Attack of the great whites

“The first duty of wine is to be red” pronounced one of the UK wine trade’s grandees, Harry Waugh. It does seem that, when it comes to truly great or fine wine, red has more gravitas.

However, recently I find myself increasingly drawn to white wine – and particularly to the white wines of South Africa.

When I first came across South African wines in the mid-nineties the reds were a mixed bunch: easy drinking, soft reds, others with a bit of rusticity, some just downright tough – and often with a characteristic hint of rubber glove about them. Many whites, usually made from Chenin Blanc, were pretty dull; stripped of personality by high yields.

In the intervening twenty years, the pace of change in South Africa has been breathtaking. In the era of apartheid, grape growers were rewarded for volume rather than quality; the fact that in 1990, 70% of the grape harvest was destined either for brandy or fruit juice production tells its own story. And yet, by 2003, the proportions had reversed and 70% of the harvest went on to be made into wine.

Today South Africa is one of the world’s most exciting wine producing nations. It’s a place where natural and human influences meet. The Cape is at the confluence of two oceans – Atlantic and Indian. Historically it also played a vital role in bridging the divide between the Old and New worlds in the era of the Dutch East Indies company. The very first Cape grapes were pressed to make wine in 1659, when Jan van Riebeck was charged with developing a market garden to supply ships bound for the Indies with fresh produce in order to alleviate scurvy amongst the sailors and merchants.

While much of South Africa is far too hot and dry for wine grape growing, the area around Cape Town, where the winelands cluster, has a benign Mediterranean climate. Additionally the cold Benguela current flowing north from Antarctica and the so-called Cape Doctor southeasterly summer wind combine to ensure this part of the country is cooler than its latitude would suggest, and help to keep vines free of rot.

The most momentous change, however, is in the human sphere. After the isolation of apartheid there has been a new spirit of openness and an explosion of creativity. Stellenbosch, the heartland of quality wine is still the capital of wine production, but winemakers are spreading out to new, cooler areas, as well as reinventing old, poorly regarded areas such as Swartland and reinventing them as the home of sustainable, high quality winemaking.

Wines to look out for:

The Tea Leaf Chenin Blanc 2103 - £12.49 from Noel Young Wines, £10.75 if you buy 6 from allaboutwine.co.uk

Here’s proof that Chenin Blanc is capable of making much more than dull, crisp wines. The Tea Leaf in question here is Rooisbos, South Africa’s indigenous herbal tea (an acquired taste). Auto-suggestion or not, but this Chenin does seem to have a distinct herbal edge alongside its tangy, ripe pineapple fruit, which may or may not be due to the nearby Rooibos plantation. Smart packaging too.

Ghost Corner The Bowline 2012 - £17.99 from SA Wines Online, £19.49 from The Wine Library

This very classy blend of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc from really very cool Elim, in South Africa’s most southerly district of Cape Agulhas, could be just the thing to refresh the palate of jaded Sauvignon Blanc fans. I find the ubiquitous Sauvignon a bit meh, but this made me stand up and take notice. The Semillon fills out the Sauvignon’s more vegetal flavour profile with lime fruit, and the barrel fermenting and ageing add texture and subtle lees character.

Thorne and Daughters Rocking Horse White 2013 - £24.95 from Edgmond Wines

A new venture, established only in 2012, is responsible for this knockout wine made from parcels of vines from Western Cape – the catch-all name for all of South Africa’s wine lands. Care is evident in every facet of this rich but structured white, based on the Rhône’s Roussanne grape, along with Chardonnay, Semillon and a little Chenin Blanc. A wine to linger over, which shows you something new with every sip.

Reyneke Reserve White - £19.79 for the 2010 from SA Wines Online, also at independent merchants

Reyneke are based in Stellenbosch, South Africa’s wine central. Reyneke, however, depart from tradition and are the country’s leading biodynamic estate. I was surprised to find that this is 100% Sauvignon Blanc: it has such layers and nuances of lush fruit, length and complexity I had assumed it must be a blend.   

Mullineux White Blend 2012 - £17.95 from Berry Brothers, SA Wines Online

Mullineux Family wines was established only in 2007, but has enjoyed a meteoric rise, including being awarded Winery of the Year in the 2014 edition of the influential Platter’s Guide to South African Wines.

They are based in Swartland, arguably the most exciting region in the whole country for its combination of schist and granite soils and store of old, unirrigated Chenin Blanc bush vines. In the past Swartland was used as a source of bulk fruit for blending or distillation. Now smaller growers are moving in, making use of the old vine Chenin and planting Rhône varietals which thrive in the hot, dry climate. Many, including Mullineux, are also focused on quality and non intervention – so no irrigation of the vines or acidification of the wines.

To the wine – it’s a blend of predominantly Chenin Blanc, with a dash of Rhône varieties Clairette and Viognier. Fermentation relies on natural wild yeasts and takes place in (older) oak barrels, where the wine stays until bottled six months later. If you like to have a sense of where your wine comes from and don’t object to minerality in your wine, to the extent that it can feel like a bit of that schist must have been in the barrel with it, then this is for you.

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.

The hills have wines...

“Someone really ought to plant some vines there”, I’ve often opined to myself as I drove along the A25 between Newlands Corner and Dorking, looking up at the south facing chalky swathe of the Surrey Hills.  Well thankfully “someone” has done more than idle daydreaming and actually gone and created a vineyard there.

The man in question is Nick Wenman, and his 13-acre patch of vines, Albury Organic Vineyard, is part of the Duke of Northumberland’s Albury Estate.  I first stumbled across the vines on a walk to Silent Pool last winter and was intrigued to find out more about the place.

I finally caught up with Nick on the last day of harvesting of the 2012 vintage.  This year, as anyone who hasn’t spent the last six months abroad will know, has been grim on the weather front.  Unseasonably cold, damp conditions have dogged us since the balmy, warm days we enjoyed in March.  This kind of weather is unkind to any form of fruit growing, from adversely affecting fruit set at the beginning of the season to threatening the final crop with rot at the end of it.

Luckily for Nick, however, he does have a crop – albeit a small one – this year.  Nyetimber, one of England’s foremost producers of sparkling wine, announced recently that it will not make any wine from this year’s harvest.  That made waves in the national press and 2012 will doubtless not go down in history as one of the best for English winemakers.

There will be more positive memories of the year for Nick, though, as his still wine, Silent Pool Rosé 2011 was one of only three English wines chosen to be served on the royal barge during the Thames River pageant in June, as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations.  How long ago it all seems now.

The ultimate goal is to produce an Albury Estate sparkling wine, hopefully in time for Christmas 2014, though the real volume of wine will not be on stream until 2015 or even 2016.  Bearing in mind that the first vines were planted here in 2009, you can see that becoming a producer of sparkling wine in this country requires dedication, patience - and deep pockets.

Why does it take so long?  Vines take 2-3 years from planting to produce a viable amount of grapes to constitute a crop.  After that hurdle has been crossed the grapes harvested will initially go through a first fermentation, which produces a regular still wine.  A second fermentation in the bottle is required to produce the fizz, followed by a period of maturation before the wine can be released.  This process can’t be hurried and unfolds over a period of 2-3 years if you are looking to make a quality product.

Hence the attraction of releasing the Silent Pool still rosé, which can be released a few months, rather than years, after harvest.  The wine acts as an aid to cashflow and helps put Albury vineyard on the marketing map.

You could not accuse Nick Wenman and his team of taking the easy option.  As well as embarking on a wine journey that will take the best part of a decade to come to fruition, the vineyard is also certified organic - 2012 will be the first organic wine to be released. 

Not content with the tricky task of using organic methods in a challenging climate, they have also converted to biodynamics.  If you’d like the one sentence summary of biodynamics it’s:  an holistic approach using organic methods plus specific “preps” on the soils, with vineyard operations timed to harmonise with the movements of the moon and planets.  Sound bizarre?  For more detail on what this means, and who else is doing it, you can take a look at a post from my blog on the subject: http://heatherdougherty.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/organic-and-biodynamic-wines.html

What with a small 2011 production and the great Jubilee-related publicity for their rosé, Nick has had no trouble selling every bottle he has of the wine this year – sadly this means that, unusually, I can’t tell you where you can taste these wines for yourselves.  There will be a small amount of Silent Pool Rosé 2012, made from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, available locally next year – but the crop is only around 25% of what Nick would have hoped for, so you’ll have to look sharp to grab a bottle when it does appear.

In the meantime, here are a couple of English wine recommendations that you will actually find in the shops now.

Stopham Estate Pinot Gris 2011 - £15.50 from Hennings, various branches in West Sussex and other local independent merchants

The 2010 vintage was selected by Jancis Robinson MW as one of her wines of the week and sold out pretty quickly.  Luckily the new vintage is as good, with true varietal style, fruit and elegance.  Their Pinot Blanc was also chosen to be served on board the Royal Barge for the Jubilee celebrations.

Ridgeview Merret Bloomsbury 2009 - £22.99 from Waitrose and various independents

Ridgeview Estate, at Ditchling in East Sussex, have been making a range of top notch English sparkling wine for years now.  Their wines are consistently good across the board, so if you see the name Ridgeview, trust me, it’ll be a good ‘un.  This elegant Chardonnay-dominant blend has Pinots Noir and Meunier in support and is their most popular and signature cuvée. It would not disappoint any Champagne afficionado.

Here’s hoping that, in three years’ time we will be fêting the success of Surrey’s very own Albury Estate sparkling wine.  Cheers!

All photos courtesy of John Powell, Albury Visual Services

God rest you merry, Gentlemen...and ladies - it's Christmas Part 2

Last time I gave some recommended wines for all those occasions that involve wine over the festive period – and if you missed it, you can catch up here:  http://yourliquidassets.blogspot.com/2011/11/christmas-2011-part-1-in-which-our.html. Now, however, the focus is on the big day itself.

Breakfast

I wouldn't normally recommend wines to go with your cornflakes, but at Christmas the normal order is turned on its head. And I'm assuming that breakfast is more of a brunch; later, more leisurely and certainly more luxurious than normal. Straight fizz might seem too much of a shock to the system for most, but brave souls could ease themselves into the day with a glass of Prosecco – its clean, fresh fruit and touch of sweetness is ideal.

For many of us, though, Buck's Fizz has become a tradition. Please, DO NOT buy the pre-mixed bottles. Buy the best orange juice you can (or even squeeze your own) and combine (in whatever proportions you enjoy) with either Prosecco or Cava. The predominant taste will be the orange juice, so go for budget bubbles.

Pre-lunch

We all love Christmas dinner, but we wouldn't want to eat it every day. Let's face it, it's a bit of an endurance test for the body, so pre-lunch you need a wine to get the juices and the appetite going in order to fortify for the feast ahead.

Champagne is the pre-prandial aperitif par excellence and now is a good time to produce a really fancy bottle if you have one. Blanc de blancs (ie made from 100% Chardonnay) are a good choice, as they have plenty of crisp fruit and nervy, mouthwatering acidity.

Jacquart Blanc de Blancs 2005 - Special introductory offer £26.99 at Sainsbury's, £38 from Great Western Wines

Lovely light style, with fine acidity and long-lasting flavours of apple, flowers and white pepper.

If you serve smoked salmon at some point, then Champagne is of course a perfect companion. You could go for something with a bit more body here.

Berry Brothers Own Label Champagne - £25.95 per bottle, down to £23.35 a bottle if you buy 6, from bbr.com

Christmas might not be the day to plonk a bottle emblazoned Tesco or Waitrose on the table (though personally I wouldn't mind). Berry Brothers' own label, though, is far more the thing. Produced entirely from top Grand Cru vineyards in the village of Mailly, this is a blend of 75% Pinot Noir and 25% Chardonnay, giving it more power and structure than a Blanc de Blancs. Aromas of pear give way to a palate of spice and crisp apple, with the length and structure to stand up to food. A great match for smoked salmon too.

Alternatives to fizz as aperitifs would be really top class Sauvignon Blanc, from its heartland in the Loire Valley.

Château de Tracy Pouilly Fumé 2006 - £17.50 from The Wine Society

No oak, just the unadorned grapes treated gently to give delicately perfumed fruit with persistent flavour.

Sancerre Le MD de Bourgeois 2010 - £22.49 from Les Caves de Pyrène

Much more full-on and assertively fruity, but with great mineral intensity, this will certainly give the tastebuds a good wash and brush up.

Lunch

Turkey, or whatever your chosen bird, is really not in the equation when it comes to choosing a wine. Think of all the different flavours that we pile onto a single plate – stuffing, gravy, sprouts, roast potatoes, sausage and bacon...I could go on. It really isn't possible to match them all, so you need to choose a wine that will not be overwhelmed, but will not try to fight with all those flavours either.

Think, also, about who is round the table. If you have a group of fine wine lovers, then by all means dig out your treasured bottles of fine, aged claret or white Burgundy. But for most of us, we are in multi-generational groups, some of whom might not touch wine for most of the year. So choose something that will please a crowd and won't frighten the horses.

Le Faîte 2007 - £14.99 from Adnams Cellar and Kitchen (branch in Richmond)

Arrufiac, Petit Courbu, Petit and Gros Manseng – you don't need to have heard of the grape varieties to enjoy this unique white wine: big bold fruit, big-boned but with refreshing acidity.

Domaine Roche Audran Cuvée César 2009 - £12.58 from winenot.co.uk

The southern Rhône is a great source of wines that are generous of fruit and body, with a food friendly whiff of herbs. This 100% Grenache wowed a group at a recent wine dinner and is certified (in a good way) biodynamic.

Brouilly Domaine Durand “Pisse Vieille” 2010 - £8.95 from The Wine Society

It may be shy about trumpeting it on the label, but this is a Beaujolais. Deliciously, juicily, red fruited stuff that will suit a multitude of food and palates. By the way, “vieille” means old and “pisse” means...well, what it sounds like. Don't let this put you off.

Rioja Reserva – such as Cune Reserva 2006/7 - £11.95 from Waitrose

The barrel and bottle ageing that Rioja Reservas undergo lead to mellow wines which are versatile with food, so they are always good to have to hand for Christmas.

Pudding

Yes, the marathon is not finished yet. If you opt for pudding, then you need something to go with – or indeed instead of.

Stanton & Killeen Rutherglen Muscat - £12.40 for a half bottle from slurp.co.uk

Australian liqueur muscat is just about the closest you can get to Christmas pudding in liquid form. Lusciously viscous with flavours of dates, raisins, caramel and spice, it can stand up to the richest, sweetest pudding.

Tawny ports also rub along nicely with the sweet spice of Christmas pudding, mince pies and the like. These are widely available, but try and get hold of a 10 year old (or even better, 20 year old), as these will have more mellow nuttiness. And you can keep going with it if anyone is still up for some stilton.

Good luck! See you on the other side.

The dark side of the moon

Collect some fresh cow manure, put it into a cow horn and bury it at the Autumn

Cow horns being unearthed

equinox. Six months later, at the Spring equinox, dig up the horn, remove the manure and put it in a barrel of water. Using a long stick, stir vigorously for one hour: the biodynamic preparation 500 (cow horn manure) is now ready to spray on your vineyard, preferably when the moon is descending and in front of a “fruit” or “root” constellation.

Stirring the "prep"

Sound a bit weird? It might surprise you to learn that spraying cow horn manure on vines is spreading (excuse the pun), as the practice of biodynamics becomes more popular. Once thought of as folklore or hippyish bunkum, nowadays biodynamics is becoming an accepted part of sustainable viticulture combining traditional farming practices with scientific and herbal knowledge.

This kind of New Age thinking might have you cackling into your cappuccino, but biodynamics is moving into the mainstream. Distinctly non-New Age companies such as M&S and Tesco consult the Biodynamic Calendar (2010 edition yours for £4.71 from Amazon) to ensure that they stage tastings on “fruit days”, determined by the orbit of the moon around the earth and the associated zodiac element, which apparently affect the taste of a wine.

So what is biodynamics and where did it come from? Biodynamic agriculture was inspired by the teachings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (best known in this country for Steiner schools) at the turn of the twentieth century. In essence, it takes organic cultivation as a starting point and adds elements of Astrology (the influence of the Moon and planets) along with Homeopathic techniques and principles – applying various “preps”, such as the cow horn manure spray above. If you will, it's organic for people who really mean it.

Driving forward to the present, Jody Scheckter, of Formula 1 fame, is a great exponent of this principle and has successfully farmed Laverstoke Park in Hampshire biodynamically for six years. His creed is that you aren’t just what you eat, but you are (if not vegetarian), the animals that you eat. You can judge the results for yourself by buying at the Laverstoke online farm shop: http://www.laverstokepark.co.uk/farm-shop.

How do you spot a biodynamic wine? Easier said than done sometimes. A fair number of biodynamic growers choose not to mention the fact on their labels: their decision to use biodynamics is to make what they consider better wine, rather than a marketing technique to appeal to the consumer; a refreshingly uncommercial attitude.

To further confuse things, the term “natural wine” is hot right now: you might come across it at hip London eateries such as Galvin Café a Vins, Artisan & Vine and Terroirs – or even at your local Oddbins. Guildford's very own Les Caves de Pyrène could be said to have started the whole natural wines phenomenon, but what does it mean?

Any attempt to define natural wine could fill a book, but in general these are wines made in as non-interventionist way as possible, often using organic and/or biodynamic methods and with low or no use of sulphur. As wine writer and scientist, Jamie Goode, puts it: “You just know one when you see one.” Helpful?

Putting aside attempts at classifying and defining these wines, then, let's just have some concrete recommendations that are delicious to drink – the proof of the pudding is, as always, in the eating – or drinking.

Domaine Huet Le Mont Sec 2005, Vouvray - £18.49, Waitrose (certified biodynamic)
A consistently delicious Loire white, whose many layers of flavour make it the vinous equivalent of expertly made flaky pastry. It's dry with chenin blanc's typical piercing acidity, but with honey, almond blossom, beeswax, apple skin and more.

Champagne Fleury Carte Rouge NV - £25.75, Vintage Roots (certified biodynamic)
No home-grown hemp jumper needed to drink this. Fun and frothy, as it should be and a very sensible price for a reliable fizz. Waitrose stocks an almost identical Champagne Fleury Brut NV for £29.99.

Saumur-Champigny, Les Terres Chaudes 2008, Domaine des Roches Neuves - £16.99, Les Caves de Pyrène, Guildford (biodynamic)
Another Loire wine (a hotbed of biodynamic growers), but a red. This 100% cabernet franc is sinewy and muscular rather than fleshy – one for claret lovers to enjoy with roast lamb.

Coyam 2007, Vinedos Emiliana - £12.20, The Wine Society or £13.50, Vintage Roots (biodynamic)
Biodynamics is perhaps strongest in France, but this moreish Chilean shows that the New World is not being left behind. It's a veritable cocktail of syrah, carmenère, merlot, petit verdot and mourvèdre and provides a nice contrast to the more austere Saumur-Champigny. Enjoy its full-bodied, robust fruitiness now – or keep it for 4-5 years, if you can.

Talking of keeping wine in optimal condition - Bodegas Amezola de la Mora in Rioja will be storing some of its wine on the seabed at a depth of 12-15 metres, close to the port of Bilbao. The specially designed pods will allow water to flow freely around the bottles and the bodega plans to see if the constant temperature of the seabed provides a better ageing environment than a cellar – and if the seawater has any effect on the wine!

“Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” Joan Collins

We are sure that the Spanish will be cheered to learn that divers have discovered thirty bottles of Clicquot Champagne (now Veuve Clicquot) believed to have been made between 1782 and 1788, pre the French Revolution, on the Baltic seabed – and still drinkable! It is thought that the champagne was en route to the Tsar of Russia from Louis XVI and is said to be perfectly preserved by the cold and darkness, retaining its fizz and fabulous taste. Proof perhaps that the old ways are not to be scoffed at and we can learn much from the past.

“I love everything that is old: old friends,old times,old manners, old books, old wine” Oliver Goldsmith