#261 Simple wine notes from Vergelegen

The name Vergelegen sounds like something the Swedish Chef from the Muppets would say.  I tried their wines recently, this is what I thought.

2009 Vergelegen Sauvignon Blanc

OK, so the labeling is a lie!  It is neither entirely Sauvignon Blanc, and isn’t even entirely from 2009, but because of the rules, they can still label this as they have!  And that isn’t a bad thing because although this contains 5% of Semillon, and two fifths of that from 2008, it is a tasty bottle of wine!  At £9.49 it is in the ‘just under a tenner until the government raises the tax again’ price point where there is a lot of competition, but this South African wine holds up well.  Very grassy, with some green chilli peppers on the nose with some gooseberry.  A nice, fresh palate with some lime skin and lemon juice, but with a creamy palate.  Clean and fresh finish.  7.5/10

2009 Vergelegen Reserve Sauvignon Blanc

Much more herby than the basic Sauvignon, with asparagus aromas, some warm nettles and a hot concrete aroma.  The palate is softer, some round stone fruit with some tangerine and a lovely texture.  A good wine, and worth the £14.50 it costs.  8/10

2008 Vergelegen Chardonnay

Vanilla pod and mango on the nose with lemon juice squeezed all over it!  Oak is there, but not massive, dry, very clean with some pineapple skin and a bit of under ripe mango on the palate.  Vanilla comes through with pine and just a bit of heat on the finish.  Very clean.  £9.50 a bottle is a steal.  8.5/10

2008 Vergelegen Reserve Chardonnay

The basic chardonnay has a lemony colour to it, but this is bright yellow.  A sort of yellow that doesn’t exist in nature.  The nose has a bundle of oak, but quite Burgundian in it, with some cream and buttered toast.  There is bitter wood up front on the palate and then this is softened by the fruit,  A nice wine, quite balanced once you get through the big oak up front.  8/10, but at £14.50 it is a bit pricy.

2007 Vergelegen Blanc

This is their oaked Semillon Sauvignon and, although I don’t normally like oaked Sauvignon, but it is quite tasty.  It is grassy, yet with some light floral elements, nice veggie notes on the soft and creamy palate, but with oak elements coming through.  Lemon and honey is on the palate, but it has a bit of heat on the finish.  It is a very good wine, but £22?  A bit pricy.  8/10

2007 Vergelegen Cabernet Merlot

56% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc, that gives a bit of wet tar on the nose, some sweet berries, mint and cocoa.  Hints of tobacco coat the whole thing.  The palate is soft, it has the South African burnt rubber element that I associate with Pinotage, but it is not off putting.  A hot finish, with liquorice and spice.  7/10 £9.50

2006 Vergelegen Shiraz

A great wine.  OK, so it is £14.50 a bottle, but it is worth it.  A rich, sweet element on the nose, lots of rich, almost ripasso sweet aromas.  Dried berries, menthol, some lovely spice and berry compote.  The palate is dry, spicy with some pippy elements and a balanced finish of sweet fruit, leather and blackcurrant cordial.  8/10

2006 Vergelegen Reserve Merlot

Ah, another wine that contains other grapes!  91% Merlot and the remains split evenly between Cabernets Franc and Sauvignon.  This £14.50 wine is a bit of a waste of money.  The nose is fruit driven, no rubber, but with hints of nettle, eucalyptus and bramble.  Some floral elements too.  The palate is a bit dull, the fruit is there but it just lacks any form of interest, which is worse than it being bad!  6/10

2005 Vergelegen Cabernet Sauvignon

A bit of veggie and bramble on the nose, some dried lavender and a cherry aroma too.  The palate is nice, some raspberry and bramble, dark chocolate and liquorice.  The tannins grip, with punchy, crunchy fruit on the mid palate, and more vegetal elements on the finish.  I like this.  8/10

2003 Vergelegen Red

A blend of 78% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest Merlot and Cabernet Franc, and spent 24 months in French Oak, this wine has a voluptuous nose, with juicy bramble and blackcurrant punching its way out of the glass.  There is also some milk chocolate and toffee.  Some sweet fruit on the palate, quite thick and intense with berries being rammed in your mouth.  Very chunky tannin, with a really nice, knitted together structure.  This is big, but is quite balanced and a long, juicy, finish that comes back  in waves.  At £27 it is a bit much, but it is very very tasty.  9/10

#260 Red Stripes

OK, secret time.  The first wine that I bought to cellar was a d’Arenberg Coppermine Road Cabernet Sauvignon.  It was in 2001 and my late friend, and then assistant manager, Duncan said that I’d ‘get’ this wine as it was new world, easy to understand and was big and sweet.  Then I discovered Bordeaux and returned that bottle and bought a bottle of Ducru Beaucaillou with the credit and a bit more cash.  And so my love affair with the orange labeled St Julien was born, simply because I liked the orange label and had £20 credit to put to the price of a £50 bottle of wine.

And that is where my relationship with d’Arenberg pretty much ended.  Sure, there were a few tastings where our paths crossed, and I remember that the Red and White Ochre that d’Arenberg made getting reasonable Parker points once, but most of the time I just ignored the wines with the red stripe on the label.

So I decided to take a look at a few of d’Arenberg’s stranger wines.  I didn’t need to try their Shiraz or Cabernets as there are hundreds of similar wines at similar price points.  But I thought I’d take a look at what this large producer is doing with Tempranillo, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Mourvedre.  These wines are the harder sells, the wines that only specialists can really sell, and if it was some unknown small producer, even the best specialist might struggle with these grapes from Oz.  But by having the distinctive red stripe down the label makes the selling of these wines a bit easier as it is a recognized brand.  I popped the corks…. Wait, no I didn’t, I unscrewed them as they are under Stelvin.  And that was my first problem.

These wines were all SO dumb when you opened and poured them.  I know that any serious wine person will let them breathe, but a lot of people who will buy these won’t.  And maybe this is a problem with screwcaps.  They may keep them fresh and ‘as the winemaker wants them’ but the first sniff of this wine just totally numbed and dull.  I obviously then started sloshing the wines around in the glass like a madman, giving these freshly trapped wines some air, and they improved dramatically.  This is what I found.

2005 d’Arenberg The Sticks & Stones Tempranillo Grenache Shiraz (McLaren Vale) £15

Rich aroma of cherry fruit, a lot of mint and herbs, with a little black pepper and chocolate.  A little fruit pie on the finish.  Palate is restrained, a bit of fresh fruit, but a lot of burnt meat juice, black pepper, rubber and some dried leaves.  Very woody.  OK, but a bit too much bang, and not enough bucks.  6.5/10

2006 d’Arenberg The Galvo Garage Cab Sauv Merlot Petit Verdot Cab Franc (McLaren Vale, Adelaide Hills) £15

Rich, perfumey aroma, lots and lots of sweet fruit, brambles, some cassis and a little bit of violets.  Kinda reminds me of every sodding overly sweet Australian wine I’ve ever tried, but with just a little bit of sophistication.  Palate is ok, a bit sweet, a bit oaky, but with a bit of depth and veg coming through.  Some nice leathery tannins, a bit of cocoa and not a horrific alcohol burn that you’d expect from an Aussie at 14.5% (and the rest) alcohol.  Not bad for a Bordeaux blend.  7.5/10

2007 d’Arenberg The Twenty Eight Road Mourvedre (McLaren Vale) £17

Perfumed.  Nice floral aromas, some red berries and just a hint of cinnamon coming off the nose.  Very gentle all the way through.  Palate is soft, gentle spice, crunchy red fruits and with some savoury notes.  Quite a light wine, with stoney elements, nice cherry stone and plum skin flavours.  Finish is quite long, and tasty enough.  I just wish it had a bit of character.  It feels as though the winemaker is just being a little too safe with this wine, and not allowing himself to make a really interesting wine.  7.5/10

They are good wines, well made, just not particularly inspiring products.  I just wish that they had grabbed me a bit more.

#259 Vintage Chart iPhone Apps

How do you rate vintage chart apps, when in reality they all do exactly the same thing!  Give a list of how well various vintages are doing now.  So I downloaded a few and here are my thoughts.

The Wine Spectator Vintage Chart is not bad.  Easy to use, just lots of lists, with 100pt scoring and a very simple “Drink”, “Drink or Hold” and “Hold” comment.  Press on the small information symbol and you get a very brief, but accurate (as you would expect) opinion on the vintage as a whole.  Vintage port goes back to 1900, Sauternes back to the fifties, but Bordeaux is disappointingly limited to options of “Left Bank”, “Right Bank” back to the mid nineties and “Vintage Reds” which goes back to 1900.  I think this is definitely a work in progress, and where you see an information plus symbol, you get a good in depth assessment of the vintage.  When updates come, this will be a fantastic app.  7/10 at the moment, potentially 10/10 Cost: Free

Cellar Rat gives you two options – new world and old world and then splits it down in a very simple chart. America features prominently, split into numerous regions including New York, Washington, Oregon, and then those regions split into their sub regions.  Europe is less well served, with Bordeaux red just coming all together  (do we really need to know the Finger Lakes in New York over St Julien?).  The biggest thing that puts you off is the smiley and grimacing faces that tell you what the vintage was like.  This, although useful for more obscure regions of America, is not a great app.  5/10 Cost: Free

If you like Spanish wine, WineVintages gives you an in depth but brief guide to this country.  A very easy to use app, where you select the year and scroll down to the region of Spain you want, it is a good, simple design, but obviously limited in the grand scheme of things.  6/10 Cost: Free

 World Wine Vintages, costing a whopping 59 pence, created by Acquamedia, is by far the most comprehensive wine vintage app I have found.  Limited in that the vintages only go between 1990 and 2007, it is split down into great detail with many sub regions from numerous countries.  There are some massive errors, with the main grape varieties in Port being listed as Silvaner and Muller Thurgau, but with the main chart being serchable by region, country and year, this is a great, easy to use guide to the vintages.  Needs to have updates soon though.  8/10 Cost: £0.59

 

The best however, is Berry Bros & Rudd’s app.  Amongst other features, the vintage guide is split by region and vintage and has good vintage reports through the information symbol.  You can also browse the company’s stock and therefore buy the wines too, but what gives this the nod over Wine Spectator or World Wine Vintages, is that it is up to date, easy to use and has a very handy ‘best vintages’ guide when searching by region.  9/10  Cost: Free

#258 Interview with Richard Geoffroy, chef de cave at Dom Perignon

Richard Bray was fortunate to attend the launch of Dom Perignon Oenotheque Rose earlier in the year, and spoke with Chef de Cave, Richard Geoffroy on behalf of The Tasting Note and his own blog, WineRant

Your family made wine in the Cotes de Blanc for several generations, but you trained originally as a doctor – was there a comfort going back?

 Medicine, for me, was the way of being rebellious. It sounds funny, but it was my way of making it away from something all too predictable. I felt that I had to prove to my friends and family that I could make it on my own. And once I’d made it, I started thinking ‘well, so what’ and so the attraction back to my roots was too strong and my belief is that when you come from the land, you can deny it and think you can leave, but no – you belong. I’m from a family of farmers; I’m a farmer. Even when I’m an MD, I’m a farmer. And I’m glad I came back. I’m happier as a person, and I have a greater sense of achievement in my wine making.

It is often forgotten, particularly in a setting like this (the Scottish launch of Dom Pérignon  Œnothèque Rosé at the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh) that what we make and sell is actually an agricultural product

You are so right. I keep telling our marketing and business people “it all depends on the elements”. You’ve got to be ambitious in business, and ambition is fine, but you have to remain humble at the same time, to know where you place yourself in the picture with nature otherwise, one day, you are in trouble. It is an element of wisdom in a way. And never to overdo things, trying too hard.

Do you find that in your role, not as a winemaker but as, occasionally, a brand ambassador?

Its funny because I don’t think this way. It is like in sport, if you start thinking “I’m Michael Schumacher”, you don’t think of the status you are at, or what you have achieved: you are only trying to make your own thing. It is the best way to have little pressure. I’m afraid of pressure, pressure is always bad because it makes you compromise or not be yourself.

It’s probably why the wines remain exceptional vintage after vintage…

Voila, Voila, Voila. It gets back to my point about not trying too hard, when you pretend… no, no. You’ve got to be yourself. I’m very suspicious of flattery, I’m uneasy with flattery and particularly when it is undeserved.

You said that your favourite vintage was always the most challenging one. You had a few landmark vintages after your first in 1990, and I’ve spoken to winemakers who say the great vintages are always the most challenging because nature is giving you a lot and they want to hold back…

Yes, you have a point because when you are given so much you had better be up to it, so it is a more personal challenge. But in the end I’m more after the technically challenging years like 1980, which I didn’t make but my predecessor did, whenever I taste it I say ‘wow’ – it is alien, it comes from Mars! For me this wine means more than the greater vintages. We released ’80 as an Œnothèque, it was my decision, and I gave it justice, because many people had been critical of it in the first place, and then when it was an Œnothèque they said “the wine is great” and maybe they were influenced in the first place by the pedigree of the vintage which was nothing in France, and I was so happy to give my predecessor justice!

1996 was challenging, there were issues with oxidisation with the Pinot Noir, it was hard to overcome that problem and I think many people failed in ’96 because of that.

You’ve just launched the 1990 Œnothèque Rosé, which was disgorged in 2007. It strikes me that there had to be a very early decision made to release this wine. Was it a few years prior to the disgorgement or was there always a plan to release an Œnothèque Rose?

We had been wanting to do one for a long time, we decided it would be 1990 and I started tasting it on a regular basis and charting its progress, and I could anticipate that the wine would be ready in one or two years and then we disgorged the entire release at once. So the second release will be from that initial disgorgement. The remaining 1990 remains on the lees for a third release. So by tasting twice a year, you see the whole thing moving along.

The British palate likes older champagne, and I was wondering if your personal preference was for an older wine or do you prefer them younger?

I’m not with the British palate; it’s not what I’m really after. I’m after what Dom Pérignon Œnothèque is: so intense but yet little fat and not tired at all. I’m at a point where I cannot separate personal taste and my job at Dom Pérignon. They became so intimate and I don’t have the possibility of distancing myself from my job.

If you are to have a glass of something outside of Champagne, what would it be?

As we speak, it would be Burgundy or Port. I love Port, I have a fascination for port. It is about as rustic and sophisticated as can be! There is a tension. Port is a paradox and I love it. And burgundy, something that is so close to my own world, and it gives a mirror image. It’s intriguing!

Do you see yourself as a caretaker of the Dom Pérignon house or as more proactive, as a builder?

A builder. I’m not good at caretaking. A journalist asked me yesterday ‘how am I maintaining the style?’ – I’m not in maintenance you know, I keep pushing. Consistency is terrible and my brief is not make it consistent. It is push push push. The chairman of Dom Pérignon  allows me to be independent enough; I’m running my business within the business (of LVMH); I’m an entrepreneur. Mark my words, in the coming years there are going to be quite a few stunning things to come… Dom Pérignon doesn’t have to be obsessed with ratings; it is about the quality of the comments. And when I’m asked about the price (of Dom Pérignon ) I say that I have to factor in the vintages that we don’t declare.

Are the vintages you don’t declare some of the more challenging? How early into the process do you realise that it just isn’t worthy of a vintage?

Not too early, I don’t want to have preconceived ideas at picking or vinification, I never comment on the vintage at the time, I wait after several rounds of tasting individual components before I comment, and yet I keep going and blending even in the lousier years, I go to the final blend. I never give up before hand and never have preconceived ideas. It is something I learned in medicine. In medicine you have someone injured coming into emergency, if it bleeds from here (points to his head), the scalp (bleeding) is very spectacular but there could be internal bleeding. It is so easy to be influenced by what you see, but without looking. Stay calm, in control.

Which vintage has proven most challenging for you?

In my time, 1996, because of the highly oxidisable pinot noir. There was a major issue of dehydration in the berries. It concentrated the acidity. It was very difficult to balance the blend, and 2003 is another challenging year because of the heat, which can make the wines very forward, but there were ways of going round the problem.

You’ve done more in the last 20 years at Dom Pérignon than had been done since the forties, and even though the range has expanded, it is a very simple and logical expansion

Its very simple, its very logical. Everyone comes up with a need for a ‘range’, but I don’t speak of a ‘range’ at Dom Pérignon. I don’t like the word range. Its simple, there are two blends and we will never extend it outside the two blends.

Thanks to Moet Hennessy & Kirsty Duncanson

Dom Perignon Website

#257 English Wine....

The port of Dover is up for sale, and the locals are revolting and trying to buy the port to stop it getting into the hands of Johnny Foreigner.  Ever since Ceaser set sail and saw a bunch of blue faced barbarians, the white cliffs of Dover have guarded England from the invaders from Europe.  And now the port is being sold off, probably to a nation that once tried to invade us, making it all too easy for Jerry to sneak in the next time it all kicks off.

And what were the cliffs guarding? Black and white cows, Vera Lynn, the Austin Seven, roast beef and the green and pleasant fields.  So why are there people prepared to abandon the crops that have been planted in our soils for hundreds of years to grow vines?  Vines, the fruit that makes the fermented beverage of choice in countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Germany… all countries that have tried to bully their way into the UK and take us over?  Well if the three wines I tried today are anything to go by, the question “why have we been planting vines in England?” will remain unanswered as they were horrific. 

Now I’ve got into trouble in the past from British fruit wine producers for criticizing their wines.  The fact that I subsequently did a blind taste test against similarly priced grape wines, and the grape wines came out overwhelmingly on top (100% preferring a bad, cheap Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc over an elderflower fruit wine, and 80% preferring a cheap and terrible French rose over a bramble wine) proved that my opinion of ‘these wines are horrible’ was justified.  So, to make sure that I am not alone when the inevitable hatred and bile comes flying my way, I got a number of other people to try these wines and they too thought much the same - that they were atrocious.

First up, the Shawsgate winery in East Anglia...

2004 Shawsgate Neptune

OK, so this is commended at the International Wine Challenge, and according to the company’s website is supposed to have a “rich, elegant aroma of wild fig, apricot and hints of citrus”.  Well I got slightly oxidized champagne, with a harsh, cheap vodka aroma.  Some hints of dried fig did come through, but they weren’t particularly nice hints, and there was some overripe strawberry too.  The palate was an appalling nutty mess, fat with a bruised fruit flavour.  An overly dry and acidic finish.  2/10 £7.99

Other comments

“OH DEAR GOD!” – CG, St Andrews

“horrific” – VF, Cupar

2004 Shawsgate Pandora Medium Dry

Boldly proclaimed on their label “She was made in heaven.  Every God contributed something to perfect her”.  Well I couldn’t agree more, because Hades also had significant influence in the end product that was contained within the bottle.  It had a minerally nose, with lemon hints coming through, but a pretty dull aroma.  Now that in itself is not too bad, but the palate had burnt lemon and orange flavours, a bit of cheap lemon marmalade.  Now I’m going to give this the benefit of the doubt and not score it, as the vintage on their website is 2009 and therefore this is five years old.  You have to question the logic though of selling both the 2004 and the 2009 vintages of the same wine through their UK agent.  Is it a case of ‘get rid of the old stock first so not to lose money’? £8.99

Other comments

“I’m going to gag” – CG, St Andrews

“can you give me something that tastes of wine please?” – AD, St Andrews

2006 Strawberry Hill Pinot Noir

Made from fruit from vines that are only four years old, it has a thin aroma and palate.  Cheap burgundy, with a confit pork belly aroma!  The palate is quite savoury, with small hints of strawberry sweets and then a nasty bubblegummy flavour, and a plastic finish.  To be fair, I am glad that Gloucestershire producer Tim Chance has put down some ‘mainstream’ grape varieties as at least he has the comparison with other European nations to see how he is doing, but, at the moment, he isn’t doing well.  It reminded me of a Lebanese wine that I tried five years ago, that now, with older vines, is a perfectly acceptable wine. 3.5/10 £10.00

Other comments

“that just tastes of wine” – AD, St Andrews

I know that three wines don’t mean that every English wine is horrible, but these three, available nationwide through a well known and large agency, don’t fly the flag well at all.  I just hope that English Wine improves….

#256 Peter picked a pair of ports

When you have a new bloke start working for you in your shop you need to adopt the mantra of New Labour and focus on "education, education, education".  I've recently had an Aussie join my jolly ranks of employees, and unlike many bright young hopefuls wanting to work for a cool shop and enjoy the staff discount on booze, this fella has worked in alcohol shops back home, so knows that it is about lugging boxes about and dealing with annoying customers.... before you enjoy the staff discount!

So as he has a lot of experience in Australian wine, I thought I'd start to mould his European palate with some port!  A basic introduction to ruby and tawny port, showing the influence that time in a barrel has on this fortified wine.  So I opened up two ports and discovered that these two, well, entry level(ish) wines were absolutely fantastic.

First up was Grahams The Tawny.  I've been subsequently informed that this is mostly 15 year old tawny port (I am open to being corrected on that one), and expecting a pretty young style, but was really impressed when I found that it showed hints of age!  There were lots of lovely raisin characters on the nose, old, slightly dried honey mixed with a bit of honey and a touch of soft leather - baseball mitt!  Palate is dry, some really nice leathery elements, sweet caramel coated nuts, a little dried apricots and some very nice heat on the finish. A tasty tawny port.  8/10

Next up was the original organic port, Fonseca Terra Prima.  I'd remembered liking this port when I last tried it, but that was such a long time ago the details have escaped me!  This had a lovely cassis and bramble on the nose, a little cracked coffee bean mixed with dark chocolate. The palate is soft, juicy dark berry fruit, a little heat up front and then some really tasty savoury elements creeping through.  Lots of coffee on the finish.... minty notes too with some more of the coffee bean flavour.  A long end, a touch of alcohol heat, but essentially a cracking cracking bottle of port.  8.5/10

So my newbie got his first insight into port and I got to revisit two wines I'd long since abandoned and found them to be real gems.  Great wines, the pair of them.