#501 Tempus Two

When you are born as a fourth generation of a wine making family, and you want to do something other than make wine, what do you do?  Lisa McGuigan had that problem and went off to run hotels and restaurants around Australia.  But in 1996, the call to get back to wine came and she decided to do things her own way.  Starting in a garage in Sydney she formed Hermitage Road, named after the road that runs past some of the family vineyards.  The French got a bit narky regarding this, so they changed the name to Tempest Two.  I tried their range and here is what I thought.

2010 Tempest Two Semillon Sauvignon

Soft citrus, a lot of booze coming off, a little plasticine as well.  The palate is simple, a touch lemony with a bit of lime juice, though watered down.  Simple and a bit thin.  A bit high priced at £10.  78pts

2011 Tempus Two Copper Series Sauvignon Blanc

Spending two months in french oak, it smells quite nice.  A bit of green chilli coming off with just a touch of oak emerging.  The palate has more veggie flavours - green pepper and a little bit of dry wood coming off.  A nice wine with good balanced acid on the finish.  I'd like a bit more character for it's fifteen pounds price point, but still it is nice.  81pts

2011 Tempest Two Copper Series Wilde Chardonnay

Nice gentle oak - some charred wood and then a creamy element coming off with some peach and pear.  A little bit hard on the palate, some oak first but the fruit is a little flabby.  Alcohol comes on on the finish as does a lot of oak but, fortunately then it settles down.  It is just a bit unbalanced and too expensive at fifteen pounds.  76pts

2009 Tempest Two Cabernet Merlot

Big sweet fruit with a dark aniseed coming through the medium weight berries.  There is a violet element coming off, but a bit confected.  The palate is pretty much what you expect at a tenner, some greenery coming off and a bit of white pepper at the end.  80pts

2010 Tempest Two Copper Series GSM

As near as makes no difference, toilet cleaner on the nose.  More of a baked berry pie from Tesco's Value section filling following it up so things are not going well.  The palate has a bit of up front spice, some bitter, dark liquourice flavours and then an earthiness, but there is that chemically note coming all the way through.  High acid, a bit punchy and although the finish is clean and short it doesn't make up for the rest of the wine.   64pts

2008 Tempus Two Pewter Series Shiraz

Big, sweet berry but with some more vibrant, raspberry aromas cutting through the jam.  There is some black pepper there as well on the nose.  Big, menthol, with some jamminess, but a backbone of spice, savoury and charred meat.   A black pepper fest on the finish which is quite nice but MAN, the tannin and alcohol is big.  Not bad though for a ballsy Shiraz at £16.  80pts

2011 Tempus Two Copper Series Moscato

Very bright, fresh and clean with some lovely light lemon and melon aromas.  A clean style of Moscato with some sweet, fresh aromas.  There is a nice, simple mousse, a lovely bright melon and peach flavour but without too much sweetness.  Acid cleans things up nicely.  83pts

I can't help but think that making these wines a few pounds cheaper with less fancy packaging would make these wines a bit more sellable.  Apparently Lisa McGuigan's plan was "to create something that had appeal to a niche market, a generation of wine lovers who had an appreciation for the finer things in life".  To say these wines were all style and no substance would be unfair, they are just a bit too fancy and a bit too pricy for the contents of the bottle.

By Peter Wood with No comments

#500 Six Questions with... Angelo Gaja

Angelo Gaja is a living legend!  The current owner and president of his family company, Gaja is credited with revolutionising Italian winemaking and is known as "the man who dragged Piedmont into the modern world"!

Born in 1940, he started working for the company at the age of 21.  He immediately got to work, experimenting with green harvesting in his first year, single vineyard production half a dozen years later and introducing malolactic fermentation in the 1970s.  He planted Cabernet Sauvignon as he reasoned that Italy would only be taken seriously internationally if they produced world class Cabernet.  His attention to detail has made Gaja one of the most highly acclaimed Italian wines and their Barbaresco is one of the world's truly great wines.

Now in his seventies, he has handed over the routine running of the company to his daughters, but still works full days.  I asked him six questions...

Describe yourself in three words

A wine artisan

What is the best, and worst, wine you have ever made?

A wine quality depends in a large part on the vintage's weather conditions.  If they are awful, like in Piedmont in 1960, 1972, 1980 and 1992, it would be very difficult to produce a good quality wine.  If they are perfect, such as 1961, 1978, 1989, 1997 and 2004, then there is the possibility to produce a wine of great elegance.  The elegant wines are those which are best at matching with food and making your table guests happy.  

If you weren't in the wine trade, is there any other job you would like to do?

I would have been a photographer, to catch the reality which is surrounding us, to focus on only one aspect of it through the lens.

What is your first memory of drinking wine?

I was told that when I was six years old, I drunk a drop of Barbaresco and I was disgusted.  I was expecting a sweet and creamy taste, instead dry and austere.  I improved a lot with age!

What is your favourite book?

I do not own a TV and purchase ten daily newspapers to read the articles of the journalists which I follow - spread throughout 10 to 12 hours of work each day.  Only during the short holiday periods I have do I get to read, I usually choose from the classics, not looking at the top ten bestsellers list.

Name three people, real or fictional, living or dead, that would be guests at your dream dinner party and what would you be drinking?

Winston Churchill for the pleasure of smelling his cigar's perfume at the end of the meal.  Mahatma Gandi to suggest he enjoy the Gaja Barbaresco as a way of returning after his long fasts.  Finally, I would pick a poor unknown man, taken randomly from the street to see how it feels to him.  

We'd drink Dolcetto d'Alba, Barbaresco and Barolo (all served at 14-15°C), a Moscato d'Asti (at a cooler temperature) combined with authentic, old fashioned, seasonal food without a waiter near to reveal the mystery of how it is made or what the ingredients are.

Thanks to Vinum Wines

By Peter Wood with No comments

#499 100 Grapes - Baga and Vital

Grown in western Portugal, Vital is a white variety that is a bit boring with low acid unless it is shoved high up a hill!  Permitted in numerous regions, putting it into oak can benefit the grape as it actually gives it some flavour.  The wine I tried today had this treatment and, i'm pleased to say, it was quite tasty.

2010 Casal Figueira Vinhas Velhas (50-100 year vines)

Some lovely peach but with a bundle of vibrant ginger - a touch of oak but very much acting as seasoning rather than flavour. The palate is very nice, clean, apple and stoney fruit, again just subtle use of oak and a lovely bright, crisp finish.  Slight saltiness too, and clean on the finish.  86pts

Baga produces a tannic wine with high acidity, which is a bit strange considering that one of Portugal's most famous wines - Mateus Rose - had a high percentage of Baga in it, and the wine was neither tannic, nor high in acid.  The Bairraida region is the grape's homeland and I've always loved the hard, tannic reds that it produces, but the wine I tried for 100 Grapes was a sparkling rosé.

2010 Luis Pato Informal Espumante Rose

Lots of strawberry and raspberry pavlova - creamy, meringuey and fruity.  The palate has more of that raspberry coming through with some nice biscotti flavours.  Good balance, nice fresh fruit and clean acid. Very tasty, clean and with a lovely, lingering finish that gives you that raspberry to the end.  84pts

By Peter Wood with No comments

#498 An Ol***ic Ceremony wine trio

There is athletic opening ceremony tonight and due to the lack of 2012 vintage wine, particularly from the London area, I decided to to try three wines from Olympic nations - England and Greece.  None are medal winners, be it gold, silver or bronze, but are summer drinks that I thought were rather tasty.  Neither cost twenty or twelve pounds, but are around the fifteen mark.  

(PS - Mr Trading standards person, I don't make any money from this website and I am simply reviewing wines that I have no commercial benefit from reviewing, therefore I'm allowed to use words such as Olympic, medal, London, 'twenty twelve' and so forth)

2010 Santorini Dry White Wine

Made with the Assyrtiko Grape this is very floral with a bright tangerine aroma coming through.    The palate has more of the same, a little chunky, with some delightful clean fruit, sweeter citrus - almost blood orange - and with a lovely minerally, pencil lead and hot summer dust finish.  Delicious.  88pts

2010 Stopham Estate Pinot Blanc

From Sussex, this is minerally, gentle with some hints of hot grass and gooseberry coming out.  A lovely, grassy, gooseberry flavour with hedgerow, with hawthorn, lemon pith and slightly diluted lemon juice.  A touch minerally on the finish with nice acid and very balanced.  89pts

And if you win a race, you could always try this English fizz

2007 Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs

A Kent producer, with round, biscotti aromas with citrus pith, pea pod and a lovely bright lemon aroma.  A tiny amount of oriental spice as well.  The palate is more of the same, delicious crisp apple followed by slightly underripe melon, and an awesome, Champagne-esque minerality and acid.  Delicious.  90pts

By Peter Wood with No comments

#497 Second First Release

A year ago I reviewed the 2010 vintage of Sedlescombe First Release and it changed how I viewed English wine.  Before then, I'd always thought 'oh well, they are English wines so I'll be a bit lenient', but Roy Cook's wine changed that.  He was producing a wine that was serious enough to be compared with with other nations, and subsequently I've discovered other super wines from England that can also compete on an international level.  That First Release was a blend of Bacchus, Rivaner and Solaris and was a cracking biodynamic wine priced £13.  I recently got sent a bottle of the second release of the First Release, the 2011 vintage and noticed a three things.  Firstly, it had gone up to fifteen pounds, secondly it was now a blend of Reichensteiner (62%), Bacchus (21%), Johanniter (10%) and seven percent of other things.  The final thing I noticed was that my note for the 2010 vintage was used on Sedlescombe's website for the 2010 vintage!  I eagerly opened the bottle to write another note.

2011 Sedlescombe First Release Oh dear.  It has intial light bright fruit with some slight buttered popcorn element, and I am not keen on popcorn.  There is some citrus, summer hedgerow and a bit of Refreshers coming off the nose - quite sherbety and zingy.  The palate has more hedgerow flowers, quite soft and yet there is a slight hint of lemon pith coming through on the mid palate.  The finish has some herbal elements, but is a bit short.  This isn't as good a wine as the first First Release, and is a bit more pricey.  79pts

I also tried the 2011 Sedlescombe Bodiam Harvest, a single vineyard wine from their vineyard at Bodiam Castle.  It was a bit more savoury, some woodier notes coming off the nose and less fruit.  A bit of pear juice comes of the nose which is nice - quite rustic.  The palate has a bundle of fruit up front, more pear and a touch of peach.  I find the mid palate a bit weighty and then the finish has a strange, banana skin flavour that I'm not certain I like, but am certainly intrigued by.  A bit confusing but I wouldn't say no to a glass.  76pts  The third wine I tried was the 2011 Sedlescombe Pinot Noir & Dornfelder Rose which smelled a bit like Croft Pink Port without the sweetness - a lot of cherry, raspberry and strawberry with a tiniest bit of cream coming through.  It is a drinkable rosé, nothing spectacular, but, chilled down, not bad.  74pts

Roy Cook's wines are still nice wines, and I do think they are serious enough that I can judge them as an international level.  My main complaint is that they are too expensive.  I can suggest other wines from countries such as Georgia and Japan that I'd prefer to buy at around this price, and I'm not even thinking about the more recognised nations and regions.  Putting them on a restaurant list, with restaurant margins, and I could maybe see the appeal, but at the lower margin retail level they would be tough sells.  Sorry Roy.

By Peter Wood with No comments

#496 (part 2) Hooch is back!

Further to the last post about Dragon Soop, the original RTD, Hoopers Hooch, is making a comeback.  Harking back to the Britpop era, Hooch came under stinging criticism for being a lemonade with 4% alcohol and the brand suffered a huge amount of bad publicity with phrases such as 'Alcopops sale led to death' being plastered all over the papers.

Looking back, with what has become the norm now, it all seems as innocent as Olivia Newton John at the start of Grease.  Four percent alcohol is nowadays viewed as nothing and Hooch actually tasted of cloudy lemonade, if a touch on the confected side.  The problem most people had was with the label saying it appealed to children.

Hooch is a bit like British radio DJ Chris Evans.  I the mid 1990's it was the bad boy, promoting excess and debauchery, turning up for work late and hungover.  Nowadays, with the success of Magners Cider and Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer being served over ice in civilised company, Global Brands is hoping that Hooch can do what Chris Evans has done, grow up, become more presentable and become a part of the establishment - with just an occasional glimpse back at the naughtiness that went on two decades ago.

By Peter Wood with No comments

#496 Wreck the Hoose Juice - Dragon Soop

I am not going to go all 'Daily Mail' on you and start campaigning for the banning of these drinks, but I really do not understand how drinks like 'Dragon Soop' are allowed to be sold.  Forgetting about the debate over whether the colourful tins will attract children or not for a second, they are horrifically bad for you.  With as much caffeine as four cups of coffee, and with four units of alcohol for £2.99, they are quite simply juice to get you drunk and buzzed as quickly as possible.  High alcohol sweet drinks such as these are known is Scotland as 'Wreck the hoose juice' due to them being drunk by undesirable characters who have a compulsion to smash things when drunk.  I sampled just a little of these in case Dragon Soop drove me to destroy a bus shelter.  Here is what I found.


Dragon Soop Herbial Fusion

Smells like Red Bull - but with no redeeming features, almost a sweet, confected strawberry medicine aroma.  The palate is a bit like 'Tesco value Red Bull' with a bitter alcohol element on the finish.  Doesn't appear very alcoholic, but that is the problem as you could mistake this for a budget Red Bull and not know you were drinking loads of alcohol. 

Dragon Soop Blue Raspberry

Rubber and a salty soy sauce aroma.  Doesn't smell like raspberries.  Doesn't smell like Raspberry slush puppies either which that would be a redeeming feature and remind me of summer holidays in Scarborough.  There is a positive on the palate - it is less sweet than the Herbal Fusion.  The negatives?  This is so bad, everything I hold dear to me is tarnished by this beverage.

Dragon Soop Sour Apple

Smells ok, like confected apple sweets or apple Tango.  The palate actually tastes like Granny Smiths apples, confected Granny Smiths apples, but Granny Smiths apples nevertheless.  Then you get a bit of the core of the apple as well on the finish, and whilst this is the best of the three, it isn't saying much.

By Peter Wood with 2 comments

#495 21st Century Corn Laws - Whisky & Milk

Back in 1815, the British Government decided to protect British farmers by introducing the Corn Laws.  It meant that cereal producers in the UK were protected from imports of cheaper grain as it set a minimum price, making sure the British farmer could compete.  Sure it stifled free trade, but what it meant was that farmers could continue to employ people in Britain's rural areas, and not have to lower their prices.  Manufacturers hated these laws, as it kept their raw materials at an artificially high price.  They argued that they wanted to provide cheaper food for the lowest paid, but the reality was that they wanted to maximise their profits by reducing the cost of living, and therefore pay their workers less.  The debate as to whether this was right or wrong bimbled along for thirty years until Prime Minister Robert Peel, a firm believer in free trade, repealed the laws in 1846.  After that, with British farmers no longer protected, there was an exodus of workers from the country to the cities and a poorer standard of living.

In early 19th Century Britain, life was hard in the countryside, but in the cities it was worse.  If you were a labourer in the country, you had your own one room house, albeit small and often filled with three generations of your family.  You could grow your own food, get clean air and your health was, generally, ok.  Sure, if you got a serious illness, due to the complete lack of medicine, you were dead.  A good outdoorsy life made you tough though, so you were less likely to get ill in the first place.  There were problems, landlords increasing rent, bad harvests, modern machinery reducing the need for workers and so on, but you could forage for food, barter and scrounge out a living somehow.  Oh, and you could poop away from your house in a designated 'poop hole' that you dug yourself.  Things in the city were not so rosy.

You were stacked up in tenement housing, families living on top of one another, going to work in mills and factories where safety was non existent and machinery was dangerous.  Exploitative factory owners making you work long hours for a pittance, and no trade union to even try and protect you.  Unlike in the country, there was medicine available in case you were sick, but it was too expensive to buy and so when you did get ill, which was more likely due to your upstairs neighbour, Mrs McLafferty throwing her Feces out of the window, you were just as dead as you were in the country.  So for all the bad that the corn laws did, there was an up side to them - better health and a better environment for the lowest paid.  

from BBC Website

The reason I mention this is that there are two products that various trade bodies are debating price 'fixing' at the minute, the drinks could not be more different.  Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are wanting the public to boycott supermarkets who are cutting the amount they will pay farmers for milk to below cost.  According to Farmers Weekly, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose pay a decent price, whereas, according to the National Farmers Union (NFU), Asda and Morrisons pay below cost, and it is threatening the dairy industry.  If you asked anyone on the street, everyone would want British farmers to be paid a decent amount, but they also want cheap milk.  The chefs, NFU and Farmers Weekly want protection for the farmers instead of a few extra pennies in the public's pocket, and that is perfectly understandable.   To sum it up, the people supporting this are pro-corn law.

The other beverage that is going to war is the whisky industry who claim that the government's planned 50p minimum pricing per unit will damage the industry and the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) is going to court to try and stop it.  The SWA say that 85% of blended whisky will have to go up in price (likely to £14 per bottle), and this is apparently 'punishing those that drink responsibly'.  The whisky industry is the anti-corn law camp.

There are reasonable arguments for and against each.  You could argue that milk should be able to be available cheaply - milk is good for you and essential for bone and teeth development- and if all our milk has to be imported as British farmers can't afford to compete than tough luck for them.  Nobody gave a hoot about the farmers in the 1840s when the corn laws were repealed, so why should we bother about the dairy farmers today?  Similarly, you could argue that alcohol is not an essential and can be bad for you so you should be expected to pay more for luxuries.  If it prevents a few people drinking themselves to death, then imposing a minimum pricing is a good thing.  But what is clear is that two industries that employ thousands of people are convinced that their livelihood is threatened and everyone agrees that this is not a good thing.

So hows about this for a solution.  Put a tax of 10p for every bottle of alcohol that goes under the £1 per 2 units threshold, and give that money to milk farmers.  Everyone wins - the consumer doesn't get the price hike that would make their £10 bottle of vodka cost £14, farmers get the money that they are losing by selling to Morrisons, children continue to get cheap milk and everyone keeps their jobs.  The spirits industry could also give all of their spent grain to farmers for cattle feed, thus reducing the costs of feeding the cows and make the farmer a bit more money too.  The only people who would suffer are lactose intolerant whisky drinkers, and I think we all agree that those few people can be sacrificed for the good of the masses!

By Peter Wood with No comments

#494 Paradis(e)

Speak to a whisky buff and they will say that proper whisky is made in pot stills, essentially a big kettle, where they dump a load of beer into it and boil it.  You can also make whisky in a continuous still and are frequently used when making grain whisky, but these are often seen as lesser whiskies than single malts.  

The same applies with brandy where Cognac (pot stills) is perceived as being a better spirit than Armagnac (continuous) despite the latter being older, indeed Armagnac was one of the first areas in France that started distilling spirits.  There are two reasons for this, the first being that twice pot distilled Cognac is a smoother spirit compared to the once distilled Armagnac, and the second is that Armagnac tends to be made by smaller producers, whereas Cognac is made by big producers who have many millions of marketing Euros, and as we all know, perception is everything.  

Having said this, when Armagnac gets old, it can have an outstanding beauty and balance, and I was presented with the chance to try a trio of old brandies and I wondered how an old Armagnac would stand up to some younger Cognacs.  

First up was a 1982 Delamain Grande Champagne Cognac, landed in 1984 and bottled in 2007 at twenty three years of age.  It had super aromas of dried tropical fruit - papaya and pineapple - with some zingy, fresh summer flowers and evaporated milk leaping out of the glass.  The palate is very alive - some salty flavours mixed with dried fruit, a bit of tobacco and a lovely, leathery flavour.  Dry on the finish and very elegant.  91pts

Moving a little older was a 1979 Hennessy Grande Cognac, landed in 1981 and bottled at twenty seven years old in 2006.  Again, it lept out of the glass, bright honey and lemon aromas with some soft, peachy elements.  Very pretty.  The palate has a leanness to it, some old, polished wood meets dried citrus and a lovely spice coming through which warms throughout the palate.  A gorgeous clean, pencil lead finish that is delicious.  92pts

i then moved onto an old Armagnac, a 1950 Paul Loubere Bas Armagnac bottled in 1998 at forty eight years old.  It was a different beast!  Dark, coffee and lots of demerara sugar soaked raisin aromas.  A bit of pipe tobacco comes off the nose with a delicious perfumed, floral note to it, I really love this concentrated, dark aroma.  The palate has initial sweetness, then some dark caramel and a concentrated coffee flavour with some dark cigar smoke.  It is interesting, but not really that drinkable, and I think it has just got a bit too old.  86pts

In this case, the Cognacs won the day, but I really loved the nose on the Armagnac with it's dark, sweet aromas coming to the fore, the balance just wasn't there on the palate for me, whereas the Hennessy was delightful.  With this in mind, I decided to try another Hennessy Cognac, their Paradis.

Hennessy Paradis is a cognac made by blending together very old brandies from the extensive library stock they hold.  This brandy isn't their top spirit, but at £400 a bottle, it isn't cheap!  The brandy had aromas of flowers, subtle sultanas and a gorgeous creamy, slightly sweet perfumed character.  Tiny amounts of orange zest and orange oil come through as well and just a touch of toffee.  The palate is very subtle with warm, slight spice and a nutty element coming through the dried fruit and aniseed flavours.  Hints of clove and a beautiful dry, floral flavour.  It is simply sublime.  99pts

The Paradis simply blew the other brandies out of the water, being as near to perfect a brandy as you could hope to get.  It has elegance, grace and an ease of drinking, yet every time you put the glass to your lips it astonishes you how good it it.  Goes to show that rather than focusing on vintage, blending various years together to create a masterpiece might be the best way forward for brandy producers!

By Peter Wood with No comments

#493 100 Grapes: Schioppettino

Nope, I'd not heard of it either but I'm really glad that I have now.  Nearly extinct after the phylloxera epidemic as farmers decided to focus on French grapes instead of their native ones, Schioppettino was given a leg up in the 1970's when the EU encouraged planting in the Udine province.  Today it is still mainly seen in Friuli, but has some plantings in Sonoma County in California.

2007  Azienda Agricola 'La Viarte' Giulio di Ceschin Schioppettino

The nose has loads of ground coffee beans coming out and big, juicy dark fruit - lots of damsons and brambles.  The palate is savoury, more of the coffee with a dark, raspberry and bramble fruit driven but supplemented with tarry, herbal woody elements.  A strange, almost clashing style of wine.  Lots of little points of flavours exploding in your mouth (I can see why the name 'Schioppettino' means 'gun shot') with sweetness and softness verses hard, black, charry flavours coming and then some gorgeous pure fruit at the end.  A bundle of brilliance in a bottle.  94pts

By Peter Wood with No comments

#492 The only wines to drink this summer

Thirty years ago the Australian winemakers kicked the French's backside in the UK by offering inexpensive, fruity, ready to drink wines when the European nation was still firmly believing everyone had their own wine cellar to age their bottles for a decade or so.  With no rules to adhere to, Aussie producers could plant whatever they liked, wherever they liked and capitalised massively on the desire of the wine buying public for bottles they could take home and drink that night. 

But now, with the Australian Dollar, high costs of transport and a building market in the far East, Australian producers are seeing a fightback from the French, particularly from the regions in the south.  I've previously highly rated my friend's wines from the Roussillon, but here I'm looking at a much older producer from the region, Domaine Paul Mas. 

With over a thousand hectares of vineyards in the Languedoc, Domaine Paul Mas is big.  They produce an extensive range including brands such as Claude Val, La Forge, Domaine Astruc and Arrogant Frog, but the three wines I tried recently are a new label, Cote Mas.  I know it shouldn't matter, but labelling is important on a bottle and so many great wines get it so tragically wrong.  I still adhere to the theory that the better the label, the worse the wine inside is, and with the Cote Mas wines I immediately liked the labels, and thought I wouldn't be too keen on the wine.   With a 1950's southern French coast feel about them, it made my mind go back to a more romantic time with old Lancias and Citroens dashing about in the sunshine and girls in petticoats and swimming costumes had four times as much material in them as the outfit Rhianna wears to go shopping.  Aesthetically these wines work for me, but what about the stuff in the bottle?

2011 Cote Mas Blanc Mediterranee

Lots of citrus with some chalky elements coming through and some bruised peach and pear on the nose.  The palate is simple, clean, fresh with flavours of pear drops, pear skin and peach.  A little weighty on the end, but it does clean up to be a nice, very drinkable, white wine.  85pts

2011 Cote Mas Rosé Aurore

Bright fresh strawberries and a little raspberry cream coming out.  The palate has good balance, more strawberries and a tiny touch of confection on the palate, but this is warm so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.  Again, simple, clean, fresh rose from the south of France.  83pts

2011 Cote Mas Rouge Intense

Slight hints of barbecue smoke with some lovely cherry and dark blackberries.  The palate is dark, but with a lift of more acidic berries.  A good balance of tobacco, coffee, dark cherry and some chocolate coming through on the finish.  Really quite tasty.  84pts

Domaine Paul Mas has created something that could really work for them, a trio of simple, summery wines that cost £7 each that look good.  You really don't need to drink anything else this summer... assuming the summer eventually gets here.

By Peter Wood with No comments

#491 Independence Day Drinks

To commemorate the American Independence Day I tried a bottle of wine from one of my favourite American Producers, the 2006  Le Cigare Volant from Randall Grahm's Bonny Doon Vineyard.

A big, smoky wine with loads of tobacco coming off, but shrouded in fantastic bramble fruit aromas.  The palate has more of the smoke, dark stone fruit with a dollop of black pepper.  Yet despite all these bigger flavours, it is so well balanced, elegant and has a freshness at the end that finishes off the wine like a good last chapter in a book.  A great wine from a great winemaker. 92pts

By Peter Wood with No comments

#490 100 Grapes - Cabernet Sauvignon

Occasionally I just want a bit overly extracted, jammy fruit in a wine.  I figure that you can only appreciate the wonderful, balanced, graceful wines from France if you have sampled the big, brash juicy ones from America and found the positives in them.  Bottom line, my dirty little wine secret is that I am very partial to Californian Cabernet Sauvignon so I chose wines from the USA to use for my 100 Grapes challenge.

Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely planted red grapes, growing everywhere from it's homeland in France to places like India and in a variety of soils.  The result of a freak crossing between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, this grape is one of the last mainstream grapes to ripen. This can cause some problems in Bordeaux with the grapes needing blended to fill in holes in the flavour profile, but rarely is this a problem in California where single variety wines are more common. 

2007 Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

Big, vanilla and coconut aromas, a lot of bramble and aniseed.  The palate is big, lots of extraction, lots of power and less oak than I expected - but still loads!  A nice, big porno Californian Cabernet. 89pts

2008 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Artemis Cabernet Sauvignon

Ripe Cabernet fruit, some lovely green notes and a bit of tobacco, some perfumed elements too.  The palate has spice, heat, juicy fruit but restrained by lovely earthy elements. 90pts

2009 Ridge Estate Cabernet Sauvignon

Delicious red berries and then bramble. There is a delightful cherry and menthol and a bit of spice coming through. Gorgeous dark savoury flavours, a bit of charred meat, a bit of earth, vegetal green peppers and very nice juicy berries. Beautiful balance and simply awesome. 94pts

By Peter Wood with No comments