Everyday drinkers

Wine of the moment

What do you drink wine wise with your weekday bowl of pasta that won't break the bank and will still be drinkable ? Good question, and one which depending on who you ask will cost you upwards of £7-10 per bottle (outside of special offers). If you want to spend only a fiver what sort of choice do you have ? If you have no wine specialists nearby and you can't or don't want to travel and have only a large supermarket within reach, what then ?

My solution is to scrutinise the labels very carefully for information about where the liquid comes from and who might have made it with which grape varieties, and using the moderate wine knowledge at my disposal, make an educated guess as to what it might taste like. I then take the plunge and buy a bottle (only one) and taste, preparing, more often than not, to be disappointed.

One recent find, which did not disappoint, is a Garnacha made by Bodegas Borsao from Campo de Borja in Spain sold by a local supermarket as Gran Tesoro for the princely sum of £4.49. Now of course if you are a Bordeaux blend or Pinot Noir purist you might not want to be seen dead drinking Garnacha/Grenache. It is however a grape that is at the heart of many excellent wines from Priorat to the Rhône valley and one which I appreciate having drunk my fill, over the years, of Vacqeyras, Gigondas, Signargues etc.

This particular wine shows red fruit on the nose, with sometimes, depending on the batch, a more complex earthy character. There is good acidity and the alcohol content of 13.5% is well integrated. It is wine which is meant to be drunk with food. In this household it is inevitably consumed with pasta and a simple tomato and olive oil sauce (includes garlic and any herbs available in the kitchen) or a homemade pizza with olives and mozzarella. It has become our everyday drinker and until we find something else will do very nicely.

Bodegas Borsao http://www.bodegasborsao.com/en/index.html

Terroir Musings

Left bank Bordeaux- terroir by design ?

I have been reading Jean-Robert Pitte's book Bordeaux Bourgogne - Les passions rivales and have found some interesting ideas on terroir (as the French would have it).

Far from being something eminently mysterious and bound in with geology, geography, climate and a little sorcery by the winemaker thrown in, the author posits that terroir is in fact a fiction, albeit a very plausible one, created over the centuries by the vineyard owners of France, in particular those of Bordeaux and Burgundy. He uses some striking analogies to make his point: would the brilliant virtuoso violinist point to the wood of his Stradivarius to explain his performance, or the sculptor explain his work of art as the product of the pure Carrara marble he is sculpting ? Likewise the sage old owner of a premier grand cru or a classed first growth will point to his vines and argue that outside of this place no great wine can be made. This is the false modesty of the winemaker assuring us that he is responsible for only 10% of the wine's standout qualities.

The predominance of Pinot Noir in Burgundy - down to Philippe le Hardi and his dislike of Gamay (decree of 31 July 1395) happened more or less by chance, yet the bourguignons will swear that great wine can only be made from the former grape, which can be quite temperamental if not cultivated in the right way. This temperamental nature is both a good (in the right hands) and a bad thing : after all a bad Bourgogne rouge can be very bad indeed, overcropped as the vines producing the grapes going into it might be, on a very bad stretch of land. Perhaps Gamay is not so bad after all. If you are familiar with the better winemakers in the Beaujolais and elsewhere you would be tempted to think so. A well made Beaujolais is a fine drink and will keep too. The stars of the show, all other things being equal, are the vine growers and wine makers aided and abetted by a large number of wine professionals and wine connoisseurs who have a vested interest in ensuring that Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne (there are other wine regions of similar standing) continue to be identified with high value, high quality wines.

The notions of terroir and appellation, supposedly guardians of quality (and this is true to some extent - preventing the mixing of wine from Algeria or the southern Rhone with passtoutgrain to produce Burgundy) have been used as a means of of increasing and preserving the value of land on which certain vines stand. Many restrictive practices have contributed to this in the past ensuring for example that the wines of Bordeaux and not Cahors reached the markets of northern Europe. Now appellation rules and prohibition of planting in the EU perpetuate the status quo. Since phylloxera many potentially great wine regions have been lost and unless they are still within appellation boundaries will remain so forever.

Happily English wine now has the opportunity to rival these so called great terroirs 'touched by the Gods'. Our Montrachet or DRC is somewhere to be found and will be made one day by an exceptional winemaker. The lack of restriction on grape plantations is a great freedom currently enjoyed here and should be used to the full. Alas, knowing the EU's propensity for regulation it may be restricted in future, so gather ye rosebuds while ye may. There is a unique opportunity for English growers and winemakers to create a rival to the great wine regions.

Recently planted English vineyard

Of course terroir in England is all about nosing out a good site, where grapes will ripen consistently without being wiped out by frost or rotted by fungus, not some old bit of field not used for anything else. Naturally if you are into sparkling wine then of course cuttingly acidic grapes are to be praised and sought out, but the fruit must still be good. Is it possible to produce a great wine on a useless site ? Maybe once in a blue moon but not consistently.

My view of terroir is that you must first and foremost find a good winemaker in tune with his land (he knows it like the back of his hand), his vines, the weather, on a good site, and you will have a chance of finding a good if not great wine. The label on the bottle will give you an idea of what to expect but is no guarantee of a great wine experience. There is no substitute for curiosity and meeting the winemaker.

Drinking less and better and the 250ml wine serving

There has been discussion recently over how much alcohol we should consume. A committee of MP's has recommended that we should have at least two 'dry' days each week to allow us to recover from the days when we have been binge drinking to reach our weekly allowance for intake of alcohol - defined in this country by the number of 'units' (the unit being 10ml of pure alcohol) drunk. Men, it is advised, should take in no more than 21 units per week. For women the figure is 14. These figures are believed to be the threshold beyond which damage to health may occur. It is of course ironic that MP's should be advising everyone else on alcohol consumption considering the large number of subsidised watering holes at which they can potentially drink in and around the Houses of Parliament. They do seem to have a point about excessive drinking. A look at volumes drunk in this country over the years shows a steady increase, and there has been a well-documented increase in the number of people - especially young people, treated for illnesses associated with excessive drinking, not to mention the Saturday night carnage in town centres. We should all perhaps be more careful about our alcohol intake and consider drinking a bit less and, as far as wine drinkers are concerned, better or more interesting and out of the way - or even more local (i.e. English Wine - try The Wine Pantry near Borough Market http://www.winepantry.co.uk/home.php).

This reflection led me to consider the way wine is sold in pubs and restaurants and to wonder at the 250ml wineglass, filled almost to the brim, which passes for a 'glass of wine'. To my mind this innocuous 'glass of wine' is an aberration, containing, as it does, one third of a bottle of wine, and if the wine contains 13% alcohol, amounting to 3.25 precious units ! One glass like this and you are very likely over your daily allowance; have two or three and you are waaay over...Not forgetting that the glass itself looks like a goldfish bowl (perhaps the next serving measure for plonk enthusiasts). Even in traditionally wine producing and drinking countries such as France this sort of measure is more often than not shared by two people, or consumed by one over the course of a whole meal. This 'glass of wine' even comes close to the once accepted (perhaps different now in Sarkozia) French daily wine ration of around 300ml for a man. Granted, in those antediluvian times, wines often contained no more than 8-10% alcohol. Still,  we Brits seem to have gone to extremes to catch up with our Gallic neighbours. In my view servings ought to be much smaller than 250ml and not gulped down to make room for the next glass.

Better the glass half full ?

A recent change to legislation allowing the dispensing of 'smaller' measures of less than 125ml ought to help, as do wine dispensers (see www.by-the-glass.co.uk/) which allow wine to keep for two weeks or more after opening. There is now no need to rush to finish an opened bottle, and you can use a large glass only partly filled which will allow you to better taste the wine (give it a good swirl to get air into it !). All in all drinking wine should be an enjoyable experience combining the stimulation of all the senses and the awakening of curiosity about the culture of how and where it was made and the story of those making it. It is also very much the accompaniment of food, unless drunk as an apéritif. So don't forget to order some food with your wine. It will enhance your enjoyment.