Cathy's blog

Cathy van Zyl (MW)'s online journal about wine ... mostly

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Marking papers, tasting reserve bubbly and learning about horse sweat … 25 February 2008

My days and nights (!) have been very busy here in Bordeaux – last Tuesday the students wrote a mock theory exam and the ‘resident’ MWs are responsible for marking these and returning them before 15h00 Friday (today, as I write this) … all 53 of them.

As a result, I haven’t attended nearly as many of the lectures as I would have liked but do have a couple of things that you may find interesting.

For example, last night at the gala banquet hosted by Dourthe to round off the week long programme, we were introduced to Dourthe ‘Essence’, a dry red wine that blends select parcels of premium grapes and barrels from the company’s more than five properties spread throughout the various communes of Bordeaux, including Châteaux Belgrave (Haut-Médoc), Le Boscq (St Estephe), Teyssier and Lamarzelle Figeac (St Emillion) and La Garde (Pessac-Léognan). The brainchild of Dourthe head, Jean-Marie Chadronnier, this wine has only been made since 1999, and he gives his viticulturists-cum-winemakers free rein (and budget) in the vineyards and the cellars. The 2001 we were served was lovely, very savoury and refreshing … but with a slightly less ‘Bordeaux’ character than the single château wines that were on the table.

A few days earlier, I’d listened to yeast expert Antonio Palacios discuss the role of yeasts and enzymes during the fermentation and maturation processes to eliminate off-odours and flavours. Fascinating stuff. Antonio is from Rioja, and pointed out that he was quite perturbed by the ‘horse sweat’ people referred to when discussing Rioja wines apparently infected with Brett. He and some of the scientists at Rioja University set out to discover this element and so – and this I found quite amusing – ‘harvested’ sweat from some nearby horses, analysed it and compared it to the compounds in this so-called Brett wine. You’ll be very pleased to know that there is categorically no compound in wine that also exists in horse sweat!

I tasted, from magnum, the 1976 reserve wine from the house of Bollinger. Reserve wine, which is used during the blending process to assist the grand marques maintain their house style, is not permitted under French AC regulations to be sold, is bottled with no dosage and kept at 2 atmospheres of pressure. Bollinger keeps all its reserve wines in magnum and, for the most recent vintage, had to open – by hand – some 18 000 bottles before adding it to the cuvee. And I complain about a dozen or so when tasting for Platter. 100% pinot noir, the wine was medium gold, quite developed with hints of struck match and kerosene, but with lovely weight and acidity.

Must dash, papers to mark, enemies to make!

Cold but sweet 21 February 2008

It’s cold in Bordeaux, where I am one of the Masters of Wine involved in the seminar for 2^nd year studentsbut who cares – it’s Bordeaux and there’s wine.

The visits organised by host Dourthe (one of the larger producers in the area) for those of us who arrived a day early included one of its properties, Château la Garde in Pessac Leognan, Château Guiraud in Sauternes and Domaine de Chevalier in Graves.

At Château Guiraud, they invited us to taste eight of the up to 24 ‘lots’ they harvest and ferment each year before blending the grand vin which is, of course, botrytised sauvignon blanc and semillon fermented in barrel for three weeks to two months before being blended and aged a further 18 to 24 months depending on the vintage.

The ‘lot’ numbers refer to the batch of grapes harvested on a particular day; we tasted lots from the 2007 vintage – sauvignon lots 11, 21 and 22; semillon lots 20, 23 and 25; and then lots 24 and 26 which were already ‘blends’ because sauvignon and semillon was ready to be picked on the same day. Then, as an extra treat, we were given the wine that the château is considering as the final blend for the 2007 en primeur campaign, and the 2006 which is n-e-a-r-l-y ready for release.

The wines were all unctuous but with a piercing, cleansing acidity that could be described as ‘vivacious’. The sauvignon lots were more upfront and showing more ‘apricot’ botrytis notes while the semillon was more textural, more mineral.

The probable final blend – 35% sauvignon/65% semillon – weighed in at 13.73% alcohol, residual sugar of 112g/l and 4.19g/l acidity. It was amazing to see how the components came together to sing a far sweeter and more elegant duet. It is lovely, and gets my thumbs up; as if they need it!

As cold as I was, I wasn’t about to turn up my nose at the tasting put together at Domaine de Chevalier. This property is probably better known for its white wines (dry sauvignon/semillon this time) and I hoped that included in the 12 wines that were promised us would be several of the older vintages.

Our first flight included a 2007 barrel sample as well as finished wines from the 2006, 2005, 2003, 2002 and 2000 vintages. I preferred the 2005, which was a mélange of tropical fruit and vanilla, saved from opulence and thrust towards elegance by a nervy acidity. Sauvignon clearly dominated the wines in their youth.

This acidity didn’t abate, as wines from the next flight showed – 1999, 1998, 1996, 1991, 1984 and 1975 – but the wines gained a waxiness and earthiness as semillon came to the fore, and honeyed bottled age characters started adding to its complexity.

Here my favourite was the 1991. This was the year of the great spring frost, and the Domaine lost 80% of its crop overnight. It showed quintessential smoky Graves aromas, and layered cinnamon and tangerine peel, and still that refreshing acid backbone remained.

The 1984, too, was superb; floral aromas and a slight oxidative hints adding to the complexity. It had just a hint of dirtiness – but we’ve all eaten a sandwich without washing our hands before, why not excuse a grand vin!

All quiet on the Pierce front 18 February 2008

I’ve been spending some time researching wine viruses (I have to give a presentation on the subjecte to Master of Wine students in Bordeaux this week) and re-reading about corky bark, rugose, fanleaf and so on sparked a – related – thought: ‘What ever happened to the glassy winged sharpshooter and Pierce’s Disease?’

Nearly 10 years ago, this was hyped as the biggest threat to the wine industry in North America and – as we all know – when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.

So, instead of googling for ‘wine virus impact quality’, I looked for articles on PD, and found something which looked useful but it didn’t seem to offer (quickly) a succinct summary of the status quo.

I found another that mentioned that Solano County was declared out of danger in November 2007 and, as of February 4 2008, 13 out of California's 58 counties remain on the infestation list, but nothing more useful … except the email address of the PR company responsible for disseminating information on behalf of the CDFA’s PD/GWSS Board (that’s California Department of Food & Agriculture Pierce's Disease/Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter).

I shot off a simple request ‘could you please tell me what is the "state of the nation" or "status quo" with respect to the disease at the moment? How bad is the infection? How much money is being spent on fighting it?’

Ken answered very quickly, and simply: ‘The bottom line is that you haven’t heard much about it because about $20 million a year is being spent to keep it under control with about another $4 million a year going to research hoping to find a cure or at least ways to manage it so it doesn’t wipe out vineyards.’

He also directed me to several documents he thought I should see (I probably would have found them if I wasn’t so lazy when it comes to trawling through sites):

• 2007 PD Research Symposium

• 2006 Report to Leg (apparently the 2007 report isn’t out yet; nice to know not only in South Africa …)

Both are very detailed documents, the latter highlighting among many other things, that the disease now threatens a grape crop production value of $4.14 billion and associated economic activity in excess of $45 billion. Other crop and ornamental plant resources such as almonds ($2.86 billion) and susceptible species of citrus ($1.22 billion), stone fruits ($1.13 billion), and shade trees are also at risk.

Exams, traffic and pinotage in Singapore
15 February 2008

Regular readers of this blog will know of Remie Law, the friend in Singapore I’ve mentioned before, but I don’t think I’ve told that he’d taken as a good omen the fact that the rat hero in the movie Ratatouille was called Remy.

Why would he do so? Well, because he (Remie Law, that is!) was nearing the end of a hotel, restaurant and general hospitality course which required him to not only have a more than passable knowledge of the relevant legislation, business practices, kitchen and restaurant design and so on, he had to prepare a dish to an exceptionally high standard.

It seemed to me to be an awfully big challenge to take on when one has a wife, two children, is running a wine consultancy and is involved in wine education but Remie was undaunted. And his belief in the Remie-Remy connection has just been vindicated

I received an email from him yesterday saying:

My cooking practical exam is over and the examiner loved my dish. Both he and my principal lecturer really tucked in. I’m thrilled because I didn’t exactly get off to a good start.  

See, I had packed my equipment and uniform before the weekend but decided to leave my chef's jacket to hang in to closet so that it would not be crumbled in the knapsack; a smart uniform adds marks to your score.

This morning at the examination venue at about 8:40am I started to dress for the exam, which was due to start at 9:20am. Lo, and behold! I realised I had left my jacket hanging in the closet. My dear Bibi and Daryl [that’s Remie’s wife, a teacher who is herself studying for a higher diploma, and son] hopped in a taxi to deliver it to me, right in the middle of the city. Only in a major city like Singapore could one travel 8.5km in 30 minutes during peak period traffic.

I started my prep about 10 minutes late with my hands still quivering with the adrenaline rush. But the dish, when I finally delivered it for assessment was, as Gordon Ramsay would say, ‘Spot on.’

The good news kept on coming: when I went to collect my theory exam results, I was told I’d scored the only distinction for both full-time and part-time students.

Then, sans lunch, I rushed to the Nanyang Techological University to do my part for wine education in Singapore. They were holding the 1st wine exhibition ever for a tertiary institute, and I was to lead a ‘wine tour’ through the booths of the 12 participating merchants.

The only South African wine we came across was a Hartenberg Pinotage 2003, which was still drinking well in a middle-aged kind of way. Not racy, but a comfort wine, perhaps with some Char Koay Teow (fried flat rice noodles with oodles of sweet black soya sauce, bean sprouts, egg and Chinese sausages).

Sounds good to me. And I’m certain that if anyone were to go to Singapore with a bottle, Remie’d be happy to share it with them, and provide the dish.

Talking of –  and tasting – slate 11 February 2008

It’s difficult for me – sitting here at my laptop – to think of something to write about the ‘Slate’ tastings organised by Jörg Pfützner. (You may recall that he’d chosen the title because the wines he’s selected come from the schist of the Duoro, Priorat and Germany’s Mosel.) But write about it I should because the day-long ‘workshop’ he’d arranged for some media and retail people was one of the best I’ve attended recently – and the grand wine-and-food fests he held in top Johnanesburg and Cape Town restaurants were reportedly also great occasions (sadly I had to miss them).

It’s difficult partly there was so much, partly because there were so many other journalists in the room, who might have beaten me to the keyboard. I tried so hard to begin my blog first thing today but real life got in the way and last night – well, I got home at seven in the evening after having left the house at ten in the morning; it was a long adventure and I owed the family a piece of me.

Leading Mosel maker of great riesling, Ernie Loosen (of Dr Loosen fame), introduced his presentation as ‘The Rocky Horror Riesling Show’ (the influence of slate rock was, after all, the focus) and it was this informality that set the tone for the nearly two hours we listened to him talk about his vineyards and his wines while we sipped them. You might enjoy these two quotes he uttered, the one under his breath and the other quite forcibly (you guess which):

‘Any of my wines that retail for under $30 in the USA will be bottled under screw cap. Customers shelling out more than $30 don’t want screwcaps, they want cork, so they’ll get it. I don’t want to force the customer, after all he still has to pay me.’

‘High alcohol content completely destroys the delicacy of slate. Our fruity wines will therefore only reach 7-8% alcohol and our dry wines 11.5%.’

By contrast, Dirk van der Niepoort (of the famous Niepoort port house, now almost as well known for the dry wines he makes in Portugal’s Douro valley) was quite reticent. When I arrived at the venue and found him in the kitchen with a large pot of crayfish he had just steamed and de-tailed and asked if I could help him take out all the leg meat, he replied ‘If you wish,” and shrugged his shoulders, moving on to his next task (he wouldn’t even turn for a photograph).

Later on, he admitted to being nervous sharing a kitchen with Aubergine restaurant’s Harald Bresselschmidt. He needn’t have been: his contribution to lunch – poached hake on a petit pois puree and cucumber salad, and crayfish risotto – were superb.

Talking about his wines, a different Dirk emerged, one that was charming but forthright. How’s this:

‘I don’t believe in varieties, so can’t give you the exact proportions of all of those that are in my wines.’ [He could have added that we probably wouldn't have heard of any of the 13 or so indigenous Portuguese varieties in one of his white wines.]

‘Fruit is not important to me but freshness is; I insist my wines have a lot of freshness. Schist soils make more elegant, fresher wines; granite soils make fatter, more rounded wines.’

Oh, there was much, much more to this tasting. It was a treat. So watch out for those reviews that are bound to start appearing.

Alternative to Eskom?
8 February 2008

After reading the Widow describe Mont Destin’s Valentine’s offer of a pinotage and water bath in the vineyards to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I thought there was nothing left for those in the wine industry to do to cause my jaw to hang open with disbelief.

But wait (in the words of those dreadful infomercials), there’s more! It’s the pachyderm press. Ask Boplaas.

The press is called Harry, and he’s a 22 year-old resident of the Knysna Elephant Park. It took just three weeks for staff there to train him to tread grapes. During the treading process – his feet were washed and sterilised beforehand – Harry snacked on chardonnay, pinotage and cabernet sauvignon grapes, his favourites. It stands to reason then that the rosé will blend these two red varieties.

Powerful, manoeuvrable and Eskom-independent, this press was used – for the first time, claims Boplaas’s Rozanne Nel, to press grapes for an Elephant Rosé 2008 and Elephant Chardonnay 2008. These will be sold in selected restaurants and wine shops, and the proceeds donated towards elephant research projects and conservation. 

Go figure!

H$w m$ch b$tt$r?
5 February 2008

There I was, peddling away on the exercise bike at Virgin Active, training for The Pick ‘n Pay Argus Cycle Tour in much the same way as John Maytham and so many others who don’t enjoy cycling into the teeth of the South Easter are, when I came across that age old wine question: Do you get better wine if you spend more?

Actually, I was re-reading a book I’d first read about five years earlier (I get so bored on the bike, but nothing will induce me to brave winds that endeavour to push me backwards up a hill I’m trying to cycle down). It’s called You heard it through the grapevine: Shattering myths about the wine business by Stuart Walton.

Walton asks (and answers) several questions, using Domaine Romanée-Conti, good sauternes, champagne, the Super-Tuscans, and wines from Torres to make his points:

• Do the winemakers literally just charge what they think the wines taste as if they are worth?

• Or are there genuine economic factors at work in their creation?

• Do you get better wine if you spend more money; or is it just another kind of label snobbery, on a par with the designer clothes industry?

Incidentally, he thinks DRC is ‘rather good’, just not ₤650-good (bearing in mind the book was published in 2001); good Sauternes worth the ‘ridiculous’ prices asked for it given its labour-intensiveness; champagne over-priced despite its mechanisation (which replaced its labour-intensiveness); the Super-Tuscans revolutionary next to even supposedly superior Chianti Classico; and Torres Grans Muralles, on the evidence of the 1996 vintage, ‘not worth anything like its asking price’.

I guess I agree with him in every respect, with the exception of his pronouncement on the Grans Muralles. I’ve tasted different vintages about five (yes, a whole five) times now, and I reckon it’s one wine I’d buy for my cellar when I win the Lotto.

The reason I wanted to re-read Walton’s arguments was I’d just received an offer from Cambridge-based Noel Young Wines to buy from their ‘typically miniscule yet highly desirable’ allocation of Larry Turley's 2005 Zinfandel.

The wines come from grapes from some of California's oldest, head-pruned, dry-farmed and organic vineyards. Yields are very low and grapes picked very late (I tried not to remember my prejudice about Californian hang-time), the wine is aged for 14-16 months in 75% French and 25% American oak barrels (25% new) before being bottled unfined and unfiltered.

The under-bond case prices were pretty reasonable; about £239 for a case of one of the single vineyard bottlings. If I were a zin fan, I could just about go for that; the wine is a lovely example of the variety. But, add transport, duty and VAT, and it nudges over the R500 a bottle mark and not desirable enough.

PS: Pinotage champion, UK-based Peter May, wrote to say he’d spotted more South African wine at a lower alcohol level than expected … and lower than many a German wine (LINK TO BLOG). In Morrisons, a supermarket, he spotted a First Cape Café Collection Chenin Blanc 2007 boasting a 9% alcohol (and costing £4.79; or just less than R60). Go figure.

Turning down the heat  1 February 2008

The drone of a heavy-duty helicopter woke us this morning. ‘Fire on the Helderberg!’ screeched Luke joyfully and rushed outside to catch a glimpse of the bright orange bucket that holds the water which is so often the only hope of wine growers desperate to keep the flames from their vineyards.

I had a beautiful view of the site of the fire 40 minutes later after dropping him at school; a journey which included a detour past the reservoir in the Helderberg Nature Reserve where these flying fire-fighters fill up. It seemed to be in the bluegum plantation just above Spanish Farm, one of Somerset West’s most exclusive suburbs. That meant that no vineyards were in immediate danger but if the southeaster were to rise (as it threatens to do as I write this; there’s a determined breeze tickling the tree tops outside my window), the situation could change in an instant.

Chatting to Boekenhoutskloof’s Marc Kent about something else earlier in the morning, he mentioned he’d been wide awake at four o’clock on Saturday morning. Not because his twins had disturbed his sleep, but rather a fire on the property. Marc’s a bit of an old hand at battling the flames, with the help of the Franschhoek Fire Brigade, of course; he’s had several on the property in a handful of years.

Fire, too, was just one of the many personal and business-related hurdles that have beset the Kröne family of Twee Jonge Gezellen over the past decade. Yet, like others in the industry, they refused to let it snuff out their love for their farm and way of life.

I was reminded of their collective fortitude when I was surprised with a drive to Tulbagh and one of their Night Harvest Dinners. It’s a Krone family – complete with dogs – affair: youngest son Luke is the host ensuring the dinner and programme of events runs smoothly; dad and bubbly specialist Nicky leads the bottle maturation cellar tour; Mary, dubbed ‘matriarch’ by Nicky, explains the range of specialist MCC wines they’re bringing to the market; and Matthew (older than Luke but no less good looking) takes charge of the trip into the vineyards.

Harvesting at night serves a dual purpose, explains Nicky. Because the grapes are cooler to start off with and don’t have to be transported in the baking sun where they’d get even hotter, they more quickly reach optimum fermentation temperatures. This streamlines the cellar routine and benefits wine quality.

Just as importantly for him, the harvesters prefer working in the cool of the night; it’s less physically taxing and they’re more efficient, picking – and therefore earning – almost double the amount they used to harvest during the day.

I don’t know about you, but I struggle to work in an office when the mercury rises above 34°C; I hate to think how I’d fare out in the vineyards of the Boland where 40°C has been the norm for the past few days. Perhaps Twee Jonge Gezellen makes a good labour practice point, as well as great fizz!

Showing off Spain 29 January 2008

I get a little anxious when I’m conducting a tasting at which the wines I’ve chosen are intended to demonstrate a certain point, or points. Like, for example, attempting to highlight to Cape Wine Academy students the differences and similarities between rieslings from Germany, Austria, Alsace and Australia and South Africa. Or hoping to convey the Old World charm of Italy to my wine tasting club. Or even just trying to convince cycling-cum-avid bubbly sipper-cum-gossip buddy, Shirley Williams, that the high price of a French sparkler is well worth it. (Actually, I think Martin Meinart did just that with a 1998 Billecart-Salmon Cuveé Elizabeth Salmon last weekend – aee the previous blog entry.)

Sometimes – like dogs and babies – wines refuse to behave according to their stereotype, or label. The riesling from Alsace will prove far more robust than those from Austria and Australia, the Chianti will attempt to masquerade as an ultra ripe pinot noir, and the champagne will just not, well, not fizz.

Fortunately, this didn’t happen earlier this week at the tasting at which I’d included wines from two of the producers I visited in Spain last year – Finca Antigua (owned by well-known Rioja producers, Martinez Bujanda) and the Màrqués de Griñon’s Dominio de Valdepusa.

I’d selected them for three reasons – both believe petit verdot has a role to play in the future wine fortunes of the Meseta and I had sourced single bottlings of this grape from both producers; the Màrqués had been the driving force behind new wine legislation resulting in the introduction in 2000 of a new quality category, Denominación de Origen de Pago or Denominación de Origen de Pago Calificada, by the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha in 2000 and I wanted to determine if those attending the tasting agreed with the decision; and the Martinez Bujanda family had elected to invest in La Mancha ahead of upcoming regions of Toro, Somontano and Cigales because they believe this area is Spain’s ‘New World’.

The Finca Antigua wines acquitted themselves well. Two that we tasted sold for only €3 from the cellar and would certainly meet any supermarket buyer’s requirement for supple tannins and luscious fruit. Its flagship, Claus, which is priced at around €15 ex-cellar, was also very New World in character with bold fruit and oak flavours, but was certainly several steps up the quality ladder and worth the price.

The Màrqués de Griñon’s wines – we tasted three: the petit verdot, the syrah and the Bordeaux blend called Summa – were very classy. Tasted alongside other producers from Méntrida, they certainly earn their lofty status; tasted alongside Spain’s ‘first growth’ line-up (which we didn’t do but we did have wines from Ribera del Duero and Priorat), I’m not so sure.

And the petit verdots? That from Finca Antigua was juicy and amenable, I can see them buying it now in Asda, Tesco and other Brit supermarkets, and enjoying it immensely. That from the Màrqués de Griñon was stylish, with polished tannins and more classic fruit profile. ‘Boy, I’d love to have this wine in my cellar as a blending partner,’ quipped one of the tasters. ‘But it just doesn’t do it for me as a single variety. That’s my prejudice coming through.’

Prejudice aside, I think I’ll call this one a success, and the wines well behaved.

Challenging the stereotypes 23 January 2008

The wine in your glass is pleasant enough – it has a neutral nose with some floral and green apple hints, not much flavour, not much texture but it’s dry and has a fair whack of alcohol (14% you’ll discover when shown the label). What is it?

Over-cropped chardonnay or chenin blanc from Chile or South Africa? Mass produced trebbiano from Italy, or airén or viura from Spain? Badly-sited verdelho in Australia, or America? Aligoté from Burgundy?

If I was a betting person, I’d be prepared to bet the best bottle of claret in my cellar that you’d mention these – in addition to numerous others – before turning to silvaner from Germany, which is what it was.

I tasted the wine courtesy of winemaker Martin Meinert in Langebaan this weekend, where we and our families were both guests of cycling-cum-avid bubbly sipper-cum-gossip buddy, Shirley Williams, and her steak-aficionado husband Gerald. Martin had been sent a mixed case of wine by a few German visitors he’d hosted during the course of last year.

This wine (I wish I could find the piece of paper on which I made a note of the name; it was a good party) was bottled in the traditional bocksbeutel of the Franken region (the bottle shape better known here as the claimed but disputed property of Distell for their Graça), where it was made. Franken is, according to authors Oz Clarke and Margaret Rand in Grapes and Wines, home to the best site for silvaner, the Stein vineyard on a steep slope on the edge of the city of Würzburg.

They also suggest that, in Germany, silvaner’s wines are dry and gently earthy, never aromatic; in Alsace, they are smokier and spicier with greater breadth; in Italy’s Alto Adige, fairly bright and acidic; and in Switzerland, the best can be honeyed and mineral.

In South Africa, there’s just the one varietal bottling, that by Overgaauw. I haven’t tasted it for quite some time but German-born sommelier Jörg Pfützner did the honours for Platter’s* 2008 edition. He found it showed some individuality with hints of melon and spice. At 13.5% alcohol, it was a touch more restrained than my Franken sipper.

Now there’s something I wouldn’t wager my Bordeaux on; finding a South Africa wine lower in alcohol than a German one. During the previous week I shared in a few bottles of a delicious, beautifully balanced Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spaetlese 2001 from J J Prum: 8% alcohol it declared on the label. Though locally there was last year, of course, Jean-Vincent Ridon’s magnificent Signal Hill Eszencia which, at all of 5.1% alcohol. didn’t even offocially qualify as a wine…

* Declaration of interest: In case you don’t remember, I’m a member of the Platter tasting team.

Putting in extra time 18 January 2008

I had to giggle when a winemaking friend with a sweet tooth (he’d better stay nameless) expressed his dismay at the fact that he entered 2008 with – for the first time since he started losing weight a few years back – a triple digit score on his bathroom scale. He’s now wearing trainers, he says, because they make him look taller (and therefore slimmer) and give him the feeling that he can break into a jog at any time and banish those extra kilos from his waistline.

Of course, I was giggling in sympathy because – while my scale shows I weigh exactly what I did this time last year – I know that what I have to lose to take myself back to a pre-Luke figure (yes, I know he is 10 years old and I should have won this battle ages ago).

So, it was with great determination that I climbed on the exercise bike at gym last week, and added an extra 10 minutes to my normal routine all because I’d helped finish a bottle of madeira (apart from everything else) the night before.

The wine, arguably the most long-lived of all, is only made on the volcanic island of the same name. This belongs to Portugal but is closer to Africa, and is very rugged so that viticulture here is challenging to say the least. Not only do grape growers have to contend with steeply terraced vineyards, the damp, sub-tropical climate mean that fungal diseases are a constant, not a variable.

One of the winemaking steps that distinguishes madeira from other styles of fortified wine is that it is ‘cooked’ after fermentation. This estufagem process mimics the maturation process that wines from the island used to undergo in the 17^th century in the bowels of the ships in which they were transported across the tropics to far-flung markets.

Madeira is a complicated wine, classified according to the grape, the residual sugar in the wine and its age. One of its consistent characteristics is high acidity so that even those wines with high residual sugars taste lively and refreshing.

The wine I was privileged to drink (a 1977 vintage from D’Oliviera) was not made from the most widely used varieties of the varietally named wines – Sercial, Verdelho, Bual and Malvasia  in increading order of sweetness – but from terrantez, a grape that is regarded by the Madeira Wine Institute as noble. In style it usually comes between Verdelho and Bual. It was almost extinct a few years ago, but is slowly making a come-back.

Often, madeira defies description, because so much of its charm is the extraordinary complexity the grape and winemaking process give to the nose, and the ethereal palate balance it can achieve.

Suffice it to say, I’d be more than willing to sweat it out for an extra hour a day if my Fairy Godmother waved her magic wand and turned all the wine in my cellar to good quality madeira!

What a difference a zero makes 17January 2008

We were sitting in the back row at a tasting organised by Waterford’s Francois Haasbroek (which Tim James says he's going to report on more fully ... soon), and somehow we’d started talking about canopy management. I said I vaguely recalled that the outside leaf in the canopy would absorb about 60 percent or more of the sunlight shining down on the vine, the second about 35 percent and the inner leaves would therefore receive less than 10 percent of the available sunlight; sommelier Jörg Pfützner maintained that he’d read the outer leaf absorbed all but 10 percent of the sunlight. We agreed to disagree – and said we’d check our sources.

Of course, Jörg being Jörg and being German, he checked before I did, and left a message directing me to Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine which states ‘… say a leaf facing the sun at midday receives 100 relative units of sunlight. The second leaf in the canopy will receive less than 10 of those units and the third will receive less than one.’ There’s Jörg’s 10 percent.

I checked Sunlight into Wine (by Richard Smart and Mike Robinson – no relation but Jancis did write the foreword) and here it was stated that ‘a leaf in bright sunlight (say 2 000 micro Einsteins per square meter per second) will only transmit about 6%, so 120 micro Einsteins per square meter per second pass through to the next leaf in the canopy, the third leaf in line would receive only 7 micro Einsteins per square meter per second and would be in deep shade. This simple example ignores reflection of light between leaf layers.’

Believe it or not, I also went back to the essay plans I’d prepared while studying, and found one on the topic ‘Discuss the relationship between canopy management and fruit maturity’. Page 2 of the plan included this note: ‘a leaf in bright sunlight (2 000 micro Einsteins per square meter per second) transmits only 6% to the next leaf in the canopy … or the bunch!’

Hell, so in just five years, I’ve lost a zero! I don’t mind being wrong, because it gives me reason (and desire) to brush up on those important topics that we all lose touch with because we don’t deal with them on a daily basis. Of course, I could just keep quiet and listen to Jörg.

Sunlight is, of course, critical for the vine’s survival; photosynthesis (the process which uses the sun’s energy to convert carbon dioxide to the sugars the vine uses as building blocks to manufacture its chemical compounds such as proteins, carbohydrates and phenols) is dependent on sunlight. No photosynthesis occurs below 30 micro Einsteins per square metre per second (1.5 percent) and reaches its optimum rate at about 700 micro Einsteins per square metre per second (about 30 percent of full sunlight).

But, leaf temperature also affects photosynthesis with maximum rates between 20 to 30°C, and no photosynthesis below 10°C or above 35°C. And so, too, does wind speed, and water availability, and …

Back to the companiable Oxford. I’ll leave 'Jancis' next to my bed. Maybe that will help turn reason and desire into action.

Petit verdot – the ‘hot’ alternative 11 January 2008

Sweltering in my office, mindful of the fact that Al Gore had been one of Time magazine’s ‘People of the Year’ finalists for his efforts to draw the globe’s attention to global warming, I was reading through the notes I’d prepared last year for a tasting I’m due to give sometime this month or next, depending on the harvest demands inflicted on the winemakers in our group.

Not only did I need to create a few slides to illustrate the points I wanted to make, I wanted to check what I’d written about my decision to include petit verdot … in a tasting of Spanish wines.

One of the classic five red varieties in Bordeaux – along with cabernets sauvignon and franc, merlot and malbec – petit verdot is valued for its colour, structure and floral (violets) scent. However, its plantings in Bordeaux are limited because it ripens so late there and fruit quality can therefore be severely compromised by late autumn rains and frosts.

Of course, this characteristic would not pose as much of a problem in warmer climates and the grape has found a home (a small cottage if not a lavish villa) in Tuscany, and parts of Spain, Chile, the USA and Australia. Of course, here in South African, we know about the grape, in fact we have some 557 hectares of it according to the 2006/7 SA Wine Industry Directory, but it appears no-one is shouting its praises, except as a seasoning in wines is our blends, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Oh, about a dozen producers bottle petit verdot as a single variety.

By contrast, two of the producers I visited in Spain last year – Finca Antigua (owned by well-known Rioja producers, Martinez Bujanda) and the Màrqués de Griñon’ Dominio de Valdepusa – were very enthusiastic about the variety claiming its role in their blends, as well as single variety bottlings, will become increasingly important as temperatures rise courtesy of our collective refusal to educe carbon emissions et al.

Both producers are located on the Meseta, Spain’s high central plain, where cencibel (tempranillo) and garnacha have historically led the red wine race. Generally speaking, the wines here were not among the best Spain had to offer but this is changing: in his book, The New Spain, John Radford credits this area as being ‘the powerhouse of Spain filling the supermarket shelves of Europe with excellent-quality, value-for-money wines’.

Supermarkets are not exactly the Màrqués’ or the Martinez Bujanda’s target market; there’re more intent on establishing footholds in specialist wine stores and restaurants. Both do, however, like fruit-driven wines and regard their homes on the Meseta as Spain’s equivalent to the New World.  And, they both firmly believe the late ripening petit verdot will be a star performer in their line-up.

I’ll let you know what we think after our tasting.

By the way, in his Time interview, Mr Gore claims to ‘have failed’ so far in his quest and says he will only regard himself as successful when the world mobilises – as a country mobilises for war – against global warming. Roll on the day.

Wet, wet, wet – simple musings 7 January 2008

It’s been – thankfully or I may not have been able to drag myself into the office for my first day back at work – a wet, wet, wet day in Somerset West. Our annual holiday (yes, I’m claiming the trips I did to Spain and Australia last year as work, not relaxation) was a decadent 25 days of nothing but sun and sea ... and family … just 45 minutes away in Pringle Bay.

I have to admit it was a faitly non-vinous period, especially in terms of foreign wines, and it broke my Barolo-Rioja-Burgundy heart to respond to friend Hew’s email listing the wines he’d had with Christmas dinner (Ch. Pichon Baron 1982 followed by Ch. D’Yquem 1967, followed by Ch d’Yquem 1986) and on New Year’s Day (CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva 1968). My response was: ‘beer’. Of course, he had to ask the vintage! Hmmm, I think it was Heineken November 2007.…

Foreign wines or no foreign wines, we did imbibe a fair amount catching up with old friends, like Marian Shinn and Charlie Ward at the annual catch-up lunch thrown by Paul and Di Perton over the bay in Rooi Els. Marian does PR for The Winery of Good Hope and proudly informed us all that its Chenin Blanc 2006 scored 90 out of 100 points on the US magazine Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 Best Buys of 2007 to earn position number 8 on the list, the only South African wine to make it into the top 10.

Wines selling at $15 or less and scoring 85 points or higher out of 100 are eligible for selection for this best-buy list; it retails at about R34 in South Africa. The other South African wines to make it into the top 50 were Sebeka 2006 Shiraz-Pinotage (the new wine made for US giant Gallo by Swartland; No 15 with 88 points) and Beau Joubert 2005 Oak Lane Merlot-Cabernet Sauvignon (No 49 with 87 points).

She and I also giggled a little at the way wineries use their competition triumphs to catch the consumer’s eye. There’s nothing wrong with wearing your medals, of course, but some just seem to take it a bit too far, even mimicking the ‘bling’ to attract attention – as the photograph she emailed me to illustrate her point proves.

Phil and I did, too, eat a little too well and a little too much (I blame our guests and am off to the gym just as soon as I finish this posting) and so are looking forward to some simple fare. But how’s this for a great idea for us who like to cook – a professionally equipped kitchen and private dining room so that you can ‘chef’ for your own party of up to 24 people. It certainly would make a change from the two gas burners (no oven) we had to contend with on Christmas Day preparing a hot celebratory meal for 15 people.

Problem is, the venue is in Singapore; I noticed it when I read my friend Remie’s newsletter sent out to over 1 000 subscribers to drive them to his site, www.happywines.com. In the letter, Remie also bemoans the fact that food, venue, attire appear to be more important than wine when it comes to weddings in Singapore these days. He writes:

Wine appears to be just an afterthought in the wedding budget. In years past, serving the best available alcoholic drink, a XO Cognac for example, was mandatory to send off the newly-wedded couple. Today, even VSOP has no place in a classy banquet. And the tide, too, has turned for wine with too many wedding banquets featuring wines that are the equivalent of 3-star brandy or worse.

Think about it … tax on a 750 ml bottle of wine is about $8.00. If you serve your 10 guests to a table, a bottle costing $18.00, you are actually serving them wine costing only $10. Thus, each guest toasts to your future happiness with a glass of wine worth just $1. Hey, even a can of Coke costs more than that!”

Gulp! editor and Wine magazine deputy, Christian Eedes, gets married in February. I’m certain he’ll need no encouragement to take Remie’s point to heart.

May 2008 be filled with good fortune for our industry, its workers and its owners. I hope it’s a prosperous and peaceful one for you all.

Talking Côte Rôtie 17 December 2007

Talking about Côte Rôtie, when last did you confuse the northern Rhône wine with one from Bordeaux? It would not be that hard to do if (1) most of the wines in the line up were old-ish, (2) there was no real claret in the line up to show up the characteristics of both regions, and (3) particularly if your host pointed revealed that the only clue about the 10 wines in front of you was that three of them were Parker 100 point achievers.

‘Parker’ and ‘Bordeaux’ seem a natural pairing, like Sauternes and foie gras, tuna and wasabi, salty pistachios and fine fino. But, too many of us forget – or forgot on this occasion – that Bob also rates Burgundy, Italy, California, Spain, Australia, sometimes some South Africa, and always the Rhône.

Syrah fanatic (now there’s another clue) Marc Kent was the host throwing the cat amongst the pigeons (or the red herring amongst the … now, where would you throw a red herring?) at one of the tasting groups to which we both belong. About half of his guests took his bait, nominating the line up as Bordeaux. Another third suggested that only one of the flights was Bordeaux, the remainder Rhône. Fortunately, there was a handful of us who put 4 plus 3 plus 3 together and decided to back the home of syrah – colour and bouquet aside, the tannin structure just didn’t fit claret.

In fact, all of the wines came from the northern Rhône: there were four from Cornas, three from Côte Rôtie and three from Hermitage. Among other things, it was interesting to note how rustic the Cornas wines appeared alongside those from the Côte Rôtie and Hermitage, and how modern several of the 2001 wines were compared to those harvested more than 15 years ago. Aside from being a seriously delicious treat, this was an intriguing mental exercise, something I love.

The tasting was a week ago, and I’m still mulling it over in my mind. Of course, my memory is fuelled by the three Parker 100 pointers – Guigal’s La Mouline 1991, Chapoutier’s Le Pavillon 1990 and Jaboulet’s La Chapelle 1990 – sipped with the superb celebratory meal we enjoyed afterwards. A ‘retro’ feast (Avocado Ritz, duck with cherries and mince pies were the inspiration), this was prepared with typical flair and numerous twists and takes by Reuben Riffel to say ‘goodbye’ to a frenetic year and ‘hello’ to what we hope will be a peaceful and prosperous one for all.

May all your end of year wine experiences be memorable – although I promise you, you’ll have to go far to top Marc’s epic. Happy holidays!

Of rats and wine in the movies 12 December 2007

Luke and I went to see Ratatouille on Saturday, the latest animated masterpiece (if you enjoy animation) from Disney’s Pixar Studios. The movie stars Remy, a young rat with a passion for food who arrives in Paris and makes an unusual alliance with a restaurant's new garbage boy. This young man, Linguini, then becomes a rising star in the culinary world thanks to Remy’s skill at directing him in the kitchen.

Of course, there’s more of the usual – like love, betrayal, theft, death threats, flying knives and raging fires, etc – but while the antics of the rat and human populations interested Luke, I was fascinated by the all-powerful restaurant critic, named Anton Ego and impressively ‘voiced’ by Peter O’Toole.

Unfortunately for me, Ego made only a view brief appearances but there was always a bottle of wine in his scenes. I was intrigued by which wines the American storytellers would have him drink, given that the film is set in that country which wouldn’t believe in weapons of mass destruction. I’m happy to report that I saw only French labels, of which I managed to scribble down – in the pitch black of the movie theatre – the names of only two.

When I visited the Internet Movie Database to see if the wines were mentioned, under ‘trivia’ I found a whole bunch of interesting things, several of which suggest that critics aren’t the only souls only on this planet with giant egos:

But back to the wines: they were – I hope, because I only saw them for a split second – a 1961 Chateau Latour and a 1947 Cheval Blanc. The third was a Côte Rôtie, but it was shown side on and so I couldn’t see the producer or the year, but I bet it was superb. Ego has great taste.