A Trio of Terror: Napa Cellars & Jargon Pinot Noir

Three American wines, none of which scored above 5/10. Not what you want to be tasting first thing in the morning, but taste I did.

2006 Jargon Pinot Noir
A cheap Pinot from California, but it was all about sweet, confected fruit. Smelled a lot like Mr Sheen furniture polish! The palate was biter, with little fruit, burnt jam and yet very astringent. This could be the worst wine I have tried recently, though I have been informed that it doesn’t taste that bad normally. So how bad does it normally taste? 3/10

2007 Napa Cellars Chardonnay
So much wood coming off this my nose has splinters. Pineapple struggles to get through, but sweet vanilla, toast and butter just yells “go away fruit, this is an oak fest and you are not invited to the party”. This is a flabby, pathetic attempt at a wine and the only reason it doesn’t score lower is that I concede that some oak fiends may like this. 4/10

2006 Napa Cellars Merlot
It is a bad day when the best wine you try is overpriced rubbish, but with this Merlot it was. There is a massive sweet fruit, cheap, nondescript fruit jam from a supermarket. Then coconut and a bit of mint comes off the nose. The palate has more of the mint, but very confected, and then the finish is so long and so unpleasant that you start wondering if chopping your tongue out will make the unpleasantness end. 4.5/10

I hope things get better!

Ardbeg Independence Day

It was American independence day on Saturday, and as we know, the Americans like more. More of everything. You ask for bacon and eggs in an American diner, you get a stack of pancakes with half a pig and a barn full of eggs. You ask for a large Coke, you get a bucket of the stuff. Small cars don’t exist, and a family runabout is the size of a small articulated truck, their version of rugby is “Rugby +”, where the players have more size and more padding than Jordan.

And as has been proven time and time again, more isn’t necessarily better. And Ardbeg has proven this with their latest offering, the Supernova. Ardbeg’s peatiest ever whisky, with over 100 parts per million, is all about MORE! More peat, more alcohol…. more more more more more. And like an American burger which really doesn’t need chilli, bacon and cheese, Ardbeg has seriously destroyed a good whisky!

What I have always loved about Ardbeg is that it has always been simple and complex at the same time. There were many layers to the malt, but it delivered them so simply that it was a joy to drink. Thankfully this continues with their excellent ten year old, but the Supernova is just obscene.

I immediately got Arbroath Smokies on the nose, with a fresh air of seaside air, some pear and elastoplast. All was going well thought I, until my nose started hurting from the alcoholic fumes coming off. Then it was all peat, smoke and it was getting quite unpleasant on the nose. The palate was very hot. Lots of burnt toast, some Coal Tar soap and then some sweetness comes in, but it is all firey and smoky after that, with the taste of burnt matches. The whisky evaporates very quickly, leaving a burning sensation in your mouth. More peat, and no depth, a contrast to interesting, cheaper,and better, ten year old.

Simply, this isn’t Ardbeg, and try as they might to jazz it up with more glitz and glamour on the bottle, the whisky may be about more peat and more phenols, but I like it far, far less than the standard ten. I don’t want an American single malt, I don’t want an US burger and I certainly don’t want an SUV to drive to see the Miami Dolphins. Give me Ardbeg ten, a plain burger with maybe a little cheese and I'll clamber into a mini to see British Lions!

Glenglassaugh and belly buttons

If you are a banker and have managed to hold onto your millions during the credit crunch, but want to join your friends, who were formally minted, in poverty, I can suggest two ways to lose your money. The first plan I have is to blow all your money in Stringfellows, spraying Cristal and drinking Hennessy Paradis from the navel of one of the dancing girls. The second is that you open a whisky distillery and sink all your money into that. To make it “commercially viable” you’ll have to put in a hundred grand a year in casks, plus wages, rates, power, raw materials and a hundred and one other things, and keep doing that for at least ten years before you see any return. You will lose your money so fast you will be begging on the streets within a year.

And it is this length of investment which has caused various companies to release new make spirits onto the market over the past year. Companies or individuals who have sank every penny they have into making a whisky, and they are now realising that the bills don’t pay themselves and they are needing to get some income and cannot wait for their spirit to become a fully mature whisky.

And today I tried the products from the latest distillery to be resurrected from the dead, Glenglassaugh. Owned by Highland Distillers, this distillery was closed in 1986, but reopened last year under new Dutch ownership. The distillery has just released three whiskies, a 21, 30 and 40 year old, comprising of old stock bought from Highland Distillers, and have also released new spirit, distilled since the company’s rebirth.

The Glenglassaugh 21 year old, bottled at 46% abv, costs £150 and is a release of 8700 bottles. This price, I’m afraid to say, is a bit much. It is a nice whisky, lots of pineapple aromas, a touch of petroleum jelly on the nose, some almonds and raisins too. The palate is ripe, sweet fruit, some spice zipping around your mouth and lots of nuts. It a nice whisky, but just a bit pricy – it should be £50 less. 7.5/10

But what interested me was the new spirit. Named “The Spirit Drink”, it is around £30 per bottle and is bottled at 50% abv. It was really tasty! Pear drops, vanilla cream, lots of toffee, herbs and marshmallows on the nose, and then on the palate, white pepper, tinned pineapple and a delightful texture. More spice and some more fruit on the finish. This is a bit of a revelation. I was expecting something akin to moonshine, but this is a very tasty and drinkable spirit. I’m a little dubious about the suggestion that you maybe mix it, thirty quid for a 50cl bottle is a bit much to pay for something you would mix cranberry juice with, but as a sipping spirit, like a good vodka, this is a very pleasant drink. 8/10

I hope Glenglassaugh is a success, we need more privately owned distilleries producing whisky, but I fear it is going to be a bit of an uphill struggle for them. Unlike distilleries like Bruichladdich, who bought a wealth of old and young stock with the distillery, Glenglassaugh only has older stock, which means higher prices and no entry level products to get people interested. The Spirit Drink is a nice drink, but their real money is going to be made in Single malt whisky, not new spirit. With their range of older whiskies starting at £150, and the only people who will buy such whiskies are collectors and tourists, which is a limited market. Lets hope the bankers start making bonuses again, because then they could buy 21 (£150), 30 (£400) or 40 year old (£1500) Glenglassaugh to drink from a stripper’s belly button!

Glenglassaugh Website

Parker & The Retsina Effect

I read an interesting article by Tim Atkin in Off Licence News regarding junkets and wine critics, and inadvertently it has led me to having a rant. He asks the question if it is possible for a wine writer to be totally impartial if he is being wined and dined by a producer, and also if it is possible to be a fair judge of a product if you have never seen where it is produced. It is what I have called “The Retsina effect”

As you will by now know, I run a wine shop, and every year, from the middle of the summer onwards we get requests for Retsina. This horrific drink, a combination of wine and pine resin, is demanded by customers as “a fantastic wine I tried when I was in Greece”. And of course it was! They were sitting on a beach, surrounded by half naked attractive people sipping this ice cold beverage having a wonderful time. They could have drunk bleach and it would still be the most wonderful drink on earth. But what they are remembering is the whole experience, not just the wine. So I sell them a bottle, Retsina, not bleach, they take it home and drink it and find out the truth, that it is a hateful drink and that they would have been better with a bottle of Domestos. While we like to think we are professional enough to rise above it, people who comment on wines or retail them are not immune to the Retsina effect, and nor should we be.

The Retsina effect is why retailers and journalists are given all expenses paid trips, because the producer or distributor wants us to visit the places the wines are made, meet the people who make the wine, have a nice holiday, trying wonderful wines and then go back home and write about them favourably or stock them in their shops. They know they are trying to influence their guests, their guests know that they are being played, and as long as you recognise that, there is no problem. If you are serious about your job, you can compensate for the schmooze factor in and be objective, and if you can’t, just own up to the fact that you went on a junket and tell the truth in your article, or ask for a sample from your supplier to try when you get home before you order half a pallet worth of stock.

Atkin mentions Robert Parker, who set the ethical standard by which critics are judged, but that standard is now, thanks to RP, beyond most people in the trade. Only an independently wealthy critic could afford to adhere to Parker's “no hospitality” rules and any retailer would soon be out of business if he had to fund every trip he went on.

I decided to analyse the freebies I’d received over the years and see if they have been influenced me in any way. And of course they have, I wouldn’t be human if they hadn’t. I have a particular fondness for some producers I’ve visited, have great memories and have, as a result, been somewhat influenced in choosing their brand over another when recommending or purchasing (for personal use) wines. I’ve also promoted their brands in a small way on this website when I have written about them. What these trips have never done, like Atkin, is influenced my opinion on their wines.

But Parker would argue that I, and Tim Atkin, have been influenced and have come up with a conclusion about a wine that is tarnished and therefore not 100% unbiased, all because of a freebie. My counter argument would be simply this:

Everyone is influenced and everyone is bias when tasting wine, even Robert Parker. He can try wines in the most clinical of surroundings, stand on his moral high horse and say that he has paid for everything and that his judgement is ethically sound. But what if he was starting to get a cold and his senses were slightly off par? What if he had an argument with someone that morning and was in a bad mood? What if he’d just had some great sex and was in a fantastic mood? These influences, irrespective of the fact that they have nothing to do with wine tasting or freebies, could influence his tasting abilities, either negatively or positively, and therefore, due to his overwhelming influence, make or break a winery! And what makes this ‘flawed’ opinion any more valid than my ‘flawed’ opinion just because I got a free trip to Italy?

Similarly his personal preferred style of wine is very biased towards more simple, fuller styles of wine, and therefore both 100% correct and 100% wrong. His desired style of wine is not always my cup of tea, but I’d never dream to say it is wrong, even when it is totally obvious that he is! But even this is not a problem I have with Parker. The problem I have is the arrogant attitude that leads the reader of his “standards” to think he is the only perfect taster.

Parker claims to be the “One True Voice of the Wine Consumer”. We could argue whether that is ego or a marketing line till the end of time, the fact is he has become the one voice that everyone listens to. He may insist that these comments are just his own and that people should decide what their palate is like rather than take his word as gospel, but every writer, yours truly included, says that! But if you really believe that your views are purely personal, you should not claim to be “the one true voice” of anything, let alone the “wine consumer” who you have directly led certain wines to be taken away from and into the hands of investors.

He also says, on his website, “on occasions, I have accepted invitations to lunch with a producer, but have never had any problem criticizing that producer if his wines are not up to standard”. There, by his own admission, makes his whole claim to be unbiased, total hogwash or exceedingly arrogant. Feel free to choose for yourself. If it is ok for him to have lunch with a producer once every five years and then comment on their wines, considering himself beyond any corruption, who the hell does he think he is to have the opinion that a different critic would not be able to make a similar claim, even if they have dinner with a producer once every five days?

Going on, he says he keeps control of his writers by buying bottles of highly regarded wines to check for “accuracy”! Accuracy in what? Whether an individual liked a wine or not? We all know the ongoing disagreement between Parker and Jancis Robinson, and reading through the American’s notes and those of Michael Broadbent, you also see a marked difference in preferred styles, so why shouldn’t those people on his payroll also disagree with him? Oh, that’s why! They are on his payroll and you aren’t allowed to disagree with the boss in a dictatorial state. Just look at Burma... or Iran…

Wine is all about personal opinion and wine writers, like the wines we try, are not perfect. Tasters all have their idiosyncrasies and they all have their personalities and not one of us is 100% immune from outside influences, be them positive or negative. Parker’s claims to be neutral from any ethical influence are, at best, tenuous, as, even if he does pay for most of the things he comments on, by his own admission, he receives free samples and the occasional lunch. So his arguement for being the people's champion, purely comes down to the fact that he thinks that critics and retailers who get the occasional freebie can’t form a clear, unbiased opinion, and he can.

Which is codswallop.

And arrogant.

We are in a time where perks are being scorned upon because a load of MP’s are on the fiddle, and if a free trip to Islay or a night at Chateau Saran is going to be viewed as buying my reviews of Ardbeg or Moet & Chandon, then so be it. I have been bought. The 1978 Moet is lovely (not available commercially) and the 1974 Ardbeg was delicious (hideously expensive). Oh, and 2003 Moet Rose sucks and Ardbeg Blasda is pointless and they are both available on a shop shelf near you. Just thought I’d level out the scorecard for Mr Parker...

Duncan Murray, 1980 - 2009

It isn’t unusual to admire someone you worked with, but when I joined the wine trade in 2001, my assistant manager at Oddbins was a man I grew to admire, but not because of his work – by his own admission he wasn’t overly brilliant at that! He was given the reins of the Oddbins shop in St Andrews and for two months he and I staffed it on our own, with a grand total of 7 months experience combined, and we did a not too shabby job. I worked hard, he played hard, and on more than one occasion I’d arrive to find him looking a little worse for wear and in yesterday's clothes! For those two months we struggled on 12 hour shifts, for thirteen days straight, fueled by rather tasty wines which he introduced me to, until finally we got some relief in the form of a new employee. By that point, I knew I wanted my career to be in the wine trade.

Later on, he would joke that he “was the manager of Oddbins, St Andrews… but didn’t manage”, but nevertheless he moved to Bristol and was instrumental in opening up one of Oddbins’ Ultimate Wine Stores, and he stayed there until he decided, apparently on a whim, to leave and return home to Scotland

Realising he had to get home on some form of transport, he opted, not for the train or a car, but to cycle from Lands End to John O Groats. Buying a knackered old bike and a few spare inner tubes, he peddled his way up the country, not to achieve a record time, just because he wanted to say he’d done it. This was, to me, the serious element of the man. His schemes may have been unusual, but the determination to succeed was unwavering.

He then discovered the Plymouth Dakar Rally, a car jaunt for old bangers, and decided he wanted to do it. There was just one problem, he didn’t have a driving licence! Again, because he had set his mind on doing it, he took lessons, got his licence and set off for Dakar in a beat up Ford Orion that he had bought for less than £100.

Moving to Aberdeen saw him living with, according to his tales, a stripper, and then, again, apparently on a whim, he went to University and studied business and Spanish and committed to it with the same determination that he completed his previous exploits. There never appeared to be a plan in his life, just a series of spontaneous decisions made which always seemed to work out and almost always accompanied by insane dancing and laughter.

Duncan Murray was a man who, to the casual observer, would not be the person you would point to and say was someone to admire, but to me he was. No matter how mad the idea, he embraced life and did whatever he needed to do to achieve his goal. Around the dinner table, whenever his name came up there would be dozens of “Duncan Murray stories”, all funny, crazy and, usually, inebriated, but they always made people laugh, and that is his legacy. Anyone that can make people laugh, whether they are in the room or not, is a man that you have to admire.

You were taken too soon my friend, on your 29th birthday. If I ever make anything of myself in the wine trade, you were the one that guided me, in your own unique fashion, on my first few steps of that journey.

I’ll miss you.

Champagne, Day 3: Four champagne houses & a chalk pit. Part 2

I’ve never really been a fan of Veuve Clicquot for two reasons. Firstly, they always appear to be firmly aimed at a certain demographic of customers; the polo playing fashion conscious young with lots of money to waste and where presentation is everything. The company’s distinctive yellow label is seen anywhere there are trendy people and they appear, to focus on the on trade a lot more than the off. The second is that I've never really liked their non vintage!

As a result, I’ve never really given Veuve Clicquot a chance to prove it’s worth to me. If I wanted a vintage champagne I’d always have opted for Pol Roger, Taittinger or, latterly, Moet & Chandon. Veuve was never given a chance.

Our last night of the trip was spent at Veuve Clicquot’s Manoir de Verzy. Not the splendour of Chateau Saran, but much more homely and a friendly place to be. We sat out in the sunshine filled garden drinking a bottle of Yellow Label, already established as not one of my favourites, and we were shocked. This wine was outstanding! Normally, to me, the non vintage Veuve is quite tart, a lot of high acid and masses of zingy, zesty fruit and bundles of minerals. As a result, I’ve avoided it because it isn’t the style of wine I want. Chill it right down, effectively killing the flavour, and I could drink it, but normally, I’d avoid it. This bottle however was richer, rounder, far more balanced with hints of honey coming through the citrus fruit. We learned that this bottle had a bit of bottle age on it, resulting in a mature bottle of really delightful champagne.

An aperitif of 1998 Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame followed. Showing their prestige cuvee first was a bold move, but an inspired one. It is a lovely wine, but has a lot of freshness that cleans your palate before a meal. There was dark honey aromas, some dusty stones and spice, and a palate that was quite minerally, but with a super, elegant element to it. Almonds and candied fruit finished off this wine – it was super. So why did they show their latest prestige cuvee first? The fact that it is still a young wine (relatively speaking!) meant that it would not go that well with food, it would simply clash. So, if you are showing a young wine off, you might as well make it your best! Then they showed what Veuve Clicquot is brilliant at. This champagne house’s wines are brilliant with food.

The first course was served with 2002 Veuve Clicquot Vintage. It was lobster with asparagus and citrus fruits and the zingy, zesty elements of the champagne really complimented the fruit, and the mineral elements of the wine paired perfectly with the lobster and the acid cleaned up your mouth delightfully.

1999 Veuve Clicquot Vintage Rose followed with a fillet of beef with potatoes and truffle essence. You wouldn’t believe that a rose champagne could survive being matched with steak, potatoes and a rich sauce, but not only did it survive, it shone. The dark, meaty aromas of the wine, wild strawberries, spice and a lot of cranberries complimented the aromas coming off the plate. Once in the mouth, there was a mature, smoked spice, some Black Jack chewy sweet flavours, cassis and some green, under ripe fruit. This just worked perfectly with the strong flavours of the food. It was a seriously impressive pairing, executed expertly by the chef.

The 1999 rose continued through a cheese course, and dessert was served with Veuve Clicquot Demi Sec, served out of a carafe! Our host informed us that decanting the wine increased the sweetness and helped to amplify the oxidation of the Pinot Meunier in the wine. The carafe had been put in the freezer so there was ice surrounding the glass, and then decanted into it before being poured into the glasses. It complimented a Coxes Orange Pippin cheesecakey dessert (I know, I’ll never be a food critic) perfectly and, again, the wine stood up to very bold flavours from the course very well. As great as the 1959 Moet was the night before, it clashed with the dessert. This wine, which I really wouldn’t normally want to drink as it is far too sweet, was outstanding.

After dinner we sat down and we were brought a bottle of 1985 Veuve Clicquot Rose. A light, orange colour, with marmalade and spice on the palate, with some lemon and brioche. There was a little crusty bread aroma coming off the wine with dried strawberries and raspberry. It was a lovely wine and a perfect end to our evening and our trip.

Postscript

My trip to Champagne was unbelievable. I am so fortunate to have tasted so many outstanding wines, met lovely and interesting people and been looked after by my hosts so well. But there is one thing that will stay with me more than all the splendour and sparkle that I experienced, and that was a wall in Epernay.

I’ve studied the First and Second World Wars in the past, but had never made a trip to a battlefield, and didn’t expect to visit one on this trip. I remember, years ago, reading that grapes were harvested during the First World War to the sound of gunfire, but it had never really been real to me. But on my first day in Champagne, a casual walk up the Avenue du Champagne made it very clear how close war came to champagne, and I found myself on a battlefield.

In the wall of a building, yards away from the likes of Pol Roger, Perrier Jouet and, of course, Moet & Chandon, was a stone with five bullet holes in it in the shape of an arc. These holes, showing the movement of a machine gun being aimed at a soldier, made me realise very quickly that the First World War was fought, not just trenches in wide open fields, but on the streets of Europe, amongst palaces, homes and above wine cellars.

Thinking back to the trip around Moet’s cellars, seeing the 1892, 1904, 1907 and 1911 vintages, virtually undisturbed for all these years, it occurred to me that those wines were sitting in the same cellars when that soldier was being shot at a few hundred yards away and made me realise how fortunate I am. I get to try exceedingly good wines, and get to live a wonderful, free life because people like that soldier, be him British, French or German, were prepared to give their life for what they believed in. That wall and those five holes will be the most powerful memory from my trip to Champagne in 2009.

Champagne, Day 3: Four champagne houses & a chalk pit. Part 1

I don’t normally get a lot of time to relax, but for an hour on the morning of day three in Champagne, I did. Eating breakfast in my room, with the windows open, fresh air circulating around my room and views to die for, I started my day in the most wonderful surroundings. After saying our farewells to the wonderful hosts at Chateau Saran, we decided to head for Mesnil. Unfortunately, satellite navigation systems don’t factor in closed roads so we ended up getting lost. Our three car convoy soon became two, when the third car, an Audi R8, went AWOL. Realising that we had to stop and wait for the Audi to catch up to a 1 series BMW and a VW Polo (do the words hare and tortoise mean anything here?), we did so only to nearly get nicked by ‘le rozzers’. Fortunately, the police were understanding, or couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork of arresting a bunch of Brits, and led us to a lay-by and not the local police station.

After regrouping, we reached Mesnil. This town is what I wanted from France. Lots of small roads with ramshackle buildings next to perfectly restored houses with dust being thrown up as you drive down the street. We’d arranged it so we had a morning free so decided to visit Le Mesnil, a cooperative based in the town it takes it’s name from, and attempted to try their wines.

The people at Le Mesnil were exceptionally accommodating, and started opening bottles for us, at ten in the morning. The Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs, costing €16.70 at the cellar door and therefore about £25 on the shelf in Britain, was outstanding. Light and fresh with a simple lemon juice and lemon pith flavour. A wine with lovely balance, a delightful mousse and a long, minerally finish that shows, inexpensively, how good Blanc de Blancs can be. 8.5/10

Their top wines are called ‘Sublime’, and the 2001 Sublime Blanc de Blancs was also excellent. A little more lemon than the basic wine, quite spritzy too and with lots of pencil lead on the finish. A hint of fruit sweetness, I actually got pancakes with lemon juice and sugar on the nose. The palate has a gentle bubble, again, great balance and with a zingy flavour mixed with a creamy texture. A really lovely wine but I actually preferred the basic wine! 8/10

When in Mesnil, we had to visit the famous walled vineyard of Krug. The Clos du Mesnil is not easy to find, it doesn’t have the large branded signs that, for example, Salon has. A simple iron gate with the name above symbolises Krug’s greatest Chardonnay vineyard, and they do not want visitors! The gate is permanently locked, and whilst you can take photos outside the gate, you have a better chance of getting into Keira Knightley than you have the Clos du Mesnil. We stuck our hands through the railings to take a few photos of the vines that produce this outstanding wine, and then got back into the cars to go to visit Krug in Reims.

PLEASE don’t think badly of me, but Krug was a bit of a disappointment. We were welcomed, tasted the Grande Cuvee, which, as always, is outstanding, whilst being told about the history of Krug. We were informed that it doesn’t matter where the base wines in Krug Grande Cuvee come from, nor which of the three grape varieties they are, as Krug is made to a specific taste. Some years there will be more of one grape than another, other times older reserve wines will be used more or less depening on how the main body of the wine tastes. Everything in Krug is about how things taste, not what they are or who grew the grapes.

A tour of the cellars came next, which is always fun and entertaining, and the fact that Krug were bottling when we were there was very interesting. You think of a producer like Krug having a very traditional method of producing their wines, and they do, but when it comes to bottling it they hire in a bottling plant and get it all done in a month! What I would imagine is usually an oasis of quiet in the bustling city of Reims becomes a noisy industrial plant!

We then went back into the tasting room for a tasting with Olivier Krug where we got to try the 1989 vintage with him. I’ve had this wine before and it has been lovely, but the most recent bottle I have had seemed a little bit old. This bottle however was anything but. Gorgeous honey and melon aromas, lots of brioche, and a touch of spice and goats cheese. The palate has a rich, up front flavour of honey and mature fruit, but then cleans up, becomes very lively and youthful, with fine bubbles. It was lovely. And that was the end of our Krug experience. Obviously, Moet & Chandon raised the bar in hospitality, and Ruinart and Veuve Clicquot would be just as hospitable, but it felt as though Krug didn’t want us there. We were a group of people who work in the wine trade, knew all about the history of Krug anyway, but were almost fed from a company script. There was no attempt to show us, through use of maybe base wines or a blending class, how they get the flavour of Krug Grande Cuvee, which is, by their own admission, the only thing that matters. I realise that I’m incredibly fortunate to have been permitted to visit Krug, but I just felt a little under whelmed. Moral of the story: Don’t meet your heroes.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Ruinart and I never knew why. Their wines were always excellent, when I tried Dom Ruinart for the first time, their 1988 vintage in magnum, I was amazed that it smelled like a distillery washback and that stuck in my head, but I’d never had a major event cause this effection.

Having visited Ruinart, I now have a reason for my liking of this house, and it is because I like their stories! I’ll give you a potted history. Making use of the change in law in 1728 that allowed wine to be transported in bottles as well as barrels, Ruinart was founded in the following year. Their house was built on top of massive chalk pits that were then used to store the wines in perfect conditions. During the First World War, Andre Ruinart used his cellars to smuggle food to the troops, by constructing an underground railroad. He stayed underground for four years during the war, but his health and his house suffered. Above ground, Ruinart was destroyed, and below ground, Andre became ill. He saw the end of the war, but didn’t see his Champagne house rebuilt, dying in 1919. But like other famous widows, Andre Ruinart’s wife, Charlotte, rebuilt the buildings exactly as they were before the war, and she is the person to be credited for raising this company from the ashes.

We then tried four wines, two Blanc de Blancs and two pinks. The Ruinart Blanc de Blancs is a favourite of mine. Light, fresh and clean, it has a spice emerging through the citrus fruit on the nose. Great minerality on the palate, a super long, tingling finish, with a lot of citrus on the palate makes this wine a perfect choice for rejuvenating yourself after a long day! We then compared it to 1998 Dom Ruinart. This had a longer, richer aroma. Lots of honey toast, chevre and some honey comb wax. The palate had a gentle elegance to it, evolving fruit and a creamy mouthfeel and a little coconut on the finish. A really, really good wine!

The Ruinart rose was all about strawberry jam! Very simple, clean and with a touch of rosewater, this is not a wine you think about. Cold, on a lovely day and you really wouldn’t go wrong with this wine. I know of a few people who might say this is boring, but I don’t think that is fair. The fact that it is not a challenging wine can only be a good thing as it will appeal to many people, not just wine nerds!

Finally the 1996 Dom Ruinart Rose. It is not often that you taste a wine and are reminded of sweet cured sausage, but the Dom Ruinart Rose certainly tasted like that! There was also a warm leather, tobacco an hints of oranges on this wine, with a lovely spicy element on the finish. This is definitely a Champagne to go with food, on it’s own it is not exactly an easy wine to drink, but with something to balance out the gutsy flavours, this wine would sing.

Champagne, Day 2: From P&O to a palace. Part 3

After trying a wine that showed the passage of time, I suddenly found myself a hundred years in the past, but with wireless connectivity! Chateau Saran is an oasis of luxury, with fine dining, fine champagne, fine views and servants. If you are not used to servants, suddenly having one is an odd experience! Everywhere I’ve ever stayed before, I’ve taken my own bags to my room, ironed my own shirt and have never had breakfast brought to my room before, but at Saran I had people doing everything for me and it was so strange!

We were visiting Saran for dinner, and again, were presented with some unbelievably good wines to try over dinner Starting off with tuna tartare with a avocado mousse and caviar, this was paired with the 2003 Moet & Chandon. Firstly, the food was exceedingly good, but the bitter lemon pith and the smoky elements worked wonders with the meaty fish. This was a pretty damn good food wine pairing. Moving on a course and things got better with the food and, marginally, worse with the wine!

Since my early days in the wine trade in the dim and distant past of 2002, I’ve never really been a fan of the nineties vintages of Moet & Chandon. I’ve said that the 1990 was “all bubbles, no squeak”, the 1996 was “not special” and the 1998 “like Cheshire cheese and… bitter”. We tried the 1995 with seared foie gras, with grapefruit jelly and orange powder. The wine was the weakest Moet we tried that day, but an ideal partner to the food. The brioche and orange that came flying out of the glass, then a very bitter element on the palate complimented the Foie gras and citrus flavours of the dish.

Revisiting the 1990, nearly five years after tasting it before. An aroma of lemon came off the glass, but it was quite a closed nose. The palate had lemon pith, some grapefruit elements and a herbal element too. A very subtle finish, with lingering lemon flavours made this wine a tough one to make notes on, but it was nothing like the cheesy, dull wine I tried in 2004. Or maybe that is just my palate changing! Served with Sole and langoustines, with a saffron emulsion, this subtle dish, matched with a very subtle wine… subtly!

Pigeon with a maple syrup came next, and an outstanding wine with it. The 1976 Moet & Chandon, a wine with seriously low acid, as has the current release 2003, gave us the opportunity to see what the ’03 vintage may become in thirty years. A load of tobacco, quite smoky with lots of marmalade. The palate had toast, tropical fruit an some lovely spice, and then an apple sweetness. It was this flavour that made the wine sing with the food, the sweet maple, matching the apple, and then the smoky aromas and flavours giving the champagne a savoury element to go with the pigeon. I had never had a better champagne and food matching before.

And then I had one of the worst! But it really didn’t matter because the wine was fabulous! The 1959 vintage is an outstanding champagne. I tried it on New Years Day this year, and it was even better at Chateau Saran. Gorgeous citrus and tropical fruit, honey, brioche and a super texture, this is a wine you must try. The dessert it went with, a sweet cake, was lovely, but clashed terribly with the wine. I didn’t care though, as the champagne is so good!

After dinner we retired to the drawing room, and had a bit of time to reflect on the day of decadence, with a magnum of the best tasting Moet non vintage I’ve ever had (an older bottle per chance?) and some Hennessy Paradis. Sitting there in splendour, sipping fine cognac, I realised that my life is quite good!

And the next day we’d be going to Krug…

Champagne, Day 2: From P&O to a palace. Part 2 (Esprit du Siecle)

What came next was a very rare treat. Not to put too fine a point on it, a once in a lifetime treat. In 1999, Moet & Chandon decided to create a wine that had never been done before. The Esprit du Siecle was a blend of eleven different champagnes from the best years of the 20th century. The combined vintage champagnes from the years 1900, 1914, 1921, 1934, 1943, 1952, 1962, 1976, 1983, 1985 and 1995, and then fermented them for a third time in bottle to give the wine bubbles.

The end product was 323 magnums of a unique champagne that very few people have tried. Some were released to charities, others sold to collectors, but the remaining stock was put, behind a big barred gate, in the cellars in Epernay, to sleep until the house’s 300th anniversary in 2043.

Occasionally though, a magnum is opened so the wine can be assessed to see how it is developing, and I was fortunate to be present when a magnum was opened. In a damp cellar, a selection of very experienced wine buffs became as giddy as schoolgirls as the cork was pulled, and we all were astounded.

The Esprit du Siecle is more than a wine, it is a celebration of Moet & Chandon’s history. Although you couldn’t put an accurate figure on it, over a thousand employees will have contributed to this wine being made, with many of them now long gone. It is therefore very difficult to figure out what this wine actually is, as no company has ever done this exercise before, but was summed up perfectly by someone in the group; this wine was the ultimate expression of non vintage.

Trying to describe a wine that was showing elements of a mid nineties champagne, whilst at the same time showing traits of a 109 year old bottle was tricky. No sooner that you picked up on one element, then another would come and go before you had a chance to write it. Having tried the vintages before, it made this job easier as I could recognise certain characters within the Esprit du Siecle, and compare this one wine with the vertical tasting we had just had. It is an unbelievably complex wine, but supremely balanced and utterly delicious, with flavours of lime marmalade, chocolate, hints of aniseed, earth, fresh lemon juice, oyster shell… they all came thick and fast with not one part dominating.

Everyone I have told about the Esprit du Siecle has asked the same question, “how much would it cost and is it worth the money?”. I could reply to the first half easily, it was sold for $25,000 per magnum, but the second part poses a problem. Is any wine worth twenty five grand? If the answer is no, you then have to ask, “but what about a piece of history from one of the great champagne houses, is that worth so much?”

I’ve been thinking about this for a week now and I have finally made up my mind. I certainly couldn’t afford such a wine if Moet & Chandon chose to sell it now, but I’d certainly want one! This is the finest champagne I have ever tried and certainly the most interesting, and in thirty four years time I will be doing everything within my power to reacquaint myself with this wine on it’s forty third birthday, but as a wine, it is not worth $2,084 per glass. As a piece of history though, this is worth every penny. Not as an object to put in a cellar and look at once in a while, but because when you drink the Esprit du Siecle, you experience something you will have never experienced with any wine before, and it is the only tasting note I can write confidently about this outstanding drink, and possibly the only tasting note anyone could ever need.

In the Esprit du Siecle, you can taste the passing of time.

Champagne, Day 2: From P&O to a palace. Part 1

Starting the day in a small four berth cabin on board a ferry with two other sleeping companions was not how I finished the 18th of May. Upon departing Zebrugge, which was just as big a hole as Hull is, except for the fact that they have windmills to generate their power rather than huge coal fired stations, we hit the road south towards Epernay.

The Belgian border was a bit of a let down. I wasn’t expecting men with machine guns ready to blast anyone who tried to get through without their say so, but I was expecting a civil servant with a clipboard. We didn’t even get that. A couple of booths, that were falling down, marked the line of divide between these two nations and whilst it is great that as a subject of Her Majesty, I can travel anywhere within the EU without being strip searched at international crossings, I feel that the spirit of travelling has died somewhat as there is no sense of entering a new country.

We arrived in Epernay and had a wander up the Avenue de Champagne, looking all tourist-y with our cameras, before entering the huge building that is Moet & Chandon’s head office. This imposing, but remarkably tasteful, building dwarfs every other champagne house on this street. And this is what I thought the problem with Moet & Chandon was.

It is huge. The company, part of the LVMH group, is one of the biggest producers of Champagne, they have over 1000 hectares of land under vine and, at a million euros per hectare, that is a massive amount of money. So you would assume that such a big company would produce mass produced wine and not take much care in quality, but this is so far from the truth. Moet may be a huge producer of non vintage wines, but their care and attention, and willingness to experiment, is what is now making their vintage wines excel.

The 2003 is a perfect example. 2003 was a ‘challenging’ vintage for Champagne. An early spring caused early budburst on the vines and once everything was going swimmingly, there was four nights of frost! This wrecked a majority of the Chardonnay vines, and lost the company a third of their potential crop. After that frost everything continued as normal, and then along came hail which took out more vines. By the summer, there was a low yield, and then, to make things worse, came the famous heat wave, resulting in over ripe grapes. And this is where things got interesting.

If you take a house like Bollinger, they realised there was no chance of making their Grande Annee vintage wine from the 2003 harvest, so they opted to make a stand alone wine, reflecting the year but distancing it from the Grande Annee brand. This was a weak, flabby, low acid wine that, if we are honest, nobody liked. I applaud them for giving it a go, but this wine had very little structure and replaced Mumm 1995 as my least favourite vintage champagne and, in my view, shouldn’t have been released.

Moet did things a bit differently. As they were suffering from a heat wave, they treated the vines as hot climate producers do, and didn’t try to protect the wines. The result is apparent. Like the Bollinger, the 2003 Moet & Chandon doesn’t have much acid. Along with the 1976, this has the least acid (5g/litre) of any vintage Moet, but by not protecting the grapes, the 2003 has wonderfully mature fruit. A lovely smoky element is right up front on the nose, then bitter lemon pith aromas come through. Dirty potato skin is next, yet everything is wonderfully balanced, with a solid bitter backbone. This comes through on the palate too, a dose of spice, then apple cores and more smoke, all latching on to the pithy structure, and then lots of mature fruit to finish it off. What Moet have managed to do with this wine is provide structure where there really shouldn’t be some, and you really have to applaud their winemaking team for that, as they have produced, to my palate at least, a better wine for drinking now than the great 2000 vintage was.

We then had a sneak preview of the 2002 vintage. It was felt that this wine needed an extra year to mature, and due to the experimentation of the subsequent vintage being a success, the immediately (in relative terms) 2003 vintage allowed them to postpone the release of the ’02. The 2002 Moet & Chandon is a totally different beast to the ’03. A lot more fruit dominant, some sherbet lemon, with dust and toast too. The palate has a lot of acid, the dominant chardonnay coming to the fore, yet still with some red berries around the lemon and lime citrus fruit flavours. Fresh bread comes through, and a sublime clean finish. This is a very good wine.

Moet & Chandon keep masses of old vintages of wine, and the next wine we tried was the 1978 vintage. A severe, long winter, followed by bad weather throughout the summer was showing all the hallmarks of being a terrible year. For four weeks, starting in mid August, there was good, dry weather, which saved this year, and the 1978 vintage Moet was a stunning wine. Smoky tobacco, lots of honey, toast and earthy potatoes, mixed with loads of herbs, started this wine off, and then the palate was lovely and soft with gentle spice notes, candied fruit peel and a lime marmalade finish that was so, so good. This is a brilliant wine, a feeling echoed by everyone in the room, and what makes it extra special is that it is the first wine from my birth year that I have tried that was excellent!

A freshly disgorged 1961 magnum came next with, initially, loads of dried mushrooms, over ripe apple and earth on the nose. Very dry, after all there was no sugar added, with lots more mushrooms, tea and toffee apple on the palate. A creamy texture, great acidity, and flavours that evolved into more citrus, rather than richer over ripe fruit – it was just stunning. It was so good, it became my favourite champagne ever, beating the 1966 Dom Perignon.

When a champagne gets really old, it is increasingly hard to judge it as a wine as it isn’t how the creator intended it to be drunk, and this was certainly the case with the freshly disgorged 1937 magnum that we tried next. A lot of honey and toffee apple, then round, mushroomy and new potato skin, baked fruit and a musky element was on the nose. The mousse had pretty much gone, but the flavour was lovely, lemon marmalade, candied fruit and very dry, superbly balanced and elegant. Trying this aged wine, despite having nearly no mousse, was a very valuable experience, one which I will remember, as it made what came next a lot easier to understand.