Taylor's 2009 Tasting (with some 1985s and other odds and ends as well - woohoo!)

Nobody's talking about Port at the moment. The immense non-event of Bordeaux 2011 teeters above all of us in the trade like the sword of someone far more boring than Damocles and so most vinous thoughts are focused on the Gironde and not the Douro.

Pity, that. Port's awesome. I tasted some last summer and they were rather nice. I'm not sure why I've taken so long to post this, but there you go. With everyone dropping heaps of cash on re-scored Bordeaux, the savvy might find a bargain here.

Adrian Bridge, the Managing Director of Taylor Fladgate, was our host. Informed and charming, he explained that 2009 was special enough a vintage for the group to break with the '3 Declarations per Decade' tradition and declare a fourth vintage. I bit my pedantic tongue with regards to 2000 technically belonging to the previous decade due to there never having been a year '0'. Apparently, 2009 was a hot summer and harvest but never excessively so. It was also very dry, with low-yields and high concentration. Which is perfect for Port, as during ferment you have a very small amount of time to get maximum extraction.

There are no scores here - I rarely use them for a tasting like this. Also, there's no mention of colour for the 2009s, because they were all crazy dark.

Taylor's Skeffington 2009

Nose of plum and spiced apple with a nice mealy-fleshiness. Very apple-y.

Fleshy fruit but with a touch of bitterness that starts at the end of the mid-palate. Simple, pleasant, but probably wouldn't lay it down for more than 20 years.

Croft Vintage 2009

Dark and sweet on the nose, quite brooding. Hint of varnish. With air there's more apple and less varnish.

Big purity of fruit burst on the start, with all the secondaries and tannins coming through from that ripe, brash dark bramble and cassis. Intense and structured. 20-30 years before I'd really start enjoying it.

Fonseca Vintage 2009

Glazed meat with black cherries and plums. Quite stony. Floral notes as well- apple blossom on a warm, spring day.

Utterly delicious. Rich, layered fruits with superb purity that just flows from juicy to floral to rustic and back again. And then there's this awesome, bracing grip. The tannins lock down on the tongue, reminding you of its youth and that it's going to take time to come round. The first half of the palate is decadently drinkable. The second half reminds you that patience will be a virtue.

Taylor's Vintage 2009

Brighter fruit. More flower petals.

The palate is so elegant. Light, crunchy dark fruit crushed with violet and apple blossom petals. Superb structure and poise. The tannins kick in a touch earlier but they're sweeter than the Fonseca.

Taylor's Vargellas Vinha Velha 2009

Not a lot coming through on the nose. Bit of apple, bit of stoniness, bit of meat.

Um. Wow. Quite enormous. The grip jumps in from the start. The fruit and savoury just match each other step for step. Flower petals, cassis, pata negra, ground cloves and anise and all the bits and pieces are kind of turned up to 11. Depth, complexity and great stoniness. Incredibly intense, but also brilliant.

We then moved onto some older vintages, starting with a couple from my favourite vintage harvested in my lifetime, 1985.

Very large harvest in 1985 - 25,000 cases of Taylor's - as the weather was hot and the fruit abundant.

Interestingly, Taylor's still source from small holders who tread themselves. Fladgate still foot tread 2000 tons a year themselves - just for vintage though, not for 'wood ports'. There is three and a half days between picking and fermentation and all extraction has to come in that period.

Taylor's Vintage 1985

Slightly lighter than the Fonseca, but still intense and bright.

Quite hot on the nose, surrounded by glacé cherries and plums with red apple peel.

Creamy on the palate. Very luscious, with nice softness of the fruit. Cherries and strawberries with clotted cream surrounded by wood spice and cloves. A bit of tobacco leaf, touch of leather. The booze pops up on the finish, but a bit of cheese would sort that out no problem. Delicious.

Fonseca Vintage 1985

Lovely colour of ruby and translucent purple. It's lightened, but not rusted. Intense.

More perfumed, soft on the nose with a soothing spiciness to it. Still cherry-like.

There's such beautiful harmony and integration. Candied cherries, roast plums and toffee apples, coated with cinnamon and spearmint. There is still that lovely creaminess and again a hit of booze on the finish, but it's softer and more liqueur-y. I think this pips the Taylor's to the post.

Croft 1991

Still deep colour, though a bit stewed looking (no bits or anything, just a bit)

Like a massive slab of cured ham or beef glazed with a cherry jam.

Nice, fleshy palate. Dark cocoa and plums, with quite soft tannins and really nicely integrated fruit. There are some bitter tones that come out with coaxing, but not unpleasantly. Minty. Quite charming.

Croft Roeda 1997

Dark. Ruby edges.

Black fruits and caramel on the nose.

Quite simple, dark and pleasant. Doesn't go anywhere in particular, but it's nice.

Fonseca Panascal 1998

Nice maturity on the colour.

Hot and savoury nose. Hot salt beef and roasted red apples, laden with plums.

Very much follows through from the palate. Savoury, meaty with stewed fruit. Not a huge amount of structure. Small hit of mint on the finish.

Fonseca Guimarens 1996

Youthful colour.

Bit mute on the nose. Touch of mothball.

Soft and light on the palate, relatively speaking. There's a lot of secondary mint and mothball and a bit of heat too. It's also a bit drier than expected. Not in a bad way, but all of it results in being a touch thin.

Taylor's Quinta de Vargellas 2001

Young and dark.

Quite serious on the nose. Young, dark and a bit broody. Dark fruits.

Palate is superb, bright but dark fruit integrated with youthful but curbed tannins. The structure is table wine like. Good length and spectacular purity. Nice one.

Taylor's Quinta de Terra Feita 1999

Quite earthy and rustic on the nose. Berries and brush, forest floor.

Nice dominance of sweet secondaries surrounding the fruit, giving it structure and providing a nice elegance. 

Tasted at The Bonham in Edinburgh, 14/6/2011

revisiting Ausone 1988

I *think* I have one of these left in my cellar. I hope so, as it's rather lovely.

Good red-rustiness on the rim with nice brilliance and depth at the core.

Black pepper and tobacco leaves on the nose that give way to cassis and cherries. There's a nice dustiness to it as well as stained leather. Great secondaries.

Harmony on the palate - cedar and cinnamon roasted pipe tobacco wrapped around red cherries and blackcurrants. The fruit rises quickly with still-gripping acidity and juiciness but it's quickly followed by savoury notes and winter-spiced tannins that don't linger on the edges but instead ride the fruit along the tongue - which is what gives that fantastic feel of harmony. It leads to a finish of both fruit and spice that lingers with a dusty, leathery touch. Long and warm.

*****

Tasted at Shorehead with a cracking roast chicken and trimmings, 30 October 2011

Vin Jaune Clos des Grives 1998 Claude Charbonnier

My knowledge of the Jura is limited to the whisky of its namesake in the Hebrides, basic winemaking techniques (flor is encouraged, as in Jerez) and that they have a grape called Savignin, which I try very hard not to pronounce 'Sauvignon'.

Vin Jaune (literally, 'yellow wine') interests me because of its superficial sherry-like qualities. I love sherry-like qualities, superficial or not.

Jaune. Huge surprise - quite rich as well.

Oaty, porridge-y, Fino-y nose.

Hay & biscuits and salted shortbread. Touch of damp mint leaf as well.
Intense and mouth-filling. Like salted gravel wrapped in hay and roasted limes. Tasty stuff, but pricey. Not sure I 'get' the wine style yet, and it's a big investment to further discover. Any Jura-heavy tastings out there?

****
Tasted at Luvians Bottleshop, 23 November 2011

Lambrusco, the next big thing, bored wine folks and the circle of life

It's not their fault. There is a low ceiling of subject matter for wine writers. I've grumbled about this in the past, finding myself bored with tastings and my own tasting notes to the point despair. Wine exists in cyclical form, the growing season to the harvest to the winter and pruning and back to the growing season. The trade and press exist also in a cyclical form. The year starts with Burgundy en Primeur, followed by Bordeaux en Primeur. By the time Bordeaux en Primeur is finished you have, in alternative order, rosé, zingy summer whites and BBQ reds to cover, before slipping in maybe a light reds that go great with salads and seafoods. Dotted throughout will be Champagne releases. If it's a really fun year, some Vintage Port releases (with the standard explanations of declared vintages, the three a decade rule guideline, the difference between ruby and tawny etc) may be available.

And then autumn comes. Hark the Nebbiolo sings, with the sneak previews of Burgundy en Primeur peeking around November. After that we have the top billion Christmas wines list, endless nonsense about detox and we're back at the Burgundy en primeurs. Like high-priced, limited quantity, endlessly appellation'd phoenixes from the ashes the prices soar and reactions range from delirious excitement to calloused cynicism and everything in between.

It gets repetitive, it gets boring and even the most enthusiastic of wine writers/tasters/buyers/merchants grow weary. We need something new to write about, read about and taste. The Next Big Thing becomes the next big thing and so here, there and everywhere, throughout the press and blogosphere Lambrusco emerges, not for the first time, as the world's most criminally neglected wine suffering from consumer misconception and if-you-don't-get-in-on-it-quick-then-my-goodness-the-price-will-double-once-the-masses-rush-out-and-demand-high-quality-sparkling-Italian-red. Ancient sales ledgers are inevitably produced, showing how top Lambrusco once matched Champagne in price as it was held in similar regard. To be fair, ancient sales ledgers are used all over the place for such things, be it in Beaujolais to prove top Crus once cost as much as top village Côte d'Or or in the Rhône to show people bought new oak before Parker, but there you go.

I should say now that Lambrusco is today's example - others include the Lagrein grape, all the wines in Alsace (which have suffered from the 'how do we get consumers to understand how awesome these are' problem forever), Sherry (mmmmmm…), Hunter Valley Semillon, Savennières and pretty much every other once-lauded-now-less-so region or varietal.

And so we all talk about Lambrusco for awhile - not the bulk rubbish, but the real thing. We taste (But possibly don't drink) a bunch and find it fairly remarkable. Tactile, grippy red fizz that would go brilliantly with this, that or the other. Independent merchants get a few in and push it for a month or two before the dust settles on the last 2 or 3 bottles on the shelf that sit there until it gets put on bin-end before the big Bordeaux promotion kicks off.

Too soon and it's forgotten. Something else comes along, and that's ok because Romorantin and Cour-Cheverny have been overlooked for too long.

Not anymore, though. It's the next big thing.

Givry 1er Cru Clos des Bois Chevaux 1999 Joblot

From a cache of bottles I stuck in the cellar years ago.

Just the faintest hint of rust, but still quite dark Burgundy.

Initially very gamey, shitty & farmyardy. This blows off, and rich, cherry/strawberry glazed savoury meats come through.

The palate is as elegant as the nose is brusque. Soft red fruit tied seamlessly with dusty tannins and great, herby, spicy secondaries. The fruit still has great crunch. Nice balance, rustic - but not sloppy. Great sinewy length. Textured, deep, nourishing. Superb, but better with food.

*****


Tasted at Naughton, 16/3/2012

Champagne Paul Bara Special Club 2002

So we really didn't know much about this when we opened it. That's a good thing. I like surprises. Champagne that surprises is a bonus. A cursory bit of research revealed the blend - 70% Pinot Noir 30% Chardonnay - all coming from the brilliantly named Grand Cru village of Bouzy.

Nicely deep gold. Looks a bit more mature than I expected. Medium mousse with a bit of a rush to the bubbles.

Tiny wild strawberry nose, with shortbread and a wee bit of cep dust. Generous and inviting.

Ripe, juicy red fruits - strawberries and currants - that burst and crunch at first, slipping back and picking up biscuit and shortbread flavours and feel. Silky and beautifully put together. The mousse carries it all with a gentle touch - like carbonated clotted cream. Fruit and secondaries are all well integrated and then there's this lovely lift and lightness to it all. Really fantastic. Sexy, elegant, more-ish, balanced and beautiful. Delicious.

*****

Tasted at Naughton 16/3/2012

Jacques Selosse Lieux Dits Mesnil-Sur-Oger 'Les Carelles' Grand Cru Extra Brut.

Wine tasting is often laden with expectation. Experience does little to assuage this, though it probably should. It's a double-edged sword: experience can enforce pre-conceptions whilst also exposing the taster to more and more peculiarities that don't fit that palate's world-view.

I approached this wine with a degree of expectation. Selosse and his wines are legendary in Champagne circles, both for their quality and their divisiveness. His vinification techniques seem more at home further south, on the Cote d'Or. Devotion to detail in both the vines and the winery is his hallmark.

Information on this cuvée is few and far between. Selosse's Lieux Dits are small parcels of superb vineyards in various Grand Cru villages, parcels he took control of at the beginning of the last decade. Initially released as vintage wines, as reserves have built up he has started using the solera system favoured in Jerez (and that he uses for his 'Substance' cuvée). I couldn't find production numbers, but from what I understand the bottling is infinitesimal and strictly allocated. This particular wine is 100% Chardonnay.

We served this a bit differently. Kept in the fridge for only 15 minutes, the wine was cool, but not chilled, when first poured. We then put it in an ice bucket and it got colder as we topped up. The effect was interesting.

As far as my expectations go, I thought it would be bracing and grippy. Selosse is known to keep dosage to a minimum. So as we were examining the bottle and peeling the foil off, I prepared myself for cerebral, piercing bubbly.

Quite rich and golden colour, medium bubbles with excitement.

Nose is farmyardy in a pleasant way. Mushrooms, strawberries, salt caramel, prickly quince and herbal honey.

Full, broad, rich, toasty palate with bubbles forming the impression of a honeycomb lattice. Roast apricots. Brioche with light butter. Very soft and silky. There's almost a maltiness to it. Strikingly low acidity- luscious, giving and very much a 'now' wine. Foie gras please? My expectations are confounded. Instead of a 'thinking' wine, this is every bit a 'feeling' wine. As it gets colder, it gets racier but far less expressive. There's also a peculiar powdered sugar finish that comes in with the cold. Much of what makes this wine is lost with the chill, and I would say it should be drunk no colder than cellar temperature.

*****

Tasted somewhere in Fulham, 29 February 2012

what do diamonds filter, anyway? (or how I learned to stop worrying and love Crystal Head Vodka even though I wouldn't pay for it)

Super-premium vodka is bullshit. It's important to get that out of the way right now - you're welcome to disagree with me, but you're wrong. As wrong as a creationist denying climate change whilst adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 7.

Grey Goose, Belvedere, Chopin, Absolut Level, Smirnoff Penka, Ciroc, Uluvka, Stolichnaya Elit, and that ridiculous mammoth tusk were all created to exploit society's ridiculous compulsion to spend more on something stupid in hopes of buying an 'image'. The idea that a liquid whose main purpose in the universe is to be as neutral and vapid as possible, and that the more neutral and vapid it is, the more exclusive and expensive it must become? That reminds me of a certain Hans Christian Andersen story. Hint: it's not The Little Mermaid.

If similar taste factors were used to appraise beer, Bud Light would be the most rare and expensive beer in the world, sold in zircon-studded cans individually wrapped in faux-felt adorned with a stitched print of the St Louis skyline. Think about that for a second. Have you stopped shuddering? Good.

Oh but they use the best ingredients…

Why? So that they can extract all trace elements of character and flavour from them? How important is your ultra amazing water source after 5-10 distillations? Is potato vodka better for when you get wasted and grab a bag of chips on the way home? Is it better to have a cider chaser with apple vodka?

It's all marketing, marketing without substance and marketing without substance is bullshit, pure and simple.

Which is why I fucking love the diamond-filtered, conspiracy-theoried, purified-by-aliens gibberish that is Crystal Head. Because in an ocean of grain-neutral, marketing-driven, multi-national, ridiculously packaged, over-priced, over-hyped bullshit, Crystal Head rises like a leviathan, out-purifying, out-packaging, out-bullshitting every single one of them. And who's doing this? Dan-Fucking-Aykroyd, that's who. Elwood Blues is selling snake oil; Mr Conehead has sewn a new pair of threads for the emperor. Big business marketing bullshit versus someone genuinely creative and surprise, surprise, the latter has a far more interesting line of fertiliser. They're selling image and he's selling a story. He's got my money.

Or, he would, if I ever felt like spending £50 on a bottle of vodka.

the new wine rant

Things are changing. This blog is one of those things. In the next month or so there will be a move away from Blogger, a re-design and an increase in content.

I started this blog in 2005 as a means of chronicling the wines I encountered along the way. There was no plan, no goal and, as it is plain to see, no set schedule. I guess it was in part a vanity project. I drink nice wines. People who care about nice wines like to tell other people who care about nice wines what they drink. It's a vanity that forms the foundation of most wine writing. I could easily go on infrequently informing my minuscule readership what I've been drinking, complete with my little smart arse rants, for as long as I draw breath and stroke keys.

But that seems lazy to me. My curiosity has grown.

Wine isn't just what's in the bottle, and wine bottles are not the only bottles I'm interested in. The scope here is broadening and with all the tumult and antics of the booze trade, there's little critical commentary or perspective kicking about. The trade press is saturated with barely disguised press releases and sycophantic back-patting. In-fighting grows on issues such as natural wine, craft beer, en primeur campaigns and the Asian market and there are few people that point out how hilarious it all is. I want to be that guy, and I want this blog to be that place - a place with insight, humour, a dash of iconoclastic criticism and a healthy dose of 'are you fucking kidding me?'. The wine and booze world needs more of that.

I should point out that this will take the blog further from any use as a 'consumer' resource. I don't care about the average wine consumer drinks. The average wine consumer doesn't care about what I drink either, so in that sense we're even. I'm sure this smacks of terrible wine snobbery but the truth is that focussing on the average wine consumer means dumbing down, over-explanation and, worst of all, drinking supermarket wines.

Instead of the average wine consumer, I'm looking for the informed and curious wine drinker. So pull up a glass; give it a swirl and a sniff. Don't worry if you spill some - it happens to the best of us.

Updates and looking forward

Apologies for the hiatus. The reasons are multitude - I have dozens if not scores of half-drafted tasting notes to post, waiting in the wings as it were. For a change though, the culprit is not laziness. I've been thinking about major revisions to the blog and my wine writing in general and have paused updates whilst I sort these things out in my head. Also, I've just started working on a top secret wine writing project, the details of which will be unveiled in good time.

So please bear with me. It should be worth the wait

Montes Limited Selection Pinot Noir 2009

In spite of the oceans of wine Chile produces, I've never taken it seriously as a wine country. There was a time in the early 2000s when they excelled at cheap and cheerful, but somewhere along the way they lost the cheerful. The cheap wines morphed from fruit forward and inoffensive to jammy and over made or filthy and confected. There are the occasional exceptions but they are few, far between and not really worth the effort of sifting through the dross to find them.

There's also the small matter of institutional fraud that comes with one of the more popular varieties in the cheap and cheerful(?) crowd. Wines advertised as Sauvignon Blanc from Chile are unlikely to be so. More likely than not, they are mostly Sauvignonasse/Sauvignon Vert. However, there is no repercussion for this fraud because once this oversight was widely realised, the Chilean wine governing body simply refused to accept that any grape planted as Sauvignon Blanc in Chile was anything other than Sauvignon Blanc. According to them, Sauvignonasse simply does not exist in Chile.

What a bunch of bullshit, huh?

There are some decent wines at a high level - Don Maximiano, Almaviva, Seña etc, but they tend to be quality in kind of a boring way. Delicious, but lacking a sense of place.

The pinots are a minefield - either too candied, sweet and confected or riddled with hot, off farmyard notes that seem to be an attempt at manufactured complexity. Structure in particular seems to be a fairy tale when it comes to these wines.

Which brings us to tonight's wine. Montes's top range, the Montes Alpha wines, are not bad. I've sold them on and off for years. American golfers used to love pairing the Cabernet with a delicately grilled fillet of halibut and I could do nothing to stop them. This 'Limited Selection' branding is new to me. It can't be that limited as Majestic have them on sale for £7.99. This wine in particular has received rave reviews on their site, suggesting many a happy customer.

Dark ruby but still with pinot translucence. Good brightness.

Nose is pulped red fruit and cook berries. There's a greasy savoury-ness and a barn and matchstick hit that follows the fruit. Subsequent sniffs and the order gets mixed up.

What should I expect from £8 pinot? Am I being too critical? Is my sore shoulder and head ruining this wine for me? Because this doesn't have any definition. It's jammy, unpleasantly savoury and inconsistent. There's an oiliness to the finish that reminds me of eating junk food. Liquorice comes and goes. It could be far worse. I'm not recoiling with each sip.

However.

I hate this wine. I can think of better bottles for a fiver. They won't be Chilean and they won't be Pinot Noir, but there you go.

*

Tasted at Shorehead 17 December 2011

Madeira Barbeito Malvasia 1994 Colheita Cask 232c

The single cask series from Barbeito are some of the most extraordinary wines I've ever encountered. I still have one bottle left of the Cask 18a, which is one of the single best wines I've ever drunk. A good future would be one in which Barbeito released several more of these gems.

Honeyed brass.

Smoked hay dunked in toffee and pepper. Hot and somewhat steamy.

Orange peels roasted in a muscovado crust. Toffee and salted caramel, with cigar smoke and pipe leaf. The notes of most wines like this read the same, but they're not the same. This is juicy, piercing, intense and explosive, but rich and voluptuous all at the same time. I've never really considered dessert island wines before, but one of these casks would surely be one of them. Incredible stuff.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 6 November 2011

Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny 2002

My love for these wines is well-documented. They form a valuable chunk of my cellar. I wish I could afford to drink them more often.

Quite young, beautifully translucent Burgundy.

Sweet nose of underbrush and confit strawberry. Pithy notes. Full and somewhat leathery. Hint of cocoa.

Feels incredible. Strawberry & cranberry laced suede and leather that drifts into silk and satin, then flutters along into a finish that leaves more feeling than flavour. Warm Burgundy, elegant and ephemeral. There are are wood spice and forest like notes as well, but the harmony of all somewhat obscures the individual notes.

*****

Tasted at Naughton, 6 November 2011

Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 1995

I've become more and more convinced that Champagne goes through a pronounced intermediate phase towards the end of its teenage years. The vibrancy of youth and the rich, toasty-ness of age meet for a time and mute each other. I don't really know the technical term for this or even the science behind it. But I know it when I taste it.

Bright gold. No brass or green.

Bready and savoury on the nose.

Sourdough and nameless citrus and fibrous fruit. Long-lovely, but more sensuous than flavourful. Spiced quince. Intense but under-developed. Needs a long time.

**(***)

Tasted at Naughton 6 November 2011

Tio Pepe

Given my love and devotion to the wines from Jerez, it's a bit of a surprise that I've never bothered to post a note for this benchmark Fino. About six years ago my mate Broomie and I toured the impressive Gonzalez Byass bodega. The scale was staggering. They never commented on just how many bottles they produced, but given the seemingly endless barrels in the solera, I imagine it's quite a lot. Yet the quality, regardless of scale, is extraordinary. This is a good thing. Tio Pepe is ubiquitous throughout the UK. It's nice to know that, theoretically at least, you're never too far from a decent glass of Fino. Sadly, far too many of the bars and restaurants that stock it leave it open too long, dooming it lose its freshness and zing to oxidation. Ah well.

Silver and bright with green highlights

Nose of hay, flint and sourdough bread with limes soaked in olive brine.

Imagine tearing a chunk of sourdough bread, squeezing lime juice onto it, dipping it in olive oil and then smearing it with green olive tapenade. This wine is like that. But then it finishes by crunching oyster shells with lemon peel. Benchmark fino.

*****

Tasted at Luvians Bottleshop, 1 November 2011

Aldo Conterno Barolo 2004

I bow to whimsy more than occasionally. Today that whimsy is a bottle of something I've been wanting to try for sometime, and a grey October Friday seemed the perfect time to do it. Autumn and Barolo go together like, well, like Autumn and red Burgundy - they are almost perfectly suited. That rusty, rustic crunch sits well with the falling leaves and slow-cooked stews of the season.

Stained-glass red - pale, rusty and bright.

Dusty nose with dried strawberries, raspberries and cranberries. It tugs at the nostrils and gets the mouth watering. There's hay and leather on the edges as well.

My goodness. Stunning palate that starts softly but quickly shrieks with juicy, crunchy, soured red berries - cranberries, raspberries and strawberries - all so juicy that you wince, squint and blink a bit. Then, beneath the juicy fruit, the dust, leather and tar-like tannins assert themselves, balancing that juiciness with a firm grip that goes from silk to suede to a prickly hint of sandpaper. Structure, charm, grip, fruit, earth, poise and balance, this pretty much has everything I wanted it to, and perhaps a bit more. Still incredibly youthful.

There is no hint whatsoever of the 14.5% alcohol.

Fantastic stuff.

*****

Tasted at Shorehead 14 October 2011

Chateau Margaux 1990 from Imperial (600cl)

Fortune smiled upon me this morning when a restauranteur friend of mine invited me around to taste the remains of something remarkable. It's important to resist the 'awe' factor of such wines - to not let their reputation and price precede them and potentially cloud your judgement. As a self-confessed Bordeaux cynic, my guard was up, but it's difficult not to be intimidated/impressed by a six litre bottle worth somewhere in the region of £8,000. Especially from such a legendary estate.

I should note that this had been opened and decanted the night before, though seemed none the worse for it.

Mature colour, but no amber - red rust and deep leather.

Quite a lot going on here. Cedar, licorice, saddles and Christmas spice. Glazed game, compote blueberries and currants - both red & black. Sugar-coated dust, pipe leaf tobacco and candied violets. All this on the nose and it's all intense, pervading and powerful. It's also quite addictive - I keep shoving my face in the glass.

Still young. Piercing, fresh, juicy berries - cherries, raspberries, with real crunch to them. Bright, vibrant and incredibly focused. The grip and tannins begin to take hold mid palate, at first softly, like suede or velvet, though growing more assertive by the finish, which is dark, tight and suggests a very, very long future ahead. Beautifully layered.

*****

Tasted at The Seafood Restaurant, St Andrews, 4 October 2011

Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou 1970

One of the first big tastings organised by the Naughton Dining Club (oft-referred to wine-swilling gang of trade and ex-trade mates) was a vertical of Ducru dating back to 1955. If memory serves, and subsequent tastings are any indication, the 1966 was the wine of the evening. But we all loved the 1970 as well. In those days, and up through to the 90s, Ducru provided the poise and elegance of St Julien. Nowadays it tends towards the bigger style of claret, which is a shame. As such, revisiting old Ducru is not something that needs to be forced upon me. I'll sip willingly.

Mature, but not old, and classic claret tones at 41 years.

Soft nose, with bunches of tangy berries - the dried ones you find in a good muesli, and hints of cloves on the edges.

This is almost aperitif claret. Sadly ill-suited to the lamb shanks. Perhaps the acidity of the tomato in the sauce is cutting into it a bit. Tasted away from the food, it's delicious. Supple and textured, it's not quite as big and vibrant as the La Chapelle, nor as poised as the Barolo, but sits somewhere between the two. Is it a touch too old? Nah. I'd keep drinking it over the next five years or so. Perhaps longer.

****

Tasted 20 August 2011 at Shorehead.

Jaboulet Hermitage 'La Chapelle' 1972

The search for good wines from our birth year is almost and endless task for those in the wine trade. I'm a 1976 baby myself, so Champagne and Germany have yielded the best results. A friend in the trade was born in 1972 and has searched for years in vain for a decent wine from that year. His most recent acquisition was this, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

Rusty red edges, but quite dark blueberry compote at the core.

The nose is meaty, savoury with cocoa-laced stone fruits - plums - and a whiff of stewed blueberry.

That savoury, meatiness follows through on to the palate mostly with a nice, mature saddle leather mouthfeel that guides cocoa and confit blueberry on the mid-palate. There's still a nice, rich vibrancy to this. The fruit is youthful while the texture and mouthfeel enjoy the luxury of maturity. Nice depth, too. Fantastic - possibly wine of the night (though I do love the Barolo).

*****

Tasted 20 August 2011 at Shorehead

already routine

My alarm sings the marimba at 530 in the morning and I fiddle about trying to turn it off. I avoid 'snooze'. The snooze button is not allowed during harvest.

By 630 we're at Coume del Mas, rinsing and assembling the press and loading the first comports (big plastic tubs holding about 50kg worth of grapes). It's a small bag-press, so it only takes about 18 comports. We don't talk much at this point. We've said bonjour and possibly ça va and that's about it. Yesterday's wine will be racked from cool tank into barrels in the cool room (cool, huh?) while we fill the press. Apart from a few barrels of fermenting Syrah, it's only white at the moment, with the wines that will be Folio, c'est pas de Pipeau and Catala just starting their ferments. Grenache Gris, Roussanne and Vermentino all bubbling away.

Once the press is loaded I grab a lift from Coume del Mas in Cosprons to Mas Cristine in Argeles. If all's going to plan, we get to Argeles about 730. Mas Cristine requires more strategy when getting equipment together, as our corner of the ancient co-op is cramped and a bit inhospitable. We move the press outside in order to save space. This is a larger beast than the one at Coume del Mas, and can take - with coaxing - about 35 comports. More often than not, there is wine to rack from tank to tank, and at the moment we've a Roussanne ferment to cool down in the mornings. The first grapes come in about 830. Thus far we've had Grenache Gris, Muscat, Roussanne and Macabeu for whites and a small amount of Syrah and Grenache Noir for rosé.

The standard press cycle takes about three hours, during which we clean, rack and sort out all the tanks and barrels for the grapes yet to come. Quite a lot of winemaking is being ready and quite a lot of being ready in winemaking is being clean. Scrubbing the caps for tanks, the tartaric residue off of stainless steel and epoxy vats, it's all part of the harvest.

As the press clangs and howls through its various pressures and in between all the cleaning, racking and tidying, we taste the juice. We usually switch vessel about 1000mBars, separating the lighter press juice from the harder. The juice from the first presses tends to be fruitier, more elegant, while the later presses boast more phenolics and secondary flavours. In most cases they will ferment and mature independently until the blend is decided late autumn.

Some days, we'll do two full presses, others one. Over lunch we'll chat about the odd variations in grape maturity throughout the vines. The odd cool spell and bizarre humidity levels have led to uneven ripening. Some of the best fruit won't be ready for a month, meaning the much talked about early harvest may also be one of the latest harvests in recent memory, with some reds not being picked until October. The last three years in the Roussillon, most of the ferments had finished by then.

At Mas Cristine, there is usually beer when the shift ends. It's cold and never quite big enough.

Home by 7ish. In bed around 10. The same again in the morning. I'm enjoying it while I can, as when the reds come in it will start to get busy.