Atlantic Civilisation

I'd been reading in Barry Cunliffe's sweeping history of the European Atlantic seaboard how the Loire is one of the great arteries of the continent along with the Rhone and Rhine. It shifted all those good things from the Med like olive oil out to the 'Celtic fringes'. In turn tin, furs and Vikings made their way from Brittany back towards civilisation. Around Nantes at the western mouth of the Loire is the Muscadet wine region.

There are many signs of a good wine, but one rather crude one is to leave it open in the fridge overnight. Muscadets are usually 'bone-dry' but this one emerged from its chilly 20 hours with a range of flavours. Mainly apple but also a whiff of grass and not at all sharp in the mouth. Amazing value at £7.50 from the Wine Society.

Under The Volcano

If we're talking 'terroir' than it doesn't come more distinctive than ash and tufa does it? In fact the vines of the Auvergne don't cascade down the sides of the region's extraordinary volcanoes like lava. Instead they are mainly in the fertile valleys. This rosé was the perfect dish to set us up for the steaks we cooked under the pine trees camping next to the volcanic Lac D'Aydat. It's a bit like a Bordeaux rosé, quite full-bodied and dry. It's produced by a co-operative in the shadow of the long extinct Puy De Dome that towers weirdly above the surrounding landscape. I think I can detect a hint of the old fires in that lovely colour.

In Sancerre

The Sel De Grenier is one of those rather frilly French restaurants which can put you on edge until you realise all the diners are much more relaxed than the staff. And what could be more unstressed than eating in the garden at the heart of the lovely historic quarter of Montlucon in the Bourbonnais. That's close enough to the Loire for me to order a Sancerre. Not the classic steely white of that region, however, but this lovely cherry red. It went beautifully with some classic French food avec une twiste:  beef carpaccio with a basil sorbet, par exemple.

Changing Cairanne

Wine really does have a life of its own. Even in the bottle it changes over time. And once released it continues to develop new characteristics. Take this Cairanne.

I really like the various Cote Du Rhone villages. Each has its own personality and they can be better value and more interesting than many of the well-known Rhone appelations. But I have had problems with Cairanne before. To my palette it can be a bit leaden, almost steely combined with a rather jammy, full-blown fruitiness. One of the few times I have ever left a bottle undrunk (apart from it being off) was a Cairanne.

So it was when I first tasted this a couple of years ago. But when opened this week, it had taken on a more velvety, less full-blooded body. And when left open in the bottle and glass for an hour or two, it became a very civilised, quite rich wine. Even one mouthful seemed to have quite a different finish to the first impact on the nose.

I just don't know enough about wine [as you will have gathered from this blog] to work this out. But I am looking forward to opening another bottle of this in a couple of years to find out what happens next.

Better Than Coal

I confess my real wine cellar is nothing like the one in the background of this blog. It's actually a very narrow coal hole that runs under the hallway of our Victorian terrace house. It isn't ideal as the temperature is not constant and the underground tributaries of the Fleet River are just inches below in the London clay. But it holds my collection of wine bought en primeur over the last decade or so that we've lived here. This bottle is something I dragged out in the last week past the tool boxes and the ladder, up the four steps into daylight.

After a decade of rest it's a wonderfully fruity but full and quite subtle wine from that most mixed wine region of France, the south-west. It's a beautiful part of the country, where the hills start to rise away from the Med, heading off into deeper Languedoc.

I am delighted to say that this will happily rest a couple of more years in the coal cellar and, I think, improve. The 2005 and the 2007 also awaits.

She's Forever Blowing Bubbles

This is not about the wine, it's about the moment. Champagne is for celebration and what more joy than a good friend who cheats serious illness?
And location and timing helps. In the middle of the Black Mountains near Hay On Wye, in the warm glow of a quite extraordinarily sunny early July weekend. Half way up Tympa.
This was a relatively inexpensive bubbly picked up from the very lovely Corks of Cotham independent wine merchants in Bristol en route to Wales. I am not a huge champagne fan, but this was dryish, with a nice biscuity flavour. Not too sharp or too fizzy.
Cheers to one of my oldest and dearest friends.

Coarse Corse

This is the one you fear. This is the attractively labeled holiday buy lurking at the back of the drinks cabinet. OK, it's not a wine, so it shouldn't even be on this blog. But it's alcoholic and as redolent of terroir as any Claret or Burgundy.

Look at that beautiful label with the lovely calligraphy and that exotic head of the black Corsican. Enjoy the powder pink colour and the inky blue. But note the main ingredients.

'Sucre'. Sugar. Lots of it. This is sweet, but not in the good way that a Sauternes might be.

Corsica is one of my favourite places. Wild. Hills. Family seaside or strange beaches. Odd megalithic circles and a menacing flavour of mafia, pied noir and rich, herby meats and cheeses. Some rather good wine, too. Especially from the northern peninsula.

One of most enjoyable voyages was on the night ferry. We were one of a tiny handful of non-French people in a bateau en voyage to this island that is a mixture of Italian, French and something odd of itself. A bit like this dreadful drink.

And yet. That other ingredient. Myrte. And then you are reminded of the maquis, the dry, haunting smell of the scrub that bakes in the sea-salt sprayed coastal fringes. Plus the bitter fruits of this strange isle.

So what? it's still a rubbish drink. There must be something to have it with, apart from desperation, that makes it palatable, but I don't know what.

Still, it reminds me of Corsica and that's enough.

Pull Over

You are on the E21 about 100+ KM heading north of Lyons when on the left appears the ridge with signposts to some of the best wine villages of Burgundy. You have a car full of kids and unwashed holiday clothes. What you really need is a cool (but not chilled) glass of white.

I have always thought it paradoxical that one of the most reviled and misused grapes - Chardonnay - can reach such heights on those stony slopes just off the motorway.

This is not a particularly outstanding example. It was just a tenner en primeur. But it does have that minerally, slightly acidic quality (imagine sucking a pebble with a slice of lemon - on the other hand don't) but with the oleaginous body of the Chardonnay grape. This one was was slightly oaked with a lovely fresh apple taste (Bramley not Pippin).

This year, I will pull over.

Dramatic Rasteau

The Rhone is the spinal cord of western European history, linking the civilisations of the Med to the cold, grapeless North. Head south nowadays down the Route de Soleil that follows that river's course and turn left about 100 km before Marseilles and you'll find Rasteau.

It's not actually on the Rhone, but it's one of those wonderful places that make up the superior appelation of Cotes De Rhones Villages. 

I love the words Vacqueyras, Gigondas, Tricastin and Rasteau. I spent a wonderful evening once on a terrace outside a farmhouse in the Ardeche with a top Dutch theatre person supping these fruits of the south. Short, wrinkled, moustache. Great raconteur and lover of the wines of the southern Rhone.

Those sensuous names, when rolled around his gutteral Nederlandish mouth, sounded even more  dramatic and full of flavour.

And at their best, that's what these wines are like.

Very local. Full of the stones and herbs that make up that almost-Provence landscape.

This little number was a relatively modest bottle bought en primeur from the Wine Society that I've had in the coal cellar for five years. Hence, all the dust and cobwebs on the label. 

But it's a lovely drinkable red which given some time in the air, opens up nicely from a very concentrated, deep red, almost sharp, into something quite wonderfully sunny and relatively sweet. 

I dedicate this little blog to the memory of Ric Van Hulst.

Claret not blue

The weather's getting colder, the food is getting more substantial, and we're all getting into a more celebratory mood. In this season of snow, steak and Christmas trees, claret is the ideal wine. 

Claret is French, of course, but it has always been a favourite of the English, going right back to the happy times when we actually ran a large slice of the vineyard-packed south-west of France.

This Haut-Medoc from Chateau Tour Du Haut-Moulin has all the typical characteristics. Not a lot of fruit and the dry slightly mouldy tone may not be to everyone's taste. However, those spicy, woody aromas and the long, grape flavour works for me.

My claret-wearing football team may be bottom of the league this Christmas but after watching their hard-won draw at Blackburn I celebrated with few glasses of this Medoc. It's difficult not to feel things can only get better.

Saint Aubin (white)

London, Sumer, 2010

Mineral, full-bodied white

Chateau Beaumont

London, Summer 2010

Ever dependable, good value Chateau Beaumont. Balanced claret with good fruit and a firm, dry base. Possibly needs a year or two more.

Gevry Chambertin

London, Summer 2010

Classic Gevrey - full, fruity Burgundy, well-rounded with a slight edge.