NUOVA LAZIO WINE CLUB?

What would the Nuova Lazio Wine Club be like? I guess it would be fronted by someone like this guy.

http://wineatlunch.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/funny-wine-video/

THEY SAY YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK

Annat by Loch Torridon is the place that my Scottish ancestors came from before they sailed to Novia Scotia and on to Australia and New Zealand. Here AA Gill (acerbic English food writer) describes a dining experience at the Torridon Inn at Annat

Table talk

Our intrepid restaurant critic goes north of the border to Scotland, where he visits a 'camp Caledonian cliché, all stag heads and tartan'

AA Gill Published: 9 October 2011

• Recommend (22) 
• Comment (4)
 
• Print
 
• Follow Style

The more minimalist interior of the restaurant complete with open fireThe world’s largest sperm bank. Now there’s a thought. I imagine it to be a bit like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but without the midgets, or the chocolate, and not quite Wonka. Cryos — slogan “Come again” or “One in a million”.

It’s not, actually. It’s “We know a man who can”. It’s in Denmark, so it’s probably something like “Versperm durch Technik”.

They’ve just made an announcement: they’re not accepting any more redhead sperm.

They’re up to here with it. Their nitrogen urn runneth over. They’ve two litres of the stuff, and demand is flatlining. Women tick the boxes for clever, athletic, artistic, puts down the seat, cries at films but pretends he doesn’t, always goes to see what the noise in the middle of the night is, naked, carrying a cricket bat, and then they turn the page and tick no golf, no comb-overs and no redheads.

The Torridon Inn

CuisineBritish

AddressAnnat, by Achnasheen, Wester Ross, IV22 2EY

CRITIC'S RATING

They say that redheads are going to die out. In three or four generations, ginger may only be available in a bottle, or some weird, embarrassing throwback. Maybe this is our Neanderthal moment. We lived with the Neanderthals for millenniums, and occasionally got together. You know, Cro-Magnon with benefits, or just drunk after the solstice. Then we went off them, and the neander-knuckle-scuffers, as we homos used to call them, died out, and we’ve missed them. Well, I expect someone’s missed them. So Cryos are offering special deals to Irish and Scots women, because red hair is part of their culture and, frankly, they’re not that choosy.

I wonder if sperm banks are offering incentives? Two for one? Bring a friend? All redhead shots half-price before eight o’clock? A sperm bank putting up a sign saying no dogs, no nutters and no redheads says something that I’ve suspected for some time. The amount of prejudice in the world is constant. It just gets moved on, like delinquents at bus stops, or gypsies in Kent, and it’s open season on gingers. The human rights hasn’t got round to them yet. Well, you’ll be sorry when they’re gone, and I speak as someone with a Neanderthal forehead. It’s either that or Klingon.

I’m writing this in Scotland. I come up here to the west coast every year for a week’s stalking. The country is having a late Indian summer, God’s consolation for messing up July and August. Up here, I’m told, the rain has barely drawn breath since last December. The TV weather map is all smiley sun, except for one wee cloud in the top-left-hand corner, and that’s the one I’m sitting under. I stepped out at 9 this morning and walked till 4.30, and got wetter than I’ve ever been. I’ve been in bars that were drier than the hill today. The rain hissed like smoke across the peat hags and streamed in horizontal waterfalls off the granite rocks, and I couldn’t have been happier. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.

There were a couple of hours that were sunny yesterday afternoon, so I drove to the glen next door. In 12 years I’ve never gone the 12 miles to Loch Torridon — jings, but it’s beautiful. The loch is huge, and the village of little white cottages hunkers along the strand. Behind them, the mountains rise like tall storeys. It’s quiet and charming, but also elemental and brutal. Trying to write about the Highlands landscape is like trying to copy a Landseer with an Etch A Sketch. You shoot your wad of exclamatory adjectives almost immediately, and the hills and the heather, the pines and the racing byrnes look back at you as if to say: “Is that the best you’ve got, pal? Can you nae muster a better army of similes, metaphors and allusions than that? Because, frankly, we did nae get up this morning and put on all this finery simply for you to stammer, ‘Wow, awesome’, and go slack-jawed. We’ve been described by the best. Some of the most limpid, lyrical observations have been frotted all over us. So unless you’ve got something pretty damn good to say, you’re better off saving your breath for your porridge. Is that an exclamation point in your pocket?”

The Torridon Hotel was built for Lord Lovelace. There’s a name for the sperm bank. It glowers from the stand of pines that lesser scribes might refer to as “aromatically majestic”. It is built in the odd Scotia vernacular, that is a northern variation of gothic revival, except that it doesn’t revive anything that ever was. It is the turreted and crenellated evocation of Walter Scott novels. The southern equivalent might be all English country houses being designed to illustrate Harry Potter.

I came here for lunch. It recommends itself. Inside, it’s Victorian camp Caledonian cliché, all stag heads and tartan. There was nobody about, so I rang an oversized bell on the desk. It made a noise like summoning the Kraken. After slightly too long, an efficient no-nonsense lady appeared instead, and asked me what I wanted. Lunch, I ventured, with a question mark. “We do sandwiches in there.” She pointed to a Monarch of the Glen memorial drawing room. I was hoping for something rather more sustaining. “Oh, well, there’s the bistro inn behind the car park for that sort of thing,” she said, with the inflection of my people that firmly implies, “Do you think I’m here simply for your convenience?”

The inn was behind the car park. Indeed, the car park was the featured view. It’s a wooden Portakabin containing a sticky, dark bar, with a silent TV showing Scottish football, a blinking fruit machine, no customers and a couple of Australian waitress-barmaids.

We were shown to a table where I could admire a couple of Vauxhalls. I’m not going to dwell on lunch, because they didn’t. I took Emma, the antiques dealer. She began with pan-seared scallops, crushed peas and a rocket salad. At best it was unpleasant. The scallops were wan goitres. The peas shrunken and frozen. The rocket salad some child’s pressed flower collection.

The only identifiable fish in the fish pie was salmon, which is the one fish that you should never, ever be put in a fish pieI had a wheel of Stornoway black pudding with apple and a cider reduction. The cider reduction was reduced to a skid mark. The black pudding was anaemic and greasy. The apple was brown and wizened. We could have had the home-made soup with the crusty bread. Why is the bread that accompanies soup always notably crusty? It’s like a Viking chieftain, Brod the Crusty. Why is the soup invariably cauliflower and stilton? Has anyone ever eaten this for pleasure?

For main course, Emma had scampi in a basket. The only agreeable thing about this was the basket. It came with chips, peas and home-made taramasalata. The scampi had done a runner from the batter, leaving mostly empty shells, like dried moth cocoons.

As for the homemade tartare sauce, it was as welcome as homemade toothpaste. I had fish pie, a large butter dish with a mildly piscine sludge, covered with a thick sputum-coloured scab of melted, nameless cheese. There were more of the ancient, cryogenicised peas, and dead chips.

The only identifiable fish was salmon, which is the one fish that should never be put in a fish pie. There ought to be Celtic punishments for people who put salmon in fish pie. We could have had a burger, or a gammon steak with the excitement of an egg and pineapple.

Pudding was a hideous sticky toffee, of course. This menu is a catalogue of derisively defunct dishes, an Oxfam shop of food you hated first time round. This stuff is as bad as you can eat anywhere in Europe, but is what we all expect from Scotland, outside the Central Belt — wilfully, stubbornly, f***-you-Jimmy awful. Here, just to recap, is the sort of hotel visitors love, with one of the great views in the world, sitting in a country that produces the best raw ingredients in the universe.

So they put the dining room in a hut over the car park and serve ham with pineapple, burgers and cauliflower soup.

It doesn’t just beggar belief, it rather concerns belief. It beggars common sense, hospitality, tourism and joy. You have to work very hard to come up with something this dire, day in, day out. What does it cost? Who cares. It’s a hopeless waste, and you’re never going to go. The Australian service was charming.

HERE WE GO AGAIN (2)

Stupid New Zealand winemakers, tired of making Sauvignon Blanc or, more likely, tired of the competition they get from other New Zealand winemakers making Sauvignon Blanc are now trying to do a beat-up on Gruner Veltliner.

"Gruner Veltliner could be next NZ Sauvignon, say winemakers"

Screams the headline on a wine news website. It turns out that Forrest Estate a small Marlborough (and Hawkes Bay) producer has had some success with the varietal, shipped a tiny amount to the UK which got a couple of listings and sold out quickly. Then some prat of a wine writer/expert raved about it. Well, let me tell you something, winewriter/experts would rave about their cats piss if it provided something different for them to talk about to differentiate themselves from the thousands of other wineriter/experts who are all competing against each other.
Why am I so vitriolic? I wrote this post a while ago on the same subject:

http://nzwineguy.blogspot.com/2011/06/here-we-goagain.html

and was annoyed to see more 'excited' reports on the varietal.

Sheesh!

OLD FAT AND WITH GOUT

Old, fat and suffering from gout is the traditional image of a Port drinker. At least I don't have gout.

We have a few old vintage ports in the cellar but never drink them. If I am to have port it is a very small glass so the option of opening a bottle rarely comes up. Vintage port, unlike ruby or tawny port, not to mention the robust variants from australia, need to be consumed fairly soon after opening kind of like the way a table wine needs to be (within one or two days of being uncorked).

Last night we had a progressive dinner with two of the neighbouring households who were up for the weekend. This happily coincided with the rugby where we watched the South Africa vs Australia game at one house along with pre-dinner drinks and appetisers and the New Zealand vs Argentina game at our house with the main course and the third neighbours dessert. As I knew that there were going to be enough of us (6 adults) I decanted a bottle of 1970 Offley Boa Vista.

The cork was in good condition although compressed which is expected for a 41 year old wine (39 years in bottle) and the wine was in outstanding condition, good for another decade or two. There was a fairly substantial crust which had dropped out to the bottom of the bottle as I had let the wine stand for a fortnight before opening and my trusty silver funnel  see:

 http://nzwineguy.blogspot.com/2009/06/ive-you-got-silver.html

allowed me to decant the wine cleanly off it.
This crusty sludge actually tasted great and I used to know someone who would spread it on toast like a jam. He's dead now!
The wine was lovely and clear, shiny almost. With age it had become quite pale being an orangy/pink colour. The nose was still fresh and raisiny but with a bit of 'rancio' (maderised) character. The flavour was rich and fruity with a medium weight to it. This is a good example of an aged vintage, not as big and heavy as the 1970 Warres and Taylors that I have in the cellar but was a good indicator of the development of these which should be good for quite a lot longer.
I bought this wine in about 1974 for about $8. To buy it now (it is available on auction sites and in vintage bottle stores in UK, expect to pay about a hundred quid.

I RESERVE MY JUDGEMENT

.... on Selaks Heritage Reserve 2010 Chardonnay as I am awaiting some information that I requested on this wine but I will start proceedings.

..... historically have been the wines put aside year to year in case the following year's vintage fails and, in time, came to represent the best that a winemaker was producing. The word on the label 'Reserve' meant something to the purchaser and consumer and prompted purchasing and drinking decisions.
Wikipedia is helpful with its description here:

"Reserve wine is a term given to a specific wine to imply that is of a higher quality than usual, or a wine that has been aged before being sold, or both. Traditionally winemakers would "reserve" some of their best wine rather than sell it immediately, coining the term.
In some countries the use of the term reserve/reserva/riserva is regulated, but in many places it is not. Sometimes, reserve wine originates from the best vineyards, or the best barrels, making it more special. Additionally, reserve wines might be made in a style suited to longer aging periods. However, in regions where the use is not regulated the mere presence of the term "reserve" on a wine label may be nothing but a marketing strategy. Indeed, in the case of one of the largest-selling premium wines, Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay, every single bottle produced is "Vintner's Reserve." To indicate a genuine reserve wine, Kendall-Jackson had to resort to "Grand Reserve," which has caused some confusion among consumers."

Now I am a wine marketer and have been 'adventurous' in my descriptions of commercial wines when writing copy for back labels and wine notes. This is called hype and I guess is expected else why would anyone buy any commercial product from toilet paper to cheap cars based solely on advertising. When it comes to the more serious offerings where serious money is outlaid however I am a bit of a stickler and refuse to 'be adventurous'.

With regard to the accused - Selaks Heritage Reserve Chardonnay 2010, this is one in a new range released by Selaks brand (brand owners Constellation New Zealand). I bought it in a supermarket 'on special' at $13.99 and it has a recommended retail price of $19.99. Unfortunately nowadays these prices whether 'reccommended' or 'on-special' are all over the place and there is no longer a reliable guide to be followed by looking at the price of a wine and by that determining its quality. You either have to have some inside knowledge or be prepared to experiment by buying and trying (unless of course the wine is being 'tasted' in-store which I thoroughly support). The back label tells me that the wine is fair bursting with fruit flavours and to underline that mentions stonefruit, citrus, white peach and nectarine with a passing mention of Chardonnay. It also has an even more fleeting mention of the wood that a quality Chardonnay should experience by either barrel fermentation or maturation or both. It tells me, before the "crisp and lingering finish" that the wine has "a touch of oak". Great. Did the winemaker accidently bump into the tank when he was wheeling around his new oak barriques or is this spin doctor speak for the fact that some oak chips, oak planks or oak beans were added to the stainless steel tanks-full of Chardonnay somewhere during the process? The wine is fresh and does show good Chardonnay fruit characters that I expect from Hawke's Bay. It does not show good (and particularly not $19.99 RRP worth of) wood usage. As for the 'Reserve' part I can only think of the TV show Extras and the 'Are you 'aving a laugh' by-line.
As I said I am reserving judgement at the moment but all I have to go on is endorsement from the marketers.

"This is our best 'Reserve' wine and, by the way, our priests have never fiddled with little children"

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER?

I was listening to Yvonne Lorkin, one of the wine commentators (critics) on Jim Mora's afternoon show on National Radio. She is a capable woman, not blessed with huge wine knowledge but enthusiastic and confident. Lorkin has managed in a few short years to get herself syndicated to a few publications where she selects wines for consumers. Now to give her credit she selects wines that are at least available and affordable, not like some ratbags who have tried to be so esoteric that to find the wines they have recommended you have to have the (unlisted) phone number of the importer.

While listening I came to the conclusion that the day of the wine writer, wine critic and wine recommender may well be over. Years ago when good wine was scarcer and when the whole bloody wine business was a minefield for the uneducated (I knew someone in the industry who used to say: "there are only two types of wine buyers - the insecure and the very insecure"), wine writers were helpful in guiding consumers to the source. Nowadays, with radically changed distribution channels that have led to the dominance of supermarket selling of wine, there is not so much consumer choice for if your local supermarket doesn't stock the wine you want or have had recommended you are stuffed. No matter how well it is written up by a wannabe writer if you can't find it easily you are hardly likely to contact the producer to find out where to get it from. Nowadays that is. Years ago when I first entered the wine industry, when a new shipment of top notch European or Australian wines were on the way (let alone landed) you had to be in the know to pre-order them from the wholesaler/importer who was in those days also the retailer. What was left over hit the shelves and was usually not worth bothering about.  Wine scribes were useful in giving the nod. The same went for the early examples of good New Zealand wine. We have all heard about the early offerings of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from McWilliams and later Montana and Nobilo but if you didn't cosy up to your wholesaler you missed out.
Nowadays there are so many good examples of New Zealand and Australian wine that, because of standardisation, bulk production, wine-swapping amongst companies and professional winemakers and viticulturists changing companies and moving about, are often, at the commercial price points, virtually the same. A wine writer talking about XYZ Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc could just as well be recommending ZYX Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Often it doesn't matter.

Blah, blah, blah

Unfortunately if a wine writer today was to talk about a particularly good French, Italian, Spanish or American wine the chances are that you will never find it to buy. The supermarket chains won't be stocking it. The Wholesale/retail chains of yesteryear are not interested and, if you live in Northland, Southland or most major regions outside of Auckland or Wellington you won't be handy to the 'specialist' importer/retailer who has it.
OK. Back to the premise. To be legitimate as a wine writer, wine commentator or wine critic today it is no longer adequate to just mention wine names and companies and rate them by stars, points or grades, there is something else needed. This is information but with some excitement added. There is only so much room for the academic approach and this is very ably covered by the likes of Michael cooper and Bob Campbell (and, for the good aspect of esoteric - Geoff Kelly). Stories, experiences and fun is what we want, not endless lists of 'what I tried with dinner; who I was talking to; who wants or has paid to have their bloody name/brand/company in my publication type of stuff. Give me more of Sue Courtney's ramblings or even Keith Stewart's acerbic exposes. What I am really looking for is an A.A. Gill type writer to be based in New Zealand and stir us all up.

CARDS ON THE TABLE

I have had a love affair with wine for nearly 40 years and am still learning about the subject.

Years ago my wines of choice were French wines and in particular those from Bordeaux. These represented all that was great, noble, traditional and aspirational in the world of wine. Admittedly, at the time (70's into the 80's) this was largely the case as the great wines of Italy and Spain were not available and USA, Australia, New Zealand and other contenders hadn't properly hit their straps. I would buy First, Second and Third Growth Bordeaux at ridiculously cheap prices to taste, put away and sell later and freely drink Fourth and Fifth Growth Bordeaux as everyday wines. These lesser (classified) wines such as Talbot, Beychevelle, Batailley, Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Branaire-Ducru, Lafon-Rochet etc. were cheap as chips then but now cost an arm and a leg to buy. As prices started to go ballistic after the bloody Americans started to discover good wine (the new price growth now being stimulated by the Chinese), Bordeaux invented the 'Petit Chateaux' marketing idea whereby the previous negotiants and shippers 'Clarets' assumed grandiose names of past and fictitious Chateaux and even down to the "La Plume de Ma Tante" degree.
The top wines became more expensive as did the lesser wines and the newly introduced 'Chateaux' wines instead of filling a gap actually turned a lot of potential new Bordeaux entrant drinkers off and they went to other geographical regions for their Cabernets and Merlots.

I was guilty of the "It must be good as it is a classified French wine" thinking for many years and have fond, imprinted memories of the lovely First, Second and Third Growth Bordeaux wines that I've drunk.  I have actively supported the development of the New Zealand wine industry both as a consumer and as a driver and have experienced some great 'Bordeaux-type' varietals from Hawkes Bay and Waiheke. In the past these were relatively scarce and very vintage dependant. I am very happy now that the wines are plentiful and, with better clonal selection, site selection, viticultural and winemaking advances we can see consistently good examples coming through. They  are becoming so plentiful that those bastard supermarkets can now get their hands on them and discount the fuck out of them. Shame? Yes if it leads to the downward engineering that we have seen with our Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs but no if it encourages Kiwis to experiment and discover what is on offer.

Today I opened an Esk Valley Gimblett Gravels Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec 2009. This wine's normal price is between $20 and $30 but I bought it at a supermarket a couple of months ago at way less than $20. It is great. Lovely colour and fresh plum and cherry nose. The taste is full and rich and lingering and well supported by good wood. Bloody good! Trying it while preparing dinner I thought back to the Bordeaux wines I was drinking 'everyday' in the 70's and 80's and felt that quality-wise it is above the Fourth and Fifth Growth wines (that are now in the $80 plus area) and more akin to wines like Kirwan, Giscours and Lagrange that are Third Growth Bordeaux and command prices in the hundreds now.
Fashion, snobbishness, scarcity and uniqueness all lead to higher pricing but in reality, if a glass of Esk Valley Gimblett Gravels Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec 2009 was put beside a glass of Chateau Kirwan 2008 or 2009 I don't think that it would be embarrassed.