Babies Babies everywhere - and I have a drop to drink

There are babies everywhere. In the last six months of 2008, eight of my friends will have sprogged a life into this world, and another will be coming in February. I realise that I am at the age in life when friends start nesting, settling down and having children, and I, meanwhile, am young(ish), carefree and, while not single, have no plans in sowing my seed for anything other than recreational purposes! But I have a problem.

I realised at a wedding yesterday that I have nothing to contribute to any conversation regarding babies. Surrounded by my old school friends, I discovered that breast feeding, labour pains and teething is now the topic of all chats. Foods that are off limits for a pregnant woman, lack of sleep once the crying ‘bundle of joy’ has arrived and even one person who announced that she had to go home to feed her baby because her boobs were hurting were also conversations that I smiled and nodded to. And it doesn’t stop once these petite people are grown up as within the next twelve months, I’m certain at least a couple of my friends will be moving onto baby number two, building their family and having to spread the love between the older child and the younger.

And it struck me that the conversation will then be the differences between the two children. How baby one spoke it’s first words at 12 months while it’s younger sibling took until it was nearly two. That baby one was crying it’s eyes out every night for the first year, and baby two was a blissful, happy child and didn’t keep it’s suffering parents awake at all. And then I realised that siblings are like non vintage champagne, and I’d be able to join in the conversation!

I know you think that I’ve lost control of my faculties, but think about it for a moment.

Non vintage fizz is made to a specific style. If Bollinger kept changing what their Special Cuvee they would be unable to build their brand. As a result, year on, year out, they keep the same basic building blocks to blend together their non vintage champagne. It doesn’t matter if you buy a bottle now or in three years time, the flavour template for a bottle just made will be the same when it is released. The same as a baby and his younger sibling. The genes, the building blocks, are the same. It is once the sprog has been born that things get interesting and different from it’s brother or sister. Similarly, once a non vintage champagne is bottled it starts to mature away from the style it was created.

And so I found myself with four quarter bottles of Moet & Chandon, two non vintage brut and two non vintage rose. One of each was with the older label, so it was at least a year and a half in the bottle, and the other of each was out of a recently opened box. I wanted to see if the tales I’d heard of Moet NV getting better with age was true.

Trying the new baby bottle of Moet NV, it occurred to me that I wasn’t overly keen on the nose on it. It is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not my thing. It has a lot of zest, quite violent lemon sherbert which leaps out of the glass, almost like when you are squeezing a lemon and it accidentally squirts juice in your face. The palate is zingy, but with a softness coming through. A touch of the biscuity element I like from NV fizz, with a little coconut husk on the finish. I definitely prefer the palate to the nose. 7.5/10

Moving onto the older baby of Moet & Chandon NV, I find that I have a much more appealing nose. There is a warm lemon juice aroma with more biscuit and a little tangerine, petrol and melon. It has rich biscuit on the palate, with a lot of honeydew melon skin. A rounder flavour than on the young bottle, but then it has a tangy element which clashes a bit with this fuller wine. That spoiled it a bit for me. Again, I got coconut on the finish, but this time coconut cream. 7/10

I hate to say it, but I’m preferring the younger child here. Despite appearing as a bit of precocious brat at first, it is an altogether more balanced package. The older baby bottle is initially appealing, it makes you coo over it with its wee chubby features, but then proceeds to deliberately vomit all over you with a disjointed palate.

Moet & Chandon NV Rose was a different thing altogether. The new bottle was bright pink in colour. The sort of pink that would be the colour of the leggings worn by fat girls in a council estate in the 1980’s. It’s aroma was sweet, with a strawberry milkshake aroma that lingers a bit much and makes it a bit sickly on the finish. 6/10 The older bottle however shows a salmon pink colour with a little orange around the edges. The nose is pretty closed, with a little Turkish delight stabbed with a pencil coming through. The palate is round, a strong cranberry and strawberry flavour and a bittle spice. A dry, tangy bitterness and a bit of heat on the finish is actually quite appealing. 7/10

It’s not a very scientific conclusion, but there we go. Age your Moet Rose, and drink your non vintage… just don’t have a baby and you’ll have more money to spend on wine.

By Peter Wood with No comments

Overworked

I've got lots to do at work this week, so blog posts might be a little thin on the ground until the 25th or 26th. Apologies to all who may be looking to read more waffle from me this week but I'm unlikely to get anything written.

By Peter Wood with No comments

6 Questions with Dan Connolly of Adamas Wines

Dan Connolly started Adamas Wines with Manoel Bouchet to get Burgundian wines drunk by people who would normally shy away from the complicated labels that normally cover the bottles. After spending time working for Louis Latour, Bibendum and Quinta do Noval port, he started Adamas based in Burgundy, and in his home of... errr... Fife, Scotland!

I've looked at his wines before, and liked them, so here we are more interested in the man and what his own wine likes and dislikes are. I asked him six questions.

What would you do if you weren't in the wine trade?
Park Ranger. I love the countryside and the fresh air.

What is the best wine that you have ever tried, and what is the worst?
The best was 1963 Quinta do Noval Nacional (Breathtaking), and the worst was my home made Redcurrant wine 2008 vintage (filthy!). First rule of wine making: always use grapes.

Aside from your own, what is your favourite producer?
Chapoutier Rhone Valley

Who has been most inspirational to you?
Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker, both of whom are going straight to heaven.

Any regrets?
...I've had a few...actually no I haven't.

Name three people, real or fictional, living or dead, that would be guests at your dream dinner party and what would you be drinking?
1. Obviously Morrissey to ask him how he managed to come up with the lines "...with loves and hates and passions just like mine, they were born and then they lived and then they died. Seems so unfair." Genius.
2. Dr Beeching and all his successors so I can ask them why they think that closing down the railways and covering the country in Tarmac so that we can all sit in ever larger traffic jams, is a sensible transport policy.
3. Alex Salmond so that I can ask him if he was drunk when he decided to pull down the newly erected tool booths on the forth road bridge and scrap the toll and also try to get an explanation as to why the state employs 51% of the working population, what they do all day and why I have to pay for their pensions.

Morrissey and I will kick off the evening with a pint of Exmoor Gold Real Ale, followed by a couple of glasses of 1990 Montrachet Grand Cru Domaine Thenard with the starter. For the main course we would share a magnum of 1966 Romanee St Vivante Domaine Latour.

The politicians would have Buckfast!

Adamas Wines are available from various retailers. You can see them here
Adamas Wines Website

Next 6 Questions with...
Paul Draper

Previous 6 Questions with...
Cliff Richard

By Peter Wood with No comments

Glenfarclas Family Casks - Do vintages matter in whisky?

Simple answer - no! Vintages don't matter a bit when it comes to the taste of the whisky, but do matter when it comes to being able to sell them. At the moment, any whisky from a year ending in '8' is a piece of cake to sell whereas something ending in '7' is going to be stuck on the shelves for the best part of another decade. But the vintage really doesn't have any effect on the taste at all as there is no noticable vintage variation in the grain being used, and even if there was, there is rarely any consistency or traceability of supply. The three main factors that change a whisky are the size of barrel (the smaller a barrel gives more oak reaction), the type of barrel (previously used for another product or if they are brand new barrels) and the amount of time kept in the barrel.

So if vintages mean nothing, why bother with them? Most 'vintage' whiskies comprise of a selection of casks from that year, blended together and bottled for a specific style and is then given a distillation and bottling year. A single cask bottling, however, is something special. It is one cask that for some magical reason has become slightly better than all it's siblings distilled on the same day and the producer decided to put this into bottle as a very limited bottling, and this is what Glenfarclas have done with 43 barrels of whisky.

A while back, Glenfarclas, released their Family Cask range. A barrel of every year from 1952 to 1994 has been bottled, and with a full set of these whiskies costing just under £15,000, they aren't cheap! Having said that, you will rarely, if ever, get a chance to have as many sequential years of whisky from any distillery which will mean that most of these bottles will be put into a display cabinet, never to be drunk, and hoarded by sad people with no lives. I call them whisky collectors.

I got the chance to try eight of these whiskies this week. I like Glenfarclas, it offers very good value for money and even their top whisky, the 30 year old, is a steal at £120. But are these whiskies actually worth the money you are paying for them and I'd also like to know if there is any real point for such a collection of vintage single malts, when, as we have established, vintages mean nothing. Only one way to find out, and that was to grab a glass.

1993 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 11, Refill Sherry, 58.9%, 592 bottles
Cream, vanilla and orange peel with a touch of chocolate orange and, strangely, pineapple! Warm christmas pudding, a dusting of white pepper and a lot of burnt twigs on the palate. After adding a little water, I got a lot more chocolate and vanilla fudge and burnt match. It is nice but a bit dry and fruitless on the palate. Also, for £120 you could get any of the normal range of Glenfarclas and you'd be getting a better whisky - including the 10 year old! You'd only buy this if you had all other forty two bottles and were missing this from your collection.
7/10, £120.00

1983 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 50, Refill Hogshead, 56%, 302 bottles
Pungent. Stale water and wet cardboard. Almost like very newly distilled spirit with rotten pears. I really don't like the nose on this. The palate is like grappa. It is very fruit but with a touch of toffee. Still dry and peppery. Add water and it becomes drinkable, but it is a pretty bad whisky. I can think of a better way to spend £200, including getting three colonic irrigations at York Clinic.
5/10, £199.00

1976 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 3111, Refill Butt, 49.4%, 595 bottles
A chinese takeaway! Black bean sauce and green peppers, then coffee and toffee. The palate is very dry, a maltiness with lots of dry cereal and a little charcoal. Very clean and very soft. A bit dusty and you get a 'rain on wet tarmac' flavour. Good.
8/10, £256.00

1973 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 2578, Sherry Butt, 58.8%, 457 bottles
Acetone, passion fruit sweetness and a bit of warm brandy. A soft aroma. The palate is then hot and sweet, a lot of raisins and a bit of burnt jam and a lot of spice. With water, you get so much vanilla toffee and then a semi dried lemon, all rich and sweet with a tiny zing to it. It is dry with tropical fruit - did I get dried apricot? - and a sweetness like you would get from tinned pears in syrup. A blast of Earl Grey on the finish.
8/10, £275.00

1971 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 140, Sherry Butt, 57.1%, 459 bottles
Burnt sugar, toffee apples, cinnamon and a bit of chocolate and over ripe banana. A rich, sweet flavour, lots of dark chocolate, stewed prunes and pencil shavings. A tiny amount of smoke as well. This is glorious.
9.5/10, £290.00

1967 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 511, Sherry Hogshead, 58.5%, 181 bottles
Cherry cola and Christmas cake - fruit cake and marzipan - and a good handful of chocolate raisins. The palate is warm with dried blueberries and coal tar soap bubbles. It dissolves in your mouth and leaves a flavour of poppy seeds! With water you lose the cherry coke, but everything else is the same. A little hot spice and a little burnt onions are added.
8/10, £325.00

1966 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 4177, Sherry Butt, 51.5%, 514 bottles
Warm summer pudding, a little bonfire toffee and dark caramel. A lot of boiled cinnamon sweets, a bit herby. The palate is punchy with dark tobacco, dried leaves and burnt orange peel. With water it is much better. Clean with honey and cloves. It is nicely toasty with lemon pith flavours and a little alcohol heat on the finish.
8.5/10, £315.00

1955 Glenfarclas The Family Casks, Cask 2211, Sherry Butt, 46.1%, 545 bottles
So much toffee and cough drops. A little nail varnish remover and banana. The palate is herby with menthol sweets and a smoky oak flavour. Elements of bitter chocolate and then dry, smoked fish and charred beef flavours. Warm and vegetal. A bit too old?
8/10, £750.00

It is interesting to try these whiskies, it always is interesting trying old single malts, but I can't help thinking that this exercise from Glenfarclas is purely a marketing exercise to say "mine is bigger than yours" to any other distillery with a range of sequentially vintage whiskies. The other big problem I have with the eight whiskies I tried was inconsistency of quality. I grant you, there are always going to be malts that one person will prefer over the others, but paying over a hundred pounds for a 14 year old whisky, even if it is a single cask, is asking a bit much.

As a celebration of this distillery, the Glenfarclas Family Cask collection has a purpose, but that is only available for prestigious hotels or whisky collectors with fifteen grand burning a hole in their pocket. For a whisky lover or a not so rich collector, this series of malts does nothing. The collector cant afford the lot, and the drinker looks at lots of whiskies without a clue which one they would like. This is a marketing exercise, nothing more, nothing less. And there is nothing wrong with that, but if you are a whisky lover save your money.

Buy a bottle of Glenfarclas 21 year old.

By Peter Wood with No comments

Raising the drinking age to 21 - Where are you Ian Smith?

The absurd march towards raising the drinking age to 21 for off sales in Scotland continues, with only a month to express your disapproval for it on the official petition. In June, I wrote an open email to every Member of the Scottish Parliament, and I got various replies from various MSPs. I notice, however, that my own MSP, Iain Smith has not replied at all. It's not as if he lives that far away from me, he's only just along the road from me in Ladybank, and according to the AA Route Finder, that is only 6.61 miles away, he could pop in through my letterbox when he is doing his shopping. Alternatively, he could email me at any time, in case he has lost my email address, he can contact me at thetastingnote@gmail.com.

By Peter Wood with No comments

Tasting Notes

I'm rarely seen without a notebook in my hand at a tasting. This is mainly due to the terrible memory I have and I wouldn't be able to remember what I'd tasted without writing notes. As a result, I have over eight years of tasting notes in tatty looking notebooks and I've put a lot of them here.

All the interesting and fine wines have gone on first, and every wine that I try from now on will be posted immediately. Over the next few months, I'll keep adding my older notes. Every post will have a date of when it was tasted, so even if it is posted in August, the note might be as old as 2002!

Feel free to use these notes as you wish. If you use them in shops, please credit the website - www.thetastingnote.com - rather than me personally, and if you are a producer and want to use them, please link to the website as well. You can find them here or click on the link to the right.

By Peter Wood with 1 comment

Post #100 - Do I need my Diploma?

One hundred posts of inane waffle into this blog and I am at a crossroads in my wine life. Do I do my WSET Diploma or not?

Pros Gives me another qualification, I get a bit of paper saying I know what I'm talking about, even if I don't!

Cons Need to spend quite a bit of time, which I would normally call sleep time, revising, when I could just read wine books whilst on the loo and get the knowledge anyway and not have the added pressure of having to sit exams.

Do I really need it to progress in my life in the wine trade?

By Peter Wood with 2 comments

Critique the Critic #1 - Gary Vaynerchuk

Parker, Parker, Parker. All we hear in the damn wine trade is “what score did Parker give a wine?”. With all due respect to him, Parker is only one man, but the world seems to revolve around him when it comes to advice on whether a wine is good or not. Link that to the large corporations making and selling wine, the romantic, enjoyable element of wine consumption is slowly dying. But there is one man trying to change all that.

You are likely not to have heard of him if you live in the UK, but he is big in America. Gary Vaynerchuk is not only a successful businessman, but has become a huge internet celebrity by producing a daily video blog where he tastes wine and rates them. Plenty of people are doing this already, so the concept isn’t unique – I even flirted with the idea a couple of years ago until I realised I looked and sounded like a pompous ass – but where Gary succeeds over others is in his insane enthusiasm for the subject and the fact that he has a natural gift for being in front of the camera.

He loves wine, pure and simple, and the way he expresses it is like a hybrid of a Master of Wine and a Muppet! His larger than life explosive gesticulations, his tendency to wander of subject, particularly when the conversation can turn to his favourite American football team, has won him thousands of fans and shows that this man isn’t the uber geek who obsesses all his time to one subject, and that Gary has many passions and layers to his life.

A lot of the old guard of wine buffs won’t like Vaynerchuk – thinking he is too boisterous, and his unconventional tasting terms like “oak monster” (whilst growling at the camera) certainly won’t appeal to Major Bufty-Tufton who has been in the wine trade since he was demobbed after the war, but that is exactly the point. His slogan of “Changing the wine world, whether they like it or not” is a middle finger, albeit a respectful one, to all that have gone before, yet scorn him for being different.

He is also his own worst critic, disapproving of rating wine, pointing out the flaws of an ‘instant rating’ for a wine that, six months down the line, it may not justify or may be too harsh. Yet he rates every wine anyway and tells you to pay no attention to whatever he, or any critic, says and that you should go out, get the wine yourself and see if you like it and to “trust your pal(ate)”. Immersed in popular culture of the 1980’s, his desk is adorned by Thundercat and WWF action figures, which targets the thirty something market head on, reminding them of their childhood and establishing an instant connection with this wonderfully hyperactive wine critic.

What makes Vaynerchuk different from the majority of wine critics, and it is something that he and I have in common, is that he is a retailer. Not only does he rate wine based on if it is good or not, anyone with a decent palate can do that, but he rates it based on it’s value which is often overlooked by a lot of critics. Ultimately, everyone in the wine trade is in it for the money (even ‘independent’ commentators need to earn a living from the publication they write for), and GV understands the wine business from the customer, retailer and wine lover perspective and gives all three opinions. He just happens to have used the biggest microphone available to air his views and was the first to get a lot of exposure doing it.

Vaynerchuk’s biggest success, however, will come not from wine lovers like you or I but through his breaking down barriers into the wine world. His realisation that personal branding is now everything makes him a pioneer not only in wine but in business. Certainly he might act like Animal on speed, but this is an astute businessman who appears to have a good grasp on where he wants to do with his life. Developing his family wine shop has brought him success, his next job is promoting the ‘Gary Vaynerchuk’ brand, and he will be remembered as one of the pioneering internet celebrities. By going into other fields, Vaynerchuk will bring people who don't currently have an interest in wine into our domain and give this stuffy world we love a much needed breath of fresh air.

I was speaking to an older gentleman in the trade who I respect enormously, and he told me a story of when he started in the trade forty years ago he would get together once a month with the old gentlemen of the trade for a dinner where they would drink fine wine and discuss the trade and new ideas were given a chance to be aired. There was a need for fresh blood then, and there is a greater need for fresh blood now, as more and more the wine trade becomes big faceless companies. There is one face in America that is trumpeting the wine trade, and alcohol consumption in general, as a positive thing, a thing of joy and pleasure and a thing for sharing and interacting with people over.

That face is that of Gary Vaynerchuk, and the wine world needs him – badly.

Wine Library TV
Gary Vaynerchuk
Wine Library

By Peter Wood with 1 comment

Oddbins Sale Announced on Off Licence News Website

The sale of Oddbins to wine and food retailer Ex Cellar has been confirmed, according to Off Licence News. You can read about it here.

Ex Cellar Website
Oddbins Website

By Peter Wood with 1 comment

Oddbins Sold?

I've heard a rumour today that Oddbins has been sold to a private consortium, lead by a former Oddbins employee. Castel, who bought the widely loved wine in 2001, has never had an easy time since their £55million purchase. Rebranding some of the more successful stores as their own retail chain, Nicolas and closures of other stores attracted scorn, as did a range of new 'Oddbins own label' products that didn't really cut the mustard.

It would not be surprising if Castel made a large loss on the sale, and as an ex employee I hope that the new team has success and can do what has been impossible before - recapture the old Oddbins spirit but actually make some money.

By Peter Wood with No comments