By mthomas
I have made a few changes to the site but am planning a few more when I return from a research/sailing trip to Greece in a few weeks. I have deleted the Forum page because it wasn’t really working. People leave comments on each blog and there is also the contact page which I can respond to. These seem to work but I might yet end up tweeting!
I have also changed the front page. I know the picture of me in front of the painting looks a bit smug but it was taken by a friend and I like it! People often ask about the painting and for the record it is by an artist called Emma Bennett and I bought it at an end of year show at Central St Martins in the early 90s. The other panel hangs in my office (pictured) because it is hard to find an 80 square ft wall to hang them together. I have quite a few images to search through/upload to make pages more visually engaging and am conscious that pages can be less dynamic than posts in the blog.
I also need to focus on writing another chapter for the book rather than blogging but will try to update the site at least weekly. I will be adding lots more references and also plan to update the education links (so if you know of any good courses or structured tastings let me know the details). I might also add some ’social tastings’ if people send details of these.
By mthomas
As mentioned in a previous blog, I like the Bottle Apostle in Hackney because it represents what is good in the world of wine retail i.e. an independent retailer sourcing interesting bottles directly from producers. So I was lured out for a tasting on a World Cup night and missed the humiliation of France by Mexico. Having spent a lot of time time in both countries I am fond of each but given the way France qualified I was fine with the result.
The tasting of Von Buhl Estate wines was led by the enthusiastic Christoph Graf (pictured right). It was the promise of Forster Pechstein Riesling Eiswein 2007 being opened that persuaded me to attend. I had not tasted this previously (in any vintage) but had been told, by a critic I rate highly, that it should be on my ‘to drink list’. I wasn’t disappointed and its intense finish was still resonating when I got home and checked on the sleeping kids. In fact it sustained through the highlights of the world cup games and if I hadn’t felt the need to clean my teeth before bed would probably have still been there when I woke up. A really wonderful example of noble rot that is becoming rarer due to climate change. I hope to live long enough to try it when it is in its prime and will look out for older vintages in the interim.
It was good to see the room full as these type of events are often loss leaders (although it gets quite hot for storage in the basement and they should find a better home for the wines that are there). The manager Tom has told me that they can sell out cheese and wine evenings but anything more specific tends to be more difficult. I hope they persevere because tastings like this are a public service as well as good marketing.
Three hours of tasting and discussion followed. I had already eaten but everyone else appeared more than happy with a succession of Vietnamese dishes to accompany the wines. I like to drink Riesling with South East Asian food and have had some great bottles at David Thompson’s Nahm at the Halkin. It was interesting to see the demographic profile of tasters, (young couples embodying the gentrification of Victoria Park and the increasing interest in wines among this age group). At times I found myself as intrigued by body language and social displays as I was by the wine.
I enjoyed comparing the Forster Pechstein Riesling Grosse Gewachs 2008 with’ its joined-at -the-hip’ sister Grand Cru, Forster Ungeheuer Riesling Grosse Gewachs 2008. The former, edgy when young with nice apricot notes and an underlying saltiness attributed to the black basalt (pitch stone) that gives it its name. The Ungeheuer, more traditional, fruit forward and intense floral notes, but for me less precise than the Pechstein.
A 2005 Ungeheuer was decanted but remained tight and is likely to become more approachable and relaxed over the next 5 years. I would like to try it in its tertiary stage because I am intrigued by the complexity and subtlety these wines have towards the end of their life. Many of the wines at this tasting were enjoyable but I constantly found myself thinking of a decade ahead when they are in full song.
For future tastings and workshops check out the website here.
The Bottle Apostle, Victoria Park Village, 95 Lauriston Road, Hackney, London E9 7HJ Tel. 020 8985 154
By mthomas
A cracking blog from Tyler Colman at drvino covering the increase in information alcohol levels being given during tastings (and is polling to see if consumers favour this). Colman pondered how the panel’s favorite wine, Nicolas Joly’s Les Clos Sacrés from the not massively sunny Loire reached 15 percent alcohol? So, he asked the maker and Joly’s novel response (which Coleman encouraged bloggers to share) follows;
Since several years the profile of most years here lead to a year dominated by light more than by heat which may be there for 2 or 3 weeks in July mainly. O7 is a year of light as O8 and O9 (where most nights were 1O°Celsius lower than day) the same. And 2OIO is on the same way. Global warming is in my mind for here incomplete Some magnetism of the earth is changing. Spring is less pronounced, very slow to come with not much force up to May. Surprising and worrying indeed. But people are lost in their heads and prisoners of too much intellectuality. What comes is not what is expected.
Why 15° of alcohol then? Because if you wait for the “right” maturity (yellow leaves which tells you “my job is over” , right taste etc ) the beginning of some concentration have happened although we do not reach at all the so called late harvest. Why not increasing the yields then by pruning longer? Because beyond the yield of 2O max 25 hectoliters by hectare you loose “something ” precious …I remember Lalou [Bize-Leroy] saying beyond 15 hecto / hectare you cannot make a great wine. This is probably what she meant. But with vines of 3O to 7O years old as here 2O to 25 works.
You do not get a painting away from a painter unless its work is achieved. When has the chenin completed its work is then the question? Fairly late is my answer although not at the stage of vendange tardive . Keep in mind first that chenin is a very difficult child to raise ; poorly handled it becomes a disaster, well handled it is a miracle . The basic is that you cant put it almost anywhere like a sauvignon or even a chardonnay ; a chenin will not forgive any mistake from your side. Second it does not support high yields ( like french fonctionnaire but this time for the benefit of consumers !!!); the best chenin here comes from October harvest where the cool nights and the indispensable end of the maturity permits much more subtleties and complexities to fully come out. the excess of one half of a degree to one degree does not mater you do not taste it as such!
Then last as always the simplest terroir comes out first as always .you have to move into the complexity of the wine to see the huge difference If you compare on a 8 days tasting a Coulée O7 and a Clos Sacré O7 (one glass a day just recorked no fridge ) you will see a Van Gogh beside an impressionist after 8 days !If you have been tasting a great Bordeaux of the fifties 2 years after its harvest you would not have bought it .I mean that if you just want a pleasant evening with a wine full of originality take a Clos Sacré ( sold as Vieux Clos in France ) it is great .If you have something very special wil reall friends devoted to a real thrue food take certainly a Coulée it is not the same trip This will be even clearer in one year or 2, but is certainly visible now. Make the experiment.
Fantastic and refreshing for all of us who miss Eric Cantona’s deceptively wise pronouncements!
On a related note, I attended a wonderful Haynes, Hanson and Clark tasting of wines from the Loire at the RSA on Monday. Many of the makers were there and this added real interest to proceedings. The great stories makers tell are as central to terroir as the fossils laid out by Alexandre Monmousseau to illustrate geological differences between plots and wines produced from them.
The tasting showed that fantastic expressive, balanced wines are available from this area at reasonable prices if people can be bothered to lift their blinkers beyond Bordeaux and Burgundy. I loved the wines from Domaine Serge Dagueneau and Domaine Bernard Baudry with the 2009 Pouilly-Fume’ from the former and 2008 Chinon Le Clos Guillot from the latter my picks.
By mthomas
Martin Walker is probably best known as a Guardian journalist. He was Bureau Chief in Moscow and European Editor in the United States. He has also written a range of non-fiction texts including The Cold War and presented BBC programmes on Russia and ‘Clintonomics‘. He spends summers in his house in the Dordogne and writes detective novels set in the fictional town of St Denis.
The hero of this series of books, which includes the wine focussed The The Dark Vineyard, is Bruno Courreges a parochial gendarme. He is a paragon of French culture who teaches rugby and tennis to local children. He also finds time to tread grapes with neighbours, bed various women and catch villains.
An arson attack on a research centre with GM crops triggers an investigation involving a Californian wine corporation, young French would be winemakers and a hippy commune. There is also room for a selection of slightly stereotypical St Denis characters including the odd newbie Brit settler. It is all very easy on the intellect and has some nice touches for Francophiles. The wine content is pretty undemanding and in many ways peripheral but there are a few interesting passages including one linking the treading of grapes to a spike in birth rates 9 months later.
There is a Bruno website which even has pictures of Gigi, Bruno’s truffle sniffing Basset Hound. My dad had one when I was very young and I always assumed they were English so it was interesting to read that they are thought to have been bred by St Hubert (the patron saint of hunting) for boar hunting and their ears funnel up scents to their nose. I must look out for human versions at future tastings.
I spend a lot of time reading quite demanding texts so crime novels are a bit of a guilty pleasure. I often gravitate towards French and Italian detective novels, particularly those written by Fred Vargas but she can’t write them fast enough for me. In the interim I might dip into more of this series.
I have made a few changes to the site but am planning a few more when I return from a research/sailing trip to Greece in a few weeks. I have deleted the Forum page because it wasn’t really working. People leave comments on each blog and there is also the contact page which I can respond to. These seem to work but I might yet end up tweeting!
