When you don't care what the wine is...

After the memorial service we went to a local venue along the Thames where tea, coffee, various nibbles, sandwiches and homemade samosas were provided by the family aided by very friendly serving staff. There was also a choice of wine, red or white.

After the emotion of the service where the life of the loved one (my brother-in-law's mother) was celebrated with readings and hymns (Abide with me, All things Bright and Beautiful) and music (Nimrod- part of the Enigma Variations played on the church organ) it was good to have a glass of chilled white wine and share memories.

What wine was it ? I have no idea. I suppose it was a New World Chardonnay, not too oaked. But of course it wasn't important. The sharing and the warmth were. The purpose of wine.

Everyday Drinkers (5)

The Tesco wine-buying team have done very well with this particular offering. At £2.99 this is exceptional value, and still very drinkable.

The Iberian peninsula is the source of the wine, a 100% Cabernet-Sauvignon from the 'sun ripened vineyards of central Spain' as the label puts it. Despite being such a bargain the wine contrives to be reasonably concentrated, unlike most offerings at this price, although it could never be described as heavy, with ABV at 12.5.%. Fruit dominates as it says on the label.

How much are we paying for the actual wine, you might ask ? Well, not very much, if you deduct duty (currently £1.90 for a 750ml bottle as of April 2012) and VAT.

I think it is a question of taking advantage of it while it lasts, because the producers cannot be making a lot of money, bearing in mind that it costs at least  80 or 90 Euro cents to produce a bottle of wine at this quality (= yield) level.

The Tragedy of the Commons and other tales

News that Norway (on 3D le journal a radio programme with Stéphane Paoli - France Inter Radio 10/6/2012) has extended its territorial claim to areas of the arctic liable to hold reserves of oil with a view to eventually drilling for the black liquid show that ecology and 'green' values fly out the window when money and 'resources' start to do the talking.

We are told that self interest (aka greed) is what makes the world of capitalism and the economy work and that it is right to grab as much of whatever you can so that nobody else does. The consequences of all this self-interest are of no matter, even if they involve the eventual destruction of life on Earth.

In game theory this behaviour is described in the dilemma of the 'Tragedy of the Commons'. We would all like to preserve the common land for the good of all, but we are fearful that others might take more than us. Therefore we try to appropriate the whole resource for ourselves. Everyone else does the same. Result: nothing left for anyone. We seem to be trying this out on a planetary scale.

Adam Smith, one of the fathers of modern economic thinking and of capitalism is reputed to have condoned all this avarice, even encouraged it in his writings. It would seem however that Smith might have been writing about enlightened self-interest not Gordon Gekko style 'greed is good'.

It is important to make this distinction. As human beings we naturally wish to improve our personal lot and the condition of humanity as a whole. We do also have an altruistic streak, and this extends beyond even human-kind to all of Nature.

Politicians, and many commentators who should know better, cannot believe that people are capable of doing things because they are right, good or just; not out of sordid self-interest. They are convinced that people who favour organic food or wine or ecological policies are just fashion victims and this fad will pass. Harry Eyres gives a good account of this in his recent column (The Slow Lane - Financial Times 9/6/2012).

In the belief that the electorate are only guided by narrow self-interest, our career politicians come up with policies which reflect this - short-term, mean-minded half-measures, not forgetting to feather their own nests and those of their financial friends all the while. They should now realise that we need leaders with courageous long-term goals to guide us out of all our present messes.

Where are they ?

Wine Packaging: barrels of fun or just a container ?

Barrel room at Château Angludet

There seems to be a developing debate about various new wine packaging methods and whether they will be adopted by consumers. There are also claims that one method is 'greener' or more 'sustainable' than another.

It is debatable whether any modern wine packaging technique, be it bottle, carton, bag in box, aluminium can, might be green or sustainable in any way. All of these containers demand the use of lots of technology and lots of energy. Transporting wine around is also expensive, despite the claimed weight savings of, say, the new wine cartons. All of these packaging methods, however, are very effective and do help preserve the wines, which reach us just as they were when they left the winery.

I take a more old-fashioned view.

I like the glass bottle; an ideal inert container that protects the wine from light (if you use the correctly coloured glass) and excess oxygen, allowing slow maturation. Labels can give personality and character as well as information. Good quality corks allow some ingress of oxygen, and are proven to allow wine to be stored safely for many years. Screw cap closures can preserve young fruity wines, particularly whites, and deliver them as aromatic as when they went into bottle.

Oak (or other wooden) barrels and tanks, amphorae and qvevri are probably fairly friendly to the environment in terms of carbon emissions and recyclability and personally I like them for the craft and sense of history which goes into their manufacture.

The amphorae and qvevri demand the use of firing techniques to produce, as do the wooden containers to some extent, but all are intensely traditional in nature and will always be able to be made whatever technological changes may occur. You can imagine winemakers using these sorts of containers since wine was first produced and I find the idea of this bond across the ages most attractive.

The wine pouring forth from these ancestral vessels is also organoleptically intriguing in a way it cannot be when made in shining wine factories using the most modern techniques (although good wine is also made in these). There is still a sense of occasion to be experienced in the opening of a glass bottle stoppered with a natural cork that just cannot be felt when pulling the ring on a can.

Perhaps one day we will again experience the excitement of wind powered vessels sailing up the Thames laden with barrels of Bordeaux wine, just as our ancestors did.

Desperate Business

Liked this post by Paul Krugman (in fact since I have come across him I read them all) . The Urge to Punish

It sums up the desperate times we are living, in which comfortable elites tell others what to do and how much they should suffer, in order to protect the positions of the same elites.

Meanwhile our elected leaders seem to be in a rudderless barque and drifting along an excrement-filled watercourse with no means of locomotion.

My LIWF highlight was not a wine...

The recent LIWF (London International Wine Fair Excel centre 22-24 May 2012) was a rather different affair to the RAW fair or the Real Wine Fair held around the same time in central London.

Both of the latter were civilised affairs - RAW taking the biscuit thanks to its venue and the talks and presentations in my view - compared to the LIWF, where a sea of mostly very mass-market wines overwhelmed the palate.

My highlight of the LIWF was a presentation by Ryan Opaz at the Access Zone entitled 'Winery Websites - the good, the bad and the ugly'.

The stark reality, according to Ryan, is that most of them 'suck'. They are unimaginative, plagued by designs using copious Flash effects, and just fail to communicate - which is what they are supposed to do.

He went on to outline a few rules to ensure that your site does the minimum required of it. They are (briefly):

Own your brand - otherwise others will do it of you.

Make it mobile - most people look at websites on mobile technology now and if your page takes an age to load or is otherwise non mobile device friendly people will go elsewhere. Flash is not your friend.

Who are you and how can we get hold of you ? Too often sites will not even have an email address let alone a contact us button.

Be comfortable with Facebook and Twitter. Show your face.

Who are you ? Make it personal.

Talk about your passions. Give us some context.

Google likes content, key points and differentiators.

Use simple url's

Less is more.

What I liked about Ryan's intervention was its clarity and lack of buzzword terminology. I think that not only winemakers could benefit from putting these simple rules into practice. Oh yes, and a website is never ending - make sure your content is up to date and changes regularly. Nothing worse than a blog or a site last updated a decade ago...

vrazon (Ryan's company) website: www.vrazon.com

Netting strawberries

Ripening strawberries under netting

Carrying on from yesterday when I touched on the ripening of grapes, here is an example of another fruit - the strawberry - which catches the eye of birds in particular. As the fruit ripens, it begins to gain its characteristic red colour on the side most exposed to sunlight. Birds do not wait until the whole fruit is ripe before tasting and happily devour half the strawberry leaving the remainder for the slugs or snails.

Netting, as shown above, is a good way of keeping the birds off. It is also used in vineyards where blackbirds, starlings etc can reduce crops considerably, as long as the grapes are sweet enough.

Grape Futures (5)

Just a quick look at the grapes (yes, these fruits are beginning to resemble grapes) to see how they are doing. They will look like this until they reach veraison, when they will start to gain colour, soften and swell and start to contain fructose and lose some acidity. Around this period the birds and other animals such as wild boar will also start to take a keen interest in them (just like our strawberries, of which more later). Another potential hazard for the vineyard owner.