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.

Every Prospect Pleases

A great blog by Robert Joseph on another load of Single Issue Fanatics on "factory" wine etc. Check it out on http://thejosephreport.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/big-can-be-beautiful-too-and-small-can.html

These people's missionary zeal seems to have no bounds and I have taken the liberty to compose a suitable hymn for them which also encompasses the "natural" fanatics credo (with apologies to Reginald Heber).



From Mendoza's icy mountains to Queensland's coral strand
Where Afric's sunny fountains roll down their golden sand
From many an ancient vineyard, from many a Riverland plain
They call us to deliver their land from error's chain

What though the sulphur breezes blow hard o'er NZ's isle
And every prospect pleases and only big is vile?
In vain with lavish kindness the gifts of God do come
The heathen in his blindness bows down to chips and gum

Shall we, whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high
Shall we to those benighted the natural wine deny
Salvation! O Salvation! The joyful sound proclaim
Till earth's biggest conglomerates has learned Messiah's name

Waft waft, ye winds, our story and you, ye waters roll
Till like a sea of glory, it spreads from pole to pole
Till o'er our ransomed nature the yeast for sinners slain
Peasant, plough, handmaker, in bliss returns to reign.

You can find the original text on http://www.scriptureandmusic.com/Music/Text_Files/From_Greenlands_Icy_Mountains.html

Happy new year everyone - let this be a year of peace and tranquility all over the world and let everyone be left alone to do their own thing without interference from anybody else.
 

Miami Airport - Avoid!

Some years ago, we bought a week's timeshare in a South African resort for the magnificent sum of $376. I won't say where it is, but we did visit it and whilst it was pretty downmarket and somewhat seedy, it has given us the opportunity to exchange our week with some more upmarket places. We've been to India, Zimbabwe and Mexico and this time, we obtained a week in Aruba, a Dutch colony island in the Caribbean.

Getting there, however, was hardly fun. The cheapest way to fly was with American Airlines via Miami. The problem with connecting flights in the US is the time needed to go through the rigmarole of immigration even if you are not staying in that country. On top of that, your bags are not checked through to your final destination, so you have to pick them up, go through customs and re-check them in again,

Originally there was a two hour time gap between the landing time in Miami and the take off time to Aruba, but this was cut by 20 minutes when they re-scheduled the flight to Aruba. In theory, this should have still given us enough time to clear all the immigration hurdles. However, the plane arrived an hour late and despite having priority through immigration, due to Sonia requiring a wheelchair as she had recently had an operation on both her knees, it was to no avail. We missed our connection.

So we were traipsed off to the American Airlines re-connection desks (and there were many) to get another reservation. Of course, there were no more flights to Aruba until the next day, so that meant one day less in Aruba. After quite a long time, we finally got re-booked but were told that we couldn't get a boarding pass until the next day. "Come two hours before the flight for this" we were told. All this without turning a hair - there were about 100 people waiting to be re-booked - this is obviously a frequent occurrence so it is why they have a special ticketing department to do this. I asked if they would put us up at a hotel. "Of course,"  they said, "and we will give you vouchers for dinner and breakfast". "That's mighty civilised of them" I thought, but the vouchers were for $12 each for dinner and $7 each for breakfast.   Hardly enough for an appetizer at the hotel restaurant, so we used out breakfast voucher to defray the cost of the dinner, thinking that we might snatch a bit of grub on the plane. Some hopes!

Well, at least, we had a free hotel room. All re-booked people were put up at the Miami International Airport Hotel and the room allocated to us was a tiny claustrophobic room with no windows! We were told that "that's all American Airlines would pay for". I think this hotel must have been built as a kind of purgatory location for re-bookers before deciding whether they are going to paradise or not! Well, the hotel front desk took pity on Sonia's knees and upgraded us to a bigger room.

In fairness to the hotel, we slept in a very comfortable bed with a good bathroom and the staff were very helpful. But it's quite clear that American Airlines are still in a state of poor financial health.

We decided to check in three hours before the flight and luckily we did. There was such chaos at the check in but we did manage to get checked in although it took the best part of an hour.

So the verdict on Miami airport is Avoid. That is unless you plan to make an overnight stop there because it's too risky fly onwards with a tight schedule. We could have gone to Aruba with KLM via Amsterdam, but it was more expensive. However, by the time we added up our extra costs on this trip we might just as well have gone with them.

We are not looking forward to our return flight!

Anyway, I am writing this on the beach in Aruba now and will write again with my impressions of Aruba in the next few days.