Confessions of a Wino

Beans on toast.  One of life’s staple meals.  So simple, so healthy, so cheap, so erm, studenty?  Of course there are only two types of baked bean, Heinz and shite.  And there are only two types of toast, the type that sets my smoke alarm off, and the type that is undercooked and flabby.  The absolute secret to beans on is to make sure the toast is as crispy as possible before you soggify it with the beans.  Also helps if you cook the beans over a low heat for a decent amount of time to reduce the sauce.

So sitting in the flat to the tuneful, albeit duotonous, harmonies of Manchester Fire Brigade’s finest, my mind inevitably wanders.  My challenge over the last couple of years has been to find the perfect wine match for this honourable meal, and I think I may have just succeeded in Spades.

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Sounding like a Vic Reeves’ Shooting Stars comedic expletive is not normally a criterion by which I evaluate whether to buy a wine, but somehow this just grabbed my attention on a recent visit to Majestic, Leeds.

South Africa is a bit of a blind spot in my wine rack and I occasionally have to remind myself that good wine comes from English speaking zones, as well and French and Spanish.

This wine is made from Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in proportions 42:32:26 and spends 10 months in French oak.

On opening there was faint Hydrogen Sulphide but this quickly dissipated and left a passable impression of a decent claret.  At first it smelt deep, moody and just a tad yeasty with a raspberry rush.  First sip was raspberry, violet, and vanilla.  Far from being spoilt, it was bright, fresh and almost as exciting as a freshly powdered slope (snow I mean, not cocaine).

Eranu or Uvavu?  Ugaba Stellenbosch 2006 is £11.99 at Majestic and this represents good value.  ERANU!

Hotel restaurants always give me a slight sinking feeling. Reminders of 1980s boil in the bag meals; they always smell of stale cooking, probably because breakfast buffets are when they get 90% of their traffic.

The Hotel Russell probably counts early risers 99% of its clientele.  It’s easier to get a table at The Ivy than a breakfast table here.  Dinner, however, was predictably quiet.  A few lonely foreign travellers and one table of two couples from Yorkshire who were asking for more gravy – gravy shortages are punishable by death north of Watford Gap.

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Quand j’ai écrit du Prince des vins (Marquis de Ségur) et ce vin ci, en Octobre 2007, je n’ai pas su qu’il y avait encore une bouteille dans mon moissonneuse-batteuse.  Je viens de le déguster.

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I’ve said in the past that if a rising tide floats all boats, then in good years like 2005, it must be worth rowing across to Analogy Island in one of the lesser bateaux of the Bordelais flotilla.

So I popped a few quid in the post to the Wine Society for a case of Côtes de Bordeaux 2005 and they sent me, amongst other bottles, some Château Martinat Côtes de Bourg.

It justified my argument.  There is some real shite sent down La Gironde in the name of fine claret but I think the enormous majority of wines are born of genuine fathers (and mothers….) who really care.

This is certainly the case with Martinat.  Whilst I do not know the winemaker (Stéphane Donze, since you ask), you only have to sip the wine to taste the parental devotion.

This kid is spicy, fruity, intelligent and rich – almost destined to grow up to be Stephen Fry’s replacement on QI.  The taste is peppery, plummy and with firmish tannins I found it a nice match for spicy pizza.

Mine was £9.95 from the Wine Society but unsurprisingly now sold out.  Shame because it is one of the best ten quid bottles I’ve tasted in a long while.

If you want to enter a declining market and make a meaningful dent then you better innovate.  Naked Wines is doing just that and gaining publicity by the jeroboam.

Rowan Gormley’s latest stunt was to hold a “crowd taste off” with AU$100,000 of Naked Wines purchase orders available to the winning wine makers.

The tasters were the 50 most active customers of Naked (fully clothed, I believe).  The winemakers were selected by The Government of South Australia and the Australian Trade Commission.  After rounds of tasting and price estimating, the final coup de théâtre was the winemakers themselves in a reverse auction to adjust their prices to see how much of the $100k they could take in orders.

I managed to get my paws on three of the winners that will be going on sale via the Naked Wines website in the next few weeks:

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Have you ever been haunted?  The name Teyssier has been my stalker recently.  It has bought out the best of Virgin Wines and contemporaneously the reason why they often ever so slightly under-achieve.  Well, nobody can please everybody every day!

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I have long argued that a rising tide floats all boats, but I forgot about the leaky ones which sink paying no regard to ebb or flow.

2005 was the tsunami of tidal years in Bordeaux and almost every wine I have tasted from that year has been superb.  So I was looking forward to receiving a case of Côtes de Bordeaux from the Wine Society which promised a tour of some less well known communes.

My first sample, Château Godard Bellevue 2005 Côtes de Francs, stood up to the “unknown” moniker.

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Remembrance Sunday (and Tuesday) saw me observing a total of five minutes of silence – that’s a miracle I hear you cry!  The first two at the anointed hour of 11a.m. Sunday, somewhat bizarrely, in a queue at our local Tesco store, the third at the Man City vs Spurs game, and the fourth and fifth driving across the Pennines on Tuesday morning listening to the Ken Bruce Show.

It’s amazing how time flies.  I remember about 1976 when I first commemorated the war dead.  I never imagined I would still be here 32 years later.

Château Soutard has a recommended drink by date of 2040.  I am certainly not going to wait and see if I live another 32 years to try the first bottle of the case I bought en-primeur from somewhere at about £21 per bottle.  St Emilion wines being mostly Merlot (in this case 70%) compared to the rougher, and tougher when young, Cabernet Sauvignon, are generally more approachable in youth so I was determined not to die before I sampled the Soutard.

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Château Durfort-Vivens Margaux 2003, a deuxième cru from Lucien Lurton who also owns another 2nd growth Margaux property, Château Brane-Cantenac,  82.3784% Cabernet Sauvignon with 9.632% Cabernet Franc and the remainder Merlot.  20 months in oak.

If you want to read stuff like this go somewhere serious like www.decanter.com.  If facts bore you and you prefer the experience of wine, then why not join me having fun as I learn.

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