C is for Christmas (and more Champagne)

If you’ve ever wondered why people wish one another a “merry” Christmas or say this is the season to be jolly, you need look no further than the nearest empty bottle or wine glass. For the last few years in London, I have rarely been known to be sober between my birthday and Christmas. This year, I had hoped that things would be different and to a large extent, they have been.

Climate, the need to drive, the absence of the usual drinking partners and simply circumstances have cut deep into my drinking time but what I have given up in quantity I seem to have made up for in quality and variety. Having had a total of two beers and a vodka from Monday to Thursday, Christmas Eve dawned with the promise of a day of inebriation. And what a day it turned out to be.

For elevenses in the office, we started with a couple of bottles of Piper Heidseck Rose NV which were distinguished by their darker colour than you would expect in most Roses. Usually, this is a tell tale sign that a slug of Pinot has been added rather than a case of leaving the skins in. In this case (and if this was the case), the addition of whatever it was brought along a wealth of fruit flavours - predominantly raspberries - which would otherwise not have been there. Unexpected but not unwelcome.

We rounded off the traditional office drinks with a bottle of Laurent Perrier NV which was a little more biscuity and less floral than expected. The words “heat damage” spring to mind. Perhaps had something to do with the storage in the shop. Then it was off to a client’s Christmas party at a new boutique hotel in Chinatown (well, the fringes of Chinatown anyway).

I walked in an hour late and was handed flute of something - a sip and I take back all the recent good things I’ve said in a previous blog. It is the Moet, is it not? I said. It is, the waiter smiled. Take it away, I said. Certainly, sir - the waiter grimaced.

A trusty colleague came to my rescue with the first of many glasses of Chateau Palmer 1988. It was good but no cigar. The Palmer and a solitary double Corona (Dom Rep from Cuban seed) was my lunch although I managed a glass of Jean Leon of indeterminate vintage (but very good nonetheless) when the Palmer ran out. One for the road, so to speak.

Home and a snooze plus a snack later - I was off down the road armed with a bottle of Gallo Barelli Creek 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon for an all Californian tasting. I have always had my doubts about Gallo but to be fair this prejudice stems from my student days when all I could afford was their cheap and awful stuff. This was much better - blackcurrent, light oak, a touch of tar and tabacco but best of all, a hint of vanilla. Well worth rescuing the last couple of bottles from a bin end sale at Selfridges and at £9, only twice as expensive as the cheapest and most awful stuff Gallo could throw at you. We also had a Freemark Abbey 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon the same evening and this was a denser, more concentrated wine with a bit more sun, possibly better structure and a slightly longer finish which could do with a little more cellaring.

Nothing helps you sleep better than a glass of red wine (or eight) so I woke up refreshed on Christmas Day with nothing as much as a hint of a hangover. Three glasses from three different bottles of Laurent Perrier 1995 from the same case and shipment as my birthday bubbly (previously described and somewhat derided in an earlier blog) in the early afternoon - all were good if slightly less sweet than I know they can be but most refreshing. The same could not be said of the bottle of Hugel 2000 Alsace Riesling we opened towards the end of the party (for the road, you understand). Flat, sour and possessing few redeeming qualities - feed it to the Alsatians, I say.

Having promised to ferry my aged parents and relatives around yesterday evening, I was much more circumspect at Christmas dinner, limiting myself to two tiny tasting portions of dessert wine - an Australian Semillion and a ice Riesling from New Zealand. There was no way I was going to put myself through the possible trauma of being stopped at a road block and being breathalysed in front of my relatives. And failing.

F is for Frascati

I promise I will not make any more bad jokes like these, really. In case you have not worked it out, I don’t really drink Frascati (or Evian for that matter).

About twelve years ago, there were lots of Japanese cartoons which featured cars which turned into robots, people who turned into robots and vice versa. Transformers and DeceptiCons - you get the idea. Well, Frascati is like one of these DeceptiCons of the wine world. A shade slightly darker than straw, it looks like it should taste like one of the oaked Chardonnays from the New World - honeyed, buttery and so on. Or as that weird woman from the BBC’s Food and Wine programme (not Oz Clarke, the other one) calls it “bosomy”.

Magari - if only Frascati were that. No, it taste like a mixture of vinegar, water and cat’s piss (not that I’ve tried the last but if I did, I would not have any problems recognising it - it would be just like Frascati) and nobody other than people who live around Rome ever tries to defend it and the reason for its existence.

My friend Anna who does live in Rome has tried to convince me that it tastes fresh (my milk cartons say that as well) and that served really cold, it makes a passable aperitif. No, apologies but it would take a lot more to convince me on that one - you are still my great friend and if we are to keep up the hitherto accurate claim that we have never shared a dud bottle then we must forgo the Frascati. Ego te absolvo.

I know if you were to think of Italian wines, you would hardly think of whites. It’s not what they serve in Italian restaurants and the Italians themselves seem to prefer to drink red wine with their seafood than risk the whites. However, and you will have to take my word for it - the Italian pinot grigios and chardonnays are by far the best value for money white wines (and surprisingly the most dependable) you could find on the wine list of a pub or wine bar in London unless you happen to like honeyed, buttery and bosomy white wines from the New World.

A word about the Chardonnays from the Veneto region - it is the same stuff that goes into the Prosecco, really and I believe I once heard a story (although I cannot be sure about this) that at Harry’s Bar in Venice, they make the original Bellinis from whizzed up white peach and dry, still Chardonnay which they then top up with the sparkling Prosecco. Be adventurous - go spend £4 (or S$28 in Singapore although there is a sale in a couple of weeks) on a bottle of Ruffino Libaio, a cheap and cheerful Chardonnay - see if you like it. What have you got to lose?

In some ways, it is a bit of a shame that Rome, which has great people, great food and great art, should have lousy wine but I read in Hugh Johnson’s excellent account of viticulture that the Romans (both ancient and modern) were to blame for this (and as you may recall from the excellent Life of Brian - what have the Romans done for us?) . You see, for the longest time, vines were grown, not staked and trained in the ground but up and on top of trees. Like olive trees.

Yep, you heard it right. Up and on - which meant that the vines could not be pruned and therefore improved. Yields were low historically and the quality poor - the winemakers got what juice they could and tried to make wine out of it. It’s not an encouraging story.

What hope I have in the region and its wine industry lies in the fact that not so long ago (say 50 years), Tuscany was in exactly the same situation. Chianti was what you tried to flog off to unsuspecting tourists (there is still some pretty dire wine in Tuscany). Then some money added to desperation as well as a stroke of luck led to the development of the Super Tuscan IGTs and the subsequent dragging up effect on the rest of the Chianti industry.

One can only hope that investment in new techniques and who knows, even new varietals would improve the wine around Rome. After all, I will always maintain my heart lies in Rome and the Eternal City will forever be my spiritual home.

Senatus et Populous Qua Romanus.

E is for Evian

Just joking. This alphabet is actually dedicated to everyday drinking wines. Not that I drink wine every day any more but if it is not any special occasion but the still pleasant ritual of opening a bottle is called for, these days the bottle of choice would be a Chilean red. So E is also for Errazuriz.

Cheap Chilean wines tend to be dominated by the large agro producers and if you live in London, you will always find something for less than a fiver at your local off licence or in the supermarkets. Concho y Toro, Luis Felipe and other Spanish sounding names which will be a notch above the £2.99 supermarket own brand Cab Sauv and Chardonnays. Avoid them and go for the slightly more expensive (usually a few pence more) supermarket own brand “premium” wines.

For the longest time, the Maglieri vineyard in McLaren Vale used to supply Tesco’s finest South Australian Shiraz. It’s not a big vineyard so it must be the same grapes as the ones which won the Melbourne gold medal three years in a row and at about £4 less. I know they have stopped this for about a year now but a quick glance at the Tesco website (incidentally Tesco now sells wills and conveyancing kits online) shows that BRL (which owns Hardy’s) now does all their Australian wines and Berberana continues to do their Spanish stuff.

In Singapore, the situation tends to be a little different and given that tax on alcohol is by volume rather than ad valorem, the whole cost benefit analysis takes on a slightly unfamiliar complexion. The entry level Errazuriz Cab Sauv or Merlot usually retails for about S$28 dollars and the cheapest I have ever paid for it is about S$23 (about £7). One rung up the Chilean ladder, the cheapest I have ever paid for a bottle of Montes Alpha in Singapore is S$29 (about £9). So at that level, the availability at cost becomes the prime factor in determining what I buy and what I end up drinking. Montes Alpha every time if I can find it at that price.

As a general rule, I tend not to spend the extra $15 to get the Max Reserva range of the Errazuriz wines as I’ve usually found the money rarely guarantees anything other than increased oak. It’s a bit like putting Winnie the Pooh in a tiger suit and pretending he is really Tigger. If you look beyond the stripes and bounce in the American oak, there’s still a fat, lazy and slightly mournful wine with traces of hunny around the edges. I would much rather appreciate a budget Chilean wine for what it is - fruity, New World and cheap.

Italian wine making follows slightly different lines. There is a well-established even entrenched pecking order run along regional and varietal considerations which is not entirely bad. So in the Piedmont, the noble Nebbiolo grape is reserved for the Barolos and for everyday drinking, the Barberas from Asti and Alba are thought to be good enough - although given a chance, I would still think a top notch Bricco dell’Ucellone would knock the socks off a cheap Barolo.

In the same way, the best Sangiovese grapes go into the Brunellos while the Chianti wines are made from the poorer cousins. The best value wines from Tuscany are the so-called “failed Super Tuscan experiments” like the Frescobaldi Cabernet clones which get bulked up by surplus Sangiovese and turned into a generic wine marketed as Col di Sasso (vintage not important) and rather good value at $25-$29 in Singapore.

Up in the Veneto region, the everyday wine is the Valpolicella and I must admit I am not a big fan. Dried in racks though, the raisins produce the powerful and sublime Amarones and Recioltos for those special occasions and I find these wines travel a lot better as well. Not cheap nor easy to find in Singapore.

Carrefour is not my favourite place by any means but they do sell cheap wines by Singapore standards. The cheapest Penfolds, a Rawsons Retreat Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz - vintage not really relevant again, could go for as little as $18. Up one notch, the cheaper “bin numbers” such as 2, 389 and 18 have been offered at about $28 in recent months and are arguably more interesting than the Chileans at about the same price.

Other than the rest of the Australians at about the same price, Carrefour also sells mass market reds and whites from New Zealand, America and South Africa for slightly more and slightly less money. I have yet to find anything of value or of interest in these categories as yet.

The real value in Carrefour lies with the lesser known French wines which they vacuum up in bulk and send all over the world. Especially the poorer vintages. I have previously written about the Les Gondats du Marquis de Terme 2001 at $33 at a recent sale. In the same vein, you can get the Chateau de Mallaret 1999 at $35 which is about the same as in Paris and slightly less than in London. There are countless more cru bourgeois at these prices.

So be adventurous and drink lots of different wines at these prices. They're cheap. You'll only have a hangover to contend with - no hole in the pocket. Be brave but behave - and don't make any jokes about turning water into wine. I've done that in another blog already. So there.

D is for daffodils

Words don’t have meanings, people have meanings and ascribe words to them. Chomsky was probably not trying to write an early version of the Wine Buyer’s Guide but the eternal problem of describing a taste has always been with us, stays with us and will be for ever more.

Not only do different people find and taste different things in the same wine - everyone will have different words to describe even similar tastes. I said damson, dandelions and daffodils to a colleague the other day and she stared at me as if I was writing a drop intro for a wine column in Swahili for the local paper in Botswana.

Not that it really matters as long as you enjoy the wine. The wine week started off on Wednesday with a small surprise. Rory, who was in town for a brief work visit, invited me to mini college reunion and while we were waiting for Ken to arrive from the airport, we decided to polish off the best part of a bottle of (what else) champagne. We decided to take our chances and asked with some trembling for “house”. As I might have feared, a bottle of Moet NV was produced - my fears, however, were unfounded. Slightly less brut than might have been expected (even a touch honeyed, perchance), it was perfectly chilled and went down very well. Merci, Rory.

On Thursday, the “discovery” of the evening was a relatively young Chilean red - a Casa Lapostelle 1999. A good scent of violets on the nose (I got another blank stare - if you say so, they said) and hints of cassis and red cherry on the palate. Best of all, it was pleasantly under-oaked. Now there’s a surprise given the current trend in that part of South America to add oak by any means and at any cost to the integrity of the wine.

Friday was my first Christmas party in the new job and my first as Chief Entertainment Officer. With Enoch as my deputy, expectation on the wines to be served were high but more so with my harebrained scheme to put a substantial chunk of the budget into the lucky draw. Still the Maxwell Chardonnay 1999 and Mount Riley Merlot 2001 were nothing if not good value, even if I say so myself. The greater bit of fun was actually buying wines for our personal account (while we there, we might as well save ourselves another trip).

While Enoch splurged, I had to content myself with some real bargains - Pio Cesare Barbera d’Alba 2000, Pio Cesare Dolcetto d’Alba 2002 and Michele Chiarlo Barbaresco 1997 all at about S$40. That’s cheaper than London, Rome or New York. Anyway back to Friday, for the Nijikai (literally, second course in Japanese) I brought along a Chateau Prieurie Lichine 1997 which Enoch followed with a Majella Shiraz 1999 and to finish with, a Cos d’Estournel 1994.

The 97 Prieurie Lichine was always going to be a bit of a gamble given that it is the only one from 1994-2000 that Parker did not review and for good reason. Flat and frankly, listless - I’ve got a few more to get rid off. Any takers? The Cos d’Estournel 1994 was pretty much on the mark at its price - smooth and sophisticated but pricey. My personal favourite from the evening was the Majella even though I am not always partial to Shiraz in most forms. Strong fruit, round tannins and a medium finish - good value as well.

I could even have sworn there were daffodils in the nose.

C is for Champagne (naturally)

There are lots of detractors out there who say that champagne without the fizz is just a poor white wine. Sour grapes, I say. Is curry without the spice boiled meat? Is a blue box without a white ribbon Tiffany's? Where is the comparison? It’s not even a case of apples and oranges (not that either fruit gets involved in any event) and leave Hattori Hanzo out of it. Completely.

The point about champagne is that it makes you slightly dizzy very quickly and you can drink quite a lot of it without falling over. My record still stands at 22 glasses or 4 bottles plus 2 glasses set at last year’s Linklaters annual party at Claridges. November 2003. I’m in no mood to break that record any time soon.

My first bottle of champagne was a vintage Dom Perignon from the mid-1980’s - I cannot remember the year but our favourite chef (then still at cooking school) had a barbecue by the beach and I was instructed to grab a bottle (any bottle) from her fridge. By the time we realised my mistake, the fizz had been poured into paper cups. C’est la eau de vie.

My next bottle was in some ways more memorable. I was writing freelance for a lifestyle magazine and was asked to preview a caviar festival. The chef asked me if I thought the oscetra would go with Krug and I had to say I’d never had the two together (actually, I’d not had either but I didn’t want to sound like the spotted youth that I was). He demanded a bottle be brought up for me immediately and I have been in love with that particular amber nectar ever since.

You might think things would have gone downhill since but that has certainly not been the case - thanks in large to David and Hallie (as well as their then four-year old daughter), I have learnt a few important lessons when it comes to the fizzy stuff. One, that price is not necessarily a guarantee of quality. Two, small bubbles good, big bubbles bad. Three, the best champagne are the ones that they keep for drinking locally.

In practical terms, this means that if prices are about the same, the lesser known stuff will always be better provided you know what you are buying. So take the Billecart-Salmon or the Pol Roger instead of the Veuve Cliquot and never, ever get Moet et Chandon. Exceptions to the rule (there always are a few) are the Laurent Perrier and I’ve always been partial to a flute of Bollinger (especially the RD).

Grapes. There are three - the Chardonnay, the Pinot Noir and the Pinot Meunier. Basic rule is that Chardonnay gives you flowers like primroses, violets and dandelions in the nose and a light citrus note on the palate. Pinot gives you butter cookies on the nose (remember Kjeldsens’ butter cookies in the blue tins?) and tastes like lightly toasted almond oatcakes with fizz (if you can imagine that). Unless you buy a Blanc de Blanc (in which case it’s pure Chardonnay) or a Blanc de Noir (when it will be pure Pinot), most champagnes will contain all three grapes in varying proportions.

The French have a saying - that there are no good wines or vintages just good bottles of wine from a vintage. This is more true of champagne compared with any other wine. Think of each bottle of champagne as a microbrewery in its own right. Each bottle has to be turned, sugar has to be added and finally, the plug of yeast sediment has to be disgorged. Mechanisation has made the process much more consistent and constant but this still produces greater variation than stuff simply tapped from a cask and bottled.

I’ve often been asked if sparkling wines which cannot be called champagne are any good. A few years ago, I would have said that between a £9 Mumm Cuvee Napa from California and a £14 supermarket own brand, save the £5 and buy some smoked salmon. In fact, I’ve had some Roederer Estate from Napa which smells like Crystal, tastes like Crystal, even feels like Crystal - and I paid $35 in a restaurant for it. Now, prices have bounced all over the place and I have paid as little as £13 for Laurent Perrier - also, the Tesco own brand stuff is very, very good at £12.

At the other end of the market, there simply isn’t anything you can compare with, say the latest of the greatest I have tasted, a Taittanger Comtes des Champagne 1996 (courtesy of the friendly London office of an American law firm). Past triumphs have included gems from Roederer and LP from the very, very, very good 1990 vintage (see earlier blog on birthday wines). You would not want to drink anything else.

B is also for Brunello

There are two things everyone tell you about Brunello - that it comes from a hilltop town in Tuscany called Montalcino and secondly, that it takes an eternity to open up so let breathe an hour or two before even attempting to drink it.

More of the second later but first, another road trip story. Anth and I were sharing a flat when we first started work and in the summer of 1992, we were both feeling a little out of sorts so we decided to take ourselves to Italy for some sun, salami and signorinas. We flew into Pisa, got a train to Florence and then hired a car to drive around the hills near Siena.

Now I don’t know if you are aware but I used to be the worst driver in Europe and things got so hairy on the Strada Statiale between Siena and San Gimingano that I was ordered out of the driver’s seat at the next hilltop village. We left the Fiat Cinquecento halfway up the hill and set off on foot to the top of the hill to look for an espresso. When we got there, the only place which was open was a sleepy little enoteca - I cannot remember if we bought a bottle of water or were given some but in any event, we felt like we had to buy some wine so we lugged a couple of bottles of something il padrone recommended down the hill. Muttering all the while we had probably been fleeced - who would pay £10 for a bottle of local plonk? Thus we were introduced to the “monster” vintage of the Brunello di Montalcino 1990 (present value between £50 - £80 depending on the vineyard it comes from).

Since that happy accident (did I say accident? For the record, there was barely a scratch on the car and in any event, nobody saw what I’d done to the car except Anth) I’ve had many, many happy hours in the company of a few bottles of Brunello. One of the first drinking expeditions Anna and I undertook in Rome ended with an exquisite bottle of Castello Banfi Brunello di Montalcino 1997 at the aptly named Cul de Sac wine bar off the Piazza Pasquino. Then there were the three nights before Anth’s wedding when we polished off a bottle of Fattoria Barbi Brunello di Montalcino 1995 each night (in addition to the bottles of Mumm champagne which seemed to appear every evening as soon as the sun set). Happy days.

From a viticultural perspective, the grape which goes into the Brunello is merely a local variant (and not very different) of the sangiovese which goes into your bog standard Chianti. The word sangiovese comes from “sanguis” and “Jovis” which I guess approximates to the blood of Jupiter (the Catholics amongst the readers will not fail to notice the Tran-substantial connotations albeit in a pre-Christian context and to suggest that the blood of a Roman god could exist in bottled form might seem at the very least blasphemous - yum!).

The nose from after about an hour of aeration is not unlike a walk in the woods on a dewy morning - leaves, earth and a whiff of rotting wood. As the morning sun breaks through the mists, tiny flowers open and the scent of berries and fruits ripening on the trees in the orchards (principally apples and pears) are carried by the rising breeze. A first mouthful and here is the first sign if the wine has not had enough air - if it is sour, leave it in the glass for another 20 minutes.

The acidity is also the key to the complexity of the structure and the reason for its longevity in the bottle. Tar, tobacco, cedar and sandal wood are all present in varying quantities and perhaps the merest hint of vanilla - no two bottles ever seems to be the same. There is also fruit aplenty - thick, jammy stuff which will only come through with airing. The finish tends to directly proportional to the development tannins and it is here that perhaps I have always paid the price for taking my bottles out of the cellar (wine fridge actually) too early.

Regrets, sure I’ve had a few - as the Brunellos were something I encountered (relatively) in my youth and hence a wine discovered in poverty, I have always been cautious and bought the massed produced stuff first from financial constraints, then out of insecurity and now out of habit. Perhaps the time has come to revisit Tuscany and experiment. Any takers?

B is for birthdays

The bad thing about having a birthday at the end of the year is always running a risk that one gets one present for both Christmas and the birthday. But as one gets older, good thing about having a birthday at the end of the year is that one could almost be a full year younger than everyone else. The view from the bottom of a wine glass is, as always, a little different.

I have two uncles who have birthdays very close to mine (one on the same day and the other the day before) and as each of them used to live with us for a time before they got married, we used to celebrate our birthdays together. When times were good, we would go to a cheap steak house and order vulcanised pieces of meat served with tinned peas and frozen chips with ice cream to follow (don’t get me wrong - those were some of my happiest childhood memories).

The real trouble always started when the waiter suggested some wine and as it was invariably a special occasion, we would always have a few glasses of the "promotional" wine which, sadly, due to the time of the year, would invariably turn out the be the very nouveau Beaujolais and of which I would be allowed a few sips. Not only has this experience, of half fermented juice mixed with leaves, twigs and trodden upon by the bare feet of French peasants, put me off the Gamay grape for life and for a good few years, I suffered under the inexplicable delusion that I didn’t actually like wine.

The rather more recent tradition of my birthday wines started about four years ago. Rather unexpectedly, I had found myself single again that year - David and Hallie were determined that I should not spend my birthday on my own and kindly took me along to a dinner they had been invited to. It was the night before Ritu sold her interest in our (then) favourite Indian restaurant north of Delhi and a full celebration was in full swing. Apart from the bizarre experience of being seated next to Mrs David Dimbleby and trying to eat tandoori crab without using fingers, a special birthday dessert was concocted for me, especially - one thirds each of kulfi, ras malai and fresh fruit with a sparkler on top. It was brilliant.

My one and only regret from that evening was that as I had to drive home (I was living in Maida Vale then), I had to limit myself to half a glass each of the Masi Amarone 95 (the Vaio Armaron not the cheaper Costasera) and the 91 Crystal. The very next year, I decided to make amends and for my birthday, I took the lovely Fiona to lunch at the same restaurant and afterwards, shared a bottle of the cheaper but most excellent Masi Amarone Costasera 1997 (what a year it was for Italian wines!) and followed that up with bottles of Roederer 90, Laurent Perrier Grand Siecle 90 and Billecart-Salmon 91. Last year, celebrations were split between London and Rome (grazie Anna) and we started with the much honeyed Laurent Perrier 95 in London and followed up with an exquisite Tignanello 99 in Rome.

This year, we started with three bottles of the Laurent Perrier 95 (one of which seemed to have travelled somewhat poorly) and went on to a Les Gondats Marquis du Terme 01, a Masi Amarone Costasera 99 before ending up with a Frescobaldi Nippozano 2000 (previously reviewed in the main blog). The Les Gondats was and remains remarkably good value with more fruit than one should expect from a second wine from a fourth growth Bordeaux estate. Reasonable finish and suppleness also makes this Margaux cheap, cheap, good, good and plenty, plenty value for money in a year which will not go down as a stellar year by any measure. The Amarone was described as “smelling of salted preserved vegetables” and really needs more time in my wine fridge so I’m looking forward to next year.

Next year, well - apart from the Amarone we could all look forward to, I had been given a bottle of Tignanello 2000 as a leaving present this summer and if the alignment of the stars are correct, we shall open that on the day (or evening, even). Only remains to be seen who amongst us all will be there to partake in the wine and I wouldn’t mind some vulcanised pieces of meat served with tinned peas and frozen chips with ice cream to follow either.

A is for Alsace

You really cannot please all the people all of the time - no sooner had I decided to remove all traces of wine (stains included) from the other blog that I started receiving plaintive pinings for the return of the booze to those pages. No, the wine has not returned, instead it has been moved here in this darkened, cooled and humidity-controlled cellar construct within cyberspace.

As always, a word about the title - I have told this story so many times I cannot remember exactly what happened (the story gets better every time I tell it). On the night before my graduation, I staggered down the road past The Pickerel where I bumped into the incoming Attorney General and he asked after the general state of my well-being with the words “Are you drunk again?” I barely made it to the end of the road whereupon I met the outgoing Attorney General who also greeted me with the question “Are you drunk again?”

At that very moment, I realised two things - first, it was probably pointless to try to qualify as a lawyer in Singapore with the reputation (which, if it had not been entirely correct at the time of asking, has managed to acquire an increasing patina of veracity with each passing year) that I had managed to acquire in the space of two minutes and seconldy, that I was destined to write something - a story, a poem, a song, a blog even with The Question (in Latin) as its title.

So here we are.

Since last weekend, the only wine (note wine as opposed to any alcoholic refreshment) I’ve had was a bottle of Domaine Materne-Haegelin Riesling Bollenberg 2002 last night. Those of you who drink with me will know I rarely drink anything white unless it has bubbles in it but those of you (the few) who drink white wine with me will also know that my preferred whites are Pouilly Fume from the Loire, Pinot Grigio from the Veneto and Gewurztraminer from the Alsace (God, I hate the oaked Chardonnays they serve in London pubs).

In a slightly bizarre coincidence, my introduction to Alsace took place on yet another unscheduled pitstop on a road trip (see my later post on Brunello di Montalcino). I was on the autobahn enroute to the Italian Dolomites with family friends on a skiing holiday when the paterfamilias suddenly asked if they had ordered some wine from the guy in Alsace earlier that autumn - on being assured that they had, he decided to take a six hour detour to pick up the wine (it was four cases of Rolly Gassmann Gewurztraminer 1988) from Pierre himself so we would have enough to drink in our rented farmhouse in Belluno. It remains my preferred accompaniment to a seared slab of foie gras on a bed of caramelised apples flamed with calvados.

After an almost criminal absence of more than twelve years, I was recently (well, quite recently - last year) reacquainted with a Rolly Gassmann Gewurztraminer (1996 this time around) at a dinner at Somerset House - served with, yes you guessed it, the foie gras (pate, oh well).

Taking the region as a whole, my impression has always been a straight comparison between the big cooperatives like Trimbach and Hugel which make the mass produced slightly cheaper stuff versus the smaller but pricier producers like Sylvie Spielman and Rolly Gassman. A notable exception is Zind-Humbrecht which seems to produce volume at high prices. Grape varietals are similar to the German rieslings, muscats and pinot gris although the Alsace equivalents tends to towards the more aromatic and less sweet if a comparison has to be made.

Anyroads, back to the Materne-Haegelin Riesling last night - on the nose, it was easy - almost a breeze of zesty citrus and light spring flowers like daffodils and chrysanthemum (I bet you’ll never find the latter description in any tasting notes - so folks, you read it here first). None of the petrol fumes as my drinking companion feared although there is a reason why most Alsatian wines are known for their aromatics.

The bottle was too warm to begin with but iced for about ten minutes, it hardened perceptibly with the mineral slightly flinty undernotes coming through the disappearing acidity. It was a little light on structure although the citrus notes held well before the air did its job and flattened it just inside an hour and a bit.

Oh and by the way, I never did get round to requalifying as a lawyer in Singapore.