OONAPHILIA

 There's news of a wannabe wine writer on the scene. Here's a link to a blog that is announcing it: HERE

I don't know what his wine blog will be called or by what name he will go under but I assume that it will be something like 'The Vulgar Vieille Vigne' or 'Too Uncouth for Vermouth".

I guess in his new blog profile he will use appropriate words like:

• Dirty
• Flabby
• Full-bodied
• Buttery
• Acidic
• Barnyard
• Earthy and,
• Tight.

I'll wait to see and then might place a link on this blog.

THANK YOU LANSON

 

In the past I've complained about the esoteric date codes printed on the back labels of wines and beers.

METHODE IN MY MADNESS

These are designed to obfuscate and you need to be in, or have been in the drinks industry to decipher them most times.

When it comes to Fino Sherry, beer and Champagne the date of packaging, or disgorgement for Champagne is critical.

We opened a Lanson Black Label Champagne yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I noted on the back label that Lanson is sensibly writing:

• The blend % of grape varietals
• The number of crus (selections) used
• How long the wine was aged before disgorgement
• The year (2016) that the base material came from
• The % of base wine used
• The disgorgement date

This is good information. Thanks Lanson. it's the first time that  I've noticed this and I must check with Champagnes I buy in the future. I definitely will be favouring Champagne Lanson.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

 A good friend gave me a bottle of Veuve Cliquot NV Champagne for my birthday which, as one of my favourite NV marques, will go down very nicely thank you.

She also have me a bottle of Banrock Station sparkling shiraz that'd been sitting in their cellar for years. They know that we have (have had) a liking for Australian sparkling shiraz with E&E and Leasingham being top favourites over the years before they were discounted as a result of Constellation's takeover - ripping, stripping and bastardising of BRL Hardy brands - like the British, Spanish, French and Portuguese empires did to far flung countries for centuries.

The wine was given out of interest as she doubted that it would be any good. She couldn't remember when they bought it but I guess that it was probably  before 2006 making it at least 16 years old. Banrock Station, at the time was owned by Constellation along with Barossa Valley Estates (E&E brand) and Leasingham and while at the budget end of the market, winemaking input came from BRL Hardy/Constellation with their world class sparkling winemaking team led by Ed Carr.

I said to 'Her Indoors' after we'd bowled a bottle of Bollinger Rose that I'd got in for my birthday (which is still 2 days away but we couldn't wait) that, while we wait for the lasagne to cook we could check out the Banrock Station.

The Bollinger was pretty good I must say - savoury and complex with a long finish. My only complaint is that the bottle went down so bloody fast hence needing another glass of bubbles.

Bubbles? The Banrock Station sparkling shiraz didn't deliver these but, to be fair, E&E, Leasingham, Great Western and the few, very few, others that braved this style never gave us bubbles other than a kind of fluffy mousse. 'Her Indoors' and I recently discovered another Australian sparkling shiraz - Rockford sparkling shiraz - that was like a lesser E&E but supply has been limited. We'd kind of given up on drinking this style of wine again which used to be a Christmas Dinner staple.

I opened the Banrock Station wine not expecting a 'pop' which I didn't get but neither did I get silence. There was a little squeak which wasn't as ostentatious as the 'bang' of note in wine circles according to this old joke:

.... I couldn't find it on-line but it goes like this:

A wine expert is demonstrating to a group of 'wine enthusiasts' from the Moera and Wainuiomata Wine club on how to open a bottle of Champagne.

Expert: "You grip the cork and twist the bottle. As the cork exits the bottle you should hear a hissing sound like the sound of a satisfied woman."

The expert attempts to do this but the cork leaves the bottle with a resounding *BANG*.

Wag from the audience: "I know her."

I poured the wine into two glasses making sure that 'Her Indoors' tried hers first. 

"It's fine she said" which surprised me and prompted me to try mine. The wine had deep, dark red colour with only slight browning at the edges. It had a bit of spritz still which freshened the palate showing nice fruity flavours. To be honest it was damned good and the bottle age - over 18 years - seemed to have improved what was otherwise a simple wine made for early drinking. I note that this has been long discontinued but, in the UK a few years ago loyal followers of it petitioned Constellation to bring it back.

They didn't.

THE WORST WINE I EVER TASTED.

 

Wine is a very variable commodity which, while generally still being safe to consume *can vary drastically in flavour profile, taste, quality and drinkability.

* This doesn't mean that all wine is safe however as people have been made ill, blinded and died from wine that has been 'doctored' by greedy manufacturers hoping to increase the value by adding illegal substances. I have written on this before. See: HERE , HERE and HERE .

Sometimes, naive and parsimonious wine drinkers purchase and consume 'cleanskin' wines in the belief that the lack of a label means that they are saving money and that the wine in the bottle is just as good as the stiff that the winemaker actually bothers to put a label on.

These people deserve a dose of diethylene glycol.

I'm not going to talk about the 'doctored' wines in this post, nor will I (shudder) mention the occasional wine that I've been offered by Richard or those that Robert buys from the bargain bin at his local Pak 'n' Save but I will try to remember some of the worst wines that I've had the misfortune to drink.

Early days.

In the early 1970s I started my wine 'career'  .......

...... at Murray Roberts Wines and Spirits as a part-time job while at university. This set me off on a lifetime of working with and appreciating wine. I was able to drink, buy and nick many of the world's finest wines which opened my eyes to the subtleties and intricacies of tastes and to the exciting history behind the labels.

Not all wines from supposedly top wine producing countries were good  though and  a fair bit of study and trial and error was required. Portugal for example is rightly renowned for port but some of the 'table' wine was dire like the disgusting Dao red and white and the unripe Vinho Verde (the name gave it away).

New Zealand wine s in the 1970s were generally a bad lot. They were produced from unsuitable grapes - Baco 1A, Baco 22A, Palomino, Albany Surprise, Chasselas, and other 'industrial' grade rubbish. These were sugared, sulphured and watered to the point of undrinkability which, I guess, did put them on a par with the vile German Liebfraumilch wines and the unpronounceable stuff that came from Hungary. Yugoslavia, Greece and, at the time, Australia. It wasn't until the, now, unfashionable and unfavoured Muller Thurgau came on the scene and later the boring Sauvignon Blanc that New Zealand wines were considered to be drinkable.

Some memorable monstrosities were McWilliams Bakano (although the white Cresta Dore was acceptable),  Corbans Velluto Rosso, McWilliams Marque Vue and anything labelled Chablis, Moselle, 'Riesling', Claret or Burgundy.

1980s and 1990s

I advanced my 'career' from 1980 into retail management, marketing and international sales and was fortunate to not only drink some of the best wines (and beers and spirits) in the world but to visit the wineries (distilleries and breweries) and taste with the owners, winemakers and cellar-masters. The taste of the best of these is still in my memory and provided a benchmark against which to measure other wines that I competitively and professionally tasted, marketed, reported on and made production and importing and purchasing decisions for.

There were some dogs though.

TCA ( 2,4,6-trichloroanisole), is the chemical that taints wine, usually via the cork that has sealed it to cause musty aromas and flavours in wines. The compound forms through the interaction of plant phenols, chlorine and mould. It most frequently occurs in natural corks (TCA can even form on tree bark) and is transferred to the wine in bottle--which is why wines with these off-aromas are often called "corky." But the taint can originate elsewhere in wineries, where damp surfaces and chlorine-based cleaning products are commonplace; barrels, wooden pallets, wood beams and cardboard cases are all sources of phenols. If TCA goes undiscovered, it can spread and eventually taint the wines. I've experienced many 'corked' wines from the most simple and cheapest right through to the most celebrated and expensive. Once tasted a 'corked' wine is memorable. It's not TCA that I want to mention as among the worst wines I've tried though.

Brettanomyces, also known as Brett, is a yeast that imparts plastic or animal aromas, such as sticking plasters, smoke or leather to wine. Brett causes spoilage via the production of volatile phenol compounds. Most people are offended by the unpleasantness of Brett characters  in wine but quite a few nutters (probably Catholics) enjoy them and do not consider low levels of Brett in wine a fault. It was the case (more rare now) that European wineries, especially French, were rather dirty and unsophisticated production facilities. The 'tradition' was more important than modern food manufacturing standards and, as a consequence winery faults (Brett, TCA, Volatile Acidity (VA) and a host of others) were tolerated and actively encouraged as they were seen to be part of the mysterious 'cellar style' and 'terroir' even.

When travelling with a colleague through France (we drove from Rheims in the North down to Bordeaux in the South West) we did lots of side trips to smaller regions and stayed in some quaint and lovely towns and villages. We experienced stunning wines in the Loire region, Burgundy, Rhone and the South West enjoying tasting and talking with the owners. One particular wine and producer near Montpellier was so bad we had to beat a hasty retreat. The beaming proprietor poured us tastes of the most vile poison and then proudly marched us off to view where he'd concocted the rubbish. The wine was redolent of Brett and VA and, if it had come out of a bottle with a cork and not from a barrel would probably have been 'corked' as well. The winery and cellars stank of damp, mould and Brett. It was like walking down a corridor in an old and dirty hospital. We really could sense the mould and brettanomyces yeast spores clinging to our clothing and trying to enter our skin. We mumbled the need to get away to an urgent appointment and took off leaving the now not beaming proprietor in his cave. We didn't buy any wine there.

Later years

I did say that I worked for a long time in the wine industry - more than 40 years in fact so have drunk some awful wines but another memorable one was a very expensive Californian Cabernet Sauvignon which was so high in alcohol it was out of balance. This is what I said about it back in 2008:

Back in the 1990s and the early 2000s American wine producers got all excited when some Californian cabernet sauvignons beat some top French Bordeaux wines in a blind tasting. This sort of meaningless competition happens all the time with New Zealand producers crowing when a New Zealand wine beats a top French one, when German pinot noirs get higher points than a Burgundy or an Australian shiraz score better than top Rhone syrahs. After that the Americans pushed their prices up to ridiculous levels and started overdoing it with inputs - low cropping and concentrated sugars, too much new oak etc - to the point where the wines, particularly the cabernet sauvignons were just too big - like pan galactic gargle blasters. This isn't surprising really as Americans almost always go over the top in things.

 

METHODE IN MY MADNESS

 

For a long time now, Her Indoors and I have enjoyed a couple of glasses of sparkling wine on a Saturday evening before dinner. Often we combine this with a 'best of three' pool challenge but we haven't played for a while. This hasn't stopped us sharing a bottle of bubbles though.

Our bubbles  of choice are ether Champagne or a good Méthode Traditionnelle. Champagne is first choice but not affordable every week. Méthode Traditionnelles are a bit cheaper but can be a bit of a minefield when selecting and buying them.

With European wines the safest bet is to stick with Champagne as 'non Champagne' sparklings or Méthode Traditionnelles coming from other than the Champagne region with French wines or other European countries (Italy, Spain and Germany for example) can be a bit coarse and variable.

There are some great examples of very good Méthode Traditionnelles being made in USA, Australia, England and New Zealand but the very best are prohibitively expensive (for us) and, when you are spending over $50 a bottle I'd rather stick with Champagne.

With New Zealand Méthode Traditionnelles, we've tried just about all of them (except for the most expensive) and have concluded that the best, on average, day to day, reliable brand is Deutz. We buy Deutz Rose and Deutz Blanc de Blanc on a regular basis and, when it is on deep cut special, stock up on it by the dozen-load.

When it comes to Champagne  I'm on the lookout for good deals among my favourite marques but it requires a bit of caution because the sayings 'one man's meat is another man's poison' or,  'buyer beware' applies well to Champagne specials. Champagne is an expensive product being unfortunately lumped into the luxury category due to the popularity it has among rich people, socialites, celebrities and rap stars. Yes it is often (depending on the brand) over-inflated in price and represents very poor value for money (it is a 750ml bottle of 12% alcohol after all) but, with careful selection good deals can be had.

The problem with Champagne, as a luxury product, unlike its cousins shoes, handbags, boats, cars, jewellery and real estate is fragile and generally short-lived. The fragility is because it is a twice-sealed wine (look up the production method on Google) and, for NV (non vintage) Champagnes the shelf-life after disgorgement (look up Google again) is even more limited - for me, 6 months is a good measure.

I ask the retailer if I'm uncertain and I check the esoteric bottling codes printed on the bottle or label if I don't trust the retailer in order to find out when the wine was disgorged (look up Google again). I always buy Champagne that is packaged with an individual bottle carton (if buying off the shelf) or ask the retailer to take the bottle out of a case. I do this because, as I said, Champagne is delicate and long exposure to light (sunlight or fluorescent) can make the wine dull.

Anyway, we finally got through the mixed case of Champagnes that I bought back in December. This was our Christmas drinking but we managed to eke the supply out until mid March. The mix was made up of good NV, vintage, and roses (both NV and vintage). I bought them from Glengarry and again concentrated on specials. A couple of weeks ago I bought, on-line, a case of 6 of Laurent Perrier NV  from Fine Wines on Line. This wine was on special and I paid $59 a bottle (down from $73).

We popped the cork on a bottle on Saturday and it was excellent - full flavoured and luscious.

The crystal glasses we use - Stuart - are of a size that we get exactly 4 glasses from a 750ml bottle. With this there is no way to cheat and sneak an extra dollop as Her Indoors will be looking for exactly two full glasses. 

It's only fair.

VERMENTINO

 

Richard posted that he's going to make rat and sparrow pie for his tea.

See: HERE

I suggested that Vermentino might be an appropriate wine accompaniment for such a delicacy, obviously a Nuova Lazio favourite, but I doubt that he'll be able to find any Vermentino in his local bottle stores . 'Ratshit to swallow', the byline for most of the crap offered in bottle stores of today is probably the closest he will come to finding a suitable beverage.

When Richard, Robert and I worked in a wine and spirit merchant store (a very large bottle store) in the 1970s the selections were much better encompassing a wide range of products. Most countries of the world were represented with wines, spirits, beers and liqueurs and it made our jobs very interesting (especially when we sampled most after work). Greek, German, Australian and various other brandies were on offer along with French brandies and cognacs * and just about every famous liqueur and spirit could be bought.

Portuguese Dao wines, wines from Sicily, South of France, Greece, The Lebanon, Switzerland, Austria, Romania, Hungary and many other 'strange' countries were alongside the traditional and famous wines from France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

Strangely enough the wines from Australia and New Zealand were minimal as at the time both countries industries were fledgling and there was a shortage of chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir etc and sauvignon blanc had yet to be planted.

Anyway, we're talking about Vermentino.

I've never tasted this, certainly not as a varietal on its own but it may well have been blended into some Chiantis I've tasted (I don't drink Italian white wines).

I don't think I'll give it a try though and, along with Richard's rat and sparrow pie this will have to remain a taste experience that will remain a mystery.

* There was one bottled in the Wairarapa.

IN VINO VERITAS ........... NO, .......... IN VINO ARGUMENTUM EST

 I noticed that I haven't written a post as THE WINE GUY since July. 

Sorry about that.

There have been wine related comments made by me on some of my other blogs, usually as a response to the very silly things that Richard of Richard's Bass Bag (don't ask) has posted or commented. This is the guy who, back in about 1976 ruined a vertical tasting of Chateau Margaux by pouring lemonade into the glasses. 

An excerpt from a post dated Tuesday, October 29, 2013

As you can see putting Richard in close proximity to decent wine is like voting Donald Trump into the presidency of the USA.

As I said, Richard has said some silly things in his blog about wine. I guess that it's a good thing that he does drink wine instead of, say, bleach or methylated spirits but his choices are a bit prosaic. His preference in wine style or varietal is chardonnay. That's it, just chardonnay. Now, don't get me wrong, I love chardonnay and think it's the best white wine varietal that can be made into an interesting range of different style wines, from different countries, different regions, different microclimates and using different methods - barrel fermentation, new wood or old wood ageing etc. I like to experiment. 

Richard doesn't. He prefers his chardonnays to be in bottles with no labels, This could be due to the fact that the big words (in small print) that the wine marketers use confuse him but, I believe it's because the wines with no labels - cleanskins - are cheaper and he gets 'more bangs for his bucks'.  Maybe he has Covid ....

........ one of the side effects of Covid-19 is that infected people lose the ability to smell and taste.

..... moving along.

Oh, that's right, I was talking about Richard's recent vinous ramblings and The Curmudgeon's responses to those. How on earth are you supposed to respond to stuff like this?

Well, The Curmudgeon responded with these two comments:

Richard has written much worse stuff about wine  - believe me - or not, as you wish.  Maybe you could just visit his blog ........ but it isn't recommended.