#232 Gruaud Larose 1995 & 2002

I like the wines from Chateau Gruaud Larose.  I've tried numerous vintages of it, but for some reason have rarely compared vintages of this wine.  So, after pulling the cork of a bottle of 1995 and 2002, this is what I found out.

The 1995 had lovely soft, cherry fruit with fresh raspberries, cherry and eucalyptus and then some boot polish came through some plum aromas.  The palate was soft, a lovely texture, and a bit of spice with leathery tannins.  Liquorice flavours, cocoa and cherry stone throughout.  The palate was long, inviting and very tasty.  Still needs a bit of time. 8.5/10

The 2002 couldn't have been more different.  Certainly, there was the Gruaud style, but this was actually quite stinky.  There was sweet fruit on the nose, loads of herbs and more cherries and plums.  The palate was nice, but had a hole where the fruit should have been.  There was the leather and cocoa that the 1995 had, there was also a bundle of tannin, but the fruit was very subtle in comparison, and that revealed the alcohol, which became a bit unpleasent.  It is not a bad wine, just a wine from a bad year, but why Parker gave this 90 points escapes me!  7/10

#231 'IWC World's Best Wine' iPhone App

The International Wine Challenge (IWC)  officially launch their first iPhone App on Monday, which claims to give the user access to "the world's best wines at the touch of a screen".  I have issues with the term "world's best wines", as they should actually read "the wines that scored highly in the IWC competition" as, try as I might, I didn't find any first growths... or DRC....

I was given a sneak preview of it to review, and I found it to not be that great for me, though it does have its uses.  This App allows you to search by wine style, country, grape variety, price range, and stockist.  So, I looked up my shop, to test out it's accuracy and found that the biggest problem with this App, is that (as usual when you rely upon a journalist or suppliers to give accurate retailer information!) the details are wrong!  Apparently, I only stock 2 wines that won medals at the IWC (I actually stock loads more than that), and it says I'm charging £10.50 for these two wines, when I'm actually charging £8.99!

To be fair to this, my customers aren't who this is aimed at.  It's a handy little guide for an occasional wine drinker.  Imagine you are standing in a supermarket and you are looking for a bottle of wine.  There are loads of bottles in front of you that you have never heard of, and the spotty shelf stacker is about as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to giving advice.  You just look up the supermarket name and there, on the screen of your phone, are all the wines that scored highly in the IWC competition, and you can pick your wine with a bit of confidence, rather than on what label looks prettiest.

Future developments of this App are apparently going to include online ordering, food pairing and cellaring advice, all of which would be welcome, but to get an accurate picture of who is selling what wine, I'd suggest that retailers be able to submit themselves as a stockist for the wines awarded medals by the IWC, and include their pricing!  Also, as this App will be out of date in a year, a cheaper upgrade for those who buy this edition would be welcomed after the 2010 contest.

This App is a good first effort in providing a guide to wines on the iPhone.  At £4.99, it is worth it for the supermarket shopper, but if you frequent specialist merchants you may be wasting your money a little as the staff should be able to give advice on the products they stock.

Now all I want is Michael Broadbent’s Vintage Wine book for the iPhone.  If that was available with yearly updates, I'd buy it no matter what the price!

If you want to buy this App, search "The World's Best Wines" in iTunes

#230 Why we should be grateful for Jamie Goode (and Jancis, Broadbent, Tim and Oz)

Robert Parker is a man that many bloggers and retailers love to hate.  They love disagreeing with Parker, and as I am both a blogger and a retailer, I should really hate him! 

But I don’t.  I disagree with him on a great many things.  His view that you can’t make an informed decision on a wine if you didn’t pay for it for example.  I believe that you can, as do many writers, some of whom have a much, much higher reputation than I could ever hope to achieve.  My palate tends to lean towards the likes of Michael Broadbent and Jancis Robinson rather than Mr Parker, but that doesn’t make him wrong and me right, or vice versa.  We are different, simple as that.

Jamie Goode, on his excellent wine blog, has recently posted an article about ‘why we should be grateful for Robert Parker’.  I read it, and can’t find fault him in most of his arguments.  I might not like the fact that Parker has become a ‘king maker’ and allowed producers of excellent wines to price them beyond my reach, I might not like that wine is now an monetary investment rather than an investment for a future dinner party, but that is the way it is.  I know that if I was a winemaker that had just got 99 points from Parker, I would be constructing a shrine to the great man and bowing my head everytime I walk past it.

Rather than addressing the article in depth, go here and read it for yourself, and make your own mind up as to whether Goode makes a solid argument.  I think he does, with one exception, but it is a very important one.  At the end of the article, Goode mentions that Parker, along with Jancis, Hugh Johnson and Oz Clarke, “have played a vital role in growing the consumer base for interesting wines”.

Firstly, I have no problems saying that the latter three critics have contributed to the growing interest in varied wines, but Parker?  Parker does recommend many other wines aside from Bordeaux and Australian wines, as anyone who follows him on Twitter can plainly see, but his work on Bordeaux and, to a lesser extent, Australia overshadow all of this other work.  In nearly a decade of working in wine retail, I have never had any customer ask for a wine from South Africa or Portugal because Parker scored it highly, but have had people ask for a wine after other critics have liked it.  At most, Parker’s influence in other regions is when a customer comes into the shop and is wanting a wine from a particular area and happens to see a tasting note from Parker, and the customer chooses that wine over another.  Outside of Bordeaux, Parker points encourage people to change producers, not explore new wines.

The likes of Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Atkin and Jamie Goode himself have more influence on getting more people trying interesting wines from new regions.  Goode’s writing about Portuguese wine, which won him the 2008 Portuguese Wine Awards Journalist Award will have introduced many people to this country, and its diverse range of wines.  From lighter minerally whites, through to the big stonking reds, Goode’s work, and open mind to new styles, will have encouraged his readers to venture into the Dao, Bairrada and Douro.  The same applies with any wine journalist with a weekend column, irrespective of whether they are national or regional.  I’m not saying that Parker doesn’t taste these wines, but his writing and scoring doesn’t translate into retail sales.  His position as the critic for Bordeaux has, and always will, overshadow whatever else he does.

Robert Parker’s contribution to the wine world should be respected, and yes, he may have encouraged more people to drink wine but that was just the first step on the journey.  The range and diversity that we are fortunate to have today is because other writers, like Jamie Goode, have explored and loved the other wine regions of the world, and then put pen to paper.

#229 Odds & Sods of SITT

 

The Specialist Importers Trade Tasting are held every year, and it is now a huge event, where, even if you were to attend both the Manchester and the London tastings, you still wouldn’t get round everything.  As I was there in a work capacity, I was looking for wines to stock in the shop so I avoided the many excellent wines from a number of suppliers that I deal with.  I concentrated on the wines I didn’t know and the suppliers I didn’t deal with.  Here are some of the best wines I found

Champagne Gardet Brut Tradition St Flavy NV, Champagne, France
Very light, some melon and a bit of lemon on this closed nose.  The palate is all pear, a bit of melon sweetness.  Very clean and well balanced.  8/10 (£21)

Champagne Gardet Brut Special NV, Champagne, France
Nice oyster shell aromas, and a bit of oak noticeable, not in flavour but in wine maturity.  There is also peach on the nose.  Light and minerally with some toast favours, and then it freshens up with lots of zingy apple.  Nice.  7.5/10 (£23)

2009 Turi Sauvignon Blanc, Chile
Grassy, a little gooseberry and nettle, green pepper too.  The palate is fresh and clean, with a little nettle.  Cracking for the price. 8/10 (£5.00)

2008 Turi Pinot Noir, Chile
Light, very earthy with subtle fruit and a lot of sour cherry.  Nicely balanced n the palate, with firmer tannins on the finish.  7.5/10 (£5.50)

2009 Stadt Krems Gruner Veltliner Loessterrassen, Austria
Limey on the nose, and then some softer, earthier fruit.  The palate is nice, good creamy texture with mineral flavours and lime pith on the finish.  8/10 (£10)

2008 Schloss Gobelsburg Gruner Veltliner Renner, Austria
Nice cream and citrus aroma, good clean honeydew melon sweetness.  The palate is really good, insanely complex, but gorgeous to drink.  9/10 (£18.50)

2006 Domaine Latour Giraud Meursault ‘Cuvee Charles Maxim’, Burgundy, France
Big oaky toast and dirty butter!  Pineapple skin, with more oak on the palate, but so beautifully balanced with spice and zingy fruit on the finish.  8.5/10 (£27)

2000 Pol Roger Brut Reserve, Champagne, France
A lovely, typical, Pol Roger aroma of biscuits, sea air and lemon, but with some dirtier citrus elements too.  The palate is fatter than I’d expected, with some sweet fruit and a bit of alcohol.  It is nice, but the 1999 is far better at the moment.  7/10 (£48)

2007 Joseph Drouhin Chassagne Montrachet
Orange chewitts, a dirty aroma with lots of butter and lemons.  A very vegetal palate.  Not great & here for all the wrong reasons!  5/10 (£50)

2008 Niepoort-Navazos, Jerez, Spain
This wine is weird!  A single vineyard Palomino, fermented under a flor, but not fortified.  Think of this as low alcohol sherry!  Totally barking mad, but brilliant!  Very dry with lime pith and wet rocks galore on the palate  So good!  9/10 (£19)

Paul Dethune Ambonnay Brut Grand Cru NV, Champagne, France
A rich fruity aroma, lots of cream covered raspberry aromas.  The palate is gorgeous, soft and lush with lots of fine bubbles and very well balanced.  8/10 (£27)

2007 Domaine Bruno Sorg Riesling, Alsace, France
A clean old fashioned lemonade aroma, crisp palate with some sweet sherbert lemon elements.  Good wine, with just a touch too much heat on the back end scoring it down.  8/10 (£12)

2005 Massaya Silver, Bekka Valley, Lebanon
Pizza topping!  Tomatoes and herbs on the nose, with some red berries thrown in.  A nice bitter flavour up front with some tree sap and a bit of nut, all coated with a little plum and bramble.  Nice 8/10 (£14)

2004 Luigi Baudana Barolo Ceretta, Piedmont, Itay
Dried fruit, loads of sour cherry and wet tar.  Then you get an insane stripping out of your mouth with acid, and then a caressing finish of leather and sweet fruit hints.  A rollercoaster of a ride, but a really good wine.  9/10 (£33)

2009 William Robertson Chenin Blanc, South Africa
Light and simple and a little off dry.  Good fruit, a little heat, but for a six quid Chenin, this is good.  7/10 (£6)

2008 Pegasus Bay Sauvignon Blanc Semillon, Waipara, New Zealand
Big, gooseberry flavours, lots of elderflower and then a kiss of lime on the finish.  A very well made wine, given a bit of complexity by the Semillon.  8.5/10 (£16)

2007 Brancaia Ilatraia IGT, Tuscany, Italy
Dark fruits, a lot of tobacco, green pepper and leather.  Herby with menthol and tobacco.  Really tasty.  8.5/10 (£41)

2001 Chateau de la Riviere, Bordeaux, France
Soft, green pepper and lush fruit on the nose.  Bonfire toffee, chocolate and leather makes this a bit like bondage in a candy store on the palate!  A little heat on the end, but a cracking little wine.  7.5/10 (£20)

Coming next, the table of the day – SWiG

SITT Website

#228 En Primeur 2008 Louis Jadot

 

When you are given the chance to try a bundle of new releases of Burgundian wines, you don't say no!  Particularly when they are being presented by the entertaining Guillaume de Castelnau of Chateau des Jacques.  I would tell you more, but it is 1.40 in the morning, and I'm sleepy after drinking the remains of the Corton Charlemagne from the bottle!  In the meantime, here are my notes...

2008 Clos de Loyse, Louis Jadot
A light, mineral element with some grapefruit pith, some lemon.  A soft, round palate with nice acid and a little pencil lead finish. 7/10

2008 Santenay Clos de Malte, Domaine Louis Jadot
Some rich, honey and tropical fruit aromas.  A lot of papaya with some sweet tea elements, nice lemon and pineapple.  A tangy palate, with a lot of zingy, fresh fruit with a long finish.  8/10

2008 Beaune Greves, Louis Jadot
Pretty, quite a chunky aroma but delivered exceptionally well.  Quite chunky, up front oak with some gorgeous tropical fruit.  A little too high acid at the moment, quite a bruiser.  7/10

2008 Chassagne Montrachet 1er cru Morgeot Clos de la Chapelle Duc de Magenta, Louis Jadot
A light, pretty and fresh aroma, with some white flowers and lemony wax on the nose.  It is quite round, with some oily textures, subtle fruit and lots of mineral and citrus pith flavours.  A good wine, but needs some time.  8/10

2008 Pulight Montrachet 1er cru Clos de la Garenne Duc de Magenta, Louis Jadot
Chalky, a bit of gentle minerality and then some grapefruit and melon on the nose with a touch, and I mean just a touch, of sweet honey.  The palate has a zingy pepper flavour, with a bit of high alcohol.  It develops some oaky characters, and lovely toast elements.  Full on spice at the end.  8.5/10

2008 Chevalier Montrachet Les Demoiselles Grand cru Domaine des Heritiers, Louis Jadot
It is very pretty, some very gentle elements and a gorgeous, light flavour of mango pith.  Very well balanced, some powerful spice and full on fruit.  White pepper, with some cheese rind flavours.  A really yummy wine.  8.5/10

2008 Meursault Les Gouttes d'Or, Louis Jadot
Oak up front with some really interesting creamy custard aromas, mixed in with some fruit skin aromas.  The palate is wood dominant, quite hot too, with some tobacco box and, if I'm honest, it is a bit crude.  One for those of you who like the wood.  6.5/10

2008 Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru Domaine des Heritiers, Louis Jadot
Soft, some gentle cream emerging from some light melon and papaya aromas.  The palate, whilst relatively closed, is still giving off some lovely tropical fruit flavours, with a spice that reminds me of papaya seeds (seriously, try them, they are quite peppery!).  It has lovely balance, the alcohol is well integrated, with a nod towards some orange flavours.  Seriously good, but SERIOUSLY young!  7.5/10 now, but 9 or 10 in a few years.

2008 Cotes de Nuits Villages Le Vaucrain, Domaine Louis Jadot
Cherry, some poop on the nose too, with rosemary coming through the poop!  The palate is quite tangy, fresh raspberries and then some rounder flavours calming down the freshness.  Some orange, and then herbs coming through.  This is quite a cirtussy red, lots of acidic fruit.  Interesting.  8/10

2008 Pernand Vergelesses Clos de la Croix Pierre, Domaine Louis Jadot
Rhubarb leaves, some great sour cherry aromas and a bit of leather too.  The palate is, like the Vaucrain, zingy with some nice tannins mixed in with the sour berries.  7.5/10

2008 Beaune 1er cru Ursules Monopole Heritiers Louis Jadot
Surprisingly soft and delicate on the nose with hints of jerky and some toast.  The palate is great, big and gutsy, lots of spice with really interesting leather and raspberries.  Some cocoa on the finish.  This will be a lovely wine.  7/10, but with room for growth!

2008 Nuits St Georges 1er cru Boudots, Louis Jadot
Silky on the nose, lots of cherry and chocolate.  There is simple fruit but with weight behind it.  Very closed, spice is pretty well integrated though.  Too young, but it still tastes nice!  8/10 now, so what will it become?!

2008 Gevrey Chambertin 1er cru Lavaux St Jacques, Domaine Louis Jadot
Big with a lot of polish and super cherry and raspberries.  A really nice wine, quite vegetal and spicy, but with a dip on the finish which spoils the party a bit.  7.5/10

2008 Corton Pougets Domaine des Heritiers Louis Jadot
A pretty aroma, lots of really soft cherry and cocoa powder aromas.  Quite tight, with some liquorice hints, but the wine is balanced, despite it's closed nature.  Quite dry with some leather and some pomegranate on the finish.  8.5/10

2008 Clos Vougeot Grand Cru, Domaine Louis Jadot
Some violets and hints of sweet cherry on the nose, with a bit of sweet meat too!  The palate is tight, with initial tangy fruit and thens some bitter chocolate, liquorice and peppercorns kick in.  The darker elements are enjoyable, but it needs the time for these to settle down.  Leather on the finish, a really fine wine just too young.  8.5/10

Louis Jadot Website Where you can find full vintage information
Hatch Mansfield Website 

#227 Crap of the Valentine Week...Heart bottle holder

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but ugly goes right to the core"  These words were said by the modern philosopher, Mr William Connolly, and he has a point!  And it is up to you whether you think that this gift is the "perfect gift for the Valentine's Day holiday!" or is an eyesore that will have your spouse reaching for the phone to the divorce lawyer, should you give this to them on Sunday.

So, if you fancy playing Russian roulette with your relationship, you can buy this bottle holder from Occupation Gifts.  It costs $85

#226 A prostitute with a chastity belt - Tasting wines with a cold.

 

I feel like a prostitute with a chastity belt on.  Granted, a prostitute still may be able to do many elements of her chosen profession, whilst wearing such a garment, but ultimately if the lady of the night is unable to have sex, it defeats the purpose of hiring her!  And when you are a wine retailer, or a blogger, and you have a cold, it is as if your talent is being restrained by a phlegm coated chastity belt.  You can’t unleash the two senses that you need the most to try wines, and because of this all the other elements of my job are just pointless.  Sure, I can waffle on about the colour of the wine, the legs and how clear it is, but bottom line, if you can’t sample the goods, opening the bottle is pointless.

As I write this, I have a stinker of a cold, and no matter how many Vicks inhalers I shove up my nose, how much Vaporub I smear over every part of the upper half of my body and no matter how many cold & flu capsules I take I can’t shift this bug, and it means that I can’t taste a damn thing.  And so I am resorting to eating spicy food, and lots of it. 

Normally I am a wimp when it comes to chilli and am frequently told to ‘man up’ by my chilli chomping friends, but when I have a cold, I tend to overdose on it.  I made a chilli that would normally kill me, but I managed to munch quite happily on a bowl full of it.  Tonight, the Thai takeaway had seriously slipped and thrown full chillies into my curry, and I didn’t realise until my numb taste buds felt just a touch of heat and I looked down and saw several green heat bombs swimming around amongst the red pepper and chicken.  When I have a cold, I may act like a pathetic child who moans and mopes around thinking that he about to die, but when it comes to eating, I am (finally) a real man, and eat very spicy food, as it is the only thing I can actually taste!

So I decided to try various wines to see if I could actually taste them when I had a cold, and was stoned on Beechams.  And this very unscientific test came up with the following conclusions, so take note as there will be a test later.  A majority of red wines from France are undrinkable, having their fruit totally masked, all you get is the bitter secondary flavours and a shed load of alcohol.  Bigger new world reds have their fruit power through the cold a bit, but you do really need a lot of sweeter flavours to taste anything,  Port works too for this reason, but the alcohol is more noticeable as the fruit is muted somewhat and the booze tends to become a bit too powerful.

Whites aren’t much better.  Rounder flavoured whites, Chardonnays and Semillons, instigate a gag reflex, and whilst you can taste tarter whites, you might as well be sucking on a lemon.  In fact, do suck on a lemon, you’ll get some much needed vitimin C.  Sparkling wine doesn’t work, regardless of whether it is Champagne or not, the bubbles make you want to sneeze and then there is the unfortunate problem of juggling a glass of wine and trying to find a tissue before you have to sneeze the contents of your nasal passages into the palm of your hand.

So really, what it comes down to is Germany, and here lies the salvation for any wine lover with the sniffles.  A cheap, but decent, German Riesling has the sweetness you need to be able to taste it, but also has the citrus flavours that your body is now craving due to the multiple honey and lemon drinks you have been downing.  Finally, it goes well with Thai food, so bring out the chillies again.  This cold has made me hungry!