www.vinolent.net

Very few people do marketing as well as the Champenois.  The Bordelais problem, which is all about the monetisation of wine, is not an issue in Champagne, and the Bordelais could learn a thing or two from this.  Many of the Bordelais appear to have forgotten what wine is about: pleasure.  They talk of Parker points and of euros per bottle.  Very few talk about pleasure, of seduction, of love, of romance.  And, as such, more people talk about Bordeaux prices than talk about the juice itself.  In Champagne, however, pleasure and romance are still very much alive.  It’s clear that it costs money, though this is secondary or indeed not even that.  It’s a detail.  At the 2004 Dom Perignon launch last week, to which I was kindly invited, no one talked about the price.  We all talked about what fun we were having.

And none of my colleagues have asked about the price of Dom Perignon either.  Aside from the odd “did you have a good time?” (answer: yes), the question has invariably been: “is it as good as the 2002?”

To answer that question I go first to the 2003, a vintage of Dom Perignon that splits the jury.

I’m one of the jurors that rather likes the 2003, and I first tasted it sat next to a man whose palate and knowledge I rate higher than most: Mr Corky.  I wrote about it here.  Mr Corky is an MW, and a serious one at that, and one that understands what wine is for.  His appraisal of 2003 Dom Perignon struck a note with me: it’s all about the pleasure, and there is an enormous amount of pleasure in 2003 DP.  Which is not to say that the 2003 is without technical class.  Pour a glass of the 2003 and you can catch the bouquet from about two feet: this is impressive.  You can give Dom Perignon “deep analysis” if you like, and it will pass the test, but it’s not really the point.

So back to the 2004.  If the 2002 is about muscle and the 2003 about meat, then the 2004 is about delicacy.  Lifted elegance.  It’s a very pretty ballerina on her toes.

There is delicacy, lift and poise in the 2004.  Lacy, as in very expensive silk lace underwear, quite obviously on someone svelte and extremely pretty.  Bruno Borie likes to compare his vintages of Ducru-Beaucaillou to ladies; to plagiarise this noble method is apt.  So, if 2003 DP is maybe Sophie Dahl then 2004 DP is Kiera Knightly.  I like both.  Most people would say, I think, that the 2004 is the better wine.  And a few might be brave enough to even say that the 2004 is the equal of the 2002, just different.  Which would suit the chaps at Moet (indeed it would suit a lot of people) very nicely.

To finish, I put my hand in the air.  I have been seduced by some brilliant Champenois marketing.  And I love Richard Geoffroy’s (Chef de Cave at Dom Perignon) trippy talk: “there is always some white in the black”.  And it’s very hard not to like 2004 Dom Perignon when you’re standing outside the Abbaye St Pierre d’Hautvilliers having your glass topped up by a very pretty lady and you’ve been shipped out to a very nice hotel, etc, etc, etc.

But I did rather like it.

Pleasure: often overlooked these days.

Which, if you didn’t know, is what “il ya du monde au balcon” means.  A quote from Dominique Lafon who, in my view, is one of the best winemakers in the World.  Except I don’t think he’s a winemaker.  I don’t think Mr Lafon “makes” his wine.  I think he lets it make itself.

It’s a bit like bringing up a child I suppose.  My son is two.  If I was so inclined I’m sure I could stick a golf club/tennis bat/whatever in his hands, read some serious books and start coaching.  He’s a clever boy and would soak some of it up.  I don’t think it outlandish to think that, after a couple of years, with some effort, largely on my part, I could have a four-year-old golfing or tennis prodigy on my hands.  But what I probably wouldn’t have on my hands is a balanced and healthy four-year-old, which is rather what I want.  Look around at the children of your friends and family (not your own) and, certainly in my experience, the children who are the most “together” are the ones whose parents give them love and a bit of direction but aren’t forcing anything down their throats.  I’m not going to “make” my son’s character – I’m going to let it form itself.

So – back to wine and big jugs of it.  Not a bad thing.

2004 Pontet-Canet was my wine of the vintage.  A perfect expression of the vintage itself: pure, fresh, clean, and of Pontet-Canet.  2005 Pontet-Canet is two bottles in one, such is the sheer concentration and power of the juice in the bottle.  It’s 75cl of Kryptonite.  I’ve not tasted 2006 for ages, so no comment.  2007 was one of the wines of a tricky vintage, outscoring Lafite from barrel though for some reason there is no in bottle score from Mr Parker.  I tasted it from bottle early this year and I can only recollect its extreme mintiness, though conditions were a long way from ideal.

2008 Pontet-Canet is again one of the wines of another tricky vintage, and my April 2009 note of this wine finishes: “I believe in this man”, which brings us to 2009 & 2010.  These two are Zeus and Poseidon, and are amongst the best wines I have ever tasted from barrel.  The 2010 is the better of the two in my opinion (making it Zeus) but the differences are stylistic rather than qualitative.  Borg vs McEnroe, Prost vs Schumacher (I await the Senna vintage), etc, etc.

2011 was the first really tricky vintage I’ve tasted from barrel (I do rate 2007 better), though I did rate Pontet and, not for the only time, I mention Latour in the Pontet note .  It’s not a comparison with Latour’s inimitable breeding (and I mean inimitable); it’s about a sort of graphite minerality/power/muscle thing that is going on.

Which brings us to 2012 Pontet-Canet, and those big jugs.

There is a hint of the Emperor’s new clothes about 2012 Pontet-Canet.  I know that I’m not the only one to have a question mark at the end of my note.  I also know how commercially important this wine is to some of my colleagues; I know too that tasting this juice at five months’ old is not a perfect science, nor am I the master of it.  Put concisely: 2012 Pontet-Canet tastes jolly good, which everybody seems to agree, but how many of us are totally sure where what we tasted is going to end up – by which I mean: what is it going to taste like, and when will it be, mature?  And, to get to my point: does 2012 Pontet-Canet taste of Pontet-Canet?  Or does it taste of winemaking?  Does it taste of those big jugs?  Is that where its seductive nature comes from?

I’m not quite sure of this, rather in the same way as I’m not quite sure of the wine.  I gave it a positive note, and it really was quite delicious in a vintage where “delicious” is a word that won’t feature in many tasting books.  But if it is one of the few successes of the 2012 vintage, it isn’t a wine that tastes of itself, if that makes sense.  If what you’re buying is what’s on the label then 2012 Haut-Bailly, for instance, won’t disappoint.  It tastes of 2012 – slightly austere, firm, angular – and of Haut-Bailly which, for me, is like benchmark Graves though with a hint of something Pomerol-esque to it.  Something very elegant.  But 2012 Pontet-Canet tastes neither of 2012 – it’s simply too seductive – nor of Pontet-Canet.  The more I think of it, the more I think it tastes of those big jugs.

In June 2005 I bought a bottle of Krug from what was then Oddbins on Guildford High Street.  I’m fairly certain that it had been there for some time, standing up, in the light, at the top of the shelf.  The argument is that if you’re going to drop £100 on a bottle of Champagne, probably the most delicate of wines, then you should buy something that has been treated impeccably well since it was bottled, something that had been in dark and cool professional storage or similar.

As it happens this was the best bottle of Krug I’ve had.  The moment may have had something to do with it, but I can still remember the meatiness, the ripeness to this bottle.  It tasted mature, complete.  My theory is that the less than perfect storage conditions (i.e. standing up for a year or so in direct light) had accelerated the development of this particular bottle.

Eight years later, Ch. Latour release 1,200 cases of the 1995 vintage of their grand vin.  Wine that has not moved from the chateau since it was bottled.  With a prooftag and a back label stating the date of shipment from the chateau, these wines have what one might describe as bulletproof and perfect provenance.  The price is £4,950 per case of twelve bottles in bond, with UK merchants making around 10% of that, depending on how much they paid for their euros.  The premium on this ex-cellar stock from Latour over non-ex-cellar stock is just under 20%.

The commentary on this release has been mixed in terms of the opinions expressed.  Some merchants have bigged up the release, some have ignored it.  Some say the premium is a bargain, others say a waste of money.  One merchant has rather impressively taken both points of view, albeit through different channels.  I’m actually rather impressed by this lack of integrity, because integrity has nothing to do with this release, indeed I say it’s the opposite.  To distil this, here are three questions:

How good are the storage conditions at Ch. Latour?  All the way back to 1995?

And are they better than, say: Octavian, London City Bond, etc, etc?

And – this is starting to get tricky – if one is better than the other on paper (eg: storage facility X moves between twelve and fourteen degrees celcius three times a year whereas storage facility Y does the same once a year and storage facility Y is bang on thirteen day after day), which one actually tastes better, and to whom?

Now clearly some sort of tasting is in order and you can easily lock me and a dozen other wine geeks in a room with five bottles of 1995 Latour from different sources.  We’ll have a ball and will descend into horrific wine geekery and be coming up with words like “depth”, “poise”, “focus”, “delineation”, “precision” and “energy” just for starters.  What we won’t come up with is consensus: the jury will be split.  And after an hour or so Mr M. and I will be talking about the kids, Mr B. and I about the football.  The point here is that I like coffee and Mr B. likes tea.  Taste is not uniform.  There is no best.

One of the UK wine trade’s more charismatic figures once said to me: “everything is ex-chateau”.  And he was right.  So why all this provenance focus?

One of my favourite phrases is: “it is what it is”.  It’s a softened “THIS is THIS” from The Deer Hunter.  The 2013 release of 1995 Latour (and 2005 Forts de Latour and 2009 Pauillac de Latour) is what it is.  And it’s this:

Drinkers don’t really give a monkey’s about where a bottle has been or what it looks like – they’re more concerned with what’s in it, and how it tastes.  An example: if you have a damp cellar the labels will fall off your bottles and the wooden cases will rot, but the corks of the bottles will be moist and therefore elastic and will do their job efficiently.  Therefore, maybe, rotten boxes and bad labels indicate good wine.  Serious wine guys know this.  But try selling a case of 1982 Lascases with the labels at the bottom of a mouldy case.

 “Provenance”, and its rise, is not about drinking.  It’s not about pleasure.  It’s not about the million-petalled flower that a bottle of wine can be.  It’s about money, it’s about dirty paper.

Latour’s decision to withdraw from the en-primeur market and to release wines “at maturity” is a commercial one.  It’s about making more money out of what they’ve got.  And merchants are on to this new spin: if you’re selling what is essentially the same kit as your competitors then how do you sell it for more?  Ah … provenance.  And you’ve no shortage of wine geeks who’ve never even tasted a bottle of Latour backing you up in their weirdy-beardy forums.  And the marketing guys are salivating over this new angle … a bunch of marketing guys who drink WKD on a Saturday night and whose Sunday Roast comes with prepared vegetables.

Latour is a special place.  I’m a Latour nut.  I can taste the soil in it.  I can taste the breeding, the fact that it has character.  I can taste the patrician arrogance of it, the regal class.  Ex-chateau release?  Prooftags?  I’m not entirely convinced and, whilst Bordeaux has been a commodity for quite some time now, it saddens me a little that the 750ml of grape juice inside a bottle has become less important than, or at least sidelined by, a sticker on the back of it.  But it is what it is, and Bordeaux is what Bordeaux does, and what Bordeaux lives off, what Bordeaux smells of, and sniffs out, is money.

I’ve got this theory about civilisation.  It’s about being conquered, and about lunch.  And the evidence, or the predicate to this theory is the quality of the nosh in France and Italy.  That and the time taken to enjoy one’s nosh – something that happens less and less in the UK.

I’ve eaten very well over the past six months.  The excellent Zucca is just down the road and is close to becoming my work canteen.  I’ve been to Medlar a couple of times – vastly different in menu but very similar in terms of the outstanding quality of the food and the impeccable service.  Last week I was at Chez Bruce – quite possibly my favourite London restaurant – drinking various examples of Pomerol next to a menu designed for that very task.  The official write up is here.

I’ve three-starred it in Alba at Piazza Duomo – stunning food, wine and company, dropped in at Ma Cuisine (which I’m still not bored of/with) in Beaune, and one-starred it in Bordeaux at a very odd place – Septieme Peche – where I ate what appeared to be raw pigeon and, astonishingly, managed to keep it down (how can anyone who grew up/lives in/works in/has visited London ever want to eat pigeon?).

Oh – and I also took lunch in the downstairs kitchen at Ch. Margaux which, in terms of bragging, knocks all of the above sideways.  With a scaffold pole.

I don’t know how much any of the above came to.  This is partly down to my inability to grasp numbers, partly down to the generosity of others.  And I do know that I’m lucky.  And I also know how much the best meal I’ve had in the past six months came to.

The best food in the world is in Italy.  Or maybe it’s the best meals.  As my host at Piazza Duomo put it: “you will eat exceptionally well at the worst trattoria in the village”.  The quality of the food in Piedmont is reason enough to go there in itself – I’ve never eaten so well, well, anywhere.

And the best meal I’ve had in the past six months came to fifteen euros for two of us.  In Barolo, in a little place that, if it had been in France, would have sold cigarettes and taken bets (maybe it does).  Two panini (mine salami) and two glasses of Barbera, and two coffees.  And in terms of satisfaction, ten out of ten.  Bread from down the road, salami from up the road and Barbera from across the road.  It’s what England could be, if you sub the wine with beer, but that’s another rant entirely.

And it’s what wine is all about.  In the past month a new wine “exchange” has been PR-d, as has a new wine investment fund.  At the same time I’ve been trying to write about “self-regulation” of the “wine investment” business – something that not even Jim Budd seems willing to really get his teeth into (I think it’s about lawyers, and I’m busy looking for my balls on this one).  I keep on running out of steam because it’s just all bollocks.  It’s not wine; it’s not pleasure.  It’s money, it’s dirty paper.

And here’s the point: “eat as much Michelin as possible”, as my friend KJJ would say, but I’ll take my salami panini every day.  “First growths are looking attractive again” as my friend the wine fund trumpeteer would say, but I’ll take my glass of Barbera, thank you.  And the coffee?  The Kenco Lady?  Who was/ is a pretty good example of money, and the making of, throwing quality, pleasure, the whole point of the product, into a dumpster.  This hasn’t happened in Piedmont just yet.

Simplicity is under-rated.  Simplicity is beautiful.  Have a look at a wheel, or a log fire.  Eat an apple.

Not a bad question as it goes.  My bet on the game’s result fell through but I’d have money on the fact that the spectators in Box 16 at Selhurst Park last Saturday were the only men drinking fifty year old vintage Port prior to watching the game (it is a sad fact that drinking it during the game would be illegal – or at least drinking it “within view of the pitch” would be – but that’s something else).  And not just any old fifty year old Portuguese, one of the best: 1963 Fonseca.

Briefly: the football.  Palace 4 Middlesbrough 1.  A fair result.  Palace goals by Glenn Murray (1983), Peter Ramage (1983) and Kevin Phillips (1973).  Middlesbrough’s goal scored by Faris Haroun (1983).  A theme here that I didn’t expect but there you go.  A brilliant game for a Palace fan – this season being the reward, that comes round about once a decade, for supporting your local team – a team that has a habit of underperforming.

Briefly: Crystal Palace Football Club.  My team, having been born in Beckenham and then grown up in Sydenham, Forest Hill and Dulwich: from 1985 to 1994 I could see the TV tower from my bed.  Owned by a series of what Ian Holloway would describe as “people” over the past few decades, the club has flirted with the FA Cup, the Premier League and, almost, Europe.  And like most flirts it has come unstuck a few times, going into administration twice in the past fifteen years.  The current owners bought the club out of its most recent administration, and one of the owners happens to run a rather successful wine merchant.  If anyone was going to be drinking 1963 Fonseca at the football over the weekend they were going to be watching the Palace.

Back to the point: ten blokes, ten wines.  Our host, Mr S., asked that we each bring a bottle.  Nine of us did.  Mr Ten got a lot of stick, and rightly so (though in my eyes he made up for it in that he seemed to know Croydon well).  Three entries were Champions’ League quality, another three solid Championship stuff.  The rest were, I’m afraid, non-league.  Indeed one was a Bromley Common Sunday morning.  Herewith the Champions’ League:

1963 Fonseca

Fonseca and Taylor.  It’s one or the other, in that the difference is stylistic rather than qualitative.  I lean toward Taylor, the bigger of the two wines, though this may be prejudice.

At fifty years old, a decently stored bottle of 1963 Fonseca is just about peaking.  Garnet as opposed to ruby in colour and the spirit just dominates the fruit.  I confess to rushing this a little on account of the impending kick-off, and I am ashamed.  At a couple of hundred quid a bottle you could say that this is expensive but I would beg to differ: unimpeachable class at the pinnacle of its maturity.  Thoroughbred lineage.  Legendary, and rightly so, vintage.  An experience.  Two hundred quid?  I pay twice that a month to South West Trains.  Bargain, and brilliant.

1994 Riesling Grand Cru, Rangen de Thann, Domaine Zind Humbrecht

This had been sitting in my cellar for three years – a magnum, and a grand looking one.  One of those bottles that waits for an occasion, though I never thought that occasion would be a football match.

The first thing about this is that it wasn’t crystal clear.  It was cloudy, very cloudy.  Part of this was down to the three trains I had to catch to Norwood Junction, though much of it is down I think to the natural style of Olivier Humbrecht’s winemaking.  No cold-filtration here, nor the pasteurisation that the bottle of Louis Latour Marsannay had gone through (and survived, I add, though this was League One at best).  In terms of taste: this was mature Riesling or, rather, maturing Riesling.  And it had two things that get me excited in a wine: character and energy.

1970 Calvados Pays d’Auge, Christian Drouin

OK this isn’t and wasn’t wine.  It’s distilled cider.  Though as distilled cider goes this was pretty good.  After fermentation, distillation and forty odd years in a barrel you could still taste apple peel here.  And, like Calvados should, it reinvigorated: a perfect Trou Normande.

The point of all this drivel?  It’s about dates and quality.  In 1963 someone picked some grapes in Portugal.  The same in Alsace in 1994.  In 1970 someone picked some apples in Normandy.  On February 16^th 2013 Glenn Murray scored two (one of which was a peach), Ramage one, Phillips one and Haroun another.  And me and a few blokes got drunk on seeds that were sown decades ago.

And, for me, there remains a bit of a spark, a bit of something special.  Focussing on the Fonseca: I have a vision of a man picking grapes in September 1963.  Of men and women treading grapes, of a country I am ashamed to have never visited, of a year before I was born.  Of a sunny day.  And somehow, that man, that day, that harvest was caught in a bottle, which my friend Mr S. opened on Saturday, nearly fifty years later, prior to Crystal Palace (this is my terroir, my home) giving Middlesbrough a tonking.  And I felt a connection.  Brilliant.  Viva Palace.

How do you taste barrel samples?  This month there has been plenty of opportunity to find out: January is the month of the Burgundy en-primeur tastings, more of which later, but essentially if you’re a customer of a Burgundy merchant, you should be able to taste some of the most recently released vintage, 2011, a vintage that (a) I rather like and (b) is fairly easy to taste.  Most of the whites have been bottled though the majority of the reds are still in barrel, even if they are almost – and I repeat almost – finished wines.

These tastings are on the whole a good thing in that they allow consumers to get closer to producers, that they allow consumers to make their buying decisions on what they think, rather than what their wine merchant is telling them.  On the face of it this is a good thing, though examined in a little more depth, it gets a little murky.  And the potential power of notes from some critics bothers me a little.  I have a draft of a very chippy article on this that I may or may not tidy up and publish.

I tasted a few hundred 2011 Burgundies late last year and formed my opinions on the vintage on the basis of what I’d tasted.  I’ve been doing this for a few years now and have the confidence in my palate to make a call, which in this case is that 2011 is certainly a success for the reds, which are pure, seductive, approachable wines which speak of their origins (I’m talking terroir here) and won’t take decades to show their best.

In the very old days, back in that lovely time where Clarethound and I shared what has to be one of the best offices in London, Clarethound himself went to Bordeaux to taste the wines from barrel (these would have been 1999s) and I was definitely in awe of the whole thing.  He went with Corky, a man whose palate I rate right at the top.  I’ll get back to Corky (I haven’t asked him for the three bottles yet), but I can still remember asking Clarethound just how you did it.  Just how do you go and taste something that is so young – so undeveloped – and then make a call on its quality?  It’s a bit like judging a meal before it’s completely cooked, or judging a car just by sitting in it rather than driving it.

I can’t remember Clarethound’s answer in its entirety but it still helps, in that if you don’t know what you’re doing, it helps to have an instruction book.  Herewith my instructions:

Cleanliness: is what you are tasting clean?  Wine that tastes dirty is rarely good, and dirtiness is something that a wine can rarely grow out of.  If something tastes like the ladybirds went into the vat when it was young, those ladybirds are still going to be there when it’s old.  On the same note, if the ladybirds aren’t there in the barrel – how are they going to get there later on?  Over to you, Mr Nanson.

Ingredients:  wine has four key ingredients as far as I’m concerned: Alcohol, acidity, fruit and tannin.  Having all four is not always essential (2003 Bordeaux lacks acidity, for example, but the best are very, very good) but it’s a good start and 2003 clarets are probably the exception that proves the rule.  An excess of any or all of these four is neither good nor bad in itself but you should be able to taste, and define, all four.

Balance:  this is where for me it begins to get serious.  2005 Bordeaux has an abundance of all four factors – the dial is up to eleven on all four.  This is not what makes 2005 a truly great vintage.  What makes 2005 the real deal (Holyfield) is the balance between these component parts.  They’re all there, all singing, dancing, shouting but there is no part of the orchestra that dominates the music.  Ripeness dominates 2009 and acidity and tannin dominate 2010.  This is why, for me, 2005 Is the most complete vintage of this trio.

Taste: erm, quite simple this one.  Does it taste nice?  This sounds facile but it’s often overlooked.

Winemaking: tricky again.  Gerard Perse’s wines taste manipulated.  You can taste that man has been involved here.  Flip the coin and there is the argument that they have been extraordinarily well made.  You can taste the winemaking but the quality of the winemaking is outstanding.  I can still remember tasting 2003 Pavie from barrel in 2004 (along with another man who I rate right at the top though have yet to divine a good nickname for).  It tasted engineered.  The style was all fruit and oak.  It wasn’t for me at the time, but technically it was faultless.   A gold Rolex is not for everyone but it is hard not to admire the engineering.

Character: this is something I need more and more these days.  Belinda on Page Three might be the prettiest lady in Ongar but I’m just not interested if she doesn’t have an opinion on footballer’s wages or if I take her to Medlar and she asks for ketchup.  To translate: there is a winemaker in Puligny whose wines are perfectly competent, indeed very good, representatives of what you can make in Puligny.  They are clean, balanced and quite delicious.  And they’re boring.  A Ford Mondeo might well be faultless, but it’s still a Ford Mondeo.

Tailoring: this to me is the end game.  And more later on this.  But, briefly: you can look at me in my pinstripes and you may or may not think that I look quite sharp.  My wife does (or at least that what she says).  But the man who I tasted 2003 Pavie with would spot in an instant that my stripes are off the hook, that  they’re not tailored.  A winemaker is a bit like a tailor.  God provides the cloth and some have better access to fine cloth than others (largely through fate of wealth or wealth of fate rather than religious devotion).  A very good note on a wine from me will contain the words “well-tailored”.

As Clarethound would say: “Barrels, eh?”.

Three questions:

What is the point of a wine book?

How do you review one?

Is Neal Martin’s book, “Pomerol”, any good?

If you are just starting to learn about wine you need two books: “The Oxford Companion to Wine” (Jancis Robinson) and “The World Atlas of Wine” (Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson).  These two are so good and, between them, so comprehensive in their coverage of just exactly what is what that, unless you need to start pretending to be some sort of authority, they’ll do you forever.

But what if you do want to be an expert, or at least pretend to be?

If, like me, your calling is Burgundy then again you need just two books:  “Inside Burgundy” (Jasper Morris) and “The Wines of Burgundy” (Clive Coates).  And I haven’t outgrown either of them; indeed I have a copy of the former at both home and office.  I refer to each of them weekly, occasionally daily.

So: I think the answer to question one is that the point of a wine book is information; education.  A good wine book isn’t necessarily something that you read from end to end – there is rarely a plot – it’s something that is dipped into from time to time; something that helps you.  And a good wine book is well written; it’s easy to understand.  It’s like that teacher that WANTED you to work out how convection worked.

The answer to question two is more tricky, so I’ll change the question: what makes a good wine book?

My favourite wine book is “Inside Burgundy”.  It has everything.  The detail is almost arrogant in its depth: the name of the vineyard behind my mate’s house in Junay?  Vaumorillon.  And most people don’t even know where Junay is.  “Inside Burgundy” is for me the benchmark of what a good wine book should be: total in terms of coverage, accuracy and clarity.  And in terms of the information, it contains the information that I want; it answers the questions that I am asking.  Nothing is unfathomable, though with Jasper you feel sure that you have touched bottom.

Final question: is Neal’s book any good?

Like most wine books of this size, it’s not something that I’d read end to end.  This is more about my attention span (think of goldfish) than anything else.  So I thought I’d give it a test.  More words have been written on Petrus than bottles have been drunk.  Likewise Le Pin, and probably VCC, Evangile, Conseillante and all that crowd too.  So I decided to randomly look up a property that is off the radar.  I originally thought of something like Croix du Casse or Bon Pasteur but the card to play was obvious: Feytit-Clinet: a property that I thought I knew well until I read what Neal has written about it.  Some perspective here: Feytit-Clinet is such a small place that you taste in the garden if the sun is out…

If you want to know what Neal says about Feytit-Clinet then you should either buy the book or ask Neal himself.  What I’ll say about what he writes is this: all the technical stuff is there and is correct; likewise the historical stuff.  That would be enough in its own right and some one-liner bit of inside info – that the dog is called Merlot or similar – would have added the gravy for most books, but there is much, much more here.  In the factory that is Bordeaux, Pomerol is perhaps the only region of renown that seems to have a soul.  There is something Burgundian to it in both vineyard and vigneron in that you get the impression that it’s a place where the wines can and do reflect the character of the man or woman that made them, the particular soil from which the grapes are born, and that it counts.  And “Pomerol” captures this, captures the soul.  As far as Feytit-Clinet is concerned, I want to own some (again) after reading it.

I think that answers question three.  I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I thought that “Pomerol” was rubbish or indeed merely average to good.  I’m rather grateful that it’s neither.  “Inside Burgundy” remains my desert island wine book; “Pomerol” isn’t a million miles off, and not a bad companion at all if you are looking to navigate a region where the most used compass in recent years has been Neal’s employer, or perhaps just his scores.

A final word or two:

The maps in the book: brilliant.

Neal’s writing style is what some might call Marmite.  I’ve always been a Bovril man myself, though do go to the other side from time to time.  There is personality to this book: a good thing.

I need to write a book.  If I could write one as good as this I would be more than happy.

www.pomerolbook.com

In the pipe for the moment are a review of Neal Martin’s “Pomerol” and something about ladybirds.  Also something off-piste about tailoring.  And a handful of characters who will hopefully answer my requests to answer the three questions.

In the meantime something brief about the 2011 Burgundy vintage.  Tim Atkin’s “10 things you need to know” is here.  I agree with some of it.  Herewith what I learned last week:

1)      The hallmark of the reds is charm.  This was on the whole a very easy vintage to taste.  Some growers didn’t get the ripeness they needed – I tasted a few wines that I reckon were picked too early – but for the most part these are good, indeed very good, and seductive wines.

2)      The hallmark of the whites is that there isn’t a hallmark.  2007s are muscular, 2008s silky-sharp, 2009s fat, 2010s either ghostly delicate or grapey depending on how happy the vigneron was working with the skins.  2011s are, well, nice.  They taste of the wine more than the vintage.

3)      Ladybirds.  My favourite line came from a vigneron who I trust: “the biggest bull*&%^ I’ve ever heard”.  More to follow on this, but I’m on the same page.  Or at least I think I am.  Maybe.

4)      This is another small vintage.  2012 is even smaller.  In the three vintages of 2010, 2011 and 2012, a vintage’s worth of harvest (and income) has been lost.  Some winemakers are going to go out of business.  I pray for them, and also that any land that comes on to the market is bought by people that are going to make good wine, as opposed to people who are just going to make good money

5)      Negociants.  I’ve always been snobby about negociant Burgundy and unfairly so in some cases.  No names here, but there are some very good wines made by some of the big names.  And there is also some complete dross that is a waste of grapes.

6)      After seven years of tasting at the same bunch of growers, a change is as good as, or indeed better than, a rest.

7)      It’s fair to say that the most impressive wines I tasted were in the lesser-followed appellations.  There is genius at either end of the two Cotes: Olivier Lamy at the south, Sylvain Pataille at the north.  They were schoolmates, incidentally.  All of Olivier’s St Aubins absolutely knocked out (and I mean truly put on the floor) a selection of grands crus tasted later the same morning at one of the larger negociants (see 5); Sylvain’s selection of Marsannays would do the same with many of the grander Gevreys.

8)      Close to 100 wines a day is hard work, no matter how much you love it.

9)      Money infected Bordeaux a long time ago.  In some places it is infecting Burgundy.  This breaks my heart.  I met a few people who seemed to be rubbing their hands in anticipation when discussing point 4.

10)    Never, ever, leave your tasting book anywhere.  Especially at the domaine where you’ve noted “cack-handedly chaptalised”, “wonky”, “all out of balance”, “dirty” and “I don’t want to put this in my mouth”.  I refer to tasting rule number one, which is: never, ever, write your name in your tasting book.

1990 started on a Monday.  I was eighteen as the year turned.  I have little recollection of the year itself, either on account of my age then or my age now.  Nelson Mandela was freed; Sammy Davis Junior died.  Mario Balotelli was born.  All I can remember of 1990 with any accuracy was the FA Cup Final and its replay between Crystal Palace and Manchester United, and watching us beat Liverpool 4-3 on the way which, incidentally, is possibly the best football match that any Palace fan has ever seen.

1990 was also a rather good year for Bordeaux.  Many wines are a little on the ripe side for some (this is a reasonably easy vintage to call blind) though this is pedantry.  And at twenty plus, nearly all of the top wines are drinking.  So: lunch at Zucca with a couple of blind wines and, despite this lunch being in the name of business, a couple of mates.

My friend Boy Wonder is quite possibly the sharpest tool in the entire wine trade toolbox.  A man who can not only see a margin in a deal in the same way that the Rain Man can count matches dropped on the floor, but also a man who really, really knows his kit.  On top of that he’s a lovely bloke, and is armed with a bottle that is just for me.  I, in turn, am armed with a bottle for him and The Third Man.  Less thought has gone into my bottle: I’ve just taken what I reckon will be nice from the Eurocave.  Though I do know that Boy Wonder and The Third Man are familiar with the chateau.

Zucca is a quite perfect restaurant, particularly if you know how to order, which is: multiple shared starters and then some pasta.  Simple rule and unfailing in success.  The food is of outstanding quality (the starters and the pasta in particular), the surroundings unpretentious yet classy, the service attentive, efficient and polite.  The wine list is very strong – there is no need to BYO unless, like me, you’re a poncey wine merchant type.  But, reverting to type, we brought our own, which we did blind:

1999 Volnay 1er cru, Clos du Chateau des Ducs, Lafarge

Boy Wonder brought this knowing that I love Burgundy, love Volnay and love Lafarge.  More later on this domaine – I could go on and on – but, briefly: impeccable, old-fashioned, impossibly precise wine that needs time.

So: region?  We all got this pretty quickly.  Avoid the 2003 vintage and Burgundy is fairly easy to nail.

Vintage?  I didn’t admit it at the time but I was on 2005, in that it was clearly a serious year.  The wine was, technically, faultless, though very, very young in terms of its development.  I then got lost but we arrived at 1999 on account of the quality and a bit of guessing.  Lafarge makes wines for the long term and this is still very young in terms of maturity rather than years.

Wot is it?  The Third Man got Volnay and then it was easy.  This was clearly from something that was at the top of the premiers crus, so Caillerets, Clos des Chenes or, as it was, Clos du Ch. des Ducs.

Summary: this is serious wine, it just wants another twenty years.

1990 Ch. Rauzan-Segla, Margaux

This is how good Boy Wonder is: having confirmed that it was a Margaux, and that it wasn’t Palmer, he nailed it.  The vintage was easy enough but nailing anything blind is no mean feat.  This is why I call him Boy Wonder.

The wine itself glides easily into my top five of the year.  The mintiness, and the precise character of mintiness, that is particular to mature claret.  The character that a wine has at maturity; the layers; the ease of the fruit.  And: the real test, the real endorsement: I could easily have done a couple of bottles of this.  If the Lafarge was the schoolwork (you had to work out the sum rather than just come up with the answer) this was the reward.  This was the enjoyment, the satisfaction.  This was a bottle that reminded me why I do what I do.  Impeccable.  Boy Wonder has moved the market on this one since but you should be able to buy it for £150 a bottle or so all in – quite the bargain if you ask me.

Summary: buy this if you see it.

Sometime in Autumn 2005 a mate of mine sold a million quid’s worth of Lafite to a gentlemen that he had met in a lift in Hong Kong.  It might not have been the beginning of the mid 2000s Far East wine boom in itself but it’s a good marker and a good story.

In the years that followed I would say that the words “Far East” were uttered in at least 90% of my conversations with new customers, journalists, etc, and at lectures, talks and the like the “new market” of the Far East invariably warranted a section of its own.  Yet I hadn’t visited the region since 1982, a time when I was far more interested in fake Rolexes and remote-controlled cars than I was in Cabernet Sauvignon and the gravel on the left bank of the Gironde.

So a trip to Hong Kong and Singapore was an eye-opener to say the least.

As a fine wine merchant in the UK over the past decade, life has been good.  I have been lucky.  Before my son and heir showed up I drove something fast and German and I wore something Swiss, heavy and very waterproof on my wrist.  This was previously the realm of the banker, not the wine merchant.  But the emergence of the Far Eastern wine market made selling wine, serious wine, profitable.  Very profitable, and quite easy to boot.  We did well.  From late 2005 to mid 2008 I would frequently tell people that selling the wine wasn’t an issue; buying it was the challenge.  Fine wine became a commodity, an asset of the speculator rather than the connoisseur, and this was largely on the back of demand, or perceived demand, from Hong Kong and China.  And I, the salesman with the flashy watch and fast car (I really do miss the latter), spoke about this mysterious marketplace where dreams were made in the same way as your average off-licence boy spoke about Lafite: I knew what it was – sort of – and I knew that it was good.  I thought that it was something to be spoken of highly.  But I never quite understood its heart: I’d never tasted it, felt it.  I knew that my Rolex was the best, that it cost me three grand, but I didn’t know what made it tick.

So: let’s get to the point.  I met thirty or forty people in Singapore and Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago and I was shamed.  Like so many, I had thought that these “Far Eastern consumers” were buying labels, not liquid (it’s actually the UK merchants who have been selling labels).  I met men and women whose self-taught knowledge of the subject, and a knowledge built in years as opposed to decades or centuries would eclipse the complacent experience of many a UK old hand.  Put simply: these guys know their kit.

I’m pretty good at Burgundy.  I’m not Allen Meadows or Jasper Morris but I’m pretty good: I know my kit, I’m the next rung or two down.  I’m also a half-reasonable blind taster (and reason, not ego, is the friend of the blind taster) but I was whipped by our hosts on more than one occasion.  You can have paper knowledge coming out of your ears, you can have visited Christophe Roumier every year for the past five, but can you compete with a man who has tasted every vintage of his Amoureuses (and de Vogue’s, and Groffier’s, and Mugnier’s, and the rest) back to the 1970s and further?  Who has had the 1999 and 2002 five times in the past year?  No.  You’re not an expert just because you’ve eaten at Ma Cuisine a few times and know where to stay in Beaune.

To finish: I know a lot of guys in the UK wine trade who couldn’t tell Pinotage from Petrus if the two were put in front of them yet sell X million pounds worth of wine each year on the back of the mystical demand from the East.  Having spent a week in this mystical East I am reminded of why I do this job, why I love wine.  The one thing that is better than drinking something that takes you closer to your maker (it was 83 Clos de la Roche, Dujac in Hong Kong) is drinking it with someone who understands your experience.  I know a handful of people in the UK that understand this, and they know who they are.  I met more than that number in five days on the other side of the planet.