Extreme wine trips

English vineyard, not so extreme

I found this draft waiting to be finished... I don't know how long it's been there (probably more than a year) and you may wonder where I have disappeared to.

I am still of this Earth and still dreaming of vine gardens. Studying viticulture and oenology. Working in vineyards. Dreaming of making wine and selling it.

"As the cold autumn evening draws in I am tempted to think of sunnier and warmer climes I would like to visit.

The Bekaa valley in Lebanon
Etna and its vineyards
Georgia the cradle of wine
Armenia the Wild East
Canaries
Japan"

A few lines to finish it. At least one post in 2016.

Not to mention Crimea, Russia, Afghanistan, and all those other places Pierre Galet once visited in his quest for ampelographic knowledge.

The United States and Canada would also provide some fascinating places to visit, and afford the spectacle of wild native vines thriving in the landscape. Of course I would also love to see vitis vinifera in its element in some obscure part of Spain; that alone would be a dream.

And what of North Africa and the old winelands of South Africa? Or 100 year old Shiraz in Australia, or the breathtaking country of New Zealand.

Really, there is no end to the search for ideal or idealised vine habitats, or terroirs. It is one of the more agreeable aspects of this obsession with a particular climbing liana and its fruit.

The ship in the boundless dark ocean

Think of a wonderful vessel, surrounded by infinite airless emptiness and cold. The ship is beautiful and inside, it is warm and bright, and all its passengers large and small have everything they need to live happily and peacefully.

They have no need to worry themselves about how any of this happens (how the air is pure and the water sweet, how they are neither too hot nor too cold, how to find the food they need for sustenance) as the ship itself operates sophisticated automatic systems to ensure everything is just right for everyone.

The ship has existed since before anyone can remember, and since before anyone can remember has been doing this work. It will continue to do so for all time, unless something terrible happens.

Then, one day, some of the passengers decide they would like to take control of the ship for themselves, because they think they are clever enough, and think they are not getting their fair share of the air and the water and all the other things the ship provides for them.

For a while things appear unchanged. The passengers in command are pleased with themselves and start to grow in numbers and help themselves to more food and water, to the detriment of some of the other passengers, who, being meek and mild, then wither away and die. This goes on for a short while. The clever passengers ever increasing in number and demanding more air, more water, and more food.

Soon, however, it starts to feel hotter; water is at first not very pleasant to drink, and then becomes scarce. Food is harder to find. The passengers supposedly in charge start to argue about whose fault it is that the water is gone, that food is scarce and that it feels so hot.  Things become so heated that the fabric of the ship is threatened. Some passengers have even made firearms, and started shooting at the others. Stray bullets might pierce the fragile and delicate outer walls of the ship and let out all the remaining air and let in the emptiness and cold. Death for all might be the result.

We do not know how this little story ends. We are the clever passengers who thought we could do better than our mother ship. We still have time to change our ways and let the ship do its work.

Everyday Drinkers (13)

This is a 2012 Primitivo IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) from the Puglia region in Italy, bottled by Canti and just now available at a discounted price of around a fiver at a well known retailer.

At this price if offers tremendous value, and as with all Italian reds, is great with food.

There is red fruit in abundance on the nose and refreshing fruity acidity on the palate. It will go with all pasta/tomato sauce/pizza dishes, and a glass of it on its own it also very satisfying. Its 13% ABV is more than sufficient.

Primitivo is one of the classic Pugliese grape varieties, but is properly called Tribidrag, the original name for this variety in its native Croatia. It is also known as Zinfandel in California. These links were uncovered thanks to modern DNA analysis.

It was once used mainly as a blending wine to increase alcohol and body in other wines which were a bit thin, but has now come into its own.

Get this one while you can.

Everyday Drinkers (12)

This is a real cracker.

Les Six - Cairanne (Côtes-du-Rhône Villages).

The 'Six' refers to the mix of grape varieties involved in its making: Grenache, Carignan, Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvèdre and Counoise. The classic Rhône varieties along with the rarer Counoise, most often associated with Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

You can read more about the origins of this wine here.

Made and distributed by Boutinot, it is a fabulous layer cake of fruit flavours, each revealing itself in succession both on the nose and on the palate in the course of a never ending finish. Tannins there are, but silky and unobtrusive. Freshness in abundance too, and despite the 14.5% ABV this wine remains light as a feather.

I would happily drink this wine every day - however it is a bit pricey to be a true everyday drinker priced at just under £16.00 at Chislehurst Wines (@chiswines).

But if you can, it is too good to miss.

Mussels, Beans and Two Veg, anyone?

Borlotti beans grown by yours truly

Alarming information from the BBC (article by Roger Harrabin) and others about greenhouse gas emissions arising from eating meat.

This has of course been known for some time. We're (we = humans) still eating meat, of course, and craving for more, it would seem. Meanwhile, the ice is melting, the sea is rising and getting warmer and all those nasty things are brewing which will make life much more difficult for us all ( = humans and most other creatures).

Are there any solutions, apart form turning the whole Earth into some sort of intensive meat production farm, producing bionic bovines emitting less methane, or searching for a laboratory produced artificial meat solution to satisfy our craving?

There are indeed, and one of them is to eat much less of the stuff. That is, if you are not completely disgusted by the thought that meat is, after all, the flesh of an animal which we have wilfully killed or had killed in order to eat it, and decide to not eat any at all.

I like my meat as much as the next human but it is not difficult at all to eat much less of it. Think of it as a treat and not a necessity; eat other things which are just as good for you (beans and pulses come to mind).

Eating something meaty and nice once a week, using the leftovers and gorging on vegetables, beans, peas, potatoes etc etc the rest of the time is also good for your personal health.

Add a few mussels (which require practically no input to produce a delicious meaty/fishy treat and store carbon in their shells) or other low impact shellfish and you have the sort of diet which will make you look ten years younger and about which you can be smug to your meat-eating friends who are destroying the Earth.

Give it a go.

Unexpected Visitors

One of the visiting Toads

We had unexpected visitors to our small garden recently.

Having decided long ago to turn this small space into a haven for wild plants and any creatures who might want to come along we felt elated when two toads dropped in one evening after sunset.

These are quite rare creatures around this part of London. It was therefore a joy to see them, and also a vindication for the unkempt (to some eyes) look of the garden.

Perhaps we shall also dig a small pond here as well. One is already planned for the allotment, and I will be digging this out in the autumn.

Ponds (even tiny ones) make small spaces even more attractive to different wild creatures.  We already see damsel flies and the odd dragonfly here even though we have no standing water, so the addition of a pond would be a benefit to these and other animals.

Everyday Drinkers (11)

I have recently been drinking (I feel like that character in the Fast Show played by Simon Day writing this) 2013 Côtes-du-Rhônes and have found them very agreeable.

Priced from £3.99 they offer exceptionally good value and are soft and fruity. Served slightly chilled they go down well with anything you care to mention and disappear disconcertingly quickly.

As to how the wine can sell for this sort of price, suffice it to say that these are bulk wines produced in vast quantities by co-ops all down the Rhône Valley.  In good years they are all very drinkable, made from reliable Grenache and Syrah cropped heavily, sometimes too heavily. This explains why some years too much wine is chasing too few buyers and why we as drinkers should take advantage while we can.

This particular bottle is on sale at a well known retailer, and originates from the Cellier des Dauphins in Tulette, with an ABV of 12.5%.

  

Stealthy Spring Surprise

Almost imperceptibly, but inexorably, Nature has been working its magic and hey presto we have had our first asparagus of the year, and our first globe artichokes.

I certainly wasn't expecting the artichokes.  The asparagus has been showing for a few weeks now, hesitantly, and then explosively, but the artichokes have been working away in secret, planning a well disguised artichoke strike.

This year we have seen wet Winter transformed into Summer all of a sudden: hawthorn, horse chestnut and elder in flower at the same time for example along with magnolia and fruit trees, without pause or transition for Spring.

Now of course I need to get cracking and plant potatoes, onions (red onions already in place) and shallots before it's too late, and prepare the ground for beetroot, carrots, salads, spinach etc.

Our little plot is generally in fairly good shape, and the cover I kept over the Winter months has protected the soil from the almost incessant rain, which would otherwise have washed much of the nutrients away. The soil here is silt, so not too rich in organic matter to start with. This green cover has now been dug in, to the accompaniment of regular visits by a couple of Robins, and a little manure added as a mulch, so we are ready for lift off.

Shed with patched up roof felt and beanpoles

The shed roof has been mended and is now more solid than it was and a new section of felt is keeping the rain out. The bean poles have also emerged ready to support the runner beans which are already chomping at the bit, having been sown inside a couple of weeks ago. I now just need to take all its contents out and give it a good clean, as well as sorting out the seeds for sowing and finding out what I am missing (can't remember if I have any cabbage seeds left for example).

Before...

...After

On a different note repairs have been made to the hasp and staple which a human intruder broke to gain access to the shed. I have no idea what they were looking for, as nothing was taken, but it is the second time this has happened.

To all you burglars out there, you will find only garden tools and other garden materials in allotment sheds, perhaps a few bags of potatoes or a few squashes, not much else.  So please don't bother breaking in, unless you want to borrow the fork and spade and do a bit of work on my plot.

I end my short garden report here and wish you all good gardening, if you have one, and good everything else if you don't.

Out of Hibernation

It's been such a long time since I've posted here.

My only excuse is that I have been in hibernation and have woken up to find that the world is being deluged, and that it's probably time to start building an ark.

Those trees in the foreground will soon be submerged

Parking the car can be a bit difficult just now

It's not that bad here. Many other people are up to their necks in it and have had to abandon their homes.

It will stop raining soon, and we will move on to the next extreme weather episode (extreme cold, extreme heat, drought?).

On a more positive note, in the garden, despite the damage to the shed - half the roof blown off in the storms - the Purple Sprouting Broccoli are doing well this year and the Rhubarb is forcing well.

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Forced Rhubarb emerging from under the cloche

More posts soon I hope.

Azienda Failoni - vintage variation

Antonio Failoni at work during the harvest

On Monday evening I had the good fortune to attend a tasting organised by Stephen Forward, owner of Essentially Wine, an independent wine merchant with shops in Chipstead and Richmond.

The wines featured were from Azienda Failoni from Le Marche in central Italy. The event was held in the White Hart in Chipstead.

After being introduced to us by Stephen, Antonio Failoni, the owner of the property and winemaker, ably abetted by Francisco who did the interpreting, made an interesting presentation of the wines of his estate explaining how the season, the land and the grape come together to influence the vintage.

This was illustrated vividly in the wines we tasted. The same wine, but from different vintages, displayed strikingly different characteristics while retaining a sense of the style and personality of the winemaker.

Antonio is no hereditary wine estate owner. Originally from Milan, his desire to make wine followed a holiday in the Marche region, where he fell in love with the landscape almost at first sight. He immediately set to work to build his dream - working literally all hours - patiently buying the land and the buildings, culminating in the launch of his own estate in Staffolo, near Ancona, in 1990. His wines are born of passion, of course, but also out of hard work, and a close affinity with the land and the vine. You can see that this a man who is at ease working among the vines and in the winery, and sense that he believes in what he is doing.

Particularly impressive were the two Verdicchios (DOC Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi), 2011 and 2012.

Although subdued on the nose they burst into life on the palate displaying citrus fruits (lemon and grapefruit - 2011) and more tropical and honeyed flavours (mango - 2012). This may have been because they a little cold. Antonio mentioned they should be consumed at around 12 C.

Perfectly drinkable now they are built to last (up to 10 years), thanks to the thick skinned Verdicchio grape which is resistant to fungal attack and contains plenty of aroma compounds, and will evolve in bottle if cellared well.

They both drink well on their own, but would go well with, say, spicy prawns.

The reds were no less impressive but also strikingly different. Two types of red wines were shown: Rosso Piceno DOC and Esino Rosso DOC.

Rosso Piceno: there is a story behind the name of this wine.

The ‘Piceno’ part is in fact a local name for a woodpecker, and of the people of the area, descended from the ancient pre-Roman peoples of the Marche region, who were known for their druids carrying a woodpecker on their shoulder in the style of an operatic pirate with his parrot.

A blend of 45% Sangiovese, 45% Montepulciano, and 10% Merlot this is a wine which spends time in Slovenian oak barrels before release, and provides a hit of tannin which would seem to mark this wine out for drinking with protein: roast beef, lamb,...

-Rosso Piceno 2009 - woody nose with flavours of cherries, blackcurrants and spice.

-Rosso Piceno 2010 - more fruit on the nose, and flavours of plums and damsons.

Esino Rosso: This wine is named after the river flowing through the valley below the vineyard. It is a blend of 60% Sangiovese, and 40% Montepulciano. Matured in French oak barrels there are less obvious woody notes and the tannins are subtle and rounded.

-Esino Rosso 2008 - Blackcurrant and dark fruits on the nose. Velvety tannins.

-Esino Rosso 2009 - Blueberries and blackcurrant, with a hint of vanilla on the nose, sumptuous fruit flavours and rounded on the palate with a long finish.

All the reds are drinkable now, but have plenty of structure, so can be cellared for several years. Perfect with any Italian dishes, but particularly good with any carnivorous fare, game (especially hare, venison), mushrooms and mature cheeses.

Largely based on the same Sangiovese grape the reds are also the perfect antidote to Chianti fatigue, offering the same freshness, crunchy fruit notes and structure, but rather better value for money and more authenticity than many of the Tuscan offerings.

Failoni also produces delicious olive oil from centuries-old olive trees.

All in all a very enjoyable evening, and I for one look forward to drinking Azienda Failoni wines for many years to come.

The wines are available in this country from the Essentially Wine shops or from the website

Everyday Drinkers (10)

Number 10 already! I didn't realise I drank so much wine.

This one is a real bargain at £3.99, and is from Sicily, yet again. It's a Vino Rosso Terre Siciliane IGT, a blend of Nerello Mascalese and Nero d'Avola.

What, another Sicilian? Is this the Mafia or something? No, just good value wine.

A delightfully dark wine, packing only 12% ABV despite the dark clothes, it is ideal for drinking every day, preferably with food. Handles tomatoes, cheeses, and pretty much anything else.

It is available from a well-known retailer (yes, Tesco) and produced, or at least bottled, by the Caviro Cooperative (supposedly the largest in Italy).

It has fruit on the nose and on the palate (black cherries mostly) and is well-balanced.

An eminently acceptable wine for the price. Those Sicilian wine producers can certainly deliver drinkable good value.

What religion is your wine?

By way of an introduction I will remind you of  the joke about the paramilitary traffic checkpoint in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The masked and armed individual doing the checking asked one motorist "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?" to which he received the reply "Neither, I'm Jewish", before asking "Are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?".

You may ask what has religion got to do with wine? A lot in fact.

There are many references to wine in the Old and New Testaments. Noah planted a vineyard. We have all heard of Cana, where Jesus changed the water into wine.

One of the bases of Catholicism is the belief that the celebration of the Eucharist involves the operation of transubstantiation - the changing of wine into the Blood of the Saviour. The wine, which to all intents and purposes remains wine, represents the Blood and becomes it.

Wine is omnipresent, and rightly so. Viticulture and wine making are at the heart of civilisation, much like weaving, animal husbandry, horticulture etc.

Jean-Robert Pitte (in Le désir du vin à la conquête du monde and Bordeaux Bourgogne les passions rivales) describes the influence of wine in Antiquity and the great divide that is at the heart of the French wine scene - the Burgundy-Bordeaux rivalry.

This opposition is partly religious, the Protestant influence being felt in Bordeaux via the influence of northern European merchants and settlers whereas Burgundy is more Catholic in outlook with some of its great wines and traditions closely linked to church properties or monastic traditions.

There is also a profound cultural divide: the Bordelais are perceived as more reserved in their dealings and in appearance often resemble English gentlemen farmers or aristocrats, whereas the Burgundians have a reputation for being peasants at heart and also much more hedonistic in their view of wine and what it is for.

Even the bottles containing the wines of the regions get in on the act: the straight-sided bordeaux bottle versus the more rounded, perhaps even feminine, burgundy bottle.

Does all this show in the wines of these regions?

Perhaps it does: it requires years of ageing before a quality Bordeaux is approachable. This wait is akin to the abstinence and forbearance at the heart of some Protestant doctrines where success is the result of hard work and sacrifice and God's will; the immediacy of a Bourgogne passetoutgrains
might be lost on the château owner. The burgundian tradition of the drinking song and the long gourmet and gourmand meal would seem intolerable to the frequenter of dinner parties in the Médoc.

So perhaps wine does have a religious identity of sorts.

In any case it tells a story about itself and its origins both geographical and botanical, but also about the people who made it.

This is at the heart of what makes us love wine; it brings its cultural identity with it onto our dining tables and encourages us to find out more.  And it can even change your life.

Mountain vines

Mountain vine

I am always fascinated to find vines growing in out of the way places. A recent stay in France allowed me to indulge this fascination once again.

This picture shows vines found in a Pyrenean mountain village, at about 700-800m altitude, vestiges of significant vine plantings all but wiped out in the 19th century by the phylloxera mite.

I am not sure what the grape variety is. A guess would be something related to Pinot Noir, probably Chardonnay, going by the leaves.

I also noticed areas of former terraces which were cultivated right up until the 1960's where vines might still be found. Unfortunately time did not allow me to attempt exploration of these areas, a long way from the village and surrounded by scrub.

View of formerly cultivated terraces above Larcat (former vineyard areas would be on the lower slopes)

Nature never takes very long to claim back what humans once thought of as their own. After only about 50 years, the terraces carved out of the mountainside and cultivated by a particularly hardy and tenacious sort of human (the ariégeois) are now barely visible, and on the lower slopes have been obliterated by the forest. 

Azure

View of Laparat lake

As Autumn dampness encroaches in London, here is a blue sky we were lucky enough to experience during a recent stay in the French Pyrenees.

This is azure is all its glory.

Herbert Hall

See the links to two great articles by Tom Harrow and Will Lyons on this fantastic English Sparkling Wine, and its creator Nick Hall.

Tom Harrow - The Arbuturian
Will Lyons - The Wall Street Journal

A great lesson in how to make a great wine and market a boutique English vineyard.

Everyday drinkers (9)

This Purato 2011 (IGT Sicilia, Feudo di Santa Tresa) was selling recently for £3.99 (reduced from £7.50, I think).

I suppose people might have been turned off by the out-and-out organic labelling.

The fact that the paper is 100% recycled and the glass 85%, and that the label is printed with vegetable ink has no bearing on what is inside the bottle. Many would have found this just too militant. The question might well have been: is the wine recycled too?

But not to worry. The Nero d'Avola grape from Sicily is generally a good bet.

This wine was no exception, with its subtle red fruit aromas, smoothness on the palate and relatively moderate (13.5 % ABV) alcohol. Unfortunately it has probably sold out now; but even at the higher price it represents good value.

Made by the Feudo di Santa Tresa it is a great introduction to Sicilian wines, as you will be left wanting more when you finish the bottle.

Bubbles

A couple of pictures of my sparkling elderflower concoction.

After 2 days spent in an open container the part fermented liquid was bottled, and allowed to continue its fermentation for a further 2 and a half days.

After some time in the fridge to cool down and stop the fermentation, this was the result. A bit cloudy because of the fine lees.

What it was like: floral on the nose, some residual sugar and refreshing taste. Just as intended.

I have several other bottles which have been fermented for progressively longer times, and will report if taste is affected.

Elderflower delights

Elderflower bloom

Last year I missed the elderflower season.

I only woke up to the fact that it was upon us when it was too late; the blooms had already passed and the heavens had opened to deluge us with rain after a lengthy drought.

This year I was determined not to miss out, and scouted for accessible (i.e. not surrounded by thickets of brambles and head-high stinging nettles) elderflower (sambucca nigra) shrubs. There were a number within very easy reach. It was simply a matter of waiting for them to flower.

Why you may ask? Well if you have never breathed in the heady perfume of elderflower, then you have never experienced an English summer.

It is powerful and indescribable (indeed it is one of those aroma characteristics featuring in wine tasting descriptors along with orange blossom, violets and roses etc), but quintessentially floral and refreshing.

The flowers are also an extremely useful resource and can be turned into delicious elderflower cordial, and sparkling elderflower 'wine' (for want of a better word).

Blooms soaking in sugar/water solution

There are many recipes for the former, and for the latter you can follow a méthode ancestrale procedure to make the sparkling liquid (taking care to choose containers strong enough to resist the pressure of CO2 given off during fermentation in bottle). You can add lemon juice and zest to both concoctions to add acidity, and even tartaric acid to the cordial to help it keep.

The cordial is a great way of livening up tap water. Diluted to taste with very cold water, it makes a very refreshing drink. The sparkler is flowery and fresh, with a balance of alcohol/residual sugar depending on how fully you decide to ferment it.

These are two great hedgerow treats, not to be missed.

Fast forward to the End of the Earth?

I enjoyed reading an article by Martin Wolf in the FT (Wednesday 22/5/2013) entitled 'Climate sceptics have already won'.

Not content with just complaining about it Mr Wolf went so far as to offer a number of solutions with a view to buying time so that humanity can get its act together and so avoid catastrophe.

So far so good.

The solutions proposed were, in a nutshell:

• Tax carbon emissions
• Go nuclear
• Impose really tough emissions standards on cars
• Create secure global trading regime in lower-carbon fuels
• Develop ways to finance technology transfer
• Invest in research
• Invest in adaptation
• Think through geo-engineering.

You can be for or against any of these proposals, each of which has its merits.

Cars makers are already doing a lot to reduce emissions from their vehicles, for example. Geo-engineering seems a bit risky to me. Well-managed nuclear energy goes a long way to decarbonising the economy. Etcetera.

Many, or in fact all of the solutions, involve government action, not just regionally but globally. This is no doubt the greatest obstacle to any meaningful action being possible.

Our governments do not appear to be capable of formulating effective policies liable to affect GHG emissions, let alone habitat loss, mass extinction and other threats to the Earth System, Gaia or however you wish to call or planetary home.

The feeble way in which they are managing the depression/recession illustrates how incapable they seem to be.

The mantra of our leaders sounds like 'markets and the economy cannot be managed or controlled, we are helpless and will just have to wait for growth or whatever to come along'.

Woe betide us if climate change is viewed in the same way.

You can do only so much on a personal level (live an a low energy home, use public transport or stay put, grow your own food, recycle everything, only acquire things which have been recycled, support local businesses and produce etc).

What does it take for a governments to do something similar on a national, regional, global level?

The stark fact remains that it may already be far too late to avoid cataclysmic climate change induced by human activity. The only solution will be the sort of adaptation proposed by James Lovelock in order to preserve what can be preserved.

Things, such as Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, are moving faster than we can imagine.

Enough is Enough

But what is, enough?

Is it 100 pairs of shoes, 250 cars? A million pounds?

Or is it something else?