New wine for old

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J is for Japan (2)

One of the surprises on my recent trip to Japan (and there were many) was to have a copy of the Financial Times shoved under the door of my hotel room in Tokyo on a Saturday morning. As far as I could remember, I didn't ask for the FT nor do I recall having been given the choice. I have never been offered the FT in any hotel in Japan. It was always the Japan Times or the Yoimuri or more likely, the Nihon Kezai Shimbun in Japanese. So, a pleasant surprise.

The best bit about getting the FT on a Saturday anywhere in the world, let alone Japan, is of course Jancis Robinson's weekly wine column. JR is probably one of my favourite writers on wine - for an MW, she manages to maintain an engaging tone and she does not shove her opinions down anyone's wine glass - although she did call one particular vintage "execrable". In the column that week, an update on non-vintage champagne.

First the bad news, prices have gone up in the UK. I did my own check on this - just surfing the websites of the places where I used to buy my stock from last week and it is true that prices have gone up by a whopping 25-30% for the cheaper NV stuff like Canard-Duchene and Heidseck. Where one used to be able to buy these in bulk at about £10.99, they are now £14.99 or more. The big commercial brands which used to cost just north of £20 have also raised their prices by about 20%. London must be one of the most expensive places in the world to drink champagne - that's why I've decided not to live in London.

Next the no news - JR reckons that it is cheaper and better to buy NV champagne from small makers dotted around Rheims, Epernay and especially Ay. I could have told you that as well except most of us are highly unlikely to be triapsing down the M20 then onto the Chunnel rail link every other weekend in search of cheap fizz. Or are we? I don't speak French and I would not trust myself on these winding French roads.

Finally the good news, JR does a sidebar in which she lists her favourite cheap NV fizzies. It is very reassuring to know that she prefers the more rounded style of champagne preferred by the English. The French like their fizz a little livelier and slightly on the raw side. So the usual Anglicised suspects are all there including my favourites like Billecart Salmon, Louis Roederer, Laurent Perrier and Pol Roger. Remarkable absentees include Veuve Cliquot, Taittanger and Moet et Chandon. Rightly so. There were also a load of stuff which frankly I would not have a clue about or where to buy them from. Oh well, so much fizz and so little time.

One of the little surpises was also that she rated the Ruinart NV above the Billecart Salmon which I am very surprised at - I have only had the NV of the Ruinart once and didn't think much of it so this goes straight to my "to do" list. The only other bit of good news to report this week is that Carrefour in Singapore is selling the Laurent Perrier Rose for $88 (that's less than £30) so I'll throw out some files in my office and clear some space for my next purchase.

In the midst of all this, you must be wondering how low and how quickly we have sunk - extolling the virtues of NV fizz when scarcely a year ago, we were debating the relative merits of the 1995 vintage as compared with the 1996 vintage. None of which can raise a candle to the 1990, of course. Truth is that it is quite difficult to find good fizz in Singapore even if one were prepared to pay the premium and certainly storage conditions are highly suspect although fizz probably fares better then say a delicate Burgundy. So if you are flying out to see me, please stop by the BBR concession in Heathrow Terminal 3, say hello to my friend Gavin and bring me a bottle of Billecart 96.

It's life, Captain, but not as we know it.

J is for Japan

The omens did not bode well for the trip to Kyoto and Tokyo last week - for although the drinks menu on the plane promised my much beloved Frescobaldi Nippozano 2000, they did not carry it and I had to make do with a glass of Charles Heidseck 1995 (or was it three?). The steward was rather embarrassed and gave us a bottle of some forgettable St. Estephe Cru Bourgeois to take off the plane (could have been the Chateau Segur de Cabanac 2002 but I forget) - as it turned out, it was the last alcohol I was to have for the next five days.

I was so parched by the time I got to Tokyo I was accepting beer, unknown Chilean white wine as well as 10 year old Macallan single malt in the course of the evening - don't ask.

That was Thursday and by Friday, things had taken a turn for the better. The evening began at the swish new faux Wall Street business district in Marunouchi and as chance would have it, the first two bars we walked into were full and we were compelled to take refuge at the newly opened Les Caves Taillevent. I chose a bottle of Jean Pabiot Pouilly Fume 2002 to start with while my new friend Mark G (not to be confused with my old friend Mark H) chose to start with a Jean Durup Chablis 2002.

I have long been a fan of Jean P's daughter Dominique who produces a very classic Loire Pouilly Fume from her own 20 hectares but the father certainly does not come off worse in comparison with a complex, fairly acidic, well-structured white (and I don't drink much white which is not sparkling) which manages to coax a sweetness from the lingering finish. Think mango, papaya and sweet pineapple floating on a mouthful of lemon and lime. Sublime, even. And yes - to the ladies who enquired, it was a Sauvignon Blanc. I think we succeeded in clearing the entire stock of JP's Pouilly Fume in Taillevent by the time we left that night.

Saturday night and I was persuaded to cook in Cara and Mark H's kitchen (see other blog) - but first a trip to Mark H's favourite Yamaya Wine Store in Akasaka where we left with among other things, a bottle each of Chateau Phelan Segur 1999 and Chateau Lefaurie Peyraguey 1996.

The Phelan Segur turned out not to be quite ready to drink and is unlikely to be for at least another two years by which time it should be an interesting proposition. Like a feisty young woman, it was a little too thin, a little too wild and a little unripe but should calm down and mellow if left pretty much alone for some time. So think not about what it is but rather what it could become. Well worth waiting for.

On the other hand, the Chateau Lefaurie Peyraguey 1996 was at the height of its powers - golden, honeyed with a touch of slight bitter woodiness which I think is the mark of a great Sauternes. It is such a shame that it is not considered to be in the same league as the Y'quem, Suideraut or the Rieussec but I have had the 1996 of the last two and I honestly do not think it any less than either of those. So at roughly 20 per cent. cheaper, this is excellent value.

And so the week ended pretty much as it had begun - with a couple of glasses of Charles Heidseck 1995 on the plane and still no sign of of the Frescobaldi Nippozano.

I is for Interlude(2)

Chinese New Year is not normally associated with drinking in the same way as perhaps Christmas might be - although that never stopped the local law enforcement agencies from turning out in the hope of snaring a drink driver or two. Well, quotas to upkeep and miles to patrol before the boys in blue can sleep.

So, the first bottle to be consumed in the new Chinese year was a 2002 Planeta Burdese. I am a big fan of this family-run winery from Sicily - their whites are extremely good and their basic red, the La Segreta Rosso, is probably one of the best wines you could buy for less than £8 in London. The Burdese is one of their higher-end wines based on a Bordeaux blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Cabernet Franc.

Frankly, it doesn't work. Too much leather and spice masking the fruit. Tannins a little too rough. Perhaps it needs a little more cellaring - after all, this has emerged from the oak less than two years ago. Perhaps the new French oak barrels were a little too raw or perhaps, the Sicilian summers were a little too hot for two cooler climate varietals. It might even be, perhaps, that I served it at a higher than optimum temperature.

The question which remains is why we should pay between two to three times more than their very good La Segreta Rosso for what is, let's admit this, yet another failed IGT experiment. Now there is hope for the Burdese as the plantings acclimatise to the hot summers and in the best case scenario could end up like the Mas de Daumas Gassac in the Languedoc which produces great wine probably two out of ten years from their Bordeaux blends although I suspect the summers in the South of France are still a touch cooler than the Sicilian ones.

Bottom line? I would stick with the local grape, in this case the Nero d'Avola, which is probably more resiliant and therefore more reliable. Not to mention better value for money.

Now for the good news. Which comes from a rather unexpected source. I don't drink white wine very often and I write about it even more infrequently. I don't like Cloudy Bay - I think it overpriced and oversold. However, when one stumbles across a Sauvignon Blanc from up the road in Marlborough which espouses all of the cardinal virtues (cheap cheap, good good, plenty plenty), it's worth a couple of paragraphs in a blog.

For years, my sole comment on Cloudy Bay has been - buy the Villa Maria Reserve Sauvignon Blanc at about a quarter of the price. It's from just up the road and more than half as good. Now I have something else to say - the Gravitas Sauvignon Blanc (not to be confused with the Australian Veritas) is probably even better than the Villa Maria and in Singapore at least even cheaper.

On the nose, it has more of a floral bouquet - the Villa Maria can be a little flat. It combines more citrus tones on the palate against, a little improbably, lower acidity and expresses a little more in the minerals department. Pricewise - in London, it costs about £15 against £10 for the Villa Maria Reserve but in Singapore, at case prices - it's $20 against $28.

Moral of the story this Chinese New Year? I fully agree with the sentiment that if you are going to destroy your liver, do it with good wine rather than cheap beer or nasty spirits. The only thing I would add is that price is not always a reliable indicator of quality. Chin chin!

I is for Interlude

Now, I am not a slavish acolyte of Robert Parker (unlike most of the wine merchants in Singapore) nor am I in the habit the extolling the virtues of the highest rated (by Parker) bottle of wine in my wine fridge (which would be vulgar).

What I am though is a complete idiot when it comes to a bargain and I would only shop twice a year in London (Christmas and summer sales - there are friends of mine in London whom I see only at Selfridges during the sales), cut coupons from newspapers if I had the time and drive 10 miles to save 20 cents. You know what I mean.

What I like even more than a bargain is to buy something at what I thought was the normal price and then come home to find I’d bought a complete bargain. A few months ago, I went over to Enoch’s (see my earlier blog) and we had an excellent bottle of Kilikanoon Oracle Shiraz 2001 which I enjoyed and which was rated 95 points by Parker.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to go in to work on a public holiday and bumped into a similarly unfortunate colleague. He told me one of the wine shops in the mall downstairs was having a relocation sale and while he had no space in his fridge, he thought I should go have a look. I did and bought a few bottles of Mclaren Vale cabernet sauvignon (as well as something else which I will mention later) at a small discount but spotted a single bottle of Kilikanoon Oracle Shiraz 2002 left on a shelf.

Now as you well know I am not a big fan of Australian Shiraz and if you believe James Halliday, 2002 in general was not as good a year for Australian wines compared with the previous year. Still the bottle was going at a 15% discount and you know me and bargain. Off the shelf it went and out came the credit card.

I was surfing the Net yesterday to have a quick look at something else I bought at the sale (a cheap Australian Shiraz from Brokenwood, not the Graveyard but the 2001 South Australian varietal blend - I know, I know, I don’t like Australian Shiraz but it was a sale and I was being stupid) before taking it with me to dinner.

Imagine when I read this about my other purchase:

“Equally profound is the 2001 Shiraz Oracle (95 points), one of the flagship wines of Kilikanoon. From low yielding 40-year-old vines, produced in open top fermenters, and aged 24 months in 50% new French oak casks, there are 1000 cases of this spectacular Shiraz. A dense purple color is accompanied by a sumptuous perfume of crème de cassis, blackberry liqueur, scorched earth, smoke, graphite, and espresso. There is tremendous density, remarkable full-bodied power, good underlying acidity, and a big, fleshy full-throttle finish with fine acidity as well as sweet tannin. While still young, it should age for 10-15 years. Amazingly, the 2002 Shiraz Oracle (96 points) is slightly better. Boasting extraordinary intensity to its graceful, blackberry, coffee and roasted meat characteristics, this unctuously-textured, seamlessly built, massive Shiraz possesses terrific purity, a multi-layered texture, and a long, heady finish. The alcohol, level must be between 14-15%. The tannin is covered by considerable glycerin, so this wine can be drunk now, and will keep for 12-16+ years.”

How do I feel about having 96 point wine in my fridge? Certainly it is a bit of a jump - I think I have a couple of 90 pointers which are the next highest rated wines in there, including a single bottle of Antinori Tignanello 2000. And I am quite sure the Oracle 2002 will not be the bottle of wine that I would most look forward to drinking - I can think of at least half a dozen bottles in there I would probably classify as “more eagerly awaited”.

Like the Michele Chiarlo Barbaresco 1997, the Masi Recioloto 1998, the Bricco dell’Ucellone 2002, the aforementioned Tignanello or even the half a dozen bottles of La Mora Barolo 1998 which I bought cheap and intend to age for a long time before drinking.

Still Parker is Parker and a 96 pointer is a 96 point wine, after all. At 15% discount, which works out at S$55 (about £18), I would buy a wine like that again and again. And again. Every day.

I is for Italy

I have always been fascinated by the literal in Islamic art, architecture and design. The Koran says you cannot have an image of a living thing so you plaster the insides of your gilded domes with birds and beasts which do not exist in nature. In the same way, the Koran says there are four rivers flowing out of Paradise, one each of water, wine, milk and honey. So Islamic garden designers endow their gardens with four fountains to express this idea.

I know which fountain I want to drink out of.

Which is a rather tortured way of getting to the four “founts” of Italian winemaking. Piemonte in the North, Tuscany in the centre, Veneto in the East and well, bits of the South in, er, the South. But first, as they say in the Eucharistic Mass, a summary of the law.

Italian wine laws, like all Italian laws, do not make sense. The average European country has about 15,00 laws to carry the average European citizen from cradle to grave. Italy has 150,000 laws - because they don’t repeal any laws. Go figure.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the Italians thought it would be a good idea to copy the French wine laws. So they created the Denominazione di Origine Controllata or DOC classification which, surprise surprise, was based on the French AOC or Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée system. What the Italians did not realise was that the AOC system was designed to further protect the status and therefore the prices of the well-established system of viticulture in the walled chateaux of Bordeaux and the cloistered clos of Burgundy.

By way of historical comparison, when Colonel Palmer (as he then was) bought the Chateau d’Gasq in 1814, Italian winemaking was a bunch of peasants running around stomping on grapes. In 1855, when the canny growers in the Medoc pressed and succeeded in getting their wines classified into crus or growths, Italian winemaking was a bunch of peasants running around stomping on grapes. In 1930, when the French introduced their AOC system, you know the drill by now. Suffice it to say, that between 1930 and the late 1950’s when the Italians brought out their DOC, things had not changed very much.

The DOC system, like the AOC, is based on geography. In Italy, this had two profound consequences, if you mixed your grapes from outside your area, your wines could not be DOC. Perversely, wines from single small holdings were, by definition, DOC regardless of quality. The Italians quickly tried to address the latter problem by introducing an upper tier called the Denominazione di Origine Controllata et Garantita or DOCG which supposedly came with some guarantee of a certain degree of quality.

This still failed to address the first and somewhat more serious problem. By not complying with the DOC or DOCG rules, some of Italy’s best wines were relegated to Vina da Tavola or VDT status. So at the beginning of the 1970’s, in keeping with spirit of reconciliation evidenced by the Second Vatican Council, the Italians drew on their tax laws and came up with a fudge. They invented a new qualification called the Indicazione Geografica Tipica or IGT which roughly translates into “wine indicative of a typical region” and which roughly corresponds to France's Vin de Pays category. Fudge, fudge.

Finally, in 1992, the DOC and DOCG classifications were relaxed in an attempt to bring the Super Tuscans (see my earlier blog) which contained non-indigenous grape varieties (horrors) such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot within the fold of the upper tier. This has not been a resounding success. Just remember this simple axiom - DOCG is not a guarantee of quality.

Well, so much for the law (nay, but we uphold the law). I noticed I have not mentioned a single indigenous grape variety, nor a single producer much less a single vintage or the time I was bouncing off each of the fountains on the Via delle Quattro Fontana (but that’s another story).

Tough, you’ll just have to wait for the next update.

H is for Haut Brion

On 10th April, 1663, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary: "to the Royal Oak Taverne...And here drank a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, tha hath a good and most perticular taste that I never met with."

Now I have a somewhat tenuous association with Samuel Pepys and his diary. We were at the same college albeit at very different times. I think I might have thrown up outside the door to the Pepys Library but worst of all, I could have ruined the original diaries (a national treasure no less) by flooding the bathroom above the library had I not remembered in the nick of time and gone back to turn off the shower.

The wine which Pepys was referring to is of course the first growth Chateau Haut Brion and while one could only guess if the 1661 or 1662 vintage which Pepys had was any good, Haut Brion has a special place in my heart and my liver. You might find it hard to believe it was the first first growth I’ve ever tasted and it was less than five years ago. You never forget your first time.

This was sometime in early 2000. Not far from the site of the Royal Oak Taverne which was located in Lombard Street and served Londoners as a tavern until 1780, my least favourite American lawyer from my favourite American law firm invited me to dinner. I think the occasion was some partner or other visiting London. He ordered the most expensive wine on the list. I swirled, inhaled and gargled.

“1995”, I said as I swallowed. Jaws fell and cutlery clattered onto the table.

“You read the label!” my host declared.

I shook my head and it was true. I said no more on the subject. Everyone was dead impressed and I was not going to give myself away. I could do this for a living I thought and the rest, as they say, is history.

What I had not told anybody at that table was that I had the same wine at the same restaurant the day before with some recruitment agents who were trying to get some work from us. What the lawyers don’t know can’t hurt them and I will say this just one more time. You never forget your first time.

So I had two bottles of the ‘95 in consecutive days and too much of a good thing is wonderful. Parker gave it 96 points but what I like about it is the understated elegance of the wine. If that wine could speak, it would have been eloquent, well-spoken, seductive even. I had not gotten into the habit of wine notes in those days so you’ll just have to make do with Parker who says:

“This wine has been brilliant on every occasion I have tasted it. More accessible and forward than the 1996, it possesses a saturated ruby/purple color, as well as a beautiful, knock-out set of aromatics, consisting of black fruits, vanillin, spice, and wood-fire smoke. Multidimensional and rich, with layers of ripe fruit, and beautifully integrated tannin and acidity, this medium to full-bodied wine is a graceful, seamless, exceptional Haut-Brion that should drink surprisingly well young.”

I’ll just add one comment - has been known to be better than sex.

G is for Gnashing of Teeth

It’s a well known fact that the mark up on wines in restaurants is, at the very least, stratospheric. When it gets a little higher than that, it usually leaves me a little short of breath. Not least from the expending of oxygen required for the fuming that accompanies the expense. I mean, how difficult can it be to open a bottle of wine and to pour it into a couple of glasses at the table?

A fortnight ago, we were at Cantina which does a very good pizza and I thought it would be nice to pick a bottle of wine to go with the food. So I popped into the cellar and chose a modest bottle of Sicilian red. I think it was a Abbazia Santa Anastasia Nero d’Avola 2002 but it could well have been a Azienda Agricola something or other of the same varietal and of the same vintage.

It is an intriguing wine that starts off opening into red fruits and spices before curling up again into smoky acidity. It must have been at least a good twenty minutes before opening up again into plummy sweetness and kept right on going up the saccharine scale at what seemed to be an alarming rate before finally flattening out.

Imagine my surprise and (I must admit) dismay when I discovered the same wine was retailing (yes, that’s right - retail) for Eur 5 in Italy and the rest of Europe (except the UK where it was going for £7). Don’t get me wrong - I really enjoyed the wine and I would probably drink more of it in the months and years to come. I just think my enjoyment was somewhat marred by the fact I paid S$65 for it.

Two nights before that, we went to one of the wine bars at Dempsey after dinner and had a bottle of CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva 1998. In keeping with the history of the place (it used to be an army camp), the owners kept up the barrack exterior and even left the toilet block in use although they did the inside up with wall to wall racks for the wine and comfortable rattan sofas to sit on.

The beauty of the place is that you pay retail prices and they slap on a small surcharge if you drink it there. So it was something like $60 and $10 which is pretty good given the retail price was about the same as London prices and the surcharge was certainly less than in any restaurant anywhere in the world. With the one possible exception of the old Tate Gallery in London.

Anyway, the wine was excellent. Concentrated, complex and surprisingly New World in its outlook with a fair bit of new leather in the nose. Much more fruit than should have been expected given the vintage. Opened nicely into a bit of herb, a bit of spice and a bit of cedar and sandalwood. Felt a little less acidic than what I would expect of the Tempranillo but good structure with plenty of mouth-coating glycerol which should do well with a couple more years of cellaring. Certainly wins my wine of the week award.

Rounding off the week, I took along a bottle of Pio Cesare Barbera d’Alba 2000 to a little soiree on Saturday evening and not without some trepidation. The Pope may have declared the millennial year a Jubilee year and made the guys in Rome clean all the buildings and public statues but in the Piedmont, it just rained. So it was a pleasant surprise to find a wine that came with a good floral and strawberry nose, more red fruit in the mouth in what I can only describe as preserved fruit way.

Given the rain, it was no surprise the wine was a little lacking in concentration but while it was thin, it also tasted fairly old. It was pale and thin so if I had been the given the Rioja at the same time, would probably have mistaken this for the older wine. Still it was suave, sophisticated and a bit of a bargain at $34 from the Christmas sales.

Isn't it strange that you never get a sale at a restaurant?