Sauvignon producer joins Specialists
Friday 6 August
Cast your minds back to the start of the year. Yes, I know it’s difficult and some of us can’t remember what happened yesterday but you may recall a premium winemaking group lauching: The Specialist Winegrowers of New Zealand.
Sauvignon Blanc accounts for 80% of the wine that leaves Kiwi ports yet the Specialists didn’t have a Savvy in their portfolio, claiming there were few producers who specialised solely in the variety.
It’s also a price-sensitive variety, as Chris Canning of The Hay Paddock, told me in an article for decanter.com ‘Sauvignon Blanc is such a cut-throat market.’
‘There was a little prejudice toward the variety. We want to decouple ourselves from the New Zealand wine brand image that is slanted toward Sauvignon Blanc,’ he said back in January.
However, the group’s tune has changed - they have just announced Marlborough’s Fairbourne Estate will be the sixth member of the Specialists, dedicated to Sauvignon Blanc.
According to the press release, Fairbourne has been on the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc scene since the early 1990’s. Embarrassingly, I have never visited them, tried their wines and heard very little about them, so I can’t tell you whether they are any good! I will endeavour to change that.
Fairbourne joins Waiheke-based The Hay Paddock and Destiny Bay; fizz producers No.1 Family Estate; Gewurztraminer specialists Vinoptima and, Wooing Tree from Central Otago.
Newcastle ladies love rosé & lemonade
Monday 26 July
I’ve had an abstemious weekend in preparation for a triathlon. So, I was designated driver at Newcastle races on Saturday where my dad’s horse was running (badly). Unbeknownst to us, it was ladies day and, the Geordie lasses really put on a display of What Not to Wear and spray tans. It was sponsored by Matalan which gives you some idea of the calibre of clothing on display.
You wouldn’t think the UK was still suffering economic woes, considering the amount of Champagne the bars were selling. If you are an importer or sales rep, try and get an account with a racecourse. It seems to be a goldmine.
The other drink ordered on many occasions at the bar (when I was having a glass of water – joy) was rosé and lemonade. The ladies of Newcastle have decided that pink wine spritzers are quite the thing. I’d never thought of drinking rosé spritzers before – and I’m not sure rosé producers have either. Rosé on the rocks, yes, but never with lemonade.
Rosé continues to fly in the UK. According to recent figures released by the Wine & Spirit Trade Association, sales of rosé wine increased 21.4% in value in the past year, with volumes ahead by 18.4%.
WSTA chief executive Jeremy Beadles said: “Given the fact that sales of other wines in bars, clubs and restaurants are down over the course of the year, the big rise in rosé is all the more striking.”
“The recent good weather will have continued to boost its popularity.” Yes, Jeremy – and its new role as a spritzer.
Wine producers and retailers are always claiming they want the wine to reach the consumer as the winemaker intended but then they don’t have any control over what people add to it. I suppose rosé with lemonade is a Pimm-type quaffer on a hot afternoon and I ought to try it before dismissing it like a wine snob. So, that’s something I’ll do this week now I’ve dragged myself through a swim, bike and run.
Award-winning bargains
Wednesday 30 June
French wine sales are suffering at the hands of the Australians, Californians, Italians and South Africans in the UK. To add insult to injury, English wines are beating them at their own game: the International Wine Challenge (IWC) has just announced Camel Valley’s 2008 Pinot Noir Brut has taken the sparkling rose trophy ahead of the Champenois. This is another kick in the teeth for the Champagne region, after poor sales in 2009.
What I like most about the competition is the value awards. As a tight northerner, the price of decent wines can make my eyes water. Finding a great wine under a tenner certainly improves my mood. And my dad, a Liverpudlian (an even more notoriously tight lot), will be making a special trip to the supermarket to fill up on bargains when he sees the results (although not to Waitrose, as they haven’t made it as far north as my hometown yet)
So, what are the stars I’ll be sending my dad out to buy:-
Oloroso Trophy winner: Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Oloroso 12 year old for a mere £6.49
La Différence Carignan 2009, France, £5.81, France, Tesco.
Moon Bridge Riesling 2009, Australia, £5.49, Marks & Spencer
Domaine Villargeau Sauvignon Blanc 2009, France, £9.99, Majestic Wine Warehouse
Falanghina Campania 2009, Italy £9.99, Laytons, Oddbins
Champagne: What have they got to hide?
Monday 21 June
What is it with Champagne houses being so secretive?
I was recently researching ferment temperatures and yeast selection (God, my life’s exciting) and asked a couple of Champagne houses if they could tell me. I added that the information would be purely for my MW studies and go no further then me, myself and I.
I managed to get the information on ferment temperatures from Veuve Clicquot’s winemaker but when asked his annual production, he said they ‘preferred to talk about quality not quantity’. What a cop out. It’s all about protecting the exclusivity of the product, I guess. Let’s face it, there’s an awful lot of Champagne made, yet they like to create an aura that there’s not enough to go around.
Similarly I put the request in to Laurent Perrier and was flatly refused. “Usually the wine making is not something our cellar master discusses preferring to focus on the end result,” the said.
What a load of cobblers. What do they think is going to happen? Someone’s going to steal their recipe? Hardly.
I had a moan to Ben Portet, winemaker at his father’s winery, Dominique Portet, in the Yarra Valley. Portet has done several vintages in Champagne and makes his own sparkling wines. He had had a similar experience but was more than willing to share his winemaking methods with me from the yeasts he uses (E118 Prise de Mousse, for all you geeks) to adding red wine at 400g/l of residual sugar in the liqueur de dosage at bottling for his sparkling rosé. If only the Champenois were so relaxed about revealing their methods. That’s big business for you. And it sucks.
World Cup dreams for Veuve Clicquot winemaker
Monday 31 May
Rugby-loving winemakers are looking for an excuse to be in New Zealand for the 2011 World Cup. Francois Hautekeur, winemaker at Veuve Clicquot, is a French rugby nut and would love to be at the France vs. All Blacks match in September. So, if anyone at LVMH is reading, I think a reconnaissance mission to Clicquot’s New Zealand stablemate Cloudy Bay is in order.
Hautekeur was in Auckland last night running an ‘Art of Blending’ masterclass but he was a year too early for rugby’s flagship tournament.
Why the Art of Blending? At Veuve Cliquot, there are 850 tanks filled with potential wines that make up the final blend of its non-vintage yellow label. That’s a lot of tanks. We tried six samples and, quite frankly, that was enough to have you reaching for the Rennies thanks to the eyewatering acids.
This was the first time its base wines were available to taste in New Zealand. “It is rare that the base wines leave the winery,” admitted Hautekeur.
The idea of tasting base wines is to understand what a still Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier taste like before they are blended together and go through the secondary fermentation in bottle which creates the bubbles. The fermentation in bottle also adds an extra 1% alcohol, apparently. I hadn’t heard this one before but every day’s a school day.
So, what do they all bring? The Pinot Noir gives flesh and volume to a Champagne. The ‘09 example from Verzy was closed at the moment but had pear, citrus and stoney notes. But it’s all about the weight and texture it gives to the final blend, which is usually around 50-57% in the Yellow Label NV.
Chardonnay provides “backbone”. What does this mean? It’s not as fleshy as Pinot Noir and gives a cleansing citrus note on the tongue. We tried the 09 Chardonnay from the village of Cramant and it smelled of chalk, lemons and white flowers. It was feminine with a lovely long finish. An older Chardonnay base wine from 2000 was lean and minerally with white stoned fruit and butterscotch.
The Pinot Meunier is “hyper aromatic”, full of fruit from pineapple and pear drops to red cherry and stoned fruit. It lacks length, however and is usually a minor part of the blend.
More on Champagne in my next blog.