Wall of Fruit

Bass, how low can you go? Death Row? What a brother know, once again, back it's the incredible, rhyme animal........

Bring the noise.....

Dense, layered samples, sirens, heavy bass and drum beats. The Bomb squad knew how to make an impact. Pop music really didn't know what had hit it.

I was too old to really feel the impact of Public Enemy, by the time I got around to listening to 'It takes a nation of millions', or 'Fear of a black planet' they were already canonical, thoroughly institutionalised into music history, academic texts had been written about their social commentary, and it many ways the world had changed, and it would be an extremely churlish person to deny them some measure of influence in that change.

Similarly in the world of wine, the late 80's seem like more than just the last millenium, fashion has shifted so far away from the wines that lit up the skies like flares. Their siren call like purity of fruit character no longer able to shock like it did - and yes - once again I kind of missed the revolution. I started drinking wine when Chilean wines were by no means a novelty, however, the journey that I've taken, towards the niche and avant garde of European wines meant that I was lining myself up for a shock.

It's all very well taking great pains to only drink biodynamic, zero sulphured, long skin maceration, ever so slightly oxidative 'terroir' wines, but good got it comes as a shock when you put your nose to a glass of serious Chilean Cabernet.

Calicantom 08 D.O Maipo - The bomb squad would have been proud - a wall of fruit, black currants, cassis, violets, crushed raspberries, some hints of herbs, mint and other fresh green notes - but what intensity. A real wake up call. On the palette the same electric restlessness, a menace of new oak in the back ground, but all attention focused on the fruit in the fore. Visceral and enervating.

Just the thing when you've been musing on the merits of mild oxidative characters in your wines.

A timely reminder

I've been wondering for some time if I'm overdoing it just a bit too much.

Lots of very late nights, quite a lot of bottles being finished here, there and everywhere. Possibly a few too many packs of marlborough being purchased. Generally having a good go at creating an internal environment utterly at odds with that consistent with a healthy mind and body.

This comes along with not having taken any real time off since January, and a series of really busy months, where despite having given a degree of thought to my future career, I've really done little other than bounce from one day to another and worry that I've not done any laundry....

So it was with a heavy pair of eyelids that I dragged myself to the 1234 Shoreditch festival, future rock and roll (which seems inordinately influenced by the early 80's C60 indie scene, but hey) and electronica. And you know what, after I got over the hipster nonchalance that hung heavy on the site I had a great time. Topping off the day with Optimo DJ's at the Dalston Superstore, left me feeling far to cool for school, and oddly ready to have a nice quiet week or so.

I'm being taken on a buying trip to Champagne at the beginning of September so it would be nice if my palette was a touch sharper by then, and following that I'm contemplating visiting Hong Kong to scout around for work etc, so likewise if my general levels of health and sleep were raised a bit it'd probably not do me too much harm.

On a sadder note, it's always a bit sad when a bottle is corked or otherwise spoilt. Doubly so when one feels that it could have been avoided.

Jardins Esmereldins, vdp de France 2001. Only recently bottled, having sat solemnly in barrique somewhere in the Loire for the best part of a decade. Tasted several months back it was revelatory, complex, vibrant, evading easy description the way that the best wines do. This morning, the wax seal had broken and the cork was half extruded. As it was a non sulphured wine I assume the worst, and wasn't wrong, the gentle prickle of a re-fermenting wine accompanied the slight tang of unwelcome oxidation. Don't get me wrong its still a lovely wine, just not quite the wine it once was..

I'm hoping there isn't a metaphor here.

Domaine Vacheron

The Loire, it's languid algal dappled waters forever waiting for that last glimmer of late autumnal sunshine, Nonchalantly cleaving western France in two, it's banks a haven for wine lovers, and it's spread of appellation's and styles so vast as to almost defy fashion. As one regions waxes so another wanes.

So many blog inches have been devoted to the punkish natural wine makers that populate it's shores that one sometimes forgets that there is anything else. The constant clatter of the Joly's of the world shouting down all the non biodynamic, non un-sulphured (surely sulphured would have been easier to type) wines seems to drag all the attention away from the quieter more restrained wine makers.

What fun writing about a restrained and relatively accessible winery like Domaine Vacheron (Waitrose fine wine amongst others) when you can score points by talking up your love for Clos Rougeard or Catherine et Pierre Breton (both incredible wineries btw). What sort of a splash can you make talking about a Sancerre when you could declare your love for naturally fermented sparkling Gamay (the novelty kind of wore off after the second bottle).

Well I'm going to try.

2007; It was sometime in the early summer, the sun light was streaming into the Ashdown Park dining rooms, the gentle East Sussex hills rolled away past the landscaped gardens, the ornamental lake was glistening obsidian, like a particularly flirtatious Kohl rimmed glance, and the sip of Vacheron Sancerre I took prior to serving the bottle was just perfect. Delicately smoky, subtly floral but elegantly restrained. At that moment I would have given anything to be in the Loire... or failing that on the terrace with the rest of the bottle.

Fast forward to the Salon des Vins de Loire in early 08 and I was interested to notice that they were biodynamic (save 3.3ha in conversion 2008), how had I not noticed? Still there weren't really novel enough for me as I was in the first flush of my affair with all things sans Souffre.

The present; Simon from MARC fine wines has dropped by of an afternoon to show us the 08's. It's been some time since I've really looked at the Domaine, and I guess the fault is with me. Their 46ha are 3:1 Sauvignon:Pinot Noir, and about 45:45:10 % flint, limestone and clay.

08 Sancerre, blackcurrant leaf, a spot of flowers, a wink at red fruit and a gorgeous mineral finish. Like a late period Matisse, unadorned but it's the line that counts.

08 Les Romains Sancerre, large size old oak barrels are used for the elevage, which adds a slight waxy gloss to the nose, but really fleshes out the palette, again breeding and elegance are the order of the day, this is a beautifully turned out thoroughbred, elegant and beautiful but with every movement you see the ripple of toned muscle.

Now I'll be blunt here. I've never really seen the point of rose Sancerre, well, that is if you discount separating rich people from their money in the presence of their pretty younger girlfriends, which since I'm neither rich nor blessed with a pretty younger girlfriend, or more pertinently working in the west end has meant that my interest in the category has been rather limited.

The Domaine Vacheron rose 08, actually rather reminded me of a still version of a blanc de noirs Champagne, a touch of soured cream, a lactic backing to some yeasty autolytic characters and some rather unsubtle flirting with summer berry fruits. All very nice, but, as with all rose Sancerre one pays for the privilege.

Similarly to rose Sancerre I've always been a touch wary of Pinot Noir from the region, feeling that too often it lived and died on the novelty of being a Pinot Noir from Sancerre. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the Vacheron with a forceful dark berry nose, at once obviously a Pinot Noir, but also quite distinct, on the nose a sort of smoky medicinal character, calling to mind, camphor, clove, and dark cherry scented summer berries. Elegant, but with a noticeable tannic core which with the fresh acidity made for a quite lovely Pinot. However my host at the tasting couldn't quite give me a convincing enough reason to want to buy the Vacheron, when I could find an excellent Marsannay or Givry for a comparable price, ah the vagaries of fashion and it's subsequent effect on pricing (though that's another post altogether).

So Domaine Vacheron, beautiful and very elegant wines that bring to mind the understated elegance of a Capability Brown garden, though to think of it, I can't really afford one of them either...

The Matadors of Toro

The Spanish idolise the bull, the Toro is hewn into their collective subconscious like no other nation.

1942 when Miguel Fariña started making wines might as well be in the era of the Aurochs for all the wines resemble those of modern Toro.

Harvest was on the 12^th of October every year, no one stopped to question why, it always was. The wines from the partially raisined berries frequently reached 17% alcohol, indigenous yeasts had evolved that coped with the high alcohol, the locals isolated from most of the rest of Spain on the high and arid plateau of the lower Douro drank what they’d always drank. The Galician cod fishermen were regular customers, the high alcohol meant that it survived the lengthy journeys, but beyond that it wasn’t a wine for the modern world.

Like the Marquis’ de Riscal and Murrieta before him, Miguel saw the light in Bordeaux, and came back preaching the new gods, stainless steel tanks, new French oak and most importantly bringing the harvest date forward by about 3 weeks.

Fast forward to the 00’s and the name Fariña isn’t that well know in the UK, why, well as international demand rose along with the bodegas standing in the domestic market, well there simply wasn’t enough wine to go around, and someone had to be left out.

Returning to the UK market now that newer plantings have reached sufficient maturity, we look at Toro in a different light. Robert Parker has been effusive in his praise with the 04 Numanthia Termanthia gaining the elusive 100 points (admittedly not from Parker himself) and many others scoring extremely highly. One is brought to mind of Robert Bakewell the 18^th century British cattle breeder who pioneered cross breeding and intensive fattening and brought the world its first overly muscled engineered cattle finding fame through out the land. There’s a reason his name has been relegated to the foot notes of history.

Fariña has always endeavoured to plough a more elegant path, avoiding excess hand time and extraction in favour of freshness balance and sensibly applied oak, and this really showed when we tasted the wines over dinner.

The fame of Toro has been built on the Tinto de Toro, a regional variant of the Tempranillo grape, albeit one that is noticeably different with much smaller berries, a higher skin to pulp ratio and a much deeper colour, and one that makes wines that sing of violets and dark fruits rather than the bramble and red berries of it’s Riojano cousins. However there are still plantations of old vine Malvasia lurking about, tucked into corners where people haven’t got around to top grafting them to more profitable uses, so fittingly for a bodega used to swimming against the stream we started with a very small production methode champenoise Malvasia, lean, mineral and with a satisfying leesy finish it certainly brought to mind dusty Spanish plains.

The Collegiate Malvasia 08 brought for me a step up in complexity, showing an almost Chablis like minerality on the nose, pebbles and a hint of stone fruits, on the palette the salty minerality was swaddled in a ripe stone and tropical fruit cloth. My only complaint was that for me the alcohol seemed to manifest a touch on the finish, though others at the table compared it favourably with the Viognier style (with which I often have the same problem).

To the reds, the Collegiate (named after the village’s church) 09 was revelatory, at the £6ish price point I was stunned, great balance, lovely dark red fruit, very aromatic, just a touch savoury, vinified with no oak it was both refreshing and very satisfying. It’s elder brother the Gran Collegiate Crianza 06 had spent 9 months in new French oak, and initially wore it’s breeding somewhat heavily. Though time in the glass brought out more of the aromatic florality and suave dark fruits that lay at its heart, my feeling was that another 9 months or so would be enough for it to really start to sing.

At this point we were served the Tinto de Toro 1973, the year of Miguel’s son’s birth, what with all the general bustle of a new born, a business and an estate to be run, some of the wine was forgotten about. Thank god for over stretched parents.

The wine had been made using a vertical destemmer which tends to damage the skins of the berries, this brings much higher oxidation risks, but enables quite heavy extraction. The 3 weeks or so of maceration probably didn’t do anything to affect this either. The wine was bottled with no oak contact, and I should imagine was close to undrinkable on release..

Christmas pudding, opulent spicing, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, caramelised raisins, autumnal forest undergrowth, mature red fruit. It reminded me of solera aged Banyuls, but with enough of a mature wine character to drag it back into the realms of normal drinking. A delight, and when I spoke of my sadness that a wine like this would probably never be made in the modern world I was surprised to hear Miguel say that his son was planning a micro cuvee copy, something he could serve to his son in 39 years time..

Traditionally in Toro, each grower had a favoured site, and each year he’d leave the grapes on the vine until they were shrivelled and rainsined, once the wine had slowly fermented the precious juice would be added to the barrel that sat in the back corner of the bodega. Weddings, christenings, funerals and last rights would all call for a small measure of this most precious of wines to be drawn off. A unique and noble wine style.

The Dulce de Lece is Fariña’s version of this, raisined grapes, 120g per l residual sugar and aged in a solera for 4 years, it finished the dinner with a swarthy panache of salty acetyl earth, rancio caramelised raisins a rough hewn and defiantly unshaved sneer at modernity and its limits.

I left the evening impressed at what for me was another facet to a region that I already held in high regard.

Easy drinkers from Loeb

My friend Silvia from OW Loeb popped round to have a little tasting with me this afternoon - yep I accept that it's slightly wrong being friends with the people you buy from, but it's slightly hard when you've got suppliers that are actually nice people, who also share quite a lot of the same interests - wine - ....

But I digress.

Surprise of the day - Domaine Sainte Merlin de La Garrigue, 2003 vdp de Coteaux de Besilles.

Now coming across a French appelation that I don't know always gets a raised eyebrow from me, as does coming across something like this -Mature nose, quite medoc like, sous bois, those slightly earthy redcurrant notes, then on the palette the grenache that's also in the blend fleshes it out leaving a bright and quite warming juicy finish.

Oh and it was only about £5.60ish ex vat. Probably not for everyone, but for a lunch time claret style wine it was great value..

Croques

One morning whilst wandering lonely as a cloud I dreamed not of daffodils, but rather of croques. Wordsworth be damned as he'd probably been more of a Welsh Rarebit sort of person, and that's another issue.

While we were growing up, a Croque Monsieur was one of the snacks that my sister and I could make for ourselves. Now looking back the kind of things that we'd have been making would have made most self respecting foodies turn slightly green and pale, but regardless, croques are intricately linked with my earliest memories of cooking food.

Bringing things into the present, I work in a French restaurant, so Croque Monsieur and his wife are an essential part of our bar menu. But I'd never been quite satisfied, maybe it was the daily tarnish of staff food taking the shine of a fondly cherished memory, or maybe we weren't doing them right..

One tweet later, and I knew I wasn't alone....

So here's what I'm proposing - I'm going to play with the formula, already I'm seeing several camps developing. To Bechemel or not to Bechemel seems to be eliciting some quite trenchant opinions. Personally I'm quite interested in the issues of what breads to use, whether there is an ideal strength of cheese, and to what degree smoking the ham has on the final taste.

But I figure it's a work in progress, and, lets face it, regardless of what I come up with, it's never quite going to match the one you first had on that holiday, or the ones that your mother used to make in the steel griddle, but lets not let this dissuade us.

Croque it, I'm game for a challenge (also I quite like both ham and cheese :-))

Katnooks and a cranny

The plan was simple, I was going to go to Bethnal Green for the 1pm drop in Yoga session. Then have something simple and healthy to eat, drink some tea and read my book. Just as I was walking out the door, my phone rang. 'Hi Donald, it's Valeria, I'm just phoning to check whether you're going to the lunch today?' - 'where, when, how?' - 'Rhodes W1 with Wayne Stehbens of Katnook estate'..... Well gift horses and mouths were coming to mind, so I knocked the whole yoga idea on the head and set off for Marble arch.

Rhodes W1 is just round the corner in the lobby of the Cumberland hotel, in fact it's somewhat difficult to establish exactly where the lobby ends and the restaurant begins.

I was a guest of Bibendum who were sorting Wayne Stehbens of Katnook estate out a little farewell lunch before he departed to Canada or where ever Barossa wine makers go to when they're not needed at home. And on arrival James sorted me out with a glass of the 2008 Sauvignon Blanc. Admittedly as breakfasts go it might not have been the most suitable but it was none the less very convincing. Quite herbal but with a degree of restraint to the nose and then a slightly sticky character to the fruit that finished with a delightful menthol/eucalypt tang. As Sauvignons go it was far from being the most obvious varietally, and all the nicer for it. This was followed by a glass of the 2001 (sadly I didn't take a photo as it was a beautiful colour), from a largish, quite ripe crop, this apparently started out showing very ripe stone fruit notes, 9 years later, it was a little bit toasty, with notes of wax, cream, polish, on the palette the wine was still very much still together a core of good acidity running taught through it. Wayne commented that all the colour and maturation was due to the phenolics created through oxidisation of the tannins left from the skin contact. Suffice to say I was very impressed.

The wines were pairing an asparagus soup with smoked salmon mousse and a smoked salmon croque monsieur. The soup was very pleasant, once I realised that the scummy orangey layer on the surface was meant to be there...

This was followed by an 'Italian salad of roast red and yellow peppers, courgettes, fennel salami, coppa, rocket and marinated Bocconcini cheese' - which pretty much did what it said on the tin, all the ingredients were present and correct, though it left you with the impression that the chef had just popped into the italian deli round the corner and knocked up a spot of lunch.

Merlot 2006 (from Magnum) was a mid depth blood red fading a touch at the rim that showed aromatic brambles, red berries and a touch of spice and ceder from the oak. This was surprisingly elegant and almost a touch understated. Wayne went on to explain how he was aiming for a style that fell somewhere between the earthy mushroominess of St-Emillion and the more gravelly restrained St-Estephe Merlots (like Ch du Pez).

The Coonawarra terroir is quite distinct, it is one of the coldest regions in Australia, being 80km from the Southern Ocean, and at only 60 m elevation means that there is a lot of wind to cool the vines. This leads to large diurnal variation. Crucially for the region, from the period between veraison and picking the average temperature rests about a degree above the Bordelais average, this with usually dry summers means that the vines can be quite safely left to ripen.

The famous Coonawarra terra rossa, is a ferrous clay lime soil that lies above a 4 foot limestone subsoil, this is believed to have been the remnant of a shallow tropical sea, the terra rossa is a Podzolic soil which is believed to have been blown into the region.

John Riddoch who first initiated agriculture and viticulture in the region was also very influential politically, and as such was able to ensure that a lot of government money was spent on drainage in the region. As such what had previously had large areas of standing water was now possible for vine growing, however the consequence of the previous water table means that depending on the relative elevation, the area undulates slightly, the soil either developed anaerobically (underwater), or aerobically (on mounds out of the water). This has certain implications on the behaviour of the vines in each soil area.

Finishing up on the regions soils Wayne explained how there is quite considerable diversity across the region, with much heavier dark clay black Rendzina soil to the west, moving through some transitional brown Rendzina to the terra rossa to lighter sandy soils in the east where you see more aromatic and slightly lighter wines, though the vines are also more in need of irrigation.

The main course was lamb belly in a marjoram broth with spring vegetables, again this was very pleasant if slightly underwhelming. Lamb belly being one of those cuts that I approve of more in theory than in practice. The meat was very tender and the fat was well cooked and melted into the broth, making the dish reminiscent of an extremely refined pot au feu.

Served with it were the Katnook Cabernets. At this point Wayne challenged us to think of what other regions in the world successfully make 100% Cabernet Sauvignons, bearing in mind that almost everyone else blends to a degree.

A flight of 06 and 99 Cabernets provided a instructive comparison into how well it ages, with the 06 showing touches of mint with the earthy dark fruit, where as the 99 was still very youthful with more licorice coated dark cherry notes on the finish (testament to the hot year).

By now the by the numbers dessert of white choc mousse, milk chocolate ice cream and pistachio was thoroughly over shadowed by the two vintages of Odessey, 05 was brooding, showing dark berries a dusty mintyness and a chewy earthiness. However what really stood out for me was how the tannins were knitted together with the fruit, there was a real interplay between the two making them very hard to separate. This was again demonstrated in the 97, a much cooler year that was showing mushrooms and a mature vegetal (tobacco leaf?) characters, a complex nose brought up hints of white pepper and smoky bacon, while the palette showed silken maturing tannins and a creamy edge to the still present fruit.

After the lunch as we walked off to refresh ourselves with a beer it was pointed out to me that Rhodes W1 has a michelin star. I'll leave it at that.

Other things that were discussed.

Yeasts - natural versus cultivated strains; Wayne pointed out that natural is a bit of a misnomer all you need to have a very successful strain of 'wild' yeast is to buy some, have a ferment and then not clean up properly.. He uses Bayanas rather that Cerevisiae as he finds them better at finishing off the slightly higher alcohol ferments.

Regarding debudding; The Coonawarra is a very frost prone region and regularly they need to use the over head drippers to work in a preventative way. However more important with regards to yield reduction is the near frost incidences, these are where the temperature falls to about -1.6 degrees. At this point there is some intracellular damage to the budding tips, this is very useful at controlling the crop.

Tomato juice; This has a very high malic acid concentration and as such is very useful as a starter culture for malolactic ferments. Which explains why fermented tomato juice is incredibly volatile.