Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side

It’s easy to become mired in an, albeit very comfortable, wine-drinking rut.  A glass of your favourite New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc/Rioja/Spanish rosé (delete as appropriate) of an evening is like slipping on a pair of comfy slippers, or settling into the sofa to watch an episode of Midsomer Murders.  It’s all about comfort and familiarity, immersing yourself in something you know you are going to enjoy, without the need to make an effort.

Every now and again, however, we need to give our comfortable lives a bit of shock treatment, shake things up, upset the routine.  Some very energetic people might consider taking up a new sport or learning a new language in order to challenge themselves; I get my thrills from trying new grape varieties from unfamiliar places.

I got the chance to take a walk on the wild side and undertake a mini grape variety safari this week, at a tasting billed as “Emerging Regions”.  Some were more emerging than others:  Spain? Chile?  Germany?  Some were genuinely new to wine production, such as India.  Others were emerging only in the sense that their wines are as yet relatively unknown here in the UK, yet wines have been made there for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

There is a fairly genteel and slow motion spat taking place in the wine world at the moment, concerning the origins of grape-growing and winemaking.  Archaeological evidence from Georgia and the Transcaucasus region provides evidence for winemaking there since 4,000 BC, with many believing actual winemaking going back further, to 7,000 BC.  However, the more recent science of DNA analysis has thrown up additional, and perhaps contradictory, evidence which could mean that Turkey was the cradle of winemaking, perhaps as far back as 9,000 BC.  Whatever the outcome of this academic tussle, what is clear is that Georgia and Turkey are home to a host of unique grape varieties, many of which may be very ancient in origin.

If you come across Georgian wines, you’ll be faced with an intriguing choice of tongue-twisting grape varieties such as the white Mtsvane and Rkatsiteli, plus the more user-friendly red Saperavi, often fermented in Qvevri (large terracotta vessels, similar to ancient amphorae).

Over the border in Turkey there is another world of native varieties to discover.  The names can look scary, but the secret seems to be to go at them with gusto, imagining yourself an Italian speaking German and deliver them with confidence.  Unless you are speaking to a native Turk, they probably have no more idea than you do.  I found the whites I tasted made from Emir and Narince pretty simple, but the reds from Öküzgözü (or ox eye in English), Kalecik Karasi and the splendidly named Boğazkere (meaning throat scraper!) full of character and appeal.  Look out for them the next time you eat in a Turkish restaurant, as this is still where you’re most likely to find them at the moment.

I admit to having wine-spotter tendencies.  I don’t possess a notebook listing all the varieties that I taste and hardly ever wear my anorak except for country walks.  However, I do get a bit of a kick out of trying new and unusual grapes, so the Emerging Regions tasting was a happy hunting ground.

Graševina from Croatia may be more familiar to you than you think, if you’re a wine drinker of a certain vintage.  I remember my Dad picking up a bottle of Lutomer Laski Riesling from Peter Dominic back in the Seventies, presumably for the ladies to sip with their beef stroganoff – Graševina is that same grape.  Freed from lowest common denominator collective farming and the dead hand of state-controlled wine-making, it makes a nicely peachy, soft and flavourful wine.  Dropping the Riesling from the name is also helpful – it is not related to that grape, which (very unfairly) has its own image problem in this country.  More complex white wines are also made from the Pošip grape, primarily on the Croation islands of Dalmatia.

Romania is having something of a success at the moment with its soft, spicy and very reasonably priced Pinot Noir.  I hope that consumer acceptance of the notion of quality wines from here will also help to open the way for the country’s cracking native varieties:  the white Fetească Alba and especially its black counterpart Fetească Neagră deserve a wider audience.  Not as easy to say as Pinot Noir, perhaps, but worth searching out.

I rounded off my grape safari by bagging a brace of Macedonian varieties – white Zilavka and red Vranec (or Vranac).  The red, in particular, impressed me with its full-bodied, dusky spice and black fruit.

After all that vinous adventuring, did I continue the theme with a glass of something new and stimulating with dinner?  Nah, a glass of Rioja and a bowl of chilli con carne did just fine.  

Searching out the new is all very well but, in the wise words of Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, “It’s very nice to go travelling. But it’s oh so nice to come home.”

Beaujolais - back to the Eighties?

Margaret Thatcher in the news, David Bowie in the charts, Beaujolais in my glass – is this really 2013, or have I travelled back in time to 1983? 

Back then it was Beaujolais Nouveau that had us all aflutter:  a wine bottled and released almost as soon as it had finished fermenting.  Its charms are all about immediate drinking, with its cherryade fruit, mere suggestion of tannin and sometimes more than a hint of Hubba Bubba.  

At least part of its success was due to the publicity raised by the race that developed around this wine that was released annually on the third Thursday of November.  Trains, planes (or helicopters) and automobiles were involved in bringing Beaujolais to British drinkers post haste from the vineyards, brightening up an otherwise dull time of year and providing a perfect excuse for a liquid lunch.

Beaujolais Nouveau is still made, although in much smaller quantities than its 1980s heyday, when it accounted for around 60% of all Beaujolais produced.  The Nouveau is designed to be drunk over weeks, rather than months or years – though the distinction between it and regular wines is really not that great.

Wine geeks (me included) will want to know that the Nouveau style is achieved by the use of carbonic maceration (or in many cases, actually semi-carbonic maceration – I did say this bit was for geeks).  In classic red wine making, the grapes will first be crushed (though not pressed) to release their juice and to allow the skins to contribute colour and tannin during the subsequent fermentation.

Carbonic maceration, in essence, involves leaving the berries whole in the fermentation vats.  Yeasts on the grape skins will start to feed on the sweet juice within the berries, leading to a gentle fermentation which results in a wine with plenty of colour, low tannins and “so bright you gotta wear shades” fruit.  However, alongside the fruit can be some less welcome aromas of banana liqueur, even bubblegum.

The Beaujolais quality ladder

If you want to leave the ephemeral charms of Beaujolais Nouveau behind, it pays to understand a bit about how the region’s wines are classified.

In some ways Beaujolais is refreshingly straightforward – the reds are all made from the Gamay grape (or Gamay Noir à jus blanc to give it its full name) which seems to have a natural affinity with the region’s granitic soils.  Large-ish grapes with thin skins make for fruity, fleshy wines which are relatively light in colour.  The tiny proportion of white Beaujolais (yes, I’m not teasing, it does exist) is made from Chardonnay.

Knowing how to interpret Beaujolais wine labels should give you a good idea of what you’ll find in the bottle.  At the most basic level is straight Beaujolais, made anywhere within the region and accounting for around half of all production.  A step up from there is Beaujolais-Villages, made from generally hillier sites which have been judged to produce better quality wines.

At the top of the tree are the ten Beaujolais “crus” – essentially villages whose wines have been judged of sufficient quality that they can simply put their names on the label.  If you’re planning a wine-themed pub quiz any time soon, naming all ten is an exquisite torture akin to recalling the names of the Seven Dwarfs.  For the record they are:  Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Chiroubles, Chénas, Moulin à Vent, Saint Amour, Fleurie, Regnié, Juliénas and Morgon.  In the interest of journalistic integrity, I hereby confess that I could only get to eight without recourse to a reference book.

Some of my current favourite Beaujolais – none with a hint of bubblegum (and shoulder pads are strictly optional)

Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Beaujolais-Villages 2010 - £6.99

If you ever set foot in a wine bar in Paris or Lyons, it’s likely that the wine you’ll be offered to accompany your plate of charcuterie is from Beaujolais.  The region’s wines are the perfect foil to salami, ham, saucisson, pâté and the like, its lively fruit and juicy acidity cutting through the fattiness of the meat.  This one is a great example of decently-priced, good quality Beaujolais with attractive strawberry fruit.

Georges Duboeuf Chiroubles 2011 - £9.99 from Waitrose

If there is one name synonymous with the region it is that of Georges Duboeuf, the man behind the flower Beaujolais labels and indefatigable promoter of the region.  This wine is a delight for Spring drinking:  vibrant, deeply coloured, with floral and loganberry-scented fruit, soft tannins and wonderful light freshness.  Chiroubles is renowned for producing the lightest wines of all the Beaujolais crus and this one is a charmer. 

Henry Fessy Brouilly 2011 - £11.99 from Waitrose

Classic Beaujolais is definitively light bodied, and this lightness can lead to it being denigrated as lacking seriousness – an unfair charge that is never levelled at its northern neighbour, Burgundy, and its decidedly light Pinot Noir.  If you’d like to see what a serious lightweight wine tastes like, then grab a bottle of this Brouilly, from the most southerly of the ten crus.  The low temperature fermentation has retained the freshness of the lively red fruit but also managed to provide enough depth of flavour to make a perfect match with spring lamb.

Getting fresh at the Real Wine Fair

Don’t you just love it when the wine trade gets a bee in its bonnet about what we should call wines?

Guildford’s own Caves de Pyrène are the leading lights in a new wine movement, which has recently held its second annual tasting of what they are calling “real wine”.  Doug Wregg, wine trade poet-philosopher and sometime Sales and Marketing Director (a man further removed from the image of anyone with that job title you could not hope to find) for Caves de Pyrène is the brains behind the operation.

What is a real wine?  Are some of the things we drink, foolishly imagining them to be wine just because that’s what it says on the label, in fact no such thing?  Rest easy, wine drinkers, of course it’s all real wine – just not “real wine”.  

Now I should provide a pithy and concise definition of what constitutes “real wine”.  But of course such a thing doesn’t exist.  These wines tend to be made with minimum intervention in both the vineyard and winery; many are organic and/or biodynamic; usually they are made by small-scale operations; a good number of them would probably also come under the banner of natural wines (another rather nebulous and hard-to-pin-down category).  The winemakers share an interest in producing wines that speak of their origins and which express the growing conditions of the vintage.  The real or natural wine movement is somewhat akin to the slow food movement.

Giusto Occhipinti of COS, a "real wine" maker - and a real winemaker

If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to sum up such wines in a single word, I’d say “What the h*** are you doing with a gun, for God’s sake, it’s only wine.” as I ran from the room.  If I was asked nicely (without the gun) then “authentic” might be a decent stab at it.

Here are some of my own highlights from the second annual Real Wine Fair, held last month in London:

I Vigneri Salvo Foti – Vinujancu Bianco 2011 - £23.16 from Caves de Pyrène

One of the joys of exploring Italian wines is constantly discovering new grape varieties, even as a seasoned grape-spotter.  This Sicilian white is a blend of Minnella (the new one to me, native not just to Sicily but to the Etna region specifically), Grecanico (aka Garganega, another Italian native and most famously associated with Soave) and Riesling (a long way from its German origins).

As you might imagine in the Etna region, the soils that the vines grow in are volcanic – indeed some resemble black granulated pumice, rather than anything you might consider trying to use as a growing medium.  The result is intensely flavoured, characterful wines, helped along by the high altitude (1200m for this wine) and ancient vines.  Salvo adds no sulphur to the wines, but there is no hint of odd or off flavours, just aromas of honey and honeycomb, leading onto a dry, grippy and zippy palate.

COS, Giusto Occhipinti – Cerasuolo di Vittoria 2010 - £16.80 from Caves de Pyrène

Still in Sicily, COS produce a range of wines from indigenous varieties.  Cerasuolo di Vittoria is the island’s only DOCG (ostensible top of the quality tree for Italian wines) and is a blend of two native varieties:  Nero d’Avola and Frappato.

If you were to imagine the style of red wine that comes from such an intensely Mediterranean setting, then I would wager it would be confounded by what you would find here:  nothing is overdone, all is lightness and elegance.  The fruit is delicate, cherryish and fresh, with no oak flavours to tone it down – the wine is fermented in cement tank and aged in large old oak “foudres” (essentially giant barrels).

 

Bodegas Bernabe Navarro – La Amistad 2011 - £8.88 from Caves de Pyrène

Spain has been rather slow to hop aboard the real wine train, but Alicante winemaker Damien Perez is making enough leftfield wines to make up for it.  This one is made from local variety Rojal and is fermented and aged in amphorae, or tinajas in Spanish.  We usually associate amphorae with archeological digs, as these vessels were used in the ancient world to transport olive oil and wine, but they have begun to find favour again in the natural/real wine movement.

Amistad is a light red wine that you could serve chilled in summer (should it ever arrive) to appreciate its lively, fresh sour cherry fruit.

“The Wild Vineyard” Villalobos Carignan Reserva 2012 - £15.90 from Caves de Pyrène

Just to show that the New World is also getting the hang of this real wine thing, I’ve included this Chilean, new to the Caves portfolio.  Carignan is one of those lowly varieties that gets labelled “workhorse” if it’s lucky.  It was enthusiastically taken up by growers in France’s Languedoc post 2^nd World War, valued for its colour, alcohol and high yields.  This aim-low strategy allied to reliance on industrial viticultural techniques was never going to be a recipe for quality, and Carignan’s reputation suffered as a result.

Chile, however, is home to some wonderful old vine Carignan – these were planted in the 1940s and 50s, which makes them positively prehistoric in the context of Chilean viticulture.  Essentially organic from the word go, the vines have never been subjected to any kind of treatment and have been allowed to grow wild (hence the vineyard name).

Freshness is a hallmark of all the wines that I enjoyed at the fair and this one is no exception, with masses of crunchy blueberry fruit - though I concede blueberries are not a crunchy fruit, it’s more a combination of crunch and blueberry that I’m trying to convey.  There is plenty of body and substance, but also elegance.

If you fancy checking out more of these kinds of wine, you can pay a visit to RAW, which bills itself as an artisan wine fair and will take place in London on 19/20 May.  The Real Wine Fair will be back again in 2014.

Modern day booze cruise - a day trip to France with a difference

Banish from your thoughts memories of booze-sodden day trips to France in the good old days of duty free.  Back then it was all double gin and tonics on the ferry over, feverish stacking of hypermarket trollies with litre bottles of vin very ordinaire, before a dash back to the ferry terminal and the last chance to down some cut price booze on the way home.

Gone is the era when Calais resembled a British retail park, with Tesco and Sainsbury’s superstores rubbing shoulders with French hypermarkets at Cité Europe and discount booze stores such as Eastenders piling ‘em high and selling ‘em cheap.  The demise of super-cheap cross channel ferry tickets, the lack of Euro-buying power of the pound and the plentiful supply of discounted wines and beers in supermarkets back home have all conspired to make selling wines to Brits abroad less commercially rewarding.

However, for those who would like to sample a little morsel of life in la belle France – and pick up some bargain-priced wines at the same time – then a quick trip across the Channel could be just the ticket.

Majestic Wine still has two outlets in Calais and they offer £2 a bottle saving versus the UK price on wines (£3 a bottle on sparkling wines).  You may not be able to cross the channel for £1 anymore, but there are still good discounts available, especially if you can travel off peak. 

Calais old town, close to the port, has its charms, especially if the sun comes out.  Restaurant Le Channel, round the corner from the main square, Place d’Armes, is a good place to head for a civilised blow-out cum leisurely lunch.  If it takes a dose of moules marinières for you to know you’ve trodden on French soil, then Brasserie de la Mer, on rue de la Mer, is as good a place as any to head for.  Do not, however, be tempted, as I was, by their long list of alternative ways to prepare mussels.  Moules à la flammande are, apparently, supposed to be sweet – a weird and unwelcome surprise.

    

Wednesday and Saturday are market days, held, of course, on Place d’Armes.  On other days a quick trip to La Maison du Fromage et du Vin may have to suffice.  And, frankly, what more could you want?

If you have more time or are prepared to do a little driving, then you could venture further than Calais and call in on the Wine Society.

The Wine Society is a wine retailer with a difference:  a mutual society which exists to benefit its customers, who must all purchase a share in order to join (currently £40).  There is a showroom cum shop at their headquarters in Stevenage, but most customers buy over the phone or online. 

The Society’s French outlet is located away from the coast at the genteel town of Montreuil-sur-mer which, despite its name, has not been “sur mer” since the 1300s.  A forty minute drive from the Channel tunnel at Sangatte (count on an hour from the ferry port at Calais), Montreuil is a picturesque town with intact ramparts around the old town in this surprisingly hilly part of the Pas de Calais.  The ramparts play host to an annual “son et lumière” performance of Les Misérables in the summer – Victor Hugo set much of the action of his novel there, following a brief visit years before with his mistress (don’t let me give you ideas).

Walking the ramparts

The Wine Society guarantees a saving of £18 per 12 bottles:  the actual amount can vary with the sterling to Euro exchange rate.  Because of this fixed price discount, you stand to gain more at the lower end of the price range.  If you are paying £1.50 less for a bottle that would cost you £7 back in the UK, that looks like a healthy discount.  £1.50 off a bottle of £50 claret is not going to set the pulse racing.  Therefore, the core range of 200 wines stocked in Montreuil concentrates on sub-£10 bottles.

Members can also use the Montreuil shop to pick up wines that they have pre-ordered in the UK, in which case they are free to choose from the Society’s full list of over 500 wines.

Having got the wine buying business out of the way, the rest of the day is free to explore the dining options of the town.  Choose from the rustic bench seats and rotisserie meat fest at Froggy’s Tavern (nowhere near as cheesy a place as that sounds), to the Michelin-starred refinement of Le Château de Montreuil – and lots more in between. 

Or, of course, you could make a night of it and stay overnight in Montreuil, fitting in a sortie to the well-stocked cheese shop, window shopping at one of the appealing but eye-wateringly expensive chocolate shops – and of course a bracing walk around the ramparts to make up for any over-indulgence the night before.

Names and addresses

Calais

Majestic outlets – 1 rue de Judée, Zone Industrielle Marcel Doret, Calais; and Unit 3A, avenue Général Charles de Gaulle, Zone la Française, Coquelles

Restaurant Le Channel – 5, boulevard de la Résistance, Calais

Brasserie de la Mer – 30, rue de la Mer, Calais

La Maison du Fromage et du Vin – 1, rue André Gerschell, Calais

Montreuil-sur-Mer

The Wine Society in France - rue de Tripot, 62170 Montreuil-sur-Mer (behind the Hôtel Hermitage on Place Gambetta).  Detailed directions and lots more information are available on The Wine Society’s website:  http://www.thewinesociety.com

Froggy’s Tavern – 51 bis, place du Général de Gaulle

Le Château de Montreuil – 4, chaussée des Capucins

Fromagerie Caseus – 28, place du Général de Gaulle

Les Chocolats de Beussent – 10, place Darnétal

Chocolaterie les Misérables –9, rue Pierre Ledent

Do the stars make wines taste better?

Ha!  I bet you thought I was going to return to one of my favourite wine hobbyhorses:  biodynamic wines, where the movements of the moon and planets are used to guide vine growing and wine-making. Mais non, this time it’s the other sort of star, the sort that appears on red carpets.

Does a wine taste better because a big name from the world of sport or entertainment is linked to it?  Well of course not, famous people are just like us (though generally better looking) and do not sprinkle a bit of magical stardust over the contents of a bottle of wine, rendering it more delicious.

And yet many actors, singers and sportspeople seem keen to get into this wine making thing, or at least putting their name to a bottle.  And we drinkers get a little vicarious taste of the celebrity lifestyle by shelling out a few more (or sometimes many more) pennies for a bottle that bears their name.  Or do we?

Here’s a rundown of some of the famous names who have decided to add wine to the list of their credentials. 

Retired Formula 1 racing drivers

Mario Andretti, an Italian American who won many Grand Prix in the 1960s, 70s and 80s is also a “very rich man”, according to his website, which undoubtedly helps him fit right in with the other vineyard owners in California’s Napa Valley (who include film director Francis Ford Coppola, now in control of California legend, Inglenook).

Amorino Pecorino 2009 - £13.50 from Eton Vintners

Jarno Trulli, also of Italian parentage, despite his Finnish name, retired from F1 last year.  He co-owns a vineyard in Abruzzo in Italy.  This is clearly more than a vanity project as Abruzzo is not a region known for grand wines – Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, that stalwart of pizza and pasta chain wine lists, is its most well-known wine in this country.  Pecorino is a native Italian white variety and, while this has undoubtedly had plenty of wine-making lavished on it, it remains a well-made, modest quality wine.

Actors

Brad and Angelina (surnames not required) have just launched the first wine from their property, Château Miraval, in Provence.  No fools they, they took the precaution of buying a château that already had a reputation for well-made wines and enlisted the help of the Perrin family, who own Château de Beaucastel, one of Châteauneuf du Pape’s most famous names.  Apparently the whole lot sold out in hours last week, though none of the people who ordered it can reaslistically have tasted it yet.

Two Paddocks Pinot Noir 2010 - £17.43 from Haynes Hanson and Clark

Sam Neill is often assumed to be Australian, but is, however, a New Zealander and he turned to his native country to undertake his wine project.  Reilly Ace of Spies (now do you know who I mean?) bought a vineyard, named Two Paddocks, in the highly-regarded Central Otago region in the far south of New Zealand’s South Island, where his winemaking team produce a range of wines, including the region’s hallmark variety, Pinot Noir.

Elegant, bordering on austere, it seems Mr Neill is keen to pay homage to the red wines of Burgundy rather than express the piercingly bright fruit that Otago is more usually known for.

Gerard Depardieu, actor, bon viveur, “Russian” tax exile and scourge of flight attendants  everywhere, looms large in many ways.  He lists his profession as vigneron  (winemaker) on his passport nowadays and has wine interests in various regions of France, as well as in Morocco. 

Singers

Vida Nova Tinto - £9.29 from Waitrose

Sir Cliff Richard needs no introduction.  Obviously fond of the sun, he has had an estate in the Algarve region in the far south of Portugal for many years, and now also a winery known as Adega do Cantor.  Algarve wines have no real reputation for quality, but Sir Cliff is determined to change that, hiring renowned Australian (but Portuguese-based) winemaking consultant David Baverstock and constructing a custom-built winery.   The red is a blend of Syrah and Tempranillo, locally known as Aragonez and has plenty of southern warmth and ripeness.

Mick Hucknell, the red-haired Mancunian crooner, is using some of his millions making wines from his vineyard in Sicily.  Released under the name Il Cantante (I sense a theme here), the vines are in the Etna region, whose wines are becoming highly valued.   They are not available in the UK.

Olivia Newton-John, country-lite triller turned Eighties lycra and headband-wearing pop princess, produces a sparkling wine in her native Australia called “Let’s Get Fizzical”.  Nah, not really, the truth is much more prosaic.  In reality she puts her name to a South Australian Chardonnay and Shiraz under the Blue Koala label.  I think my idea is better.

Sportsmen

Botham Merrill Willis Shiraz 2006 - £15.82 Christopher Piper Wines

This two for the price of one wine label combines Beefy himself with his old pal, fast bowler Bob Willis.  They leave the wine-making duties to the extravagantly moustachioed Geoff Merrill, a long-established winemaker in McLaren Vale, but they do get involved in blending I am told.  Tempting as it is to describe this wine as beefy, it actually has more in the way of bright fruit and crunchy acidity.

Ernie Els Proprietor’s Blend 2010 - £22.99 from SA Wines online

Ernie Els, nicknamed The Big Easy, hasn’t waited for his career to wane before getting stuck into the winemaking business in his native South Africa.  He has a range of wines made at his eponymous winery, which are predominantly red.  Big Easy Red is his entry level wine (available from SA Wines Online for £14.99 a bottle), but you can spend plenty more, up to £40 for his Signature Blend.  The wines are big, certainly, though I wouldn’t describe the Proprietor’s Blend as easy.  It’s dense, structured and needs a hefty slab of steak from the braai to stand up to its fearsome tannins. 

USA: beyond the Golden State

California is the leviathan of US wine, accounting for 90% of production and, despite exporting seemingly limitless quantities of Blossom Hill and Gallo here, making 3 out of every 4 bottles sold within the US.  The state basks in the reflected glory of its nickname, The Golden State, a name that betokens glamour, riches, sunshine and the good life.   However, there are plenty of other wine-making parts of the US, including California’s more northern West coast neighbours :  Washington and Oregon. 

Washington State is perhaps a surprise runner up in the wine production states, though it’s a distant second and hardly clipping at California’s heels, with only 5% of the total.  Its nickname is the rather more homely The Evergreen State – fair do’s, the name evokes the expansive wilderness of conifer forests nurtured by the plentiful rain that falls here (we’ve all seen Frasier, right?).  The state’s highest peak is even called Mount Rainier.

The Columbia River, Washington State

However, if you’ve visited the area around Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula and experienced the mile upon mile of forest, including one of the world’s rare areas of temperate rain forest, you might be surprised to find that the state produces any wine at all – it’s too cool and damp, surely?

Vines in arid Washington State

The answer to the conundrum is the Cascade Mountains:  these stand between Seattle and the interior and act as a barrier to the cool, wet conditions that prevail on the coast, sheltering the Columbia Valley, where most wine is made.  They do such a good job that the Columbia Valley has rainfall levels that class it as desert (only 150-250mm annually, compared with just under 800mm in southern England).  The plentiful sunshine means that warm climate varieties thrive here, including Syrah, and Bordeaux stalwarts Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Sandwiched in between California and Washington, Oregon is known as The Beaver State.  I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by saying any more on that topic.

On the subject of wine, Oregon is, counter-intuitively, the coolest and wettest of the three west coast wine producing states.  While the Cascades continue south into Oregon from Washington, most winegrowing areas sit between them and the lower Coastal Range, which provides only slight protection from the prevailing weather.  The vineyards are correspondingly cooler, cloudier and wetter than their more northerly neighbours.

Mist in cool climate Oregon

Oregon is largely synonymous with a single variety – Pinot Noir, which represents a staggering 66% of plantings, ahead of Pinot Gris in second place at 14%.  Pinot Noir is renowned as a cool climate variety, so it makes sense that it should find a home here, but it is also a tricky grape to nurture and in these marginal areas vintage variation is marked.

Autumn colour at Sokol Blosser estate, Oregon

Neither of these regions provides the kind of cheap wine thrills that California can, whose size bestows the ability to mass produce branded wine.  Both Oregon and Washington are more boutique-y in feel and the prices of their wines (especially once they’ve been exported here) are more like high end California.  The small scale of producers, especially those from Oregon, means that they generally won’t pitch up on the supermarket shelves and a visit to a specialist independent merchant will be in order if you want to taste them.

Wines from Washingon

Eroica Riesling 2011 – Slurp and Winedirect both have the 2010 for £17.95, Fareham Wine Cellar stocks the 2008 for £19.10

Eroica is a joint venture between Chateau Ste Michelle, Washington’s largest wine producer, and German Ernie Loosen, master of the Mosel and Riesling guru.  Riesling has a bit of a problem, apart from the main one of its unfair image as a low quality variety.  Off-dry Rieslings tend to have bags of fruit, balanced by crisp acidity, but are terribly unfashionable.  Dry Rieslings can sometimes sacrifice the exuberant fruit, leaving searing acidity that sets the teeth on edge.  This wine happily manages to combine the incisive and linear acidity of a dry Riesling, without sacrificing charm and peachy fruit.

   

L’Ecole 41 Columbia Valley Syrah 2009 – older vintages available from Noel Young Wines (based in Cambridge or online), Winedirect has the 2008 for £23

Columbia Valley is the powerhouse of Washington wine growing, with surprisingly warm and dry conditions that favour heat-loving varieties such as Syrah.  L’Ecole 41 have a well-deserved reputation for quality reds.  This Syrah has beautifully pure blackcurranty fruit with a peppery kick and enough acidity to balance the richness of the fruit.  Beware:  its elegance belies its 15.5% alcohol.

Wines from Oregon

Bergström Old Stones Chardonnay 2010 - £25.95 from Roberson Wine (shop in Kensington or order online)

A classy Chardonnay whose inviting nose promises ripe fruit with its wisp of honey and aroma of yellow Mirabelle plums.  The palate delivers this and more, with savoury, flinty lees character and wonderful freshness.

Bergström also have a delicious range of Pinot Noirs, available from Roberson and Noel Young Wines.

Firesteed Oregon Pinot Gris 2011 - £15.79 from Christopher Piper Wines; Slurp has the 2010 for £14.30

Chardonnay undoubtedly has more cachet than Pinot Gris, but well-made examples like this give plenty of food friendly enjoyment.  And if buying Oregon wines is starting to look like a rich person’s past-time, then this is a relative bargain.  Crisp, juicy tropical fruit with a hint of peach, melon and the variety’s trademark gentle spice.

Sokol Blosser Estate Pinot Noir 2009 – Guildford’s own Caves de Pyrène has the 2008 for £30.36; Noel Young Wines has the 2008 for £25.64 or the 2007 for £35.10; Winedirect stocks the 2009 for £32.50

Oregon’s Willamette Valley (one of my favourite regions in the world to say: it’s WillAMette, to rhyme with dammit) does have variable weather from year to year, so the other vintages may not display the same seductive fruit as I found in the beguiling 2009.  There’s plenty of oak drapery too, but the quality of the fruit shines through.

Cheval Blanc: the making of a thoroughbred

Warning:  arcane French wine labelling discussion alert.

In the rather stolid rubric of the St Emilion wine classification system, Château Cheval Blanc is a Premier Grand Cru Classé A.  Some French regions have Grand Cru as the very top of the quality tree; over in the Médoc in Bordeaux’s left bank, it is the five Premiers Crus who reign supreme.  In St Emilion, however, it looks as though a committee of strong-minded people couldn’t agree which way to jump and so went for both.  Then, because so many producers ended up being given the highest accolade of Premier Grand Cru Classé, they had to divide this top tier into the very top producers, of which Cheval Blanc is one of four, who are awarded an A rather than an ignominious B, to round off their official nomenclature. 

There are 14 Châteaux on the Premier Grand Cru Classé rung of the quality ladder, with another 64 properties at the next level down, Grand Cru Classé.  If you are sipping a bottle of red Burgundy labelled Grand Cru Classé, your nose (if not your wallet) should tell you that you are at the top of the tree, quality-wise.  But if you find the same thing on the label of your St Emilion, then  you are not supping such rarified nectar (and have not happened on the bargain of the century either).

If you, probably very wisely, skipped over those first couple of paragraphs, here’s a quick summary:  Château Cheval Blanc is a bit special.

Like most St Emilion producers, their wines are made from a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc – but unlike most of their neighbours, they have no limestone in their soils.  Instead they have plots with a mosaic of soils based on sand, gravel and clay – in this they have more in common with their near neighbours in Pomerol.

Cheval Blanc’s vineyards are made up of slightly more Cabernet Franc (58%) than Merlot, which accounts for the remainder.   This high proportion of Cabernet Franc also sets them apart from most of their St Emilion cohort, where Merlot tends to take the lead role.

Now, you might think that it was a pretty straightforward task to blend just two varieties to make a wine, but of course it rarely is.  

At Cheval Blanc grapes can end up in one of four destinations – as part of the “grand vin” Cheval Blanc; second wine, Le Petit Cheval; their 3^rd wine or, finally, sold off in bulk to be subsumed into generic St Emilion wines.

Château Cheval Blanc covers 39 hectares (that’s around 100 acres) and is made up of 44 different plots, each of which represents one of the two grape varieties, growing on one of three soil types:  sand, gravel or clay.  At a recent tasting in London, guided by Pierre-Olivier Clouet, the impossibly youthful-looking Technical Manager at the Château, I was able to taste samples from the different parcels from the 2012 vintage:  Merlot and Cabernet Franc from each of three soil types.  Now these wines are a long way from being finished and still have another year or so to age in barrel before their final fate is decided, from grand vin to bulk sell-off, so we were not really getting a sneaky peek at Cheval Blanc 2012 – but it did sort of feel that way.

It was instructive to taste how the same grape variety can perform so differently on the different soils.  Merlot grown on sand is earthy and metallic with a touch of green stalkiness.  Yet on clay and gravel soils that unripe, green note disappears and there is a rush of ripe berry fruits instead.  Cabernet Franc followed the same pattern, with the sandy soils producing the poorest wine, and clay proving to be the perfect growing medium.

Before we moved on, I couldn’t resist having a go at blending my own Cheval Blanc 2012 – the core being Cabernet Franc grown on clay, plus a proportion on gravel, with Merlot from clay soil completing the picture.  Pretty delicious I thought – I wonder if I’ll get the chance to compare it with the real thing?  Of course my slapdash sloshing of wines from one glass to another is a world away from the minute deliberations that actually determine the final make-up of the wines.  Pierre-Oliver told us that they have never made a perfect blend of Cheval Blanc, showing what a complex mixture of art and science go into the blending process.

Having looked at the bones of an as-yet-to-be-born wine, we then went on to taste the final result from previous vintages of Cheval Blanc and second wine Le Petit Cheval.  We were comparing wines from 2004 (a cool and wet vintage) with 2010 (a cool and dry one).  Incidentally it’s good to know that it isn’t just the UK that has had so much lacklustre weather in recent years.  I digress.

Le Petit Cheval 2004 was a beguiling wine, its tannins beginning to soften at nine years old.  Cheval Blanc from the same year was more imposing, with a solidly built structure underpinning the fruit, obviously a wine with a long future ahead of it.

The 2010 wines are clearly close to Pierre-Olivier’s heart and show great freshness and elegance, but it would be a crime to drink them any time soon.

And if you would like to squirrel a few bottles away for some special occasion in the future, what will they set you back?  It is both a blessing and a curse of those in the wine trade that we are often treated to tastings of wines which we could never afford to drink (or at least I couldn’t).  Deep pockets are required in this game:  Cheval Blanc 2010 is available for upwards of £750 a bottle.  My favourite wine from the tasting for current drinking, Le Petit Cheval 2004 is a snip at around £120.

I returned home and came down to earth with a bump and a glass of a 10 quid Argentinian red – very delicious it was too.