Wine Behind The Label 9th Edition for 2014 - Plan B September Update

Well, things are coming along nicely, but we haven't reached our target yet which will enable us to produce a printed version of the guide. What is certain, though, is that there WILL be at least, the download as before, completely updated.

I have decided, therefore, to put a time limit on this, which means that the Plan B offer will close on October 31st 2013. If we do reach our target, the following things will happen:

1. The book will be published as a printed version as well as a download.

2. On November 1st, the prices for all advance purchases will increase by 25%. This means that the price of the printed book will go up from £40 to £50, the price for 3 books will increase from £100 to £125 and so on. The price of the simple download will go up from £15 to £18.75 and the download with Bacchanalian membership will go up to £25. Hopefully, those who have not yet subscribed will see the benefit of this and place their orders in good time.

If we do NOT reach our target, anyone who has subscribed for the printed book will have the choice of being refunded in full, or pro-rata if they wish to take the download with or without Bacchanalian membership.

I have been encouraged by those Angels who have subscribed for Preference Shares. As you know we are offering a return of 10% per annum on this, with the first 10% payment being made one month after publication. I would still be very grateful if anyone would still care to help out in this way before October 31st. Any application for Preference Shares made after October 31st will carry interest at 8% instead of 10%. As I have stated before, the minimum amount you can contribute is just £1, but I do hope you will go for more than that!

With a lot of time being spent on raising finance, we have got a little bit behind on completing the text. More than 50% has already been completed and David Moore and I will meet early in October to do the final edit and put the finishing touches to the guide, including deciding on which producers are going to win awards.

It's going to be  a very exciting wine guide and just to remind you again, here is what the Rhône section will look like.

You can place your order or apply for Preference Shares with a credit card via PayPal or through your PayPal account by going to this link, or if you prefer to pay by cheque (UK bank accounts only) or by bank transfer, go to this link

Sauternes Hidden Gem

It was an exciting day when I took delivery of Alessandro Masnaghetti's latest vineyard map - the Cru Classes of Sauternes and Barsac (as well as the Sangiovese vineyards of Romagna, but that's another story).

Looking at this beautifully produced map, I couldn't help but notice that among the designated vineyard plots of Ch. d'Yquem, there were a few blank spaces. I wondered why? Showing it to Christophe Mangeart, the winemaker at Ch. Cinc-Hilhs, he mentioned that the owner (or manager, as it turned out to be) was a friend of his.

I was curious about this paradox - Bordeaux vineyards are usually pretty contiguous - so I asked Christophe if we could go and visit.

The wine from these vineyards are bottled under the name of Ch. Lafon. Not an unknown name in Sauternes as Ch. Raymond-Lafon is a 1er cru, highly sought-after wine, but this domaine takes its name from other members of the Lafon family, who held the vineyards until they sold it to the grandfather of the current owner, M. Dufour in the 1920s.

These vineyards are completely surrounded by vineyards belonging to Ch. d'Yquem - a little enclave of quality terroir sporting vines which are now around 50 years old. Ch. Lafon's holdings are not just confined to these particular vineyards, they have other vineyard holdings scattered around Sauternes in the communes of Fargues, Bommes, Preignac and Sauternes (12 hectares in total) and were traditionally blended together so they never ever really got to the Cru Classe stage, although since 2006 the wines produced from the "Yquem" vineyards have been separately vinified (in the most suitable vintages) as their "Cuvee Desir".

It does cross one's mind to ask why the hell didn't Yquem buy these odd vineyards in the middle of their patch from Lafon when they were put up for sale? Well, the answer is, so they say, that in the depression days of the 1920s, the Lur Saluces family, whilst being of the highest nobility, were strapped for cash - plus fours and no breakfast, as my mother used to describe the toffs - so it was that M. Dufour's grand-dad stepped in with the moolah.

The estate is now run by M.Dufour's son-in-law, Olivier Fauthoux, and I had a chance to taste some of the latest offerings in situ.

Of course, the 2012 vintage was a real dog in Sauternes and this is reflected by the fact that the wine we sampled was not very sweet. Olivier said that it took an exceptionally long time to get ANY botrytis going and as a result the wine lacks grip and is going to be fairly wishy-washy. But, it could turn out that it would suit accompanying foie gras and Roquefort which doesn't require the wines to be over sweet to make a splendid combination.

The 2010, not long bottled, has depth and a nice balance of fruit and acidity with honey and citrus tones combining well. The wood is still a little marked but this will surely integrate in time. The 2011, still in barriques, is unctuous with good weight and a fairly complex finish.

The fruit is 90% Semillon with the rest split between Sauvignon and Muscadelle.

The estate has a second label, Ch. Nauton. I sampled the 2010 which had a good amount of sweetness but without any great depth. No oak is used in the vinification of this wine which is perhaps why it gave the feeling of being a little hollow.

All in all, this is pretty good kit and with recent vintages retailing for under £20 a bottle, it represents excellent value for money. Cuvee Desir may be a little more expensive. You can get a list of stockists and prices from www.wine-searcher.com. Visitors are welcome at the estate (please reserve a visit in advance) and you can find out how to contact them and get there from their website,  www.chateaulafon.fr.

Of course, (and this is where it all started) you can order Alessandro Masnaghetti's splendid maps at http://www.winebehindthelabel.com/maps.html

Bordeaux 2012 Impressions

I attended the primeurs week organised by the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux last week, curious in some way to find out for myself whether the vintage was as bad as some had made it out to be.

Well, the answer is a resounding NO. True there were some pretty poor wines on display, but a number of producers made, good, if not, very good wines. It's true, that nobody has made a great wine, but then, vintage conditions were so much against this. What one can truly remark on, is that if these conditions had occurred 20 years ago, the quality would have been nothing like as good as this vintage has turned out to be.

A cold dry winter was followed by a cold wet spring, with above average rainfall in April, in particular, followed by a mild May and a cool and wet June which led to uneven bud break and late and uneven flowering, coupled with  some risk of mildew. This led to some flower abortion and uneven grape size and the start of ripening being delayed for three to four weeks.

From mid July to mid September there followed a hot dry spell, with a number of heat spikes in August causing sun scalding on some bunches. Two rounds of crop thinning were therefore considered necessary by a number of chateaux and leaf removal delayed until the weather cooled in September. Hydric stress did set in in August accompanied by a substantial variation between day and night temperatures, but this allowed the vines to do some catching up after the late flowering and provided excellent conditions for the grapes to mature. In the second half of September, warm days, cool nights and some much needed rain accelerated the ripening conditions, resulting in a good development of the phenolic compounds, thus allowing most chateaux to harvest in the first two weeks of October before the deluge of October 19th.

With such an unusual weather and ripening process, there were bound to be large variations in the quality of the fruit: Merlot and Cabernet Franc seemed to have generally fared the best, with the Cabernet Sauvignons  suffering the greatest problems of consistency. Terroir also played an important part in expressing quality. Those great chateaux with recognised superb terroir on good sites with good drainage excelled, whilst those of lower rank struggled to obtain sufficient ripeness resulting in excessive over extraction in some cases.

After tasting several hundred wines over the last week, my conclusion is that this is an average vintage in terms of modern winemaking contexts. Such a vintage in the latter half of the 20th century would have been hailed as above average, such has been the progress of vini- and viticultural techniques over the last 15 years or so. Of course, being average does not mean that it is uniformly average, although I did find many wines which had a "sameness" about them. There were some pretty dull and hollow wines made but at the other end of the spectrum, some very worthy wines were produced.

It's too early to make hard and fast judgements, especially in a vintage like this. Wines will change from day to day, almost, in this current period of their evolution and whilst in other, more even years, you could get a pretty good idea how the wines will eventually turn out at this early stage, I think that the nature of this vintage could see wines moving up (or even down) in the months to come.

For what it's worth - here is a list of my best shots. As you know, I mark on a one to five star rating with half stars for a little superiority in a given rating.

5 stars

Margaux

4.5 stars

Cheval Blanc
Pichon Lalande
Le Dome
La Pointe
Trotenoy
Petit Village
Larcisse Ducasse
Smith Haut Lafitte
Leoville Las Cases
Lafite Rothschild
Mouton Rothschild
Palmer


4 stars

Pavillon Rouge du Chateau Margaux 
Clos Fourtet
La Gaffeliere
Beauregard
Hosanna
Belair Monange
La Fleur Petrus
L'Excellance
Lucia
Sanctus
Rol Valentin
Berliquet
Domaine Chevalier
Haut Bergey
Pape Clemant
Haut Bailley
Nenin
Carruades de Lafite
Cos D'Estournel
Montrose
Coufran
Lynch Bages
Cos Labory
Angludet
Labergorce
Les Astieres
Vieux Chateau Mazerat

There were a goodly number of chateaux with 3 and 3.5 stars.

I didn't have time to taste all of the first growths, hence their absence from the list.

All in all, this is a vintages that has sorted out the men from the boys. Of course, the top chateaux have not only the terroir, but considerable mechanical and technical resources to aid them such as optical sorters, for example, and this has given them a distinct advantage.They have made good wine, so don't expect them to drop their prices much, if at all, but if the prices are right, there are going to be good drinking opportunities in the lower echelons. At least, this will be a drinker's vintage, rather than a speculator's.

Looking for Great Price/Quality Ratios in Restaurant Wine Lists

I like to analyse restaurant wine lists. I like to find value for money. I look for great price/quality ratio wines on the list. That's not necessarily the cheapest and even in the most expensive looking wine lists, there is always a bargain to be found - if you look hard enough.

A few years back I wrote a book called The Top 100 UK Restaurant Wine Lists for Quality and Value. The problem with that was that by the time it got published, many of the lists were out of date. At the time very few restaurants published their wine lists online, but nowadays a lot of them do. And this can be a great advantage to you, especially if the restaurant has a massive list which is really too long to study at the restaurant before your meal.

The way to do it is like this.

1. Choose your restaurant.

2. Go to the restaurant's website and access their wine list

3. Assess quality. For this, you will need to have downloaded Wine Behind The Label which rates some 20,000 wines on a scale from 1 star to super 5 stars. You can download this by going to http://www.winebehindthelabel.com/paypalorders.html

★ a wine of good quality, not just sound but of good fruit and with some character.
★★ a wine with more depth, interest and concentration, usually with some ageing potential
★★★ a very good, even fine, wine. In the case of many reds repaying lengthy cellaring.
★★★★ a wine of very high quality, among the very best even in a top appellation or region.
★★★★★ outstanding quality, potentially a classic.
✪✪✪✪✪ super 5 stars, restricted to the true classics, out-and-out world class.
✫ white stars are used to show a superior wine at a given rating

4. Assess great value on the following scale:

1 star wines should be less than £20 on the list
2 star wines should be less than £25 on the list
3 star wines should be less than £35 on the list
4 star wines should be less than £50 on the list 
5 star wines should be less than £75 on the list
Super 5 star wines should be less than £100 on the list 

5. Choose 2 or 3 wines at the price points you wish to pay, just in case the restaurant has sold out of one of them when you go there; and whilst you may be willing to pay up to £100 for a wine, you might find a 5 star wine at £53, which should be superb value for money, as I found on Ransome's Dock's list if you look at the end of my article on it at http://www.winebehindthelabel.com/rdock.html

6. Having found some bargains, book your restaurant where you should then be all set up to impress your guests with a superb wine choice knowingly friendly to your own pocket.
    

A great new Spanish wine guide

My old friend and colleague David Moore, has just spent the last few months compiling a very comprehensive guide to the wines of Spain.

It's only an online version which can be downloaded as a PDF, but as usual this does have searchable facilities so that you can find a producer or a wine with minimal fuss and then print out the page you need if you want to travel with it.

The guide covers every wine region in Spain in a geographical order, with the classifications of each wine shown, which is fully explained in the introduction. There are wine ratings, price guides, ageing classifications and all sorts of other useful information,

To see it, go to http://wineandmoore.com/products/wine-guides, where it is being offered this spring at a discounted price of £7.00 instead of the usual £10.00

The Beverage Report or from the Graves to the cradle

 

In the general election of 1945, the Labour Party ousted Winston Churchill's Conservative Party. The new prime minister, Clement Attlee, announced he would introduce the welfare state outlined in Sir William Beveridge’s 1942 Report. This included the establishment of a National Health Service in 1948 with free medical treatment for all. A national system of benefits was also introduced to provide “social security” so that the population would be protected from the “cradle to the grave”.

The idea that there might be some correlation between wine and health benefits goes back to 1974, when a homeopathic doctor and acupuncturist called E. A. Maury published a book called Soignez-vous par le Vin (Heal Yourself with Wine). Maury believed that the mineral content of certain wines, taking on the character of the soil in which the grapes were grown, was of great use medicinally. The book starts off with an introduction to the wine regions of France, stating what he feels about wines which are particularly suited to overcome certain maladies. The rest of the book is devoted to a lexicon of various ailments, with appropriate suggestions for their treatment using wine. So with “x” disease you should be drinking St. Emilion and with “y”, perhaps a Nuits St. Georges. Champagne was a “must”, good for fever, liver sluggishness and coronary heart disease. That's because dry or brut Champagne contains, among other things, two important elements for a feverish person: phosphorus, which is very stimulating, and sulphur in its sulphate of potassium form, whose detoxifying action on the body has been established. Of course, this counsel was confined to the wines of France, as at the time, nobody in France could ever believe that decent wines (let alone health-giving wines) could be produced anywhere else. This conception was rudely demolished at a famous (or as the French would have it, infamous) tasting in Paris in 1976.

Research done since this book was published has found that it is the polyphenols in wine, particularly red wine, that are the agents that are keeping arteries clear. Scientists and doctors have long claimed it is good for the heart - and now a hospital is prescribing wine on its wards. Nurses are giving heart patients at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon two glasses a day! Heart surgeon Dr William McCrea, who instigated the scheme, said the idea came from looking at the health statistics of the French, whose rate of deaths from heart attacks is half of those in the UK. They tend to drink more regularly and don’t binge. Seems to be working well and additionally it has been found that cheaper reds are healthier, because fine wines lose the antioxidants in the barrel.

So undo the screwcap from your Chateau Plonque and get it nicely administered from a lovely nurse, knowing full well that you will be looked after from the Graves to the cradle!

Some musings on 50 years of air travel

Flying back from Genoa the other day, I mused over the quarter bottle of Spanish wine offered to me by British Airways. It wasn't a bad wine at all - I noticed that it had been sourced for BA by Bibendum, an independent wine merchant. Not that I have any problem with Bibendum, I have always admired them for the quality of wines that they handle and I am sure that BA have made a good choice here. It seems (perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong) that they now have a monopoly on supplying wine for BA.

It's a far cry from the days when BA employed Masters of Wine to make the selections for them and it caused me to muse further on how cabin service has developed over the years that I have been flying.

My first flight recollection was as a teenager, I flew on holiday to Copenhagen. Sitting next to the wing I noticed flames coming out of the turbo prop engine, but I was comforted by a nice hot meal on the flight. Right up until the nineties, I think, airlines prided themselves on getting a famous chef to devise meals on long haul flights - even in Economy. Wine flowed and the meal was always rounded off by the offering of liqueurs or Port to make these flights you could really enjoy instead of the platitude you get from the Purser stating that "we hope you enjoyed your fight with us" nowadays.

Also now, I have had some pretty disgusting food on a plane - seemingly grudgingly given out on long haul flights, usually a choice of chicken or beef (pasta if you are a vegetarian) all of which horribly overcooked. With some airlines you get a glass of wine and some not, all in all it sometimes seems that the cabin crew are doing you a favour! Some airlines are better than others, of course, and on balance I suppose British Airways is still my favourite airline. Certainly, their loyalty programme is one of the best around.

In the sixties, seventies and eighties, I had the occasion to fly from London to Inverness a couple of times each year. When I first flew, we always had a splendid cooked breakfast on the morning flight up - then it was changed to a cold breakfast and then, nothing at all! Another great flying recollection was flying my car from Lydd to Le Touquet for the princely sum of £21 return and getting some food and drink on the flight as well!

The advent of the budget airlines really started to change the scene. Long haul budget airlines soon found out that they could be undercut by large commercial and State owned airlines and Laker and the all business budget airline, Maxjet didn't take long to finish up in money heaven. A pity - I flew both, and I thought they gave good value for money at the time. On the short haul side, Ryanair came in with a bang and I used them a lot at the beginning of the century, because they really were so much cheaper and you could put up with the discomfort, as the flights rarely lasted more than 2 hours. But of course, Ryanair found out that in order to survive they had to make lots and lots of hidden add-ons, which brought the price up to unacceptable levels for the comfort and experience provided, especially at check in. I haven't used Ryanair for three or four years now, as the price difference doesn't warrant the excruciating discomfort one has had to suffer.

So where does air travel take us now? Well, the big airlines have cut their margins to the bone, it seems. On my recent flight to Genoa, I noticed that the basic fare was £46, but taxes, fuel supplements etc., brought this up to £118. The big winners here have been the various governments imposing these stealth taxes and they will have no compunction in raising them so that in order to keep prices reasonable, the airlines may have to cut their margins even further. This will probably mean less food and drink on the plane (unless you pay for the poor value fare you will get in this respect), or some airlines will inevitably go out of business.