As we speak I am sitting at the bar in Bocca di Lupo, drinking a fine Barbera d’Asti and perusing a desert menu I’m way too full to seriously consider. So, Sanguinaccio, then. “Sweet pate of pigs’ blood and chocolate”. I mean, wtf?
That is all.
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An absurdly long break in posts. Blogs are like new friends – so long as you see each other all the time it’s very comfortable and you get along fine, but if the phone goes cold even for a short while it just feels a bit awkward to pick it up again. Next thing you know, you haven’t spoken in six months and you’re little more than strangers.
Anyway, I digress. I’m in the office. It’s a slow day. The bit of newspaper I’m responsible for filling has been filled instead by adverts, leaving me free to look at Twitter (another friendship gone cold) and make an awkward rapprochement with the Cellar Fella.
So what was so important that it forced me to ignore this slight social chill and reignite our little relationship? The discovery, no less, of a new thing. OK, it’s not the most revelatory discovery, but it’s new to me. Chenin blanc has been one of those subjects that are just a bit too big. Like rosé, which I almost never drink and absolutely never buy because I just don’t know how, it’s been a bizarre, big gap in my vinous knowledge.
But then I went to a wine-tasting dinner (I’d call it a wine-drinking dinner, to be more precise. There weren’t that many wines tasted and they were served in such generous quantities, things swiftly got out of hand) at High Timber on Monday, a charity thing in aid of Cosmic. They didn’t really tell us what we were drinking most of the time, but it was all South African and a lot of it was excellent – a zappy sauvignon blanc, a delicious noble-rot boosted sweet. The restaurant is co-owned by Gary and Kathy Jordan of South African winery Jordan wines, who hosted the evening, so they presumably had a hand in the selections. But I really loved the chenin – The FMC, by Ken Forrester – which was as mouthwatering a white as I’ve had for a long while. Then again, it was by all accounts pretty much the best the country can muster. At about £17 a bottle it should be good, but damn, it was. More investigation required.
And it’s good to be back. More soon. And apologies for shamelessly stealing the photo from Jamie Goode’s blog.
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It’s, like, weeks since I last posted. This long lay-off coincided with my first ever bloggers’ event, at Bibendum. I had a very good time, tasted some interesting wines but I was, I think, slightly put off by the unwavering dedication to blogging exhibited by the capital’s top food and wine bloggers. They dedicate more time to their hobbies than I, a father of two little sleep-stealing time-eaters, can afford mine. Even though it only takes half an hour here and there, it’s either that or do a very small amount of genuine, computer-off relaxing. I did, though, take some very useful notes and didn’t throw them out so the good news is I’m still going to post!
In my time off I’ve still been drinking lots of wine. Highlights: Yali, Winemaker’s Selection Wetland Sauvignon Blanc 2008 Rapel Valley, a Chilean that was recommended by the venerable Jancis Robinson as her wine of the week, while Tesco’s had it in an opening offer at £3.99 a bottle (I didn’t like it quite so much as she did. I reckoned it was good value at that price but not amazing and, at its standard £5.99, probably pretty avoidable), and La Difference Carignan 2008, which I remembered enjoying last year and enjoyed again this – a superior, classy French vin de pays.
But it would take something special to force me to sit, on my own, in the living room after Rachel’s gone to bed, tip-tapping my way across the keyboard. And this is it: another Caves de Pyrene purchase and my first Fumin – not the most obscure Italian grape variety, certainly not if you drink lots of wine from the Valle d’Aosta, but I don’t and it’s obscure enough to impress me.
This could be my favourite Italian red – and I like Italian reds. It’s certainly up there. More approachable than their trademark top wines like Barolo and Brunello, and a much better partner for a full evening. It’s quite Syrah-like but it’s not as heavily oaked as they often are, and it’s a lot less fruity. It’s a very masculine wine. Tar, tobacco and leather. Tannins not overbearing. Alive, bright but serious. It’s really excellent. Note to self: keep an eye out for it in future.
EDIT: I found my receipt from Les Caves, and I’m going to tap it out here for future price-reference. For what it’s worth, this Fumin was an absolute steal.
Pis & Love 2003 – £7.82 / Pinocchio Saniovese 2003 8.70 / Pinot Noir Elio 2005 5.65 / Vaubois Pinot Noir 2005 3.91 / Viu 1 Viu Manent 2006 17.39 / Bartoli Sol e Vento 2007 6.52 / Close Du Tue Rouge La Guerrerie 2006 7.39 / Dom Alexandre Pouilly Fume 7.39 / Les Cretes Fumin 6.52 / Mount Maude Riesling 2004 3.48 / Viu Manent Malbec Blue Label 2007 3.91
The first fruit from my trip to Les Caves du Pyrene is this pleasingly obscure Italian red, a Ravenna Rosso IGT. A cuvee of our best red grapes, they say. They don’t say what grapes they are, but they’ve got sangiovese, albana and trebbiano as well as cabernet sauvignon and syrah and some other ones I’ve never heard of (update: Les Caves suggest it’s made from longanesi, which is as far as I know a first for me, though disappointingly it appears this is a modern variety rather than an ancient Italian obscurity). Instead of a useful description of the wine or why it’s got such a gimicky name, the website asks: “Can a wine help us to remember the importance of a message and to practice what we preach?”
Well, I don’t know and I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned all that matters is what response the wine provokes in me and others like me, drinking innocently in our various corners of the world. What does this mean? What message? What do you preach? I am none the wiser, and a bit narked.
So what of the wine? It’s, well, intriguing. At 14.5%, it’s barely above average when it comes to alcohol, but it seems a little out of balance. The smell of it hits you, like if you’ve got any spare it might do a decent job of sterilising some surgical tools. The tannins are strong too. It’s not a simple sip, for sure. It tastes a bit primitive – which fits nicely with Les Caves’ reputation – and, though it takes a while to get used to, it’s certainly pleasant. I think you need to be quite inquisitive about wine to be into it, though, because it’s not just smooth and comfortable and easy, and is as interesting for its novelty as much as for whatever pleasure it brings. You’ve got to get kicks out of slightly awkward wine to love this one, but for all of that, I do like it. I don’t love it.
It’s October 22nd, and over the last two nights we polished off our second and final bottle of Pis & Lov. On opening, it was really aggressive. I didn’t so much sip it as wrestle with it – and it fought back pretty hard. A day later, however, it had (despite using a VacuVin to theoretically leave the wine hermetically sealed and therefore totally unchanged) totally changed. Much more mellow, and much more pleasant. In fact, really good. I need a decanter, and I need to use it – that’s my lesson from the exercise.
Saturday’s sunshine tempted us to Hampstead Heath, of which our nearest corner is Parliament Hill. It was a fun day – T enjoyed the playground and paddling pool; I enjoyed the random Swedish festival and, come lunchtime when both kids were blissfully asleep, Rachel and I enjoyed the Bull & Last. I really, really like this place, even though the chips have got fatter and fatter and now they’re just triple-fried skinless wedges.
We both had salads (mine had these totally amazing balsamic baby onions, but that’s another story), and we shared a Scotch egg. I say shared, Rachel had a mouthful, I dealt with the rest.
I’ve always considered the search for the perfect Scotch egg a bit like seeking out the sweetest-smelling turd: even the best one you find still won’t be very nice. But if you do want the perfect Scotch egg, I’m not sure these can be beaten. Still warm, peppery meat with a bit of texture to it and the egg yolk – and this really is vital – golden and runny, plus an excellent crispy crumb. Unbeatable. But still a Scotch egg.
I apologise for the lack of wine-related content in this post.
Apparently we Brits associate summer with pinks. And I guess I’m no different, except the only thing around here that turns pink when the sun comes out is me.
There are some areas of wine which are so large and so unknown, so foreign, that I’m a bit scared of them. Rose is one of those. What I need, I think, is a revelatory moment: to taste one that’s so mind-blowing that I simply have to find out more. So far I’ve only had ones that are unpleasant, or ones that are quite nice. And I want more than quite nice.
So when the sun came out this week, as it did in considerable style (hence my pinkness), I stuck a red in the fridge.
And it was perfect. It’s not a very original recommendation – you can get it anywhere, from about £7 to, if you’re lucky and keep your eyes peeled, just a fraction over £4 (which is what Tesco have been selling it at online for the last couple of weeks, though that’s not where I got it), but it’s a crystal-clear, sparkling ruby jewel of a summer sipper. Plums and cherries, tannins more obvious than they would be at room temperature but still quite gentle. At £4 it’s an incredible bargain. At £6.50 it’s still pretty good value. Yum, basically.
Last Friday I visited a wine merchant I’d read a lot about: Les Caves de Pyrene, in Guildford. My trip coincided (not, to be honest, much of a coincidence) with their annual bin end sale, and didn’t disappoint. They had lots of mad stuff, some wines that stank and tasted awful, others that stank and tasted great, lots of excellent discounts, and plenty of things I’d never heard of. I bought a pretty random dozen, Gilad (who came with me), an even more random 19 bottles. We got there two hours into a two-day sale, and they were already selling out of stuff – including, sadly, the handful of bottles of Bierzo (see below, somewhere) that I’d enjoyed at the Modern Pantry.
We didn’t have a lot of time to spend there, because we had lunch booked at Drake’s, a nearby restaurant with a £25 meal deal and one Michelin star. The meal was fine, not wildly exceptional and a bit over-fussy, to my mind. I’d have preferred another hour in the wine shop.
Then a horrific, three-hour journey through evil traffic and, by way of reward, a delicious white Burgundy – not from Les Caves – that showed how good chardonnay can be. Much, much more enjoyable than the flinty, austere new world style of my last bottle of chardonnay, from Maycas del Limari (who haven’t been a great hit with me all round), though at about £14 it’s also 50% more expensive and waaay too much to become a regular chez moi.
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Tagged Chardonnay, Eating out, France, Guildford, Les Caves, Rully
This isn’t, strictly speaking, about wine at all, but I need somewhere to keep my list of places I want to eat. To get here, somewhere needs to be personally recommended to me twice, or once by someone extremely trustworthy, or I need a good review. It’ll start small, and grow…
In no particular order
That is all.
I’ve got loads of exciting white wines at the moment, but I’ve got a problem with reds. I’ve suffered in the past from deciding that I like one and buying a few of them, and as a result I’ve got a few bottles of wines that I’ve already had too many of. I’m thinking Maycas del Limari Reserve Shiraz and, most glaringly of all, a Berberana Etiqueta Negra Rioja Reserva, which I must have bought a year and a half ago and still can’t get through. I must learn that there are lots and lots of exciting wine and there’s no need to get more than a couple of bottles of any of them unless it’s something genuinely exceptional. But then, there are moments when having a stock of your favourite wines comes in handy. For example, I was emailed last week by the man who owns the winery that produced the EOS Petite Sirah that I blogged about a few months ago, thanking me for a positive write-up. So I opened another bottle and, thankfully, it’s still excellent. A meaty, mighty beast that’s really good to crack open every now and then. Sometimes familiarity is what you’re looking for after all.
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I was meaning to blog about Waitrose’s wine sale, in which they knocked 25% off the price of every single bottle of wine on their website, but then I got so excited actually shopping on it that it never really happened. I was half-tempted to buy a bottle of 2003 Penfolds Grange, reduced to just (just!) £112.50 a bottle, £60 less (per bottle!) that what the normally reasonable Wine Society are charging, but then I spent not much more than the price of that bottle on 18 other ones.
They must have been absolutely inundated with orders, but 48 hours later mine arrived. I’m quite excited about everything I got, which is just as well because I was starting to become a little jaded with my rapidly emptying “cellar”. Now comes the good bit: drinking it.
We start in the Maipo valley, Chile, and an interesting organic wine made using only natural, wild yeast. Wine Spectator loved it, considering it worth 91 points. “Dark and structured, with loamy tannins carrying a delicious mix of mint, tobacco, currant paste and fig sauce flavors,” they said. “Long and rich on the finish, with classic Maipo character. Drink now through 2012. Tasted twice, with consistent notes.” And mine for £4.49 a bottle. £4.49! It’s a tenner at Tanners!
I’ve never had fig sauce. Or currant paste. But I see what they’re getting at with the dried fruit, particularly fig. And the tobacco’s there, sure enough – I’m sure, and I know this doesn’t sound much like a positive, that I can taste a bit of ashtray. Strong tannins and good acidity and it absolutely reeks – pongs – of varietal character. You could name the grape variety from 15 metres. It’s a well-made wine, it looks and smells great. It just has a tinge of green, unripe, new leather to it, when you want it to be completely worn in. Maybe another year in bottle?
And apparently boffins from a Turkish university analysed a bunch of wines in 2004 for antioxidants and healthy phenols and found Nativa’s Cab Sauv to be the healthiest wine there is. It’s practically medicine.
All the same, a stonking start from my friends at Waitrose. Let’s hope they do the same promotion next year, when (given what they’re saying about the 2004) I might just get a bottle of Penfolds Grange. Someone liked the look of it, anyway – they’re sold out now.
Posted in Cabernet Sauvignon, Chile, Organic, Red wine, Waitrose
cellarfella.com 