CVNE Rioja Crianza 2006, Spain (£7.99 Majestic, Booths, www.everywine.co.uk, Wimbledon Wine Cellar) Bouncy pippy berry and bramble – raspberries, loganberries – with a spicy edge, a touch of vanilla rather than a huge dollop, fresh, sappy, tangy finish. Nice wine, tastes of modern Rioja, but also a good refreshing summer red. B+
François Lurton Barco Negro Douro Tinto 2007, Portugal (~£10) Heady, rich warm dark fruit, blackcurrants and blackberry, with earthy overtones, yet despite its brawn, remains fresh, and has a gentle floral/spicy edge. S-
Onda Nova Syrah 2007, Algarve (£9.99 www.mollybrownswinelist.co.uk) A full-flavoured, fleshy youngster that speaks of a warm climate with its plummy dark chocolate flavours, but which never goes overripe and remains fresh. Nice meaty finish and potential to develop further. B+
Quinta da Lagoalva de Cima Tinto 2008, VR Tejo (£8.40 Clark Foyster) Smooth, easy drinking red – too smooth? There’s soft strawberry and plum fruit, but the flavours are slightly muddied by a confected vanilla edge. B-
Quinta da Lagoalva de Cima Tinto Reserva 2008, VR Tejo (£10.90 Clark Foyster) More of that vanilla, but here it’s in balance with the black cherry, blackcurrant and redcurrant flavours, and there’s an intriguing mineral twist to the finish. Good but not great. B(+)
A couple of wines from a well-known (in the UK at least) singer’s estate in the Algarve plus a rather unusual sweet wine from the Ribatejo – or Tejo, as we should now be calling it.
Onda Nova Verdelho 2008, Algarve (£9.99 www.mollybrownswinelist.co.uk ) Clean, fresh, tight peach, citrus peel and gritty pearskin character with a touch of brine, ripe but still refreshing, wears its 14% alcohol well. B(+)
Onda Nova Syrah Rosé 2008, Algarve (£9.99 www.mollybrownswinelist.co.uk ) Bouncy rosé, packed with strawberry (fresh and tinned) flavours, fleshy and ripe but still dry, with an honest lively finish. B
Quinta da Lagoalva de Cima Late Harvest 2008, Ribatejo (N/A in UK – Clark Foyster are Lagoalva’s importers) A touch of volatility (think nail varnish), then oodles of fruit – peach, pear, apricot, grapefruit, elderflower, orange marmalade – but there’s also a less ripe, almost smoky edge that seems slightly at odds with the lusher sweeter side of the wine. Overall though, pretty tasty. B+ (see notes on the 1995 here)
Just received the following e-mail from Nuno Araujo, one of the most enterprising and inspired winemakers in the Vinho Verde region, and the most subversive of the six producers that make up Portugal’s IWA (Independent Wingrowers Association). I haven’t been a universal fan of Nuno’s wines – some were just too ‘international’ and oaky – but the best were excellent, and I featured one of them in my Portuguese Top 50 back in 2008. Given Nuno’s passionate demeanour – he’s almost more Spanish than Portuguese – I hope this is just a temporary blip. It would be a tragedy for the region to lose one of its true movers and shakers Anyway, the e-mail…
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Dear friend,
Back in 1989 -twenty years ago-, at Quinta de Covela there were no vines, no appellation (or worse: vinho Verde…), no brand, nothing but a wild, amazing potential and a very promising estate to be.
End of 2009, we could find a well-established brand, an highly respected wine-style and a coherent wine family; COVELA wines are present in a large number of excellent wine-lists of top restaurants, in many countries.
For 20 years, we pursued the goal of uncompromising excellence in viticulture and vinification, creating and developing unique wines, with a specific personality. Trusting our believes and anticipating a general concern, we moved into organic farming and were pioneers in implementing Biodynamics.
Twenty enthusiastic years, creating and developing this wonderful and unique project, against all odds (“viticulture commissions”, low notoriety of the region and its wines, “jurassic” opinion-makers, etc.); year after year enjoying the growing quality and recognition of each vintage, putting COVELA on the world-wine map!
We were glad to say that both the market and the specialized press praised our vision and the wines produced.
Last year we were “caught” by a world-wide crisis (we could face it) and by a meanwhile nationalized bank (over 4,2 billion euros bail-out so far…), this one unwilling to backing us up (maybe there are more obscure reasons behind this attitude, and time will bring them to light), and resulting in a death sentence to the project. Unnecessary, unjustified and stupid decision, I think; but definite and real.
I am sending you this mail to let you know about this unfortunate situation, and to thank for your most valuable support and interest over the years.
With my best regards
Nuno Araujo
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(picture nicked from this part of Tom Cannavan’s excellent wine-pages – Tom, I owe you a beer)
Quinta Nova de Nossa Senhora do Carmo Reserve Porto NV (£9.95 per 500 ml Halifax Wine Company, Oakley Wine Agencies) Juicy young port, warm and welcoming, with an almost velvety texture, broad but still fragrant berry and damson flavours, and a citrus tang to the finish – you could almost drink this with steak. B(+)
Quinta Nova de Nossa Senhora do Carmo LBV Port 2005 (bottled 2009) (£16.50 Halifax Wine Company, Oakley Wine Agencies) Smells just like a port winery at vintage time, with that heady floral grape must edge, powerful peppery black fruit and a sweet fleshy finished tinged with dusty herbs and spice. S(+)
Noval LBV Port 2003 (bottled 2008) (£12.99 Oddbins, Tesco, Booths, Ocado, Rhythm & Booze) Speaks of the warm vintage, this has a hit of ripe fruit but comes over just too hot and raisinny – it’s intense but it lacks the freshness I want in LBV. B-
Noval 10 Year Old Tawny Port (£15.99 Waitrose, Ocado, Fortnum & Mason) A gentle winter warmer, showing some spirity grip as well as lithe raisin, coffee, walnut and treacle toffee notes. Not too big, and with a refreshing edge to the finish. S(-)
Quinta Nova de Nossa Senhora do Carmo Unoaked Douro 2008 (£10.99 The Wine Cellar, Oakley Wine Agencies) Joyful young wine, all about bumptious, bouncy bramble and plum flavour, with hints of black pepper and brown sugar adding further interest. Ripe but fresh with it, very tasty. S-
Quinta Nova de Nossa Senhora do Carmo Tres Pomares Douro 2007 (£9.59 The Wine Cellar, Oakley Wine Agencies) A more serious and structured wine, firmer and more backward, but still with tasty chocolate ginger and berry flavours and the slightly earthy/ashy edge of Touriga Nacional. B+
Cedro do Noval VR Duriense 2007 (£13.99 Tanners from ~Feb 2010) Potent young wine, still a bit reduced, but opening up to show notes of sage, gingerbread and citrus peel on top of the generous plummy berry flavours. Promising earthy finish too. S(-)
R de Romaneira Douro 2007 (~£16 Liberty Wines) Lovely heady, aromatic wine, with red berries amid the black fruit flavours, an almost meaty, leathery core and hints of iron. Structured but still charming, with an ethereal sweet fragrance. S(+)
Saw on Facebook that Jamie Goode is currently staying at Quinta do Noval. Hope he’s having a great time, I have fond memories of being there at roughly the same point for the 1998 vintage, which was, not to mince words, one of the crapper years in recent memory. It was in the period before Christian Seely, he of Mona Lisa smile and impeccable dickie bow, took the helm at AXA Millésimes and moved to Bordeaux, so he and his (now ex-) wife Maria were in residence at the Quinta. ‘Noval has an entirely Portuguese team and entirely French ownership – I’m the English axis on which things turn.’
Slowly working his way through stocks of old wines and overseeing production of some excellent new ones clearly suited him, as did a steady stream of visitors from various parts of the globe. The previous weekend, he’d been entertaining a group of rather quiet Swedes. Quiet that was until the end of one meal, when they coughed, looked at each, stood up and sang to the Seelys – in Swedish.
Over the course of three days, we yomped over the soggy terraces of vines, hoping that the sun would come out and – as in incey-wincey spider – dry up all the rain (it didn’t). We tasted some splendid wines – Nacional 1994 is truly exceptional, the 1996 isn’t far behind, while an array of colheitas culminated in a delicate nutty 1937 that in Aussie parlance was certainly not a shabby wine. And we nattered about various things, and it came out that Christian used to have a Food & Wine Gift Pack company called Presents of Mind and it came out that I came from a place where they did a lot of Morris Dancing…
Now Christian could compete with Roger Moore in the discipline of enigmatic eyebrow-raising, and I saw his brow twitch when the subject of Morris Dancing arose – clearly, I thought, he is a fan…
And so, the following morning, our last at Noval, after we’d wiped the toast crumbs and egg dribbles from the corners of our mouths and were sipping our last sips of coffee, I coughed, grabbed a couple of napkins, stood up and did a Swedish Morris Dance, complete with a suitable ditty. I’ll say one thing for Morris Dancing – it doesn’t half get you knackered. After several jumps, much waving of the arms (and napkins) and not a few hey-nonny-noes, I had renewed respect for the men in silly hats and crossed garters. I was flagging but I soldiered on, watching Christian’s eyebrows perform dances almost as wild as mine.
Can’t remember too much of what I sang, apart from: -
‘I have had a wonderful time
In the Douro where the lifestyle is freer
Than in Stockholm where we spend our weekends
In the car-park at IKEA.’
Oh, and I managed to rhyme ‘the eggs that once were oval’ with ‘Quinta do Noval’ – class.
In the 11 years since then, I’ve come across Christian and his wines several times. He still looks like he enjoys life, he still wears an enigmatic smile, and he still remembers me as the man who did a Swedish Morris Dance at the end of breakfast.
I’ve got aching upper arm muscles today. Was it a strenuous boxing work out on Wii Fit? A marathon Swingball session in the garden with kids? Or was it having to manhandle two wine bottles that were so heavy that they made your wrists wobble even when they were empty? They were straight out of the silicon implant school of wine packaging, the mine’s-bigger-than-your mentality. How heavy were they precisely? See below…
So that’s a regular bottle, the wonderfully floaty Contino Rioja 1995 which danced gracefully over the course of an evening, and reminded me of nothing more than one of those slightly suspicious Burgundies you could once find, where whatever Pinot Noir there was in the blend (and sometimes there was next to nothing) had been padded out with a generous draft of the warm south. Warming, welcoming, aromatic yet hearty, a wow with some pork fillet baked in the ovening in a mushroomy shroud. Weight of bottle empty, 560g.
But as for our two monoliths…
Yes, the first came in at 1012g, while the other was a whopping 1196g – and that’s without there being any wine in them. I mean, je te demande, who are they trying to impress? Do they seriously think our heads will be swayed just because the bottle wants to be Arnie? Now normally the wine inside these monoliths is trying to show off just as much – wine you could walk a mouse over, as a friend of mine puts it. Overripe, overoaked, overalcoholic etc. But these two, while certainly not from the mousy librarian camp, were actually not OTT.
The left hand one is Santa Helena Don 2005 from Chile’s Colchagua Valley. Don is one of those names which, like Gran doesn’t translate too well into the English language (it stands for De Origen Noble). Mostly Cabernet Sauvignon pepped up with Merlot and Carmenère, it’s just so Chilean, with that slightly minty blackcurrant pastille intense and grainy tannins. I like it’s honest flavours, but I’m not convinced that there’s much complexity here. And at ~£35, I think I deserve some.
The right hand one, winner of the ’shit that’s heavy’ award, is the Monte da Cal Vinha de Saturno 2004 from the Alentejo. It’s from the dynamic Dão Sul operation, which has wineries dotted around several Portuguese regions (and Brazil), and is a blend of Trincadeira, Aragonez and Alicante Bouschet (some versions also have Baga and/or Touriga Nacional in there somewhere). But whatever its make up, this is good wine. It starts off on the strong and silent side, but then opens up to reveal a strong iron-like minerality, heady aromas of tobacco and olives, and intense but relaxed flavours of berries, blackcurrants and cherries, tinged with chocolate and vanilla. Excellent and very promising, shame about the show-off bottle.
Not sure what I’ll be cooking tonight, but it won’t be a patch on the super Portuguese Gourmet Dinner Jill & I tucked into at the one-starred Harrow in Little Bedwyn near Marlborough on Wednesday evening. Owner/chef Roger Jones is one of those people whose enthusiasm for wine has developed to the point where every available nook & cranny in the place seems to have bottles stuffed in. Over the last few years, he’s dropped more than a couple of stones in weight, for health reasons he says, but I reckon it’s so he can cram even more bottles into his poky but packed little cellar – heaven knows how he and the staff find their way around it. And heaven knows how his wine-savvy customers manage to narrow down their choices in a list that covers most regions in the world with considerable panache but that excels in Australasia.
Portugal is slightly new territory for the Harrow, but inspired by a tasting I conducted at the Celtic Manor in South Wales last year, Roger and his wife Sue decided to run a Portuguese promotion, and invited me to host a dinner. Few of the guests had had much experience of Portuguese wine beyond Mateus, but I think most left as converts. On to the wines then…
Casa de Mouraz Rose 2008, Dão From a biodynamically farmed estate, this is a cocktail of some of Portugal’s more famous grapes – Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (aka Tempranillo) and Alfrocheiro – with the less familiar (Jaen – the Mencia of Spain) and the totally unheard-of. Even Sara Dionoso and Antonio Ribeiro who run Casa de Mouraz don’t know all that much about the Agua Santa grape, a cross between Touriga Nacional and Castelão that was created in 1948, but mostly abandoned due to its erratic nature. Don’t ask me what the typical varietal character is then. But the blend is very successful, giving a deeply coloured, quite full-bodied, strawberry-scented pink that managed to be both refreshing and heart-warming on a rather chilly summer evening.
Reguengo de Melgaço Alvarinho 2007, Vinho Verde Portuguese Alvarinho tends to be lighter and more savoury (even salty) than the Albariño grown on the opposite side of the Minho River in Spain’s Rias Baixas. This has lovely apricot, pear and peach characters, underpinned with bracing briny citrus acidity. Served with Arbroath Smokie Croquettes and Smoked Milk Shake – think fish fingers for grown-ups.
Esporão Branco Reserva 2008, Alentejo Wine of the night for many people, this is an oak-aged blend of Antão Vaz, Arinto and Roupeiro. It comes across as something like white Bordeaux meets Rhône, with some of the oak-tinged tinned pear and gooseberry of the former with the heady waxy floral edge of the latter. Rich but fine-boned, built to last for another 3-4 years at least, and a wow with Langoustine Dumplings
Malhadinha Antão Vaz da Peceguina 2007, Alentejo A lighter wine than the Esporão – why this order? Because Roger wanted to have it working almost like a sorbet in between the langoustine and the red meat. Good idea, good wine, gentle and delicate, with melon and lemon and a touch of honey. Not as long-lived as the Esporão, but the way it opened up in the glass suggests there’s no rush to drink it up. And with a spectacular Wild Scottish Salmon Tartare, it shone.
Malhadinha Nova Tinto 2006, Alentejo First up of two reds served with a Seared Fillet of Pure Bred Welsh Black Beef, this is wonderfully seductive wine, deep in colour thanks to the Alicante Bouschet that makes up a large part of the blend, but with velvety black fruit and brown sugar characters as well. Full-bodied and built to last, but, as with the Ben Glaetzer Barossa reds of which Roger is so fond, also incredibly attractive at a tender age.
Luis Pato Vinha Pan Tinto 2003, Beiras A real contrast to the Malhadinha – if that was Barossa, then this is something like Barbaresco, with the accent on fragrance and tannin rather than power. Lithe and charming, with blackberries, pepper and woodsmoke aromas, it’s one of those you could just sit and sniff. Not surprisingly, opinion was divided as to which was the better of these two great reds.
D’Oliveiras Reserva Verdelho 1973, Madeira Served with Shropshire Blue, quince jelly and fennel biscuits, I’d have like this in a proper glass rather than a shot glass, but it was still good – how many 36-year-old wines still taste young? Fresh, lightly nutty with that lovely balanced between dried fruit and spine-tingling acidity.
Quinta do Portal Moscatel Reserva 1996, Douro Not a port to finish, but a fortified Muscat from the Douro, all marmalade and caramel flavours, with the tang of peel on the finish, and delicious with a Banana and Ginger Spring Roll whose filling included fresh pistachios.
Importers:- Raymond Reynolds – Casa de Mouraz, Malhadinha and Luis Pato wines
Hallgarten – Reguengo de Melgaço
Charles Hawkins – Esporão and Quinta do Portal
Nickolls & Perks (and others) – D’Oliveiras
Prompted by a recent Facebook posting by sommelier Joseph de Blasi about how people who go wine tasting while wearing their favorite cologne “don’t get it”, I’m resurrecting a post from earlier this year that some of the newer readers may have missed…
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Anyone who’s been to more than a handful of wine tastings knows that they should be gentle with the eau de cologne and after-shave. But while most adhere to such a rule, they seem to forget that there are other aromas that linger. This came home to me most recently at the Portuguese Top 50 bash this week, where fellow scribe Jamie Goode came up with his own personal half century (find them here and my selection from the previous year here) from Portugal’s current crop. (And great to see the same day that Sarah Ahmed, aka The Wine Detective, was judged Portuguese wine writer of the year).
But back to the Portuguese Ambassador’s residence in Belgrave Square. Lush surroundings, easy on the eye, but on the nose…? The man next to me smelt like he’d been suspended in a high-class ashtray, one awash with Havana’s finest rather than a bath of Woodbines. But still very pongy. It’s what I used to call the smell of sommelier. Before the UK smoking ban, it used to be the vogue for a certain class of sommelier at the end of some rather swanky dinners, to light up large and expensive stogies and puff away. No matter that there were several non-smokers there who, while not all averse to the pungent fumes, would still find that they needed to visit the dry-cleaners the next day.
There was another man who smelt as if, unlike those young French (they usually are/were French) sommeliers, he really needed to get out more. His favoured fragrance was naphthalene – moth-balls – and it spoke of a man who still wore the same jacket in which he used to cut the light fantastic in the 1970s. Never mind the fact that virtually anything from the Final Clearance rail at TK Maxx would have looked and smelt better. Trying to persuade him that such a course would have been better would have been like trying to convince him that Chile, Portugal and Greece now made wines to rival similarly priced French offerings.
And then there was a contingent of what are affectionately (?) known as the Masters of Lunch. I’ll say this for them: they have bottle. Make that bottles. They often come to tastings armed with shoplifting bags, and leave clanking loudly. They’re nothing to do with the wine trade, but they know where to go to get a free lunch – they’re also familiar faces at shareholder meetings. What makes them difficult to avoid is their aroma, especially that of a bespectacled gentleman who more than once has tried to pass himself off as the younger, taller, thinner and distinctly less whiffy Peter Richards. Goût de terroir would be a polite way of putting it…
Alongside Messrs Fag-Ash, Moth and Armpit, the occasional over-perfumed diva came as a breath of fresh air. Is there something to be said for having sniffer dogs on the door to keep such people out? Perhaps, but they may in there zeal also find their highly-tuned snozzles wrinkled by certain members of the legit wine trade. Here, I’m talking about wine trade breath syndrome. Here, we’re going beyond the old boys the corners of whose mouths are gummed up with stalactite and stalagmite drool. We’re talking about the ones who just by exhaling can remove the label (and the fizz) from a magnum of Krug at twenty paces. Can’t someone take them to one side and tell them they smell like a drain? I remember talking to the buyer for a well-known UK chain and asking why they had bothered to stock a rather so-so Burgundy. ‘The guy selling it kept pestering me and he had such bad breath – buying a few cases was the quickest way I could think of to get him out of the office…’
