HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLD MAN 2

 

GOING DOWN

 You will be aware that I've bemoaned the disappearance of smaller format bottles of wine (500ml and 375ml) as a result of manufacturing and retailing 'efficiencies'. The cost structure - according to manufacturers and retailers - has made production and sale of these inefficient. They made this decision without consultation with or surveying of consumers. I guess they just know better.

When I first became involved in the wine industry, 375ml or half bottles were often the norm across many brands and wine styles regardless of the price and quality scale of the wines. More often than not there was a half bottle offering of Burgundies to a high level, Chateau bottled clarets up to First Growth levels, quality German wines at any level, top Australian, American, Italian, Spanish and even New Zealand wines often at top levels. No one talked about inefficiencies and consumers expected to pay more than half the price of a 750ml bottle for a 375ml one.

When supermarkets around the world began to dominate wine sales the wine category buyers in the supermarket chains began to bully suppliers on price, demanded promotional deals, 'sold' shelf spaces and  dictated wine styles and packaging requirements. It wasn't  a case of knowing best - more. a case of having power and flexing it indiscriminately not unlike the way that USA's stupidest president is doing on trade wars at present. A side effect of this has been the decline and almost eradication of the half bottle.

I haven't had much success in securing supply of quality half bottle wines (most offerings are at the basic quality level) across a range of varietals so have resorted to using my version of the ''solera'  system.

The solera system is a fractional blending method used primarily for aging sherry but also employed for other beverages like brandy, beer, and certain types of wine. It involves blending wines of different ages in a dynamic process, with older wine gradually being replaced by younger wine over time.This continuous blending creates a consistent flavor profile and ensures a steady stream of aged product.

I don't blend or replace wine in my system although blending has become a norm for us e.g. Her Indoors likes Californian chardonnay while I prefer New Zealand Hawkes Bay chardonnay. Sometimes when I've bought a HB chardonnay that is a bit too woody or hasn't had enough good wood aging I blend a bit of her Californian chardonnay into it, The roundness and creaminess of the Californian gives a lift to the HB one. The reverse can work as well - I find the Californian style too over the top in Malo-like creaminess but with the structure and freshness of the HB chardonnay adding some improves the Californian. Does that make sense? Never mind - back to my 'solera' system.

As it is usually just me drinking the Hawkes Bay chardonnay or a pinot noir (she prefers zinfandels) I don't want to drink a whole bottle at a sitting (4 large glasses). I used to just leave a half a bottle in the fridge for coming back to a couple of days later. The problem with this is that I don't always want to drink the same wine again so soon after, preferring to mix and match my wine drinking and tasting. Wine in an opened bottle will still be good in the fridge (red, white or rose) for several days before it loses freshness. 

What I do now is, on opening a bottle that's not being shared (like a Champagne) I immediately decant half of it into a clean 375 ml bottle - putting that away in the fridge and drinking the other half (2 glasses). If I only want one glass I decant half the bottle into a 375ml bottle and a quarter into a 187ml bottle. I put both of these away in the fridge for drinking later. You can see that this is a diminishing system where 750ml becomes 562ml or 375ml and can then become 187ml left. 4 glasses to 3 glasses to 2 glasses to 1 glass. Here's a pic showing a red wine I did this with recently:

The trick is to make sure that the bottles a scrupulously clean, have a good sealing scrap and to fill the wine up to the absolute top leaving no air between the top of the wine and the inside of the cap. I've found that, even in the smallest bottle the wine, kept in the fridge will be good for several weeks.

It might sound like a bit of a fankle (effort) but this is well worth doing to cut down on wastage with a good quality wine and to offer interest and variability in tasting.

"YOU'LL MISS ME WHEN I'M GONE"*

 * Was what my mother used to say to me when I was 'cheeky' to her.

She's right, I do miss her.

Those other bloggers Richard and Robert have, for it seems ever, made fun of my blog posts and it seems have protested too much.

Because I didn't post for three days the poor, sad old men obviously missed me and took to writing about it in their blogs and comments. I guess that they need some sort of inspiration in their blogging, even from negative sources.

MONMARTHE CHAMPAGNE

 We like to drink Champagne and good quality methode traditionelle wines at our house and, now that we are older and drinking less (but better) we tend to drink Champagne more often than we used to.

We share a bottle and, with the Stuart crystal Champagne glasses we use, get 4 glasses out of the bottle. The pours are closely scrutinised for fairness of two glasses each - a consideration we don't apply to other types of wine.

This, not every weekend, is a Saturday evening treat while playing pool in the 'snooker room' as dinner is cooking in the oven.

Her Indoors (the title much more appropriate in the post 2020 Covid days as she works from home mostly now) and I rarely, if ever, open, let alone consume a 750 ml bottle on our own and, while with proper corking (the Broken Shed vodka bottle cork is ideal) the opened  Champagne is good for a day or two in the fridge we tend to only open a bottle when the two of us are together.

I rarely travel nowadays but she does - visiting friends and relatives and on secondment with her work both domestic and overseas. This creates as you can see, a conundrum when we are separated on weekends.

In previous posts I've recounted how I'm always on the hunt for good quality half bottles of wine. These are largely a thing of the past with, when they are available, being wines at the bottom end of the price and quality scale which, quite frankly is a nonsense. Either that or they are invariably fortified or 'sticky wines' neither which we consume anymore. We're a ready market for good quality pinot noir, chardonnay, rose and zinfandel or Italian reds but sadly there are never any on offer.

The same goes for Champagne and good quality sparkling (Methode-style). Our favourite NZ bubbles are Deutz rose and Blanc de Blanc but the manufacturers haven't thought to put these in half bottles. They do make half bottles of the standard Deutz and decanted bottles of 200ml 'piccolos' but. while reliable we find this blend a bit simple. We do buy the odd, when available, 375ml bottles of Grand Marque Champagnes (Veuve Cliquot, Pol Roger, Lanson, Louis Roederer etc) but they are usually prohibitively expensive.

Last week I found, via an internet search a small distributor Three French Vines selling an interesting boutique selection including 375ml bottles of Monmarthe Champagne.

The price was good (about $33 a bottle) so I bought a dozen. These will be good to keep for occasions when either of us a alone or when we just feel like one glass each. I hadn't heard of Montmarthe before so had a look at the description on the Three French Vines website and on other websites.

Three French Vines had this to say:

All good but I don't place much faith in wine reviews and competition results unless they are top competitions and very reliable wine scribes. It told me that the Champagne is 49% pinot noir and 40% pinot meunier with the rest from chardonnay grapes. It indicates a style that the description matches - ripe, toasty and soft.

Nathalie MacLean, a wine writer whose reviews I trust had this to say:

Natalie's Score: 91/100

Monmarthe Secret De Famille is a 1er Cru Brut Champagne, a solid and fruity traditional method bubble produced by a sixth-generation champagne family. The wine has been aged on its lees for two years and is dry, zesty and toasty with white-fleshed stone fruit, honeyed nut, baked pastry flavours on a fine and persistent mousse with a zesty finish. Very nice now. Chill and enjoy it on its own or with chips and dip.

OK, not glowing but suggests that the wine is solid and reliable.

The wine arrived on Friday and I opened a bottle yesterday.

While clearly not being of Grande Marque standard it is of course half the price of a Grande Marque. The wine is pretty much to the descriptions given. I detected a nuttiness to it that was pleasant and added to the roundness. The wine seems to have bottle age but the disgorgement date etched on the bottle is obtuse which is annoying. Overall though it's fit to purpose and we will use it up over the next 6 months or so.

 

LEFT A BIT

 I did some further 'fossicking' in the cellar (actually it's just a basement now as the wine cellar has gone after having sold off all the treasures and I haven't been buying any 'keeping' wines) I turned up a few more fortified wines that we will consume over the winter months.

Left to right are:

• Noval 10 y.o. (half bottle)
• Quinta da Noval 1997 vintage port (half bottle)
• Hardy's Whiskers Blake tawny 'port'
• Lauriston Reserve Muscat
• Noval 10 y.o.
• Warre's 1970 port
• Dalva 10.y.o.

The gems here are the Warre's 1970 and the Quinta da Noval 1997.

Warre's 1970 is rated as being the best vintage of Warre's produced which will make it interesting drinking after the outstanding 1983 (half bottle) we tried on the weekend and the subject of the previous post).

Here are a couple of reviews from tasters who have tried it over the last year:

I'm looking forward to trying our one. We have friends visiting in a few weeks so will likely open it then.

The Quinta da Noval 1997 is similarly well rated. Here a re a couple of reviews:

Again, I'm looking forward to trying it again.Being a half bottle we will drink this soon just between the two of us.

Both the Warre's 1970 and the Quinta Da Noval 1997 are fetching huge prices on the market and maybe if I had several bottles I might be tempted to sell but as we kept these bottles back when we sold all the ports and other good wines at auction a few years ago, these are for drinking.

The other ports (and the muscat) won't be great but we have had them for a long time (between 20 and 30 years) so while the styles don't improve in bottle should have mellowed quite a bit. Hey! We're set for the possible very cold winter we are going to have.

I'll post on the wines as we try them.

*******************************

PART 2

I had finished this post and then I went down to the cellar basement later looking for some old Zinfandel that I remembered having.

I moved the spare wheel to the trailer, my bike, the trailer tarpaulin cover, some old rope and fishing poles, several cartons of wine glasses and three big bags of golf balls and there was a box of old ports - staring me in the face all the time!

I also discovered, along with a few bottles of old American Zinfandels an unopened case of Novum NZ Pinot Noir 2019 vintage. I'd totally forgotten about this. I'll post on these wines later as this post is about port.

I brought the six bottles of port upstairs and cleaned the bottles.

They are:

• Taylors 20 year old
• Silval 1997 vintage
• Noval forty year old
• Noval Late Bottled Vintage 1994 (three bottles)

Sadly one of the Noval LBV has leaked but at least we have two more.

The wine is stuffed.

This again was a treat as I'd totally forgotten about these as well.

The Silval, another from the Quinta da Noval stable, while not being as renowned as the main Quinta da Noval wine has had some pretty good reviews.

The Taylors 20 year old and the Noval 40 year old (20 years and 40 years aged in barrels) should also be interesting drinking. The 1994 Noval Late Bottled Vintage  (usually spending a couple of years aging in barrel before bottling) will be a good medium between the vintage ports and the barrel aged ones. All three of these are fetching high prices on the market and getting great reviews. Once again I'll post a review as we taste them. Her Indoors is already making noises about opening one of the half bottles tonight - not waiting for the weekend!

SATURDAY NIGHTS ALRIGHT FOR ...

 ... well, not for fighting, that's for sure.

The cooler weather has made us think of robust and roasted meals and 'warmer' drinks. To this end I fossicked in the cellar and brought out a half bottle of Warre's 1983 vintage port.

The label slipped a bit after washing the bottle

Thankfully the state of the label wasn't an indication of the state of the wine in the bottle. The cork was intact and extracted safely. I decanted the wine which we will have this evening (roasted potatoes and pumpkin with a broccoli and cauliflower cheese bake is dinner).

As an afternoon starter we've been drinking a bottle of Veuve Cliquot NV Champagne. You know what it looks like so I won't post a picture - orange label remember. The Champagne is fresh and lovely. We love this brand.

I've left the port to 'breathe' in a decanter - not 'gasp' as you might think with it being 41 years old and we will drink it after dinner. We had a tasting glass though and were astounded. The colour is tawny but still has reddish hues. The nose has sultanas and vanilla with no nuttiness. It is still very much alive and well. The wine is silky smooth to taste and is rich, round and sweet which suggests that the fruit is still outbalancing the alcohol or, as you'd expect, the alcohol volume has dropped with the age.

I'm happy to say that I still have a couple of half bottles left of this wine but I imagine that we will have drunk them before spring.

OLD AND PAST IT

 We like Champagne at our house .... send us some!

Last week when I was cleaning up and clearing out the basement I found a box of forgotten wines stuck in a corner covered by tools, carpets and an old bicycle.

In the box I 'found' (at the corners of my memory I knew they were there somewhere) some 1980 vintage ports (Warre's) half bottles, a couple of bottles of 1988 Ravenswood Zinfandel, a decanter bottle of 10 y.o. Dalva port and three bottles of Remy Martin Club Cognac. "All good" I thought although the Ravenswood will be stuffed. At the bottom of the box was a bottle of de Venoge 1973 'Cordon Bleu' Champagne.

I've had this bottle since 1987 (37 years) when I was clearing out the basement of an old wine and spirit merchants that I'd taken over as manager. It was among some other old relics that, sadly had been opened (old postwar whiskies, vodkas and gins from the 1960s etc that would have been valuable if unopened and intact. I kept the de Venoge as it was unusual in being in a decanter bottle that had the glass stopper strapped to its side. In 1987 the wine was 14 years old - not old for a vintage Champagne but I had no knowledge of its provenance and didn't know how it had been stored so never opened it to try it.

Well, last night I did. I expected it to be flat which it was but hoped for some old Champagne taste. I was disappointed . The wine was sour like old and very tart apple juice. A shame that.

de Venoge 1973 'Cordon Bleu' Champagne doesn't fetch high prices on the international auction market. I found  it for 52GBP on one site and 250 USD on another - good luck to anyone buying it - so don't feel like I wasted anything by opening it.

1973 rated well in the Champagne vintages but generally, recent tastings have proved that Champagne doesn't last that long:

"Overall, the 1973 vintage for Champagne was fantastic with a fair few age-worthy examples. Although, simply due to the sheer length of time passed, many Champagnes are likely to be past their best. The top examples, however, may still be drinking now although careful research is advisable."

 With my bottle the label showed wear but the cork and muselet seemed to be in good condition. 

On opening, the cork was compressed which is not unusual with age and this exacerbates oxidation.

On their website de Venoge still market the Cordon Bleu range but have put the wine in the standard bottle. The 'decanter' bottle is now used for the Princes range.

The wine as you'd expect had no bubbles and was browned. The taste as I said was sour  (more Granny Smith than lemon and honey) and not worth 'freshening up' with some newer bubbles ....

..... I resorted to an old favourite instead - Stoneleigh Rose.