Crap of the Week - Wine Bottle Peppermill

Thinking that you need a peppermill in the shape of a wine bottle should immediately get the men in white coats coming round to your house, knocking on the door and informing you that you have a few weeks holiday in a padded room.

Writing the blurb to try and sell it, should make your holiday turn into a residency. The Wine Gift Centre says "Looks exaclty (sic) like a good bottle of Bordeaux, But is it? Same size and "feel" as a 75cl bottle of fine wine, this delightfully intriguing "bottle" will surprise and amaze your guests every time you use it. Great conversation piece.."

God how I hope I am never in that conversation....

If you lose your senses, you can get one here for £29.95

(Old Article) The Good Life - Wines of Cairn o Mohr

Between 1975 and 1978, two people did more to revolutionise wine drinking in Britain than anybody else. But their names will not be found in the wine literature of the day, nor will they be seen interviewed in Decanter or referenced by Parker. So what was the wine that changed the British public’s wine drinking habits? Peapod Burgundy!

The BBC sitcom ‘The Good Life’ starred Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall as Tom and Barbera Good, a middle class couple who shun a conventional life for one of self sufficiency. Along with their Goat called Geraldine and a cockerel named Lenin, these characters introduced home made booze, particularly wine making, to the United Kingdom. All of a sudden, people all over the country were rushing off to buy demijohns and yeast in the hope of producing free alcohol. The results were varied, usually with elderflower wine being the most successful, but Britain was inspired. My father even made Onion wine, that apparently tasted disgusting but made very good organic weed killer.

Nowadays, it is mainly the hippies, veggies, Scottish Patriots and folk who like dressing up in Medieval costume that drink fruit wines, and one company has a huge following amongst this customer base. Cairn O Mohr, based near Errol in Perthshire, takes the central belt of Scotland’s natural success in growing raspberries and brambles and makes them into a fruit wine. The question I had to ask was why?

So I gathered together five of Cairn O Mohr’s wines together to see what these wines were like. Losing the will to live when I was looking through the choice of flavours was the start of this whole unpleasant experience, and it is here I should admit a prejudice. In my years as a wine retailer, I have had a dislike of the people who have bought these wines. More often than not there is a funny smell coming off them (I think it is the marijuana), and they are so blinkered against every other wine in your shop that is not made out of weird things like gooseberries and bulls snot. They also try to engage you in conversation about them, usually starting with the words “have you tried these, they are wonderful…”. If you say that you have never tried them, you can’t get into that conversation and it is for this reason that I have never tasted these wines before, or indeed, visited the winery that is only 20 miles from where I live. I, sadly, do not have that luxury any more.

With a Spring Oak Leaf and an Autumn Oak Leaf pairing of wines, I had to try these first. Mixed with Elderflower, these two wines have very distinct flavours. The first smells like a dustbin bag filled with fruit, the second like a dustbin bag filled with really rotten fruit. Both have elderflower battling to get through, but this is more than likely due to the fact that the wines are “fragrant with elderflowers” which I am certain means “with added elderflower wine because oak leaf wine sucks and nobody will buy it in it’s natural state”. Both these wines are far too alcoholic, all you notice on the palate is the booze and a mass of unpleasant white pepper. The Autumn Oak Leaf has a finish that is very clean, but there again, bleach is very clean and you wouldn’t want to drink that.

The next wine I tried was Rhubarb. I love rhubarb. Put it in a pie, stew it, make it into jam, even just dunk the end of a stick of it in granulated sugar and chomp on it raw, Rhubarb rocks. What you should not do is make it into wine, but that is what Cairn O Mohr have done. It smells of stewed rhubarb, which is hardly surprising, and a little lemon, but nothing much else. The palate is more rhubarb, with a soft, sweetness but then the alcohol hits you again spoiling it all. Aside from this, for extreme rhubarb fans, this could be ok. I, however, am not extreme and it sucks.

Reds were next, well, a neon pink Raspberry flavour was next. The aroma wasn’t all that bad. It is all about the fruit. Raspberries leap out of the glass and a fresh berry zing smacks you in the nose. The palate though, mucks the whole thing up. The booze is there again, with bitter, confected raspberries that have a nasty sweetness about them. It is drinkable, but the alcohol is just such a problem. Staying with berries, the Bramble flavour is the most near to proper wine. Smelling like a far too young French Cabernet Sauvignon, this has confected bramble fruit and a leafy peppery smell. The palate is far too tangy and dry and then you get sweet, flabby fruit on the finish which totally ruins what was an almost acceptable wine.

These wines are a waste of perfectly good fruit, its as simple as that. Instead of making wine, the fruit used should be made into the world’s greatest fruit juices or jam or fruit pies… basically anything except wine. Tom Good may have made and drunk Peapod Burgundy, but he was trying to be self sufficient and he got to de-dungaree Felicity Kendall every night, so he had a really Good Life. Drinking these wines, means you don’t.

Rieslings Rock

Working in the booze trade, you hear many many different pronunciations of wines, grape varieties and producers. I'm not innocent from saying things wrong - for years I said, for Vosne Romanee, "Vozne Romanee" instead of "Vone Romanee", but common errors include "GlenmorANgie" instead of "GlenMOrangie", "SAVingnon" instead of "SAUVignon" and

There is one that really gets on my nerves, and that is when someone pronounces Riesling as "Ryezling" instead of "Reesling". My skin crawls, I instantly hate them and I want to smack them in the head with a bottle of Beaujolais. People who use this pronunciation usually think they really know what they are talking about when it comes to wine, when their knowledge comes straight out of a Sunday supplement wine column. They are middle class university lecturers who will waffle for hours about the 'bouquet' whilst wearing a backpack and shopping in Oxfam for Fair Trade chocolate. Its like the sound of nails down a blackboard to me and I just want to kill the utterer of this most annoying of mispronunciation immediately.

But that doesn't make me stop wanting to drink Ryezling (sic). I love the stuff and it's versatility was shown when over a couple of days I tried ten wines from around the world. None of them were expensive, but it showed that this grape can produce everything from brilliant, sweet, clean Germans, through gloriously dry aromatic Alsatians and crap fat Kiwis!

A 2005 Trimbach Riesling started things off. A stunning, light, minerally wine with a super spice creeping through. Good lemon zest aroma and Granny Smith apples galore. The acidity just cleaned everything up in your mouth leaving you with a lemony tang. Great. 8/10

2003 Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese from Friedrich Wilheim Gymnasium followed. This had aromas of coxes orange pippin apples, a musky, lemony smell too. The palate was so balanced, a lot of sweet, lemon marmalade and orange flavours - more apples too. There was a petrolly flavour coming along with an oriental spice. The sweetness was then gathered all up, and a beautiful acidity made your mouth wanting more. 8.5/10

Venturing to the New World (usually always a mistake after German and Alsation Rieslings), proved to live up to all expectations. 2005 Neudorf Riesling wasn't bad, it was just flabby. A mucky, stinky nose, with overripe sweet fruit, a harsh petrol aroma too led to a palate of pencil lead (nice), lemon zest (nice), lemon pith (nice), white pepper (nice) and a confected sweetness (buggers up the whole thing). As I said, flabby and ruined by a sweet element that shouldn't be there. 5/10

I needed cheered up, so went back to Alsace. 1999 Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile Riesling did the job. A rich, cheesy aroma with lots of lemon marmalade complementing it. The palate seemed quite young, a spicy, lean, lime flavour and a hunt of two-stroke engine oil. A lovely finish - very dry. 8.5/10

Back to New Zealand, and it got really bad. 2006 Wild Earth Riesling from Central Otago, proves that the land of the hobbit should not bother with Riesling. There are exceptions (Crater Rim) but generally, they should leave well alone. This mess of a wine had a stinky, yet sweet nose with cheap lemon marmalade. The palate is really horrid, with an unbalanced sweetness, lemon jelly beans on the palate, and so flabby. 4/10

"Save me" I cried, and Germany was there to hear my call! Not often one can say that about Germany really, but anyway. A pair of Schloss Johannisberger wines, a great 2002 Riesling Kabinett with petrolly musky aromas, a bit of lime pickle and pithy grapefruit. A dry palate, a little citrus, a lot of gravel dust flavour and a touch of burnt sugar. 8/10. The 2005 Riesling Spatlese from Schloss Johannisberger showed a lot of rich, roast lime and a bit of petrol. The sweet palate was nicely spiced - I got cinnamon - and a lot of citrus peel and a tiny bit of Jif lemon! 7.5/10

The penultimate wine was 2003 Leitz Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck Riesling Spatlese. Now this was really good. Honey silkiness with tart apples, then rich apples and a touch of lime zest. The palate is so balanced, with gorgeous acidity clearing up your palate, a mass of sweetness, citrus fruit and a little pepper. Wonderful stuff. 9/10

Finally, a quarter bottle of 2006 Dr Loosen Riesling Beerenauslese. An intense little wine, with petrolium, citrus and hony all over your mouth. There is a heather honey on the nose too. It is a super little wine that is going to last so long, and just get dirtier and better. A great desert wine. 8.5/10

The little bottle that could...

Once upon a time there was a little dumpy bottle of port. Born in 1970, it was his dream to one day be opened, decanted and consumed in a fine house, by fine people with fine cheeses. His name was Niepoort.

Little Niepoort had a life of two parts. After being born, he was kept in a wooden box with his brothers and sisters for many years, and he was happy. They would all talk of the day when they would be taken from the box, opened, poured into a decanter, allowed to breath for the first time, and then drunk, surrounded by laughter and merriment. Little Niepoort had a good childhood.

Over time however, little Niepoort's brothers and sisters were taken away to achieve their dream of being drunk . Then one day after he had been on his own for a long time, he was pulled out of his wooden home and little Niepoort thought that his time to be celebrated and consumed had arrived. Sadly for little Niepoort, he was then placed in a cardboard box with other ports. Gone were his familiar surroundings, and he ended up as the only little dumpy bottle surrounded by big, tall bottles called Graham, Taylor and Warre. They bullied little Niepoort for being short and fat. He got older, his bullies were taken away and replaced by younger ports who too picked on poor little Niepoort. As he grew older his wax seal began to crumble, he became tatty around the edges and he wondered if time had passed him by. He heard stories of Americans liking young ports, and knowing he could never be such a big, voluptuous brazen hussy, he resigned himself to the fact he would never be drunk.

Then one day, when little Niepoort was thirty six, he heard a computer printer fire into life. He had heard it many times before and assumed that this would be an order for one of the other ports. Light burst into the cardboard box and a hand descended to him. He got picked up and with a joyous whoop, little Niepoort realised his time had come. He was, for the first time in many years, happy again.

He had heard tales of a mystical protective force known as polystyrene, that bottles who were being shipped to far off lands were encased in. He had never seen polystyrene before but gathered that the white box being put around him must be it. After a week snug in this soft packaging, all the while wondering where he might end up, light fell on his glass again, and another hand grabbed his neck. He was placed on a wine rack in a cool dark vault unaware of what his fate may be.

He made friends with many other wines in the cellar. They told him that the people who had this cellar did not believe in collecting wine, and that every one of them would one day be drunk. This made little Niepoort happy. He didn't mind that the days turned into months, and when the months turned into years, as he knew that one day he would be drunk.

Then, in late March, a hand took hold of Niepoort. He was taken to a dining room, and had his cork pulled. After being poured into an antique decanter, little Niepoort breathed the sweet air that had been stifled by his cork for all these decades. Not since he was a baby grape on the vine in Portugal had he enjoyed the air so much. He sat for numerous hours, waiting for the time he was to be drunk, nervous as to what people would think of him. Would he perform well, would he be undrinkable. Would people enjoy him or was he an old man that was past his best.

He saw glasses. He saw Stilton. He was lifted up and poured into a smooth glass. Swirled around as if he was on a playground ride. He felt the air tickling every part of him as he wooshed around the smooth crystal. Then, after thirty eight years trapped in the dark, he was drunk.

And he tasted rubbish.

The End

Just goes to show that no matter how much you really want a wine to be brilliant, sometimes you are severely disappointed. Niepoort 1970 wasn't bad, just a bit old with middle age spread, fat, buttery, toffee aromas and a chunky, wobbly, bramble jam. The alcohol blast you normally get from Niepoort ports was there and gave it a little spicy, hot interest, but really, this wine, which was very brown with just a hint of ruby in it, was just a disappointment.

Adamas 2006

If you type in "Adamas Wines" to Google you will be directed to many websites telling you that Adamas are relaunching Burgundy to a new market with simple, easy to understand labels, and how it is a breath of fresh air in the crusty traditional world of Burgundian wine. Well to be brutally honest, this isn't a new idea as Supermarkets have been doing it for years, but Adamas has taken the concept away from the 'own label' brands and put it into independent retailers and, unlike the supermarket wines, they have produced good wines.

Adamas Bourgogne Chardonnay, 2006 £10.99
Quite a fresh, honeyed nose, with a touch of woody sap. The palate is nice, a bit minerally with pineapple skin. It's a very clean wine. Can't fault it as long as all it's rivals match the price at £10.99 7/10

Adamas Meursault, 2006
Perfumy nose. Very pretty, ripe melon and a touch of peach. The palate is a bit chunky. Salty stone flavours with pineapple chunks and a leafy flavour. A very and clean finish. 8/10

Adamas Bourgogne Pinot Noir, 2006 £10.99
Not at all stewed. Good aroma, a little pig pooh sweetness coming off the wine and then cherries and raspberries. The palate is very nice, balanced with good herby flavours, a little soft grippy tannin grabbing you with baked raspberries, A long, dry finish. Very nice. 8/10

Adamas Fleurie, 2006 £12.49
Gentle, a slight sweet fresh raspberries but without the tang you usually get from raspberries. The palate is soft, good earthy spice and very soft. 7.5/10

This is a small company, and my only criticism is that the prices are a touch above what they should be. That is not to say that they are not worth the money, they are, but without too much hunting you can find alternatives of equal quality for less. These are all clean, nice wines that you should hunt a bit for.

Adamas Website

Crap of the Week - Vineyard Vixen Costume

This week's Crap of the Week has been sent to me by Andy Cook. The Vineyard Vixen costume from Yandy.com in America retails for $47.95, but is currently on sale for the bargain price of $28.77!

If you own a wine shop or vineyard and are thinking about a new uniform, this might be the one for you. It comes complete with a "Tulle Petticoat, Apron and lace up details, a faux grape headband and a cork necklace."

Buy yours from Yandy.com today.

The Tasting Note is not held responsible for an trouser related problems any gentlemen may suffer from when visiting this website. Wine and girl not included in the price

Austrian Masochism: The wines of Loimer and Heinrich

I can’t figure out if I dislike Nigella Lawson or Ainsley Harriot more. These two ‘celebrity chefs’ make the art of cooking a joke. Lawson’s programmes are all about her being a domestic goddess, with big flirty eyes and even bigger bosoms with praise from her friends for doing sod all work and producing such wonderful food. Harriot on the other hand looks as though he is suffering from a hyperactivity disorder, makes innuendos to pensioners and fondles a two foot long pepper mill that he calls Percy.

Throughout the 1980s, the only celebrity chefs in the UK were Delia Smith and Keith Floyd. On one hand, the Home Economics teacher who wanted to instruct you how to crack an egg, and her polar opposite who would get drunk, travel the world and wear comedy bow ties whilst throwing food onto a plate in a careless manner. You’d love one and hate the other and I always came down in the Floyd camp. However, in the 1990’s, thanks to Ready, Steady Cook, there were more chefs on TV than in restaurants. It became very tricky to pick your favourite as most of them were so dull you really didn’t have an opinion on any of them. I then realised that there was another type of chef, the dull boring chef that creates a fake persona to ‘stand out’ and it is Lawson and Harriot that are the leading examples of this.

I’m not saying that they are bad people, or that they sacrifice small puppies for the location of good truffle hunting grounds, but they appear to go out of their way to be different, by flirting with the camera or doing pelvic thrusts in the direction of a granny. This exaggerated character is worse than being the faceless nobody that most celebrity chefs are as Lawson and Harriot are trying to recreate the personality that Floyd and Smith had in bucketloads, and that really annoys me.

Last week, I found two wine producers from Austria that have become my Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson. One that I dislike with a firey passion, and one that is just trying to draw attention to itself by being different from the crowd, but is, in fact, very dull.

Loimer wines are the Nigella Lawson. Their Gruner Veltliners are so dull, that the only reason anyone would buy them is because they are from Austria and different. If I wanted dull wines I could pick any number of wines from any number of countries that would cost a significant amount less.

Take the 2007 Lois Kamptal Gruner Veltliner. It would cost around the £8 mark and it was like smelling and sucking on a pear drop. It was clean enough, and the finish was pleasant. But it was boring. Then there was the 2007 Loimer Kamptal Gruner Veltliner (£9.99), it was pretty much the same but instead of having confected pears, it had soft, underripe pears. You noticed it was a better wine, but was still boring. Finally, the single vineyard 2006 Loimer Terrassen Gruner Veltliner. Again, slightly better, but so, so dull. I guess, just because the quality was getting better, I’d say I disliked the single vineyard wine least, but I just couldn’t get passionate, in an excessive positive or negative way, about any of them.

However, the red wines from Loimer are my Delia Smith. I hated them! And for that, in a weird masochistic way, I applaud them! The 2004 Heinrich Red (£9) was all bubblegum on the nose, so confected, with terrible cranberry juice hints. The palate was insipid. So weak with more bubblegum. It is a terrible little wine. Then I went onto the 2006 Heinrich Burgenland Zweigelt (£12.50) which had stewed raspberries, a confected sweetness on the nose. The palate, like the other wine, is thin and confected. It has no tannin, and is far too bitter. And despite my total dislike for these red wines, they at least made me pay attention and that is far far better than them being boring.

There is hope however for both Austrian wines and celebrity chefs. Emerging from the mass of annoying cooks is Jamie Oliver. Having left his little cheeky cockney chav persona behind and become more of a 30 something family man, Oliver has become a lot more tolerable, and also a lot more annoying. His appeal to the UK public has become polarised over his school dinner and chickens being kept in cages campaign and as a result, he is leading the way, with Gordon Ramsay and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, back to ‘love-em-or-hate-em’ chefs. Similarly, there is one wine that shows hope to these two producer’s wines. The Loimer 2007 Kamptal Riesling, while not being perfect, shows promise. It has a light, limey aroma – a touch of lime cordial on the palate then a full on citrus attack. Zesty and with a very long, lemony finish. It’s not brilliant, but it is a nice wine and full of character, which, while not being everyone’s cup of tea, makes it so much better than the rest of these Austrian wines. It isn’t a Keith Floyd, and never will be, but it has started petitioning number ten to ban turkey twizzlers and has the potential to become interesting.

Seghesio - Classic American Wines

America is a multicultural society. When the lines "give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" were etched on the Statue of Liberty, it became a worldwide invitation to anyone wanting to move to the USA. And they did. From sea to shining sea, people from all four corners of the globe settled and made it their home. That is what Edoardo Seghesio did in 1886 when he left Piedmonte.

He settled in Sonoma County, partly as it allowed him to indulge in his passion for making wine, but also as he joined the Italian Swiss Colony, which, in turn for working for three years for room and board, he received a lump sum of money to buy land or set up a business. Seghesio did both after he married in 1895 and planted Zinfandel in the 'Home Ranch'.

Four generations later, the Seghesio family still make Zinfandels, and have, like most producers, branched out to other varietals. I tasted some of their wines at a recent tasting in Edinburgh. These are my thoughts.

Seghesio Arneis, 2006
Peachy, soapy and a little sherbert on the nose. The palate has too much residual sugar. It is flabby and crude and too spicy. 5/10

Seghesio Fiano, 2006
I like Fiano. I don't like this. It is closed, a touch of lemon comes out of the glass but nothing more. The palate is dry, bitter and then with a lot of flabby, watered down peach pulp. 5/10

Seghesio Sangiovese, 2004
Smells like milk chocolate with a Burger King burger relish. The palate is thin, boring and the mid palate is just repulsive with a cheap blueberry pie filling flavour. Very poor. 3/10

I cannot tell you how disappointed I was with these wines. I was not holding up much hope for the two whites, but I wanted the Sangiovese to be at very least drinkable, and it was the worst of the lot. However, the saviour of Seghesio is the Zinfandel grape.

Seghesio Sonoma County Zinfandel, 2006
Chocolate covered cherries on the nose. The palate is too tight, with under ripe cherries and quite a bit of spice. It is a good wine, just a touch young. 7/10

Seghesio Cortina Zinfandel, 2004
Very nice nose. Savoury and sweet nose, cherry one minute then herby veggies the next. The palate is more cherry, and with a very appealing roasting tray flavour - you know, when you are roasting beef and the juices have caramelized on the bottom of the tray. Then throw in some lovely fruit - a bit of bramble. 8.5/10

Seghesio Old Vine Zinfandel, 2004
Quite a sexy nose. Belgian milk chocolate on the nose, a bit of vanilla and sour raspberries. Very balanced and the sort of wine that you could very easily drink a bottle of. 7.5/10

I like this producer. Aside from the romantic immigrant story, the fact that they have century old vines in America and they are in the same place as their forefathers were, they produce some bloody good Zinfandel. They appear to have lost their way a bit with the other Italian grape varieties they are planting, but with their Zin they are creating, what I think is, proper American wine. Grapes from the winemakers homeland, setting down roots in new world soil, and whilst retaining the identity of Italy, they embrace their new homeland and, like the family that planted the grapes a century ago, these wines have become truly American.

Crikey, I've just become all cheesy and sentimental, just like an American movie. It must be too much Zinfandel.

Crap of the week: Don't break the bottle

Giving a bottle of wine to a host is always a nice gesture, but if you don't like them, you can put it in this piece of crap.

It is a puzzle that 'traps' a bottle, and you have to somehow free the bottle by looping toggles and string around bits of wood. I can't stand puzzles like this and having a bottle of wine stuck in the middle of one would just infuriate me further.

If you want one, you can go to "I want one of those" and give them £19.95