What we drank at the weekend
I know some people were interested in my wine ramblings before Christmas, so I thought I might while a way a moment or two by letting you know what Helen and I drank over the weekend. I will put prices and suppliers etc so you can take a punt if you feel so inclined.
For Friday aperativo we had a bottle of Soave Classico made by the Pra Brothers in their Coll San’ Antonio vineyard in Italy.
This is fast becoming one of my favourite white wines. I suggested it to Jamie Broughton last year and I know he was knocked out by it. It is full of melon and pineapple flavours but shot through with a mineral acidity that means it is in no way cloying or sweet. It is balanced, structured and wonderful. You can buy it from Knightwick wines for about £9.
We were supposed to be going out to the pictures and for a pizza, but Friday was so horrible, we stayed in and ordered a curry with which we drank:
Chateau du Moulin Rouge 2004. This is one of my favourite wines and is made in the village of Cussac Fort Medoc about twenty kilometres north of Bordeaux. I have been there a couple of times and enjoyed the hospitality of the Ribeiro family who this year let us taste the 2006 out of the barrel, which was fascinating. The 2004 is still very young and a bit raw but is full of classic claret cassis flavours (alliteration anyone?) but was a bit overpowered by the curry! I bought this en primeur through 1855.com for about £7 a bottle. If you ever see this for sale in this country, particularly from the 2000/01/03/05 vintages, buy it. It is great value and a really good introduction to the wonderful world of claret.
For Saturday aperativo we drank Veuve Olivier a rose from the Aldi that cost £3.49. It was a good party wine and a perfectly pleasant way to kick off a Saturday night, but I wouldn’t form a queue to buy it.
While playing poker I drank Porton Viejo. This is available from Laithwaites by mail order for about £7. You have to be careful with Tony Laithwaite. None of his wines are bad, but not many of them are particularly good either. This one is fantastic and I recommend it to you without hesitation. It is made in the Rapel Valley in Chile from Cabernet Sauvignon and tastes like blackberries sucked through bonfire smoke on a cold November evening. Wonderful.
On Sunday, Helen was forced to go to Tesco because they are the only stockists of a particular brand of lip protector that she favours. She softened the impact of this unpleasantness by picking up a bottle of St Joseph for us to have with our Sunday lamb chops. St. Joseph is one of the Rhone Valley villages entitled to its own appellation and is capable of producing big, bold beautiful Syrah based wines that are all pepper and spice. Like most things from Tesco however, this was hugely disappointing: insipid, thin, struggling and tired. It was very generous of Helen to shell out a fiver for it (down from £7) but I am afraid it wasn’t worth it.
More again soon! Izod
Friday 21 August 2009
Quiz
What do the Australians call Syrah?
What three grapes are allowed in the production of Champagne?
Is Chateau Latour a First or Second Growth?
What country does Rioja come from and from what grape is it made?
Work out this anagram. Clue: it is a wine making region! RNOOULSLISGEUCLDANO
In which country is the Barossa Valley?
In which ‘appellation’ is Chateau Giscours?
In which two European countries do the words ‘Reserve’ have legal meaning?
Why would you decant a wine? (Give two reasons.)
If an Italian wine has ‘Classico’ on the label, what does it mean?
What is the sweetest category of German wine?
What is botrytis?
What is the main colour of wine drunk in Provence?
The great wines of Burgundy are made from one red grape and one white grape. What are they called?
The Three Choirs vineyard is on the border of which three counties?
What do the Australians call Syrah?
What three grapes are allowed in the production of Champagne?
Is Chateau Latour a First or Second Growth?
What country does Rioja come from and from what grape is it made?
Work out this anagram. Clue: it is a wine making region! RNOOULSLISGEUCLDANO
In which country is the Barossa Valley?
In which ‘appellation’ is Chateau Giscours?
In which two European countries do the words ‘Reserve’ have legal meaning?
Why would you decant a wine? (Give two reasons.)
If an Italian wine has ‘Classico’ on the label, what does it mean?
What is the sweetest category of German wine?
What is botrytis?
What is the main colour of wine drunk in Provence?
The great wines of Burgundy are made from one red grape and one white grape. What are they called?
The Three Choirs vineyard is on the border of which three counties?
Monday 10 August 2009
On grapes
On grapes
The other week, a colleague at work said, when talking about what wine she and her husband preferred, ‘I like a Chardonnay and my husband likes to drink Merlot’.
This response bothered me. Not because I disagree that either of these grapes makes excellent wine. Far from it. Chateau Petrus is made from Merlot and I would love to drink that regularly. Le Montrachet is made from Chardonnay and I wouldn’t mind a glass or two of that on a Friday night.
My issue with her response is that it is indicative of a trend in wine retailing – started in the new world - that dumbs down, simplifies and ultimately reduces pleasure. Buying a certain bottle of wine because you know the grape it is made from belongs to the school of ‘I know what I like and I like what I know’, which is reductive and ultimately leads us to Tesco and Starbucks, neither of which being a place I want to go.
Selling wines by their grape variety represents cheap and easy marketing. Just look at what has happened to Pinot Grigio. Massive marketing drives have seen it rise from being a fairly obscure Italian mutant (of the Pinot Noir) five years ago to something approaching supermarket shelf and world wine bar domination. But you know what will happen: in five years’ time, people won’t be saying, when asked in the pub what they would like, ‘Oh, ABC, darling, ABC,’ but ‘anything but PG, please’, because the mass marketing will create mass demand that will see mass retailers force lower and lower prices on to producers who will in turn produce a product of lower and lower quality. Chardonnay from South East Australia is just about undrinkable as are, to my taste at least, the mega brands from California.
If you drink only according to grape variety, chances are you only know to drink red wines called Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Tempranillo, Syrah or Pino Noir. If you drink white wines you are probably limiting yourself to Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc or possibly Chenin Blanc and Viognier (but probably not). Why do this? Why not decide to divide up your Friday wine-pound into monthly blocks of a country (France in December, Argentina in January, and Spain in February etc), or a region: Loire Valley in summer, Central Valley from Chile in winter? Why not buy something you know absolutely nothing about whatsoever? The worst thing that can happen is that you have a mildly unpleasant experience that costs you a fiver (or a tenner or whatever) and the best thing is that you could have a wonderful evening with a new life-long friend.
David Izod
August 9 2009
The other week, a colleague at work said, when talking about what wine she and her husband preferred, ‘I like a Chardonnay and my husband likes to drink Merlot’.
This response bothered me. Not because I disagree that either of these grapes makes excellent wine. Far from it. Chateau Petrus is made from Merlot and I would love to drink that regularly. Le Montrachet is made from Chardonnay and I wouldn’t mind a glass or two of that on a Friday night.
My issue with her response is that it is indicative of a trend in wine retailing – started in the new world - that dumbs down, simplifies and ultimately reduces pleasure. Buying a certain bottle of wine because you know the grape it is made from belongs to the school of ‘I know what I like and I like what I know’, which is reductive and ultimately leads us to Tesco and Starbucks, neither of which being a place I want to go.
Selling wines by their grape variety represents cheap and easy marketing. Just look at what has happened to Pinot Grigio. Massive marketing drives have seen it rise from being a fairly obscure Italian mutant (of the Pinot Noir) five years ago to something approaching supermarket shelf and world wine bar domination. But you know what will happen: in five years’ time, people won’t be saying, when asked in the pub what they would like, ‘Oh, ABC, darling, ABC,’ but ‘anything but PG, please’, because the mass marketing will create mass demand that will see mass retailers force lower and lower prices on to producers who will in turn produce a product of lower and lower quality. Chardonnay from South East Australia is just about undrinkable as are, to my taste at least, the mega brands from California.
If you drink only according to grape variety, chances are you only know to drink red wines called Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Tempranillo, Syrah or Pino Noir. If you drink white wines you are probably limiting yourself to Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc or possibly Chenin Blanc and Viognier (but probably not). Why do this? Why not decide to divide up your Friday wine-pound into monthly blocks of a country (France in December, Argentina in January, and Spain in February etc), or a region: Loire Valley in summer, Central Valley from Chile in winter? Why not buy something you know absolutely nothing about whatsoever? The worst thing that can happen is that you have a mildly unpleasant experience that costs you a fiver (or a tenner or whatever) and the best thing is that you could have a wonderful evening with a new life-long friend.
David Izod
August 9 2009
The right wine in the right place.
The right wine in the right place.
Ok, so here’s a question: if we accept that good local wine should be consumed near to its place of production if you want to get the most from it (which heaven knows I am not the first person to comment on, as hordes of disappointed Sangria drinkers have noted from about 1968 onwards), what happens if you open a good bottle of claret or a top Rhone Valley village wine on a balmy evening when your skin is fizzing with sun and water, you only have plastic glasses to drink it out of and you are chowing down on an €8 take-away pizza on the terrace?
It’s a big fat waste of money, that’s what. Now I know that the beardy fella in ‘Sideways’ ended up drinking his prized Cheval Blanc out of a plastic cup in a cheesy diner somewhere, but that was more about his need to find a new philosophy, not a new way to enjoy fine wine. He might have got something out of his experience, but the fact remains the wine would have tasted better if he had decanted it, poured it into Reidel glasses and drunk it with a rare rump steak.
My lesson of learning this ‘right wine in the right location’ unfolded over forty eight hours while in Provence. Helen and I were enjoying our usual aperativo time, drinking rosé and eating olives, when our neighbour came out on to the terrace for a smoke. We had seen him arrive earlier in the day, a swarthy southern European with cropped grey hair, a twinkle in his eye and his teenaged son on the back of his hefty BMW motorbike.
It is important to stress that although Patrick and Kevin (as we subsequently discovered they were called) shared our terrace, this was hardly an inconvenience because a) I have lived in flats that were smaller than said terrace and b) we might have been close neighbours, but much like the pioneers who tramped into the American wilderness, the next neighbours beyond were a long, long way away. Like half a mile away in at least two of the four compass points and on the other side of the building on the other two compass points which effectively put them out of sight and out of mind.
Anyway, Patrick came out for a smoke and it would have been rude not to have invited him to join us for a glass and besides, he could easily decline and good manners would have prevailed. It transpired that Patrick was not a man to refuse anything. His English was good – full of idiom and expression and obviously learnt everywhere except in the classroom. His French and German were also good and his Italian was spoken like the mother tongue that it was.
Patrick liked to talk. This could have been a disaster of course. I have seen ‘Holiday Neighbours From Hell’ on ITV2, but it really wasn’t because Patrick was engaging, witty, full of stories and philosophies that he was keen to try out on us. Within half an hour we felt we had known him years and although Helen and I had spoken barely three sentences between us, he seemed to have taken a liking to us (maybe because we listened while everyone back home in Switzerland just tells him to shut up).
The following day, we were having our picnic lunch on the big table by the pool and again it would have been rude not to have invited Kevin and Patrick (who were well aware that it was odd for two Italian-Swiss to end up with Irish names) to join us. They were a little embarrassed by the somewhat meagre fayre they could bring to the table and were suitably impressed by our Victorian Country House Picnic, but they joined us anyway and a very pleasant couple of hours passed, at the end of which Patrick invited us to be his guests at a restaurant in town that night. We accepted, enjoyed a good dinner later that evening and made only the most polite, restrained attempt to do anything with the very large tab that was placed in front of our host.
Given this generosity, and given that we could not afford to return the favour another night, I decided that the next best thing would be to offer a different, but hopefully just as enjoyable experience. I didn’t want to return the favour by returning to a restaurant because there is nothing worse that worrying about the cost of every side order, extra bottle of wine and expensive Cognacs. It is no fun taking someone to dinner if you can’t give them what they want, so if I couldn’t be a good host in a restaurant, I thought at least I could be a good host on the terrace. So the following evening I went out and got some good take away pizza and went to the supermarket and bought a good bottle of Chablis to have with the aperativos, a bottle of Chateau Ferrand to have with the pizzas and a single vineyard Gigondas to have with the cheese.
And we sat on the terrace as the sun went down and the crickets started their orchestrations and we had a rare old time. The artichoke hearts out of the packet were great as a starter. The pizza and salad were excellent, the cheese hearty and strong.
And the wine? The Gigondas just about held its own (and interestingly came from the closest geographical location) while the Chablis and the claret were lost, like autistic ‘A’ grade scholars forced out of their routine who can only manage ‘C’s. There was too much scent in the air to need it in the glass, too much warmth in the evening to need it in the wine.
We all agreed. There was only one solution. Bring on the rosé!
David Izod
August 2009
Ok, so here’s a question: if we accept that good local wine should be consumed near to its place of production if you want to get the most from it (which heaven knows I am not the first person to comment on, as hordes of disappointed Sangria drinkers have noted from about 1968 onwards), what happens if you open a good bottle of claret or a top Rhone Valley village wine on a balmy evening when your skin is fizzing with sun and water, you only have plastic glasses to drink it out of and you are chowing down on an €8 take-away pizza on the terrace?
It’s a big fat waste of money, that’s what. Now I know that the beardy fella in ‘Sideways’ ended up drinking his prized Cheval Blanc out of a plastic cup in a cheesy diner somewhere, but that was more about his need to find a new philosophy, not a new way to enjoy fine wine. He might have got something out of his experience, but the fact remains the wine would have tasted better if he had decanted it, poured it into Reidel glasses and drunk it with a rare rump steak.
My lesson of learning this ‘right wine in the right location’ unfolded over forty eight hours while in Provence. Helen and I were enjoying our usual aperativo time, drinking rosé and eating olives, when our neighbour came out on to the terrace for a smoke. We had seen him arrive earlier in the day, a swarthy southern European with cropped grey hair, a twinkle in his eye and his teenaged son on the back of his hefty BMW motorbike.
It is important to stress that although Patrick and Kevin (as we subsequently discovered they were called) shared our terrace, this was hardly an inconvenience because a) I have lived in flats that were smaller than said terrace and b) we might have been close neighbours, but much like the pioneers who tramped into the American wilderness, the next neighbours beyond were a long, long way away. Like half a mile away in at least two of the four compass points and on the other side of the building on the other two compass points which effectively put them out of sight and out of mind.
Anyway, Patrick came out for a smoke and it would have been rude not to have invited him to join us for a glass and besides, he could easily decline and good manners would have prevailed. It transpired that Patrick was not a man to refuse anything. His English was good – full of idiom and expression and obviously learnt everywhere except in the classroom. His French and German were also good and his Italian was spoken like the mother tongue that it was.
Patrick liked to talk. This could have been a disaster of course. I have seen ‘Holiday Neighbours From Hell’ on ITV2, but it really wasn’t because Patrick was engaging, witty, full of stories and philosophies that he was keen to try out on us. Within half an hour we felt we had known him years and although Helen and I had spoken barely three sentences between us, he seemed to have taken a liking to us (maybe because we listened while everyone back home in Switzerland just tells him to shut up).
The following day, we were having our picnic lunch on the big table by the pool and again it would have been rude not to have invited Kevin and Patrick (who were well aware that it was odd for two Italian-Swiss to end up with Irish names) to join us. They were a little embarrassed by the somewhat meagre fayre they could bring to the table and were suitably impressed by our Victorian Country House Picnic, but they joined us anyway and a very pleasant couple of hours passed, at the end of which Patrick invited us to be his guests at a restaurant in town that night. We accepted, enjoyed a good dinner later that evening and made only the most polite, restrained attempt to do anything with the very large tab that was placed in front of our host.
Given this generosity, and given that we could not afford to return the favour another night, I decided that the next best thing would be to offer a different, but hopefully just as enjoyable experience. I didn’t want to return the favour by returning to a restaurant because there is nothing worse that worrying about the cost of every side order, extra bottle of wine and expensive Cognacs. It is no fun taking someone to dinner if you can’t give them what they want, so if I couldn’t be a good host in a restaurant, I thought at least I could be a good host on the terrace. So the following evening I went out and got some good take away pizza and went to the supermarket and bought a good bottle of Chablis to have with the aperativos, a bottle of Chateau Ferrand to have with the pizzas and a single vineyard Gigondas to have with the cheese.
And we sat on the terrace as the sun went down and the crickets started their orchestrations and we had a rare old time. The artichoke hearts out of the packet were great as a starter. The pizza and salad were excellent, the cheese hearty and strong.
And the wine? The Gigondas just about held its own (and interestingly came from the closest geographical location) while the Chablis and the claret were lost, like autistic ‘A’ grade scholars forced out of their routine who can only manage ‘C’s. There was too much scent in the air to need it in the glass, too much warmth in the evening to need it in the wine.
We all agreed. There was only one solution. Bring on the rosé!
David Izod
August 2009
Local wines for local people
Local wines for local people
When Helen and I go on holiday, we have an informal policy of trying to find at least one good, local, wine. In an effort to do so, we have to try lots of different wines of course, some of which we will dismiss, some of which we will buy and enjoy, but we always try to find one wine that stands out, warms its way into affections and stays there. This year it was Domaine La Bouverie and it is quite the most exceptional rosé wine either of us have ever drunk. As far as I am aware, it is not available in Britain, so you are going to have to travel to Provence to get it (or come to my house over the next two months until our stocks run out) but should you get the chance to try it, I really would.
We found it like this:
After a long drive south from our over night stay in the town of Langres in the north of Burgundy, we arrived in the small Provencal village of Roquebrun Sur Argens at around five in the afternoon. Driving up to our chambres d’hote, we discovered that we had spent that snowy day in February trawling round the internet looking for somewhere to spend our honeymoon, rather well. Villa Bali is a little piece of paradise. One hundred Euro a night buys you peace and quiet, a beautiful ‘infinity’ style pool that is set against the backdrop of the dramatic Alpine outcrops and surrounded by palm trees and waterfalls, as well as an excellent breakfast every day shared with, at the most, the six other guests that see the place fully booked.
On our arrival, our host offered us a drink and, being thirsty after the long drive, we asked for a beer. Sitting on the terrace, in the 35 degree heat, we talked of this and that while we chugged our beers and he sipped from a glass of very, very pale rosé. Within five minutes, we were joined a mahoosive grey cat (called velvet) and, not necessarily prompted by his arrival, the topic turned to wine. We talked of how promotion to full AOC status in 1977 lead to a general improvement in quality in the region and how although there were a couple of decent producers of red and white wine in the locality, the truth is that if you are in Provence, then rosé is king. I asked what he was drinking and he said ‘Domaine la Bouverie. It is 10km from here and I think it is the best rosé in the whole of the region. Would you like to try some?’ I thought about replying with ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’ but wasn’t sure of the translation (Est ce que vrais que Le Pape prend un merde dans le foret? was the best I could do) so I went for the more prosaic ‘merci beaucoup’.
Our host returned momentarily with a bottle that indicated to me immediately that he brought his stock in ten litre containers and decanted it himself. He pulled the cork, offered Helen and I a glass, which we swirled, sniffed and drank.
Two days later, we made the short drive in land to visit the place where the wine is made. Visiting wineries is something I love doing and something I don’t think I will ever grow out of (and it is worth noting that you can’t visit a place called Merlot or Viognier, although you can visit the village of Chardonnay from whence the grape got its name if you so wish). We drove into the village of La Bouverie and bought bread to have with our picnic lunch and then turned left out of the village and followed the hill up, first on a road and then on a track until we were driving through the rows of vines, approaching a large and impressive looking house.
We parked, got out and envied the hammock and the day bed on the porch – testament to the fact that this part of France gets 300 days of sunshine a year. We tried to engage the attention of two friendly looking dogs (one big, one small), but they were monumentally uninterested in us. We looked at the house and wanted it, wanted it for its lavender purple paintwork, its position, its size and the fact that it was slap bang in the middle of a really lovely vineyard.
Next to the house was a cool barn, where a woman was working. We walked in and said ‘bonjour’ and she replied ‘Hello’. I hate it when they do that. I hate the fact that my accent is so bad that it is so completely obvious that I am English even though I am speaking French. I said to her, ‘Is it that obvious?’ She replied, in a strangely American accent ‘I heard you talking to the dogs outside. The small one is a rescue dog by the way. I pulled him out of a rubbish bin that was on fire. There were three others but they died.’
Reeling slightly from this story, I diverted my attention away from the thought of burning dogs by commenting on the fact that her accent sounded somewhat American. ‘That’s because I’m from California,’ she said. ‘I am here helping out a friend.’
Her job was simple but important: she organised the stock and sold it to the steady stream of people who drove up and came in through the barn door, the vast majority of whom were local. She also offered tastings and even though we knew what it tasted like, we thought it rude not to have a little glass, especially when she offered us a taste of the ‘grand vin’ of the domaine, the wine made from the oldest vines. It was only sold in bottles (for six Euro) and it was excellent, delicate yet rich with a substantial texture and a good grip of flavour in the mouth. We then had a small glass of the ‘ordinary’ rosé that we had tried before – which is sold only in five or ten litre boxes for 14 or 27 Euro respectively – and it was as good as we had first thought with its oily texture and rounded, rich flavours. We then tried the white, made from the Ugni Blanc and Rolle grapes (not ones you see on labels in the supermarket), and thought it sensational, perfumed, elegant and light with a rich fruity core.
We bought three bottles of the white and twenty five litres of the rosé, to enjoy with our picnic lunches over the coming days and to cart back to England to enjoy in Worcestershire over the coming weeks.
Except of course, it won’t really be the same, will it? The wine, being preservative free, is physiologically not designed to travel, but more importantly it is not designed to travel from a psychological perspective. It is designed to be drunk young and fresh, on the terrace, in banging heat, with perhaps a little local charcuterie while the scent of the garrigue wafts down from the hills. It was simply not designed to be chugged on a wet, post working week Friday night in Worcestershire while falling asleep in front of Jonathon Ross. But we’ll give it a go.
David Izod
August 2009
When Helen and I go on holiday, we have an informal policy of trying to find at least one good, local, wine. In an effort to do so, we have to try lots of different wines of course, some of which we will dismiss, some of which we will buy and enjoy, but we always try to find one wine that stands out, warms its way into affections and stays there. This year it was Domaine La Bouverie and it is quite the most exceptional rosé wine either of us have ever drunk. As far as I am aware, it is not available in Britain, so you are going to have to travel to Provence to get it (or come to my house over the next two months until our stocks run out) but should you get the chance to try it, I really would.
We found it like this:
After a long drive south from our over night stay in the town of Langres in the north of Burgundy, we arrived in the small Provencal village of Roquebrun Sur Argens at around five in the afternoon. Driving up to our chambres d’hote, we discovered that we had spent that snowy day in February trawling round the internet looking for somewhere to spend our honeymoon, rather well. Villa Bali is a little piece of paradise. One hundred Euro a night buys you peace and quiet, a beautiful ‘infinity’ style pool that is set against the backdrop of the dramatic Alpine outcrops and surrounded by palm trees and waterfalls, as well as an excellent breakfast every day shared with, at the most, the six other guests that see the place fully booked.
On our arrival, our host offered us a drink and, being thirsty after the long drive, we asked for a beer. Sitting on the terrace, in the 35 degree heat, we talked of this and that while we chugged our beers and he sipped from a glass of very, very pale rosé. Within five minutes, we were joined a mahoosive grey cat (called velvet) and, not necessarily prompted by his arrival, the topic turned to wine. We talked of how promotion to full AOC status in 1977 lead to a general improvement in quality in the region and how although there were a couple of decent producers of red and white wine in the locality, the truth is that if you are in Provence, then rosé is king. I asked what he was drinking and he said ‘Domaine la Bouverie. It is 10km from here and I think it is the best rosé in the whole of the region. Would you like to try some?’ I thought about replying with ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’ but wasn’t sure of the translation (Est ce que vrais que Le Pape prend un merde dans le foret? was the best I could do) so I went for the more prosaic ‘merci beaucoup’.
Our host returned momentarily with a bottle that indicated to me immediately that he brought his stock in ten litre containers and decanted it himself. He pulled the cork, offered Helen and I a glass, which we swirled, sniffed and drank.
Two days later, we made the short drive in land to visit the place where the wine is made. Visiting wineries is something I love doing and something I don’t think I will ever grow out of (and it is worth noting that you can’t visit a place called Merlot or Viognier, although you can visit the village of Chardonnay from whence the grape got its name if you so wish). We drove into the village of La Bouverie and bought bread to have with our picnic lunch and then turned left out of the village and followed the hill up, first on a road and then on a track until we were driving through the rows of vines, approaching a large and impressive looking house.
We parked, got out and envied the hammock and the day bed on the porch – testament to the fact that this part of France gets 300 days of sunshine a year. We tried to engage the attention of two friendly looking dogs (one big, one small), but they were monumentally uninterested in us. We looked at the house and wanted it, wanted it for its lavender purple paintwork, its position, its size and the fact that it was slap bang in the middle of a really lovely vineyard.
Next to the house was a cool barn, where a woman was working. We walked in and said ‘bonjour’ and she replied ‘Hello’. I hate it when they do that. I hate the fact that my accent is so bad that it is so completely obvious that I am English even though I am speaking French. I said to her, ‘Is it that obvious?’ She replied, in a strangely American accent ‘I heard you talking to the dogs outside. The small one is a rescue dog by the way. I pulled him out of a rubbish bin that was on fire. There were three others but they died.’
Reeling slightly from this story, I diverted my attention away from the thought of burning dogs by commenting on the fact that her accent sounded somewhat American. ‘That’s because I’m from California,’ she said. ‘I am here helping out a friend.’
Her job was simple but important: she organised the stock and sold it to the steady stream of people who drove up and came in through the barn door, the vast majority of whom were local. She also offered tastings and even though we knew what it tasted like, we thought it rude not to have a little glass, especially when she offered us a taste of the ‘grand vin’ of the domaine, the wine made from the oldest vines. It was only sold in bottles (for six Euro) and it was excellent, delicate yet rich with a substantial texture and a good grip of flavour in the mouth. We then had a small glass of the ‘ordinary’ rosé that we had tried before – which is sold only in five or ten litre boxes for 14 or 27 Euro respectively – and it was as good as we had first thought with its oily texture and rounded, rich flavours. We then tried the white, made from the Ugni Blanc and Rolle grapes (not ones you see on labels in the supermarket), and thought it sensational, perfumed, elegant and light with a rich fruity core.
We bought three bottles of the white and twenty five litres of the rosé, to enjoy with our picnic lunches over the coming days and to cart back to England to enjoy in Worcestershire over the coming weeks.
Except of course, it won’t really be the same, will it? The wine, being preservative free, is physiologically not designed to travel, but more importantly it is not designed to travel from a psychological perspective. It is designed to be drunk young and fresh, on the terrace, in banging heat, with perhaps a little local charcuterie while the scent of the garrigue wafts down from the hills. It was simply not designed to be chugged on a wet, post working week Friday night in Worcestershire while falling asleep in front of Jonathon Ross. But we’ll give it a go.
David Izod
August 2009
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