Ice wine

One of the drawbacks of having a wife who doesn’t drink very much is that it often means I drink more. Brought up by thrifty parents and taught at school to always finish what was on my plate, I hate to see things go to waste.  I’ve now got to an age where one glass over my usual two to three glasses can lead to either snoring or the dreaded waking up at 3am sick with worry about the mortgage or the price of cheese. So on one hand I have my frugal Scottish side and, let’s face it, my in-built love of booze screaming drink it and on the other my love of a good night’s sleep and marital harmony telling me not to.

Recently I was faced with a conundrum. We were going on holiday the next day and I’d picked up some Turkish food for supper. We had just under 1/2 a bottle of rose in the fridge (Chateau Barthes Bandol Rose, £9.99 at Majestic and really quite nice), not nearly enough to go with spicy grilled lamb for two. So I opened a bottle of red (Blind Spot GSM £7.50 The Wine Society.) Problem solved but after demolishing nearly half of the red I realised that I had to stop or they’d either be snoring, sleeplessness or even a hangover, none of them good when you have to get up at 5am to catch a flight. I’d have to let the wine go to waste unless of course i could preserve it some way.

Then I had a moment of inspiration/ light drunkenness, I popped the wine in the freezer and off we went to France. On our return I defrosted the bottle  curious as to how it would taste. It would have been interesting (though not very) to try the previously frozen wine against a fresh bottle but instead I had to rely on memory. It still tasted good but it was lighter, fruitier and simpler. A moderately serious wine had been turned into something frivolous and rather delicious. All went well until the last glass because at the bottom of the bottle was a purple sludge. That sludge was the seriousness that had been removed during the freezing process. I had inadvertently created Ice Wine.

Do you remember the craze for Ice Beer in the mid nineties? There was a lot of guff about smoothness and ultimate refreshment but actually the purpose of the ice process was to remove flavour from the beer. Tiny particles that contained beery tastes – yeast, hops etc. – were frozen and filtered out of the beer. The brewers had created something for those who found Sol a little too characterful. I think the big wine companies are missing a trick here. Many drinkers love bland products; many commercial wines are already chilled and filtered heavily. Instead of keeping it quiet, they should be shouting it from the treetops: Pinot Grigio Ice! Cava Ice! Sauvignon Blanc Ice! Come on marketing people, wake up!

Your prejudice won’t keep you warm tonight

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” – Isaac Asimov

“Your prejudice won’t keep you warm tonight.” – Steven Morrissey

Prejudices are wonderful things. You can tell a man by his prejudices.  A prejudice is a one off judgement that you hold onto for the rest of your life. They can be irrational but they can also be based on a good piece of evidence e.g. I went to the White Horse in Parson’s Green and didn’t like the braying twats at the table next door ostentatiously arguing over who would pay the bill: ‘no seriously Jasper, fuck the fuck off, I’ll pay’ one of them said waiving his gold card at the nonplussed waitress. From this you can deduce that all former public schoolboys are wankers. Congratulations, you now have a prejudice. Luckily it’s a socially acceptable one so you won’t get arrested for tweeting about it. I’d like to add that it’s not our fault we speak so loudly. If every day of your life someone had shouted ‘speak up Jeffreys! don’t mumble!’ then you too would have a loud braying voice. Anyway I digress, prejudices!

I used to love my wine prejudices: Australian wine is jammy, English a joke and Pinotage unspeakable. When I became wine writer for the Lady I decided to confront them head on. I would go out of my way to drink wines that I would normal avoid. I take my duties extremely seriously and don’t want readers missing out on the fabulous world of wine because of my bigotry. I wrote last year:

“This year I’m to approach all wines with an open mind including ones that I normally avoid. This means you Pinotage, Australian Shiraz and any still wine from England. I will be become an equal opportunities taster, celebrating the diversity of the wine world rather than taking refuge, little Englander-like, in the comforting flavours of the old world.”

So how have I got on? Well I think I might be up for a Commission for Racial Equality award because I doubt there is anyone doing more to celebrate diversity in wine than me. Australian shiraz? Well not only do I now love Australian wine but I’ve learned to love that big rather malty style of shiraz that I used to think was vulgar. It’s not vulgar – it’s just plain delicious. This year I even fell for the ne plus ultra of Oz shirazes, the Dead Arm from d’Arenberg. Tick!

With English wine I wasn’t doing quite so well, I’d had lots of very good sparklers and some reasonable stills, but then last week I had an English chardonnay, Gusbourne Guinevere 2011, that tasted blind I would have said new wave Australian – very dry, very chic, and expensive – superb stuff. And if you’re a fan of very light German reds, their Pinot Noir isn’t bad either. Tick! Another prejudice down.

And Pinotage, well I have tried. I’ve really tried, I’ve drunk lots and I’ve drunk them with an open mind. I don’t want to dislike it. I like nothing better than being a contrarion. It would be cool to champion this underdog but sadly I haven’t found anything that I would want more than one glass of. Still the Warwick Old Vine Pinotage wasn’t bad – nicely smoky, smooth and with only the smallest whiff of burnt plastic.

The best thing about prejudices is that as soon as you demolish old ones, some new ones spring up. My latest is New Zealand Pinor Noir. I’m just not convinced and I’m really looking forward to being proved wrong.

Wine of the Week: Rigal Malbec L’ Instant Truffier 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few years back I met the late Sebastian Horsley for lunch at the Lorelei cafe in Soho. We were there to discuss publicity for his forthcoming memoir, ‘Dandy in the Underworld.’ He waved at the menu dismissively and said: ‘it doesn’t matter what you order here, it all tastes the same.’ I was beginning to feel the same about the wine at Majestic: no matter what I bought, it all tasted the same. It was as if Majestic were using the Winemerchant 2000 ® (originally developed by Laithwaite’s) whereby an entire world of wines can created from an industrial estate in Bedford. They start with a base wine and then add ‘Real Languedoc Garrique’ or ‘Classic Rioja-style’ vanilla extract.

Perhaps it was my fault for being tempted by their special offers. Chianti Riserva at only £5.99 really was too good to be true. I had tried asking the staff for recommendations but these always turned out to be equally lacklustre. Perhaps they had gauged me as one of those customers who like their wines ‘smooth’ and would be put off by anything too interesting. After one too many disappointments, I’d stopped visiting my local branch in Shoreditch. But then we ran out of everyday wine, it was too late for a Wine Society delivery so I went back.

There was some late 90s house music pumping out of the speakers. It was about noon. Over the din, I asked the manager to suggest something red, cheap and Southern French and he suggested this malbec (I know more malbec, it’s as if I’m in the pay of the powerful malbec lobby.) This wine is all about fragrance, it’s floral, ripe and not heavy, it takes well to a light chilling, but there’s also a firmness at the end to let you know that you’re in Gascony. It’s made by a well-known Cahors producer but for reasons known only to the French it’s a Cotes du Lot rather than a Cahors. It’s not a complicated wine so I can’t think of anymore to say about it except buy lots and drink. Oh and it’s on special offer for only £6.99 a bottle. Sometimes those offers aren’t too good to be true.

Just in case anyone’s lawyers are reading I’m not claiming that Laithwaite’s and Majestic wines are concocted on an industrial estate in Bedford only that some of them taste as if they are. 

Youth-friendly wine tastings

Going to a wine tasting can be an intimidating even for an experienced wine bore like me. There’s all those wines lined up, you have to take a sniff, a little sip, spit – don’t get me started on spitting, a subject that deserves a whole post of its own – and then you have to scribble something. Many’s the time when I’ll be sandwiched between noted wine writers such as Victoria Moore or Robert Parker, and I’ll literally not be able to think of anything to write. It just tastes like Bordeaux; ‘typically claret!’ I’ll write, hoping that Jancis Robinson isn’t looking over my shoulder. It’s even more awkward when the producer is there and wants to tell you about the soil in which the grapes were grown. ‘ Can you taste the schist?’ ‘mmmmm, yes!’

I remember my first wine tasting. It was the Oddbins wine fair in Edinburgh in 2000. I didn’t spit in those days and was later found sliding slowly down the stairs muttering, ‘I’m so drunk, I’m so drunk.’ (Not so drunk, however that I can’t still recall a Bonnezeaux from Chateau de Fesles.) Perhaps part of the reason I got so drunk was because I felt so awkward asking for the wine and then trying to pull a suitably wine-tasty expression when tasting it. Everyone around me seemed to know exactly what they were doing.

One way to make tasting a little more youth-friendly is to embrace the boozy side of wine rather than acting as if we’re judging Pomeranians at Crufts. We drink alcohol when we’re celebrating, why not combine wine with festivity? It’s pretty radical stuff but it seems to be catching on.  Whilst I was in California recently, a local wine merchant, Domaine LA, was offering Morgons on Superbowl Sunday, a day more usually associated with hot dogs and Budweiser. Now for World Malbec Day on the 17th April there’s an event in Dalston (I just resisted the urge to use the epithet fashionable before Dalston) called Cambalanche which combines wine tasting with other noted Argentine exports such as music, food and, er, graffiti.

It sounds fun. Instead of having to talk about fermentation temperatures or worrying about your spitting technique, you can munch on an empanada and strut around dramatically to Astor Piazzollo. I tried to persuade my dear old Dad to come but he’s boycotting Argentina because of their continued claim on the Falkland Islands. Instead he’s going to celebrate World Malbec Day by staying at home with a bottle of Cahors and some reheated cassoulet. Actually that sounds quite fun as well. What to do?

Australian wine gibberish

Like many people in the British wine world, I watched the recent BBC documentary, Chateau Chunder, which charted the rise of the Australian wine in Britain. What really shone out of it was the Australian genius for marketing and plain speaking. Now you probably think that marketing and plain-speaking are mutually exclusive, but the way that Australian wine was sold in the 1980s really did make sense to British drinkers. Wines were sold through brands and grapes varieties. It was unpretentious and classless. It was refreshing seeing red-faced men with names like Len talking about wine as if they were fixing an old ute (utility vehicle ie. pick-up truck).

Penfolds epitomse this no-nonsense attitude towards wine. Their wines are given numbers and they exhibit a cheerful disregard for the modern shibboleths of regionality and localism. Many of them are blended into a house style from fruit bought from all over South Australia. The most revered wine in Australia, Grange, is made this way. You can’t get less pretentious than Penfolds. However, something seems to have gone awry in their marketing department. Here’s the tasting note for their Bin 150 Shiraz:

‘A waft of ristretto coffee – first-run – synergises with soy and a dark char, almost tar and pitch. . . . Bright red fruits conspire to create an amalgam, a continuum of flavour basking texturally avec sheen, gloss. These fruits do not travel solo – chinotto, licorice, bread and butter pudding flavours peddle (sic, one assumes) in parallel, quietly courted by stylish oak(s).’

I think we can all agree that this is terrible even for wine writing: a mish-mash of mixed metaphors, tautology, marketing jargon and malapropism. I expect they mean that the chinotto etc. are pedaling rather than out selling clothes pegs door-to-door but that scarcely makes more sense. It’s like a parody of Malcolm Gluck (former Guardian wine writer.)

The Bin 150 is one of their newer wines, a single vineyard one as opposed to a multi-region blend, but not even the venerable Bin 28 can escape the corporate gibberish:

‘Mocha/ malt and spice sequentially volatilise, consorting to form an initial aromatic wave.’

There was always something not entirely convincing in the old Australian line that making good wine was just a matter of applying common sense. Nowadays, of course, the Australians have embraced terroir, and are, in my experience, making far better wines than they’ve ever made. Sadly some of them have also embraced the flowery prose that goes along with this and they’re simply not very good at it. Rather than being honest-to-god haughty French pretentiousness, they’re doing it in a matey Australian way and the results are just horrible.

Both wines in the 2010 vintage are excellent with the Bin 28 particularly wonderful having a traditionally Australian generosity combined with lovely balance and freshness. Slurp have it for £18.95 a bottle which seems reasonable though I’m sure it used to be a lot cheaper not that long ago. 

¡Salud Carajo! Pairing Our Peruvian Table

I’m delighted to introduce a guest on World of Booze. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky  Danielle Bell now lives in Brooklyn with her partner Pablo Osorio where they run a dining club called de Porres . She’s been having a lot of fun searching for the right thing to drink with their food. Everything they cook looks exquisite (sadly I haven’t made it out to New York to eat any) and it now appears she has excellent taste in wine.

Nearly one year ago to this date my boyfriend Pablo and I began de Porres. Our idea was to host a monthly dinner party with dishes influenced by his native Peru and desserts inspired by my American South for the intellectually and gastronomically curious. Having cooked for one another often we knew it was winning combination of flavors, spices, and histories. We began, as one might expect, with ceviche, anticuchos de corazón (heavily seasoned heart, cubed, seared and served on a stick) with yuca cooked in duck fat followed. Our main course was arroz con pato with duck quarters Pablo and I had confited ourselves and for dessert derby pie.  At the close of the meal we gave out small bags of my lemon curd and buttercream coconut alfajores to our guests. “Perfect with tea or coffee in the morning,” we told our friends—most of whom devoured the cookies on the spot.

While I can recall the look and flavors of each dish, I cannot say the same for the wine. I’m sure they were fine, as people drank them with no complaint, but remarkable they were not. In the months that followed  great attention was paid to the food. We were very particular about creating an an atmosphere that encouraged conversation, laughter, and bonhomie. Each dish was meticulously plated and for drink we’d offer our guest the option of red,  white, and, in the summer, rosé. However, as our menus and execution improved I began to wonder if we were doing Pablo’s food justice by not paying adequate attention to what we served with it. From then on pairing de Porres became a mission of mine.

Currently Peruvian cuisine is not particularly well known in the United States. Even some of the most adventurous gourmands, whilst open to the idea of it, have had little, if any, of it. Often with the mention of aji amarillo, Peru’s yellow pepper of choice, someone would suggest Riesling. Other times, as when describing aji de gallina, we’d be directed to Chile and Argentina for no reason other than Peru sharing a continent with these two countries. This, of course, was not particularly useful considering the many differences between Peruvian cuisine—Limeño in particular—and that of its neighbors. Hence, pairing de Porres was not easy even while it was delightfully fun.

We began with asking questions. We’d explain our dishes and their components to a wide range wine shop clerks, barmen and woman, waiters, and beverage directors. I contacted noted sommeliers and wine writers online (some named Henry Jeffreys*, some not). I made use of my highlighter with molecular sommelier/mad scientist and Adria Ferran frequent collaborator François Chartier’s Taste buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food, Wine, and Flavor . Pablo and I would gleefully take advantage of many a happy hours, we made weekly trips to wine shops throughout the city, none more so than Astor Wines. During all of this what surprised us most was how readily these professionals engaged with us and  how eager they were to share their knowledge. That wine need not be elitist or stuffy was news to me and my boyfriend.

Pablo and I took what we learned back to de Porres. We got our always engaged diners involved by pairing separate courses with more than one beverage and asking that they be the judge. Many got in on the fun, graciously bringing bottles of their own to our dining table. We drank, we compared notes. Below are some observations from our year in pairing.

Tokaji Furmint Sec:
I suppose I could keep this post short and sweet by advising you to pick up a few bottles of  Királyudvar Tokaji Furmint Sec. Indeed, no other wine has proved to be as versatile and consistently reliable as this Hungarian white. Seductive, floral, tropical, endlessly charming, pleasingly honeyed we’ve found this bottle to pair exceptionally well with scallop tiradito, flounder ceviche, and arroz con pato. It’s gone on to be delicious with lomo saltado and I suspect would work wonderfully with aji de gallina, pulpo al olivo, and arroz con mariscos.  Upon our second encounter with the ‘o9 Királyudvar  I wrote on our blog, “One feels special when drinking Tokaji, even the smallest pour makes the room a bit more heady.” Many months later I remain enchanted. While it’s true we favor the ‘o9 Királyudvar, the ‘11 Evolúció Tokaji from the curiously named producer Love Over Money, at half the price is lovely in its own right.

Beer:
As mentioned above Tokaji with ceviches and tiraditos makes for elegant, spirited pairings. However, as many Peruvians already know, a lighter beer (for us  Brooklyn Brewery Pilsner) goes well with both. Beer would also pair well with anticuchos and jalea, although Cava would be my first choice for the latter.

Anticuchos:
As with ceviche the question you’d want to ask yourself when pairing is which direction you want to go. Should you want a more laid back presentation, by all means pour yourself a Pilsner or even a darker beer to go with your anticuchos. If you want to give your meal a more formal feel then go for red wine. We chose D. Ventura’s Viña do Burato ‘11, a fresh and playful Mencia from Galicia. I do think considering the earthiness and spice of the heart a Rhone Valley red could work very well.

Pulpo al Olivo (see left):
At our one year anniversary dinner we served pulpo al olivo for a second time. With the first we were pleased to see how nicely Manzanilla Sherry paired with the dish. For the second time I had something else in mind. We pitted Jorge Ordonez Botani ‘10, a dry Moscatel from Málaga, against Bodegas O. Fournier Urban Eco Torrontes ‘11. While both worked, the clear winner was the Botani. Aromatic, floral, with traces of limestone and enough acidity to cut through the richness of the aioli, while almost mirroring the brininess of the octopus and olives. You’d be hard pressed to find something better for your pulpo. We can confidently recommend the same bottle with choros a la chalaca,  arroz con mariscos and smoked fish causas.
Lastly, dessert:
Ever had an Yalumba Antique Tawny Port with your alfajores? No? What a shame. Rich, with notes of chocolate, caramel, dried fruit, and mocha, this Australian Tawny Port along with my signature ganache, buttercream coconut, and salted manjarblanco alfajores proved to be an epiphany, three in fact. Of course, if you’re like me and love an alfajor or seven in the morning, at an earlier hour a cup Cafe du Monde Chicory Coffee will more than do the trick.

While writing this I could not help but relive the fun that got me here in the first place. I by no means wish to imply this list is definitive, as it is certainly not complete! Rather, I wish to share with you the beginning of what is sure to be a winding, lengthy journey. With that in mind, use my selections for inspiration but do not hesitate to try your own.  And after, do share what you gathered. With me. Please.

* Danielle is being kind here, I think this is the last place one would go for help matching wines to food or vice versa.

The Bluffer’s Guide to Wine

‘Tea and toasted buttered currant buns, can’t compensate for lack of sun’                              The Kinks, Autumn Almanac

Perhaps tea and buns can’t help us through the winter but what Ray Davies really should have tried was fortified wine. I read a lovely article a few years back exploring this phenomenon in the Financial Times by Harry Eyres:

“The varied styles of sherry seem to me one of the most humane ways ever discovered of shepherding human beings through the changing seasons, and especially through the hard change to winter.”

Eyres does what few wine writers even attempt and melds history, wine and personal reflection into his article. Since then I’ve always looked out for his writings. He was wine columnist for the Spectator in the 1980s and has written a series of books on the subject. I was delighted when his publishers sent me an electronic copy of his latest, The Bluffer’s Guide to Wine. Normally I’d avoid a book with this sort of title but as it’s by Eyres, I thought it’s sure to be a quality product. It’s not entirely by Eyres though. This edition is written in conjunction with Jonathan Goodall whose work I am not familiar with it.

A book like this must succeed on two levels: 1) it must be funny 2) it must be accurate – if you’re going to bluff about wine you need a very firm based on which to bluff from. I wrote in an earlier post about the Les Dawson rule, in order to make playing the piano badly funny, you have to be a very good pianist.

So is it funny? Well I didn’t disturb my wife with snorts of hilarity but there are some funny bits:

‘An unfeasibly long and narrow strip of land. . . . Chile might seem a silly shape for a wine-producing country, certainly when compared with the no-nonsense square shapes of leading producers France and Spain’

Both nicely surreal and informative, this is a good wine joke. The tone of the book is light and witty and rarely descends into facetiousness. I abhor facetiousness! Unless I’m doing it, of course.The book opens with some general information about wine and wine tasting, moves logically onto grape varieties then takes a gallop around the world of wine and ends with a short section on wining and dining. The book is really just an amusingly written introduction to wine but scattered in it are tips to impress and to justify the bluffers guide title. Some of these are actually rather useful and on the nose such as recommending chilling some reds because it makes you look like you know what you’re doing (it does though it can also cause a furore in certain Spanish restaurants on Charlotte Street.)

Is it accurate? Again up to a point. The grape variety chapter initially seems a bit scant but there’s a very useful section where the authors not only tell us which wines are made from which varieties but also what they are often blended with.  The authors manage to distill quite complicated concepts accurately and their simplifications, on the whole, work. As a pedant, however, I was delighted to notice a few mistakes. This is probably the biggest one:

“the grand crus or top villages of the Cotes de Nuits include Gevrey-Chambertin. . . .” Grand Cru is not the same thing as top village. Gevrey-Chambertin is a village not a Grand Cru

Mistakes such as this one mean the reader has to be careful when bluffing from these pages. As Morrissey once sang: “there’s always someone somewhere, with a big nose who knows and trips you up and laughs when you fall.” I think I approached this book with the wrong expectations given it was co-written by someone of Eyre’s talents. On it’s own terms, it’s enjoyable and would make a good gift or something to read on a cold winter’s night with a roaring fire and a nice old amontillado.