What makes a great wine?

You don’t often get the chance to have a philosophical discussion about what makes a wine great with a winemaker that actually makes one. Let alone one who thinks more like a philosopher than a marketing man.

But my fascinating conversation last week with Alexandre Thienpont of Vieux Chateau Certan (about which more to follow) caused me to collect my thoughts and try to define what it is that makes a wine really exceptional.

I should say, first of all, I’m not the sort of writer who regualarly tastes what are widely regarded as the best wines in the world. I’m not part of that wine-tasting circuit and I can’t afford them. And sometimes I’m disappointed when I do, but there are wines that have immensely moved me and restored my faith - sorely challenged at times - in the wine world.

First of all, perhaps what doesn’t count - or at least not in my book. Parker points - or other stellar scores - are not important though they may well be given to the type of wines I’m talking about. Nor do high prices though longevity inevitably carries a higher than average price tag. And although small is often beautiful it doesn’t necessarily disqualify a large company from making a great wine - Grange being a case in point.

Here’s what I think a great wine needs:

1. It must have the capacity to age. How long? I wouldn’t want to put a precise figure on it - it depends on the type of wine - but 7 or 8 years at least.

2. It must be complex and multi-layered. You should be able to find different flavours in every sip as the wine opens up in the glass and yet more in the evanescent trail it leaves as you swallow.

3. It should be balanced and harmonious. There shouldn’t be a jarring note - as there may be if you drink a great wine too young. Then it’s merely ‘potentially great’. Even if it’s old and fading it should retain a taste of its prime.

4. It should be true to the place it was made. The French talk about terroir meaning a particular configuration of soil, vineyard orientation and climate but I think it’s more than that. It’s about the vision and skill of the winemaker who first created it and those who carry on that tradition. I don’t believe wine is just made in the vineyard - and that’s particularly true of blends.

5. It should accurately reflect the vintage. That doesn’t mean it should be poor in the difficult years but that it should be different. The winemaker should be rigorous about selecting his/her fruit and willing not to make his best wine in a disappointing year. (Again, that generally needs deep pockets)

6. In fact the winemaker should generally be obsessive about detail and quality. At Le Pin, for example, the winery was specifically designed not to have any impact on the water table of the surrounding vineyards.

7. It should have a track record. You can’t make a great wine in one go - and besides (cf point 1) you need several years to discover if it is great.

8. It should be able to be drunk on its own with great pleasure. Sure, food may complement a great wine but it shouldn’t need it to be complete.

9. It should be memorable and not just because of the occasion or the company in which you drank it but you should retain an sharp sense of its taste and yearn to try it again.

10. It should have soul. It should sing. It should move you. Chateau Musar, for example, has soul though many would say it has defects that disqualify it from being great. I disagree. I think great wine is all about personality.

So, what do you think? Are there other qualities I’ve left out? What makes a wine qualify as great for you?

Why is wine still so snobby?

The other day I went to an Asda wine tasting. It was held not as you might imagine in a well-lit modern tasting room but in the chandeliered splendour of Dartmouth House in Mayfair. Some of their wines were displayed in wooden Pomerol cases.

They were certainly unlikely to persuade the journalists present that they had suddenly morphed into an old style wine merchant but even the most traditional wine merchants have a more contemporary image these days. So is it their customers they want to impress - and why?

They’re not the only ones. Morrisons has just launched a new website called The Morrisons Cellar while Lidl is advertising its Wine Cellar under the strapline ‘fine wines exclusively at Lidl”. Leaving aside for the moment whether Sancerre actually constitutes a ‘fine wine’ - unless you define fine wine as French what on earth are these cost-cutting retailers talking about cellars for? How many of their customer has a cellar for heaven’s sake? I don’t.

I find it quite sad that you have to talk about fine wine and cellars to encourage people to engage with wine. That’s certainly the reverse of what is happening with beer at the moment and craft beer is booming. I was watching the TV documentary Chateau Chunder the other day about the rise of Australian wine in the '90s. Why did it do so well? Because it offered an unstuffy alternative to the staid world of unpronounceable names and condescending wine service. Have we moved on from then? Doesn’t seem like it at times.

As usual I suspect it comes down to money. Average spend is still low in the supermarkets and lower still in the likes of Asda, Morrisons and Lidl. If they could persuade their customers that the only way to impress their friends is by trading up and taking about cellars then they’d be on to a winner.

(Incidentally Morrisons is charging a fair bit more for its new ‘cellar’ range than you’d pay elsewhere online*. Even allowing for the fact they don’t appear to pay UK tax Vinissimus is charging way less for the Honoro Vera Garnacha 2011 (£4.28) than Morrisons' £14.99 while you can buy the Abanico Boca do Monte for which Morrisons is charging £10.99 for £8.77 in thedrinkshop.com)

In his recent excellent address to the European Wine Bloggers conference Andrew Jefford said 'when you consider that 95% of wine drinkers take it for granted that wine is inseparable from hilarity, I suspect that almost all of us take it too seriously, too earnestly, too reverently".

I couldn’t agree more. It’s time supermarkets projected a different image of wine, encouraging their customers to feel more at ease with wine instead of pandering to our insecurities and prejudices.

What do you think? Is wine marketing still stuck in the dark ages and what do you think supermarkets should do to change it?

*although it does, at the time of writing, have a 25% off a case deal. That doesn't mean the wines aren't generally overpriced.

 

How to read a menu and come up with a great wine match

When you have a menu in front of you how do you decide which wine to order? Sure, you can ask the sommelier or waiter but in some restaurants the service is not as helpful or knowledgeable as it might be. But there are plenty of clues in the descriptions of the dishes themselves that point to the key ingredients and the way in which they are handled. Here are a few examples:

Linguine with rocket pesto, green beans and new potato
This twist on a classic Ligurian dish is hearty and rustic. The pesto, with its slight bitterness, is the dominant component and suggests a dry Italian white rather than a red - maybe something like an Arneis from Piedmont, a Gavi or a Vermentino from Sardinia

Risotto al Amarone con prosciutto di Parma
Here the key is Amarone - the powerful, rich porty red wine from the Veneto. That will make this risotto more compatible with a red than a white but an Amarone mibht be too heavy and intense at this stage of the meal. I’d suggest a Valpolicella ripasso instead, a flexible red that will work with other lighter starters.

Pan-fried fillet of cod with coco beans, tomato confit and ham
This dish was translated as ‘facon pays Basque’ which signals cooked tomato, onion and maybe a pinch of piment d'Espelette. Add the ham and the beans and you’ve got a fish dish that could just as easily take a red as a white. I’d suggest a light rustic red like a Côtes du Roussillon Villages or an inexpensive young syrah.

Whole roast poulet de Bresse with foie gras stuffing
Foie gras is often paired with sweet wines like Sauternes but that wouldn’t suit this main course dish. But with the foie gras stuffing it’s going to be richer than an ordinary roast chicken. I’d suggest a full bodied, mature chardonnay such as a Meursault.

Charcoal grilled corn fed chicken with green lemon and rocket
An entirely different type of chicken dish - chargrilled with a zesty lemon twist and some bitter rocket this suggests an altogether sharper white than the chicken dish above: say a Sauvignon Blanc or Semillon

Roast wild duck with celeriac, bacon and chestnuts
Nowadays most game is flash-roasted in restaurants and served quite rare. And you’ve got a robust accompaniment of celeriac (slightly aniseedy), bacon (salty) and chestnuts (sweet), a flavour-packed combination that seems to me to lead more towards the Northern Rhone or other syrahs than the usual duck match of pinot noir. Côte Rôtie would be great if money is no object, otherwise try a Crozes Hermitage.

Roast pork cutlet with caramelised apple, cider and grain mustard sauce
If you’re lucky the drinks list will include an artisanal cider which would echo the appley flavours of this dish and handle the slight bitterness of the mustard. Otherwise I’d go for a full, slightly earthy white such as a white Côtes du Rhône or similar Languedoc blend of Roussanne and Marsanne.

Photo © nicoletaionescu at fotolia.com

Choc Tales: Chocolate and Cocktail Matching for Chocolate Week

One of my favourite food bloggers Helen Graves of Food Stories selflessly subjected herself to an evening of chocolate and cocktail pairing at Choc Tales, a highlight of London's recent Chocolate Week which saw some of the country’s best chocolatiers paired with premier booze hounds. Here’s her report:

A creaky old candlelit townhouse in Soho. Five rooms, five different chocolate and cocktail experiences:

Damian Allsop joined forces with Martin Miller’s Gin; a truly engaging speaker, Damian talked through the proper method for tasting chocolate by way of a single unadulterated disc of Pacari Raw melting on the tongue. First acidity, then fruit, sharp blackcurrant, tea and finally, leather. Next, his ganache, made using water instead of cream and butter, which dilute the true flavours of the chocolate. Examples were smooth as silk, smeared on a bed rock of honeycomb textured blackberry and matcha tea strips; like neon Crunchie bars, picking up on two of Allsop’s favourite flavours in the raw product.

Chocolate initiated, the first cocktail was received, as ever, with much enthusiasm; a ‘deconstructed bramble’ containing oleo saccharum (lemon oil extracted by pounding the zest with sugar), green tea (see a pattern here?), Miller’s gin and fancy ass spheres of cassis twinkling at the bottom of the glass. Dangerously fresh, it was knocked back like water.

The Grenada Chocolate Company paired their 71% chocolate and Gran Reserva rum ganache with hot buttered rum; the drink of dreams. How nice of the weather to match the drink so perfectly I thought, as the rain battered the windows and my hands wrapped around a steaming glass of spiced booze. This drink could effortlessly cure most problems, except, perhaps, obesity. A thumping bass of Santa Teresa gold rum, spiced apple juice, the bitter caramel flavour of treacle, schmoozed into submission by the magical hand of melted butter. Smooth ganache slid around my butter-coated mouth leaving, somehow, a hint of banana.

Smoky Johnny Walker Blue Label whisky came with a fluffy chocolate pyramid hiding a centre of crème brulée, and an apricot sauce flecked with vanilla. ‘It’s real vanilla!’ we were told. I should think so, too. I enjoyed the classic combination of whisky and apricots; a safe match but none the worse for it.

An Artisan du Chocolat ‘wafer’ snapped satisfyingly in the mouth releasing its sultry salted caramel centre. An accompanying Aperol spritz and cocoa pulp sorbet cocktail was visually dramatic; a glam version of an old school coke float, basically. The cocoa pulp sorbet, subtle with almond flavour excited the fizz until it spilled over the rim of glass inviting giggles and frantic slurps.

Finally, Paul A Young paired his stunning shiny chocolates with margaritas made by Cleo Rocos, of Aqua Riva tequila (no, I didn’t know she made tequila either). This effervescent pair are as entertaining as their products; the tequila makes a clean tasting margarita without a hint of burn, while Paul’s chocolates picked up the citrus theme using kalamansi, a South East Asian fruit with the appearance of a lime but a more complex flavour profile. We were encouraged to eat the chocolate whole then take a sip of the margarita to initiate a taste experience bordering on the explicit. This was one of my favourite matches of the evening, although in the end, it was a close call with that hot buttered rum . . .

Here’s the recipe from Felix Cohen of Manhattans Project.

Hot Buttered Rum

1 litre apple juice

125 grams butter

100ml golden syrup

25ml treacle

1 teaspoon allspice

Golden rum (Felix used Santa Teresa Anejo)

Heat the apple juice, and add the butter in chunks, stir in the golden syrup and treacle and once everything is mixed well, add the allspice. Once it's at about 80 degrees, the mixture is ready to mix with the rum.

Add a shot of rum to each glass then ladle over the hot buttered mixture - about 4:1 i.e. 100ml butter mixture to 25ml rum. It’s nice to serve this with a cinnamon stick in the glass, to use as a stirrer. Make sure the mixture is well stirred at all times.

Manhattans Project is located downstairs on Fridays and Saturdays at Off Broadway, Broadway Market.

Photographs © Paul Winch-Furness