.  There was a low point. A winemaker (I think he was called Jesus) poured us wine from a bottle weighing a kilo and a half (i.e. the empty bottle alone was the weight of a normal full bottle), adorned by a dreadful metal plaque instead of a label. He then proceeded to sprinkle edible gold flakes in every glass...   He told us that the Chinese had wanted to buy every bottle, but he was only letting them have 25% of his production.  This is very disappointing: if only the Chinese could be encouraged to waste their money on this sort of inky abomination there would be less of them chasing real wine.   

It wasn't all bad. Whilst this region can perhaps coast on its reputatation internationally, which doesn't help the pursuit of quality, I tasted a lot of good wines.  Here are the positives:

A.  2005 was clearly a great vintage in Rioja - so look out for anything from that year

B.  Most wineries continue to make a decent Crianza - the 2007s usually seemed fine

C.  Some really interesting wines are being made outside the Tinto/Crianza/Reserva/Gran Reserva codification.  These are released as Riojas, as they include the right grapes, but even though they may be expensive they won't have Reserva or Gran Reserva on the labels. The locals sometimes call these "Vinos de Autor", personal expressions of Rioja. 

Finally, I have to pay tribute to our Basque hosts, who clearly felt that English folk, labouring under austerity measures at home, needed fattening up. One day we had a five course lunch followed by a six course dinner. Here is that light lunch, eaten in the stone cellars of the excellent restaurant La Cueva in El Ciego (sadly I didn't take the camera out in the evening!).

First, (left to right), rounds of toast with tomatoes, jamon iberico and cheese; second, a mound of cod and potato; third, a fine piece of hake on Swiss chard; fourth, steak with mushroom sauce;

 and finally, a messy pile of cheesecake like substance, mildly gluey (so I spare you the photo): this last was too much for me!

Wednesday 8th September 2010 17:28pm

WE WON

Last night, at the International Wine Challenge Awards Dinner and Dance, Stone, Vine & Sun received the award for Specialist Merchant of the Year for South Africa.

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.