Tabali Winery, Chile

I suppose it might appear to be a form of torture and you may well ask why we do it, but you cannot have enjoyed being part of the wine trade for as long as we have without being equally eager to explore food and wine combinations and developing an abiding interest in all forms of scoff.  I’m talking about watching Gennaro Contaldo producing a rich, gooey, artery-clogging lasagna on BBC2’sFood and Drink programme, while enduring a 5:2 diet fasting day and having to ratchet up the volume to cover the noise of my own stomach, protesting mightily at the injustice of it all.  Compounding the gastric angst was their wine commentator, Kate Goodman, who wheeled out three different Syrah/Shiraz and waved her glass spitefully at me on what has to be a “dry” day. 

While I wondered why the wine choices were not specifically Italian rather than international to go with this calorifically disastrous, unctuous celebration of home-cooking, I was nonetheless pleasantly surprised to see that the final wine of the trio was none other than Tabali Syrah Reserva.  Furthermore it received the most favourable reaction of the lot and they were all impressed by its unexpected elegance and rich depth of flavour.  It is good to see top French and Italian chefs knocked out by a southern hemisphere wine at a price below that of most Claret or Chianti.   It was also interesting to note that although the price you should expect to pay was given as “around £11”, the price at Wines of Interest is £10.20 with your usual 5% off if you buy one as part of a mixed twelve, taking it well below a tenner.

Tabali Vineyards

Two more wines from their impressive range have come onto our radar recently and have both added to Tabali’s impressive haul of awards and trophies.  Felipe Muller, Tabali’s brilliant winemaker knows the vineyards like his own face and in concert with viticulturalist, Hector Rojas, they have mapped out the distinct terroirs of the estate and planted them with varieties best suited to their particular conditions.  Their Talinay vineyards, about twelve kilometres in from the ocean, are reserved for three which thrive in the calcareous soil here: Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  We were seriously bitten by the first and last which ooze class.  Descorchados South American Wine Guide (the equivalent to James Halliday in Australia or Platter in South Africa) has given it The Best Sauvignon Blanc in Chile award while, closer to home, it has won gongs in the Decanter World Wine Awards and the International Wine Challenge.  Its mineral-driven, green-apple crispness, fine acidity and cleansing zip led Descorchados to declare it “a Sauvignon fundamental to understanding the wines of Limari,” which is a bit poncy, frankly, but means that Tabali’s Talinay version is the one that sets the standards for the whole region.  Drink with fish and shellfish, obviously, but try it with a ceviche if you feel a little more adventurous.

Felipe Muller

Talinay Pinot Noir has a structure and refinement derived from its unique site and combines freshness with a degree of richness and finesse with a sense of strength.  Pinot Noir is a cooler climate grape and does not naturally, nor should it be encouraged to, develop the psychotic level of alcohol or port-like mouth-weight which some manage to coax out of Shiraz in the heat of the Barossa.  In wine big is not always best, although there are plenty out in customer land who equate octane with intrinsic quality; hand-to-hand combat reds have their place with a big winter braise, but frequently a bit more restraint, suppleness and subtlety are called for.  This is a job that Pinot Noir was put on Earth to do and Talinay does it in spades with a touch of pretty Pinot scent and assured elegance.  The minerality so to the fore on the palate of the Talinay Sauvignon expresses itself as structurally in the Pinot with an appetising edge of tannin which puts it perfectly with food.  Drink with feathered game, guinea fowl or grilled lamb.  To balance this delicious duo, Descorchados has also awarded it the position of The Best Pinot Noir in Chile.  How’s that for the double?  

We have stocked a few wines from this fine estate for several years and have banged on about them to the point of boredom, but only because we don’t want anyone to miss out, for there is a widespread misperception that Chilean wines are perfectly sound and preferably cheap, but simply do not feature among the world’s best.  Oh yes they do.  To reinforce this point leading Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio, published an article in January this year naming the two best winemakers of Chile.  In the article, Felipe Müller is honoured for his ability to understand Tabali´s distinctive terroir and use it to create remarkable wines, unique for Chile.  According to the newspaper: “Today, more than ever, the wines of Tabalí are among the best wines produced in Chile”. For his achievement Felipe Müller is nicknamed “The Interpreter” and chosen as “Best Young Winemaker”.

Best Sauvignon in Chile, Best Pinot Noir in Chile and Best Young Winemaker in Chile...surely this needs some investigating.  We are pleased to make available the two Talinay wines in an introductory offer so that you can see what all the fuss is about.

Now, just before you look at the price and declare swipe me, that’s not my usual budget; how much does a bottle of standard house red set you back when you eat out?  Exactly.  By comparison these are a bargain.

2012 Talinay Sauvignon Blanc, Tabali, Limari Valley,Chile

Price: £13.95 but £11.95 if you buy two bottles or one of each.

2011 Talinay Pinot Noir, Tabali, Limari Valley, Chile

Price: £15.95 but £13.95 if you buy two bottles or one of each.

 

Fairtrade Fortnight - Bit Lukewarm Actually. Here's Why...

Any minute now we should all expect a tap with the “worthy” stick as retailers try to persuade us to buy Fairtrade.  Many of us will respond and pay the extra for what are, as far as anyone can tell, the same bananas/coffee/chocolate (delete as appropriate) we bought last week with the exception of the comforting blue & green logo on them.  But hey! That’s fine because someone at the other end of the line should be getting a fair deal, right?  Not according to one of our suppliers who, when exploring the idea of a range of Fairtrade wines with a major supermarket was told that whilst this was an idea they would love to take further, they weren’t prepared to pay any more for the wines.  Really?  Isn’t that the point?  Shouldn’t those of us who can afford to do so be prepared to pay a bit more for the reassurance of a better deal for the chaps at the other end?  This particular major retailer was not in the least concerned about these effects, it simply wished to bask in the glory of being perceived to be Doing The Right Thing. 

How many will be offering discounts on Fairtrade products during Fairtrade Fortnight, and who do you suppose is supporting these offers? Cutting prices on these products just at the point that’s supposed to increase sales is at best counterproductive; hypocritical at worst.

Please don’t get us wrong here though.  We are not against Fairtrade (and other similar schemes) in principle.  We just don’t like the fact that a well-intentioned scheme has been hijacked and used as a marketing tool.  There are a lot of front-end costs too which make us wonder just how much of the good that could be done gets siphoned off in bureaucracy.

Surely the idea is not to attract the bargain hunters with special offers just for two weeks of the year but rather to encourage people to switch permanently to lines which deliver a better deal for the producers?  Sorry, but you don’t achieve that with discounts.  All you do is attract the “price-is-all-that-matters” consumers who’ll be chasing the next deal in 2 weeks time and the golden opportunity for long term benefit will be lost.

There is only one thing that will clinch long-term support for Fairtrade lines and that’s delivering quality products at affordable prices (actually that may be two things so to get round that we’ll call it “value for money”).  This is where it all starts to fall down as far as the vast majority of Fairtrade wines are concerned because frequently the people in most need of help are working the poorest plots of land so you’re not starting with good quality raw material – silk purse, sow’s ear etc.

Oh we’ve tried plenty of Fairtrade wines certainly, but it strikes us that the reason people buy them is because of the badge and not because they’re any good (the supermarket tale above certainly suggests that’s what they think anyway) and that’s putting the cart before the horse.  Frankly, the wines themselves need to be better, both better made and more exciting.  It’s no use trotting out yet another predictable South African Chenin Blanc or Chilean Merlot which people will simply find “acceptable”.  There has to be a reason to keep buying these wines beyond the call of the badge.  You don’t drink the badge after all.

If you’re minded to try wines such as these during the dedicated two week period we would point you to the Santa Digna (Gewurztraminer and Cab.Sauv.Rose) wines by Miguel Torres and the Coyam and Novas reds by Emiliana.  They carry the Fair For Life badge as opposed to the Fairtrade one but they were good wines first and happen also to subsequently deliver a good deal for the people who grow the grapes.  These wines do appear on offer occasionally, though not at the demand of the retailer.  More importantly, they are all good enough for us to recommend them for 52 weeks of the year and not just two.

Call Time On Duty

Now that the smoke has cleared away from Christmas and the New Year celebrations we start to look forward to the late winter and spring tastings put on by our suppliers.  It’s part of the planning process to fill gaps in the list and to discover new lines and new growers, as well as consolidating existing relationships with more familiar faces.  In short it’s time to go shopping and, as it’s the only type of shopping either of us can manage with a smile, it is usually fun.  Sometimes it’s challenging or frustrating, but when we have written off the non-starters and filtered through the shortlist to emerge with a clutch of exciting fresh ideas for the Wines of Interest 2014/15 Wine List, we are confident that you, dear customer, will have plenty to get your teeth into over the coming year.

 Part of that process necessarily involves costing.  Obviously we would like to make a modest turn out of it - you can’t feed and clothe the children by giving it away.  One thing is for certain here and that is that no matter how much we sell, nobody makes more out of our labours than the government and it is the government which makes the major contribution to the expense of your favourite tipple.  Now, we all know that education, the NHS, the armed forces, the police and so on must be paid for somehow and that the principle of paying tax is sound, so we are not griping about excise per se.  Thus as Williamson bashes his calculator and redraws his spreadsheets after the spring budget, we understand why our industry is required to stump up, but what does irk is just how much.  Have a little trundle through some revealing figures to see the extent that we are lent on by No. 11 Downing Street….

Did you know that the wine and spirit industries are worth £20 billion annually to the British economy and support, directly or indirectly, £40 billion of economic activity in the UK?  The UK alcohol industries (ghastly description but you catch our drift) support nearly 2 million jobs in total.  Worth encouraging wouldn’t you think?

Since the introduction of the alcohol duty escalator in 2008 by Mr. Darling, wine taxation has risen by 50% and spirits by 44%, of which 25% for both categories was imposed by nice Mr. Osborne who picked up the baton when it became his turn.  Tax now accounts for 79% of an average-priced bottle of spirits and 57% of an average bottle of wine.  This will increase to over 80% on spirits and 60% on wine if the escalator is retained for 2014.  Don’t forget that every time the excise duty increases as part of our cost, the retail selling price also contains a growing amount of VAT.  You pay a tax on a tax.

As we stand now, the UK accounts for 38.8% of all duty paid in the EU – more than France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined.  Phew!

Next time you hear the talking heads pontificating about the UK’s alcohol problems, putting such troubles down to the cheapness of booze in this country, remember these statistics.

What beats me is just how the constant milking of our industry to this punitive degree squares up with government’s declared intent to create jobs and support growth.  It doesn’t look that way from here.  With the chancellor’s budget booked for March 19^th the spectre of another increase looms large and, as the duty escalator’s rate is set at 2% over inflation, we could be looking at another significant hike.

This is not a partisan, anti-government rant; all the parties of whatever political hue have been equally unsympathetic to our trade down the years.  The fact remains that the UK, whilst apparently enjoying a modest measure of economic improvement, remains pretty well immersed in the proverbial cess pit, wherever you wish to lay the blame for that.  Thus we understand why tax revenues need to be guarded and we understand why the national belt has had to be tightened.  What we don’t understand is why our industry, which shows such obvious benefits to the nation, should once again be clobbered like no other sector that we can think of, which results in the long term stifling of one of our more successful industries and contributors of revenue.

In short, we’ve paid already.  Go and fleece somebody else for a change, George.  Oh, and don’t defer it for a year, DO IT NOW.

If any of you feel similarly but do not know where to express that frustration, please go to http://action.calltimeonduty.com/  hosted by the Wine and Spirit Trade Association and endorsed by The TaxPayers’ Alliance, where you can find out more about this issue and send a pre-prepared, electronic letter to your local MP.  The words and major points are already there for you so please feel free to make your voice heard.  There’s an election in the offing and the current incumbents could do with a splash of popularity so it may well be a good time to nudge the chancellor in this direction.  If he sees sense but leaves it any later and it’ll look like a bribe.

Of course, if you actively wish to pay more for your booze and see further hurdles shoved in front of your favourite pub or restaurant and the vital tourist industry, please feel equally free not to do this…..

(Data sourced from Harpers Wine & Spirit Magazine, January 2014, issue 113)

A Basic Guide To Sherry

Don't give up now - you've already come so far...!

So you think you don't like Sherry?  We'd be prepared to bet that you just haven't met the right one yet.  Maybe you had an unfortunate experience in a previous life with an unfortunate sweet, brown, sticky liquid in the 1970s... Even if you think this isn't for you, you really should hear us out.  Sherry is the best value fine wine in the world and offers a vast range of tastes and options.  What's the harm in reading on...?

Before we go any further we should try to erase all preconceptions and distant memories.  Forget the crystal decanters on the set of Yes Minister, and the dusty bottle in Grandma’s cupboard and let’s also delete any recollections of bottles labelled with the word “sherry” but also bearing the words “British”, “Cyprus” or “South African”.  Thankfully these horror stories are consigned to ancient history. They are not, and never were, Sherry and labelling such wines in this way is now illegal.  When I say “Sherry” I’m talking about the wines made in a corner of Andalucia (southern Spain) in what is known as the “Sherry Triangle” based on the towns of Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlucar de Barrameda and Puerto de Santa Maria.

 

Sherries tend to be aged in a Solera System where new wines from each vintage are added to the start of a series of barrels and a proportion of the contents is moved, each year, to the next barrel in the sequence (each level is called a "criadera") with up to one third of the contents of the final barrel removed for bottling and sale.  No barrel is ever emptied and the new wine which is added takes on the properties of the wine it joins thus creating a consistent style and ironing out any vintage variation.  It’s why styles of sherry are so consistent.

Sherry Styles

Let’s bowl out the exceptions first in the form of Moscatel and Pedro Ximenez (PX).  These are the only naturally sweet styles of sherry and also the names of the grape varieties that produce them.  Moscatel is grapey, sweet and a bit like a big pudding wine.  PX is made from sun-dried PX grapes and is dark and intensely sweet – sort of  alcoholic liquid raisins.

 

With Moscatel and PX out of the way I can generalise a bit and tell you that all other sherries are made from the Palomino grape and they are all naturally dry.  Got that?  I say again, all naturally dry.  Yep, unlike port where the fermentation is stopped by the addition of spirit (thus leaving unfermented sugars, resulting in a sweet wine) the fermentation of sherry is allowed to finish before the spirit is added (this is called fortification) and the wine is already dry with all the natural sugars having been turned to alcohol.  It’s only after fortification that the real magic begins! Any sweet or medium sherries you therefore encounter were originally dry and have been adjusted with sweetening wines made from our old chums Moscatel and PX.

 

The magic then… Unique to this particular area of Spain (apart from the Jura in eastern France and a tiny bit of Hungary, or so I’m led to believe) is a naturally-occurring film of yeast which settles on the surface of some (but not all – and nobody knows why) casks of sherry.  This film of yeast is called Flor and does the double job of lending its own particular flavour to the wine and, where it completely covers the surface of the wine, protecting the wine from oxidising through contact with the air.  Sometimes the flor isn’t complete and air starts to oxidise the wine, sometimes the flor forms, but then dies off and sometimes it doesn’t form at all and the wine begins to oxidise straight away.  All of these variants produce different styles of sherry as set out below – and all because of a quirk of nature!

 

Fino – produced in Jerez de la Frontera and Puerto de Santa Maria where a flor covering has remained protecting the wine throughout its ageing in the solera.  The result is a very pale, dry and fresh sherry which is the perfect aperitif though the Spanish drink it with food too (so we should as well).  Think big white wine – serve chilled.  It’s not seen any oxygen whilst ageing though so will oxidise once opened thus a bottle is best consumed within days (or in our house hours) of opening.  Better still, buy 2 halves and keep the second one unopened to retain its freshness until the first one has gone.  Click here to browse our range of Sherries.  Should you see anything labelled "en rama" (meaning "in the raw") this is Sherry left unfiltered and as close as any bottling will be to drawing the stuff straight from the cask in Jerez (or Sanlucar.... or Puerto...).

 

Manzanilla – a style of Fino made in Sanlucar de Barrameda which, being by the sea, inherits a salty tang whilst ageing and is lighter, crisper and even drier than other Finos.  The same rules apply about keeping it fresh, buying halves to assist if appropriate, and serving chilled.  Warning – this stuff is dangerously addictive!  Look out for Manzanilla Pasada which is an older Manzanilla (about 7 years) where the veil of flor starts to fade and the wine takes on a richer style.  Some Bodegas stop short of Pasada status but still produce an older Manzanilla which has a bit more concentration and depth than the regular version. Click here to browse our range of Sherries.

 

 

Amontillado – started life as a Fino (or Manzanilla) with flor influence but then also began to oxidise because the flor didn’t form properly or has died off (which may have been encouraged to occur by the level of fortification) thus allowing a degree of oxidation.  Still crisp and fresh in their natural form and also naturally dry.  Quite complex and rich with a nuttiness to their flavour.  All Amontillados are naturally dry (because all such sherries are dry remember?) but often those sold on the UK market have had sweetening wines added to make them “medium”.  Best check with the retailer to see whether you’re buying a naturally dry version or one that’s been “mediumised”.  I’d still be serving these chilled incidentally. Click here to browse our range of Sherries.

Fino/Amontillado – quite rare but a halfway house between the two styles where there has been less oxidation than a full Amontillado but the wine still has the obvious flor character of a Fino.  Well worth seeking out.  Serve as Fino. Click here to browse our range of Sherries.

Oloroso – these are what results when no flor formed in the first place, largely because they were fortified to a higher booze level to prevent flor forming.  The wine therefore began to oxidise from day 1 and has continued to do so.  Dry again of course though UK versions are sweetened up so again it’s best to check.  The Spanish still serve these chilled (so I would too) but it’s up to you.  They can be complex and flavoursome wines. Click here to browse our range of Sherries.

 

 

Palo Cortado – this style is pretty rare and sits between Amontillado and Oloroso in terms of flavour.  It begins life as a Fino or Amontillado but then wakes up one morning and decides it actually leans the other way and starts to age as an Oloroso.  Nobody knows why but winemakers get very excited when this happens.  Though rare this change seems to produce the best of both worlds and sherries of intense flavour and complexity.  Fantastic stuff! Click here to browse our range of Sherries.

Cream – Oloroso base wine with Moscatel and PX added to produce a sweet style popular in the UK but almost unheard of in Spain.  This is what Mothers-in-Law and elderly maiden aunts run on and is probably the bottle that ought to be in Grandma’s cupboard that we mentioned at the beginning…

Sherry is one of the finest experiences that they world of wine has to offer.  Some people claim they don’t like Sherry; they’re wrong.  They just haven’t tasted the right one yet. Click here to browse our range of Sherries - you must be ready for a glass now, and if you're not ready just have a look at this picture for a while...

 

Domaine Charles Baur, Eguisheim

We estimate that for every wine we eventually include in our range we taste over 30 samples; most are rejected because either they not good enough, or not interesting enough, or simply because they are too expensive for what they are.  A few areas of our list present us with a different sort of challenge however, namely that we are spoilt for choice and it is difficult to know what to leave out rather than what to include; it’s a nice problem to have!  One such area is Alsace, which presents the further challenge for us of how to connect UK wine lovers with these fascinating and original wines which seem so often to be overlooked, or at least misunderstood.

Overall quality and consistency in Alsace is excellent.  Certainly there are producers that are less good, or make wine on a more commercial scale than one would ideally like, and vintages vary of course.  As ever, we try to sniff out producers whose wines offer that little bit extra.

The narrow streets of Eguisheim are full of
flowers and charming buildings.

Domaine Charles Baur in Eguisheim first came to our attention last year when a sample of their award-winning 2010 Pinot Blanc landed in front of us.  On the strength of the sample we dipped our commercial toe in the shallow end and bought a few cases.  There was an initial surge of interest and when we highlighted the wine again we could have sold twice our remaining stocks!  My annual family holiday this year saw us spend a week in the Vosges Mountains – within striking distance of Alsace – and I arranged to pay Domaine Charles Baur a visit.  The day was blisteringly hot and we were all glad to find that the water in the village fountain was icy cold and, along with many others, stood around it dangling our hands in the water in an attempt to keep cool!

Arnaud Baur looks too young to be such a talented winemaker.  He has excellent pedigree however, having obtained a Masters Degree in agricultural engineering specialising in winegrowing and oenology.  Both his father (Amand) and his grandfather (Charles) made wine at the estate and in 2009 Arnaud and Amand made the decision to begin the transition to fully organic production in all of their 57 vineyard sites and they have been fully organic since 2011.  The 3 year qualification process means that from 2014 they will be able to publicise their organic status on their labels, but you can rest assured that their wines are already made with organically grown grapes.

Arnaud Baur checks a bottle of his Cremant d'Alsace
undergoing its secondary fermentation in bottle.

Arnaud very kindly showed us round his immaculate winery which included both large and small oak casks.  Arnaud explained that he matures some of his wines in oak though the barrels are so old that they do not impart any flavour to the wines, he simply uses them because experience has proved that they make wines that are more “open” with their flavours than those fermented and aged in stainless steel.  Arnaud is also investing in a new bottling line.  It’s quite usual for winemakers to take huge pride in their bottling lines, mostly because it represents their single biggest item of expenditure, but Arnaud explained that he is replacing his not because it needs it but because a more modern line will enable him to reduce his already low sulphite levels further still.  He is tremendously keen to make wines as naturally as possible and his care extends to every part of the process from the vineyard to the glass.

The serious (mostly) business of tasting

When we taste there is a similar attention to detail, with Arnaud tasting each wine himself first to ensure he is completely happy before he lets us anywhere near the sample!  We begin with his Cremant and progress through the noble white grapes of Alsace; Sylvaner, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Muscat, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer, with Grand Cru versions introduced at strategic points and finally we taste a couple of Grand Cru Vendages Tarvives (2009 Pinot-Gris from Eichberg and 2009 Gewurztraminer from Pfersigberg).  The common theme that runs throughout all the wines is purity of fruit and a degree of restraint.  Each wine is not only a textbook version of its grape variety but also shows a delicacy not often seen in Alsace.  Wines from this region can be made in a blousy and extrovert style (Pinot-Gris and Gewurztraminer especially) yet Baur’s are fine and pure.  There is still plenty of flavour in the more aromatic varieties, but it’s nicely managed so you don’t feel overwhelmed.  Is it the neutral oak casks?  Is it the organic grapes? Or is it Arnaud’s obsessive attention to detail in every part of the process?  In truth it’s probably all of these and more factors besides, but these wines have that extra note of class that marks them out from their peers.  I would encourage you to explore these wines further yourself; I’m sure you will be impressed!

JW and Arnaud Baur

We have shipped 4 wines;

2011 Pinot Blanc

Drier than medium, rich and rounded with floral scents and white fruit aromas.  Perfect with fish, seafood, shellfish and white meats or as an aperitif.  So often Pinot Blanc can be unremarkable, or at least be overshaddowed by the more extrovert grape varieties, but this is ripe and pure and is an excellent illustration of just how good Pinot Blanc can be.

2011 Riesling, Cuvee Charles

Made from 25 year old vines this is deep yellow-gold colour with light green tints. The bouquet has a floral and citrus fruit character. The palate is fresh and crisp with keen lime and grapefruit flavors. The wine is dry, well balanced and bodied, with a long finish.  Textboox Riesling; fine, elegant and long.

2010 Riesling Grand Cru Brand

The Baur family bought their vineyard in the Grand Cru Brand in 2008, it lies 5km to the north of Eguisheim on a sand and granite soil which Arnaud regards as the best terroir for Riesling where the natural steel and minerality of the variety really shine. 

Made from 30 year old vines this is medium intensity golden yellow colour. The nose is composed of white flower and intense grapefruit flavours. The palate is fresh, rich and crisp. Remarkable harmony between grapefruit, white flower flavours and an intense but silky minerality.  You will struggle to find a finer example.

2010 Gewurztraminer Grand Cru Pfersigberg

The Grand Cru Pfersigberg is on the outskirts of Eguisheim where the soil is clay & limestone which retains the warmth of the sun very well and this, along with the south-east facing aspect, usually ensures early and full ripening of the grapes.  The Baur family have 1 hectare of 25 year old Gewurztraminer vines in Pfersigberg.

This is a generous wine with spicy hints and an aroma of wilted rose petals evolving with time into grilled almonds and candied apricots. The wine has finesse and freshness.  Gewurztraminer can so often be overpowering, but not this one.  Sure, it has plenty of flavour but it has balance and elegance too.  A very fine example indeed.

Buy wine online - click here to browse our full range of wines from Alsace

Most of Eguisheim looks like this...

Cooling down at the village fountain...

Overheard Conversation

There was hard-nosed Australian lady, a shiny-suited English bloke – senior manager or director I’d guess – and another woman of indeterminate rank who wore a business suit and smiled a lot.  This is not the opening line of a joke (not entirely anyway), but the little crew who sat behind us at a break during a tasting.  Williamson and I had repaired to the rest area with a modest pop-up café to revive ourselves with a face full of sandwiches while we mulled over the morning’s successes and mapped out the afternoon’s work. 

Their conversational volume was indiscreet, especially the Aussie (yes, really) and it was much more interesting than ours so we tuned in.  We identified them as a team from a vastly larger player than us, possibly a supermarket or maybe a national distributor, from the volumes they were discussing.  They spoke in gobbldegook – corporate jargon, acronyms and technobabble – but what really struck a nerve was the dispassionate way that they viewed the subject of wine and how they planned to interfere in a, currently, independent producer’s business.

“I’m going to get the head maker to change his fining régime, make him use a vegan-friendly material,” said Aussie.  “Why?” asked Smiler naively, “Is it any better?” “I doubt it, but it ticks another box; it makes it more attractive to the veggie market,” said Aussie.  “Will it improve the finished liquid?” persisted Smiler.  “Dunno, but as I said, it will help to grow the market.  It’s that sort of detail that can pump up sales; we’ve gotta get the man to think outside the box and embrace our marketing ethos.”

Hang on a mo, we thought, this is somebody else’s business here; we should all welcome a little advice from time to time, but the wholesale imposition of different cellar management under the threat of withdrawing a huge chunk of business seemed rather unfriendly.  “Well, he has to see it from our point of view and that’s that,” barked Bloke in a Suit, “Can he manage the volumes we’re gonna need?”  Aussie jumped in, “Birmingham predicts over a quarter of a mil SKU’s in year two of the Charddie alone, factor in the other two varietals and we’re talking big biccies.  I think he can manage, but I guess we’ll have to cuddle him a bit to bring him across our line.”

“Any other problems?” Bloke in a Suit ventured.  “Well, the first sample of Merlot showed a little tannin; Joe Public can’t get on with that, but we can have that rounded out and then it’ll do.  I’m experimenting with oak levels in the Charddie; we can have him knock out anything from no oak to loaded with the stuff so whatever we think will sell best – as long as the lab likes it – gets the gig.  Once we establish the formula, consistency will follow,” Aussie assured him.  I think we can take it that “the lab” is not the office dog.

This is just a snippet of a debate that continued for fully forty minutes in the same vein.

As a couple of suit-free geezers who fell into the wine trade at different times and bumbled into business together with our respective wives because of a passion for the stuff, we found this discussion at first laughable, then very quickly chilling.  There was not one soul between the three of them.  Nobody cared about the quality of the wine; nobody had any respect for the hard working guy who had, unwisely, hitched himself to this cold triumvirate and nobody cared about the paying consumer.  Apart, of course, from the money, about which they were all very keen indeed.

These are the sort of people who invent spurious “half-price deals” and congratulate themselves on them because they fancy that they are so much cleverer than the rest of us.  They are the sort of people who create meritless, anodyne styles of the lowest common denominator from the cheapest old wampo they can find.  These are the sort of people who, in the face of a duty increase in the budget, turn to their suppliers and threaten to remove their business unless the supplier makes up the difference.  Clearly they cannot afford to do either, but do these guys care?

So, while we started by tittering at the language and the evident moral-free nature of their approach, eventually their disrespect for pretty much everyone except themselves, their collective lack of product knowledge apart from what the technical printouts told them and their obvious disinterest in wine as a wonderful aesthetic experience, seriously began to worry us.

Smaller independent merchants like Wines of Interest are the engine room of the wine trade.  What we all have in common, apart from our quirks and specialist enthusiasms, is that we care about you, our interested customers, and we care about the wonderful wines that we are lucky enough to work with.  Those two factors alone make all of us infinitely more qualified in our field than any of the tossers who shared our lunch space.

When buyers don’t care about you or take a pride in their products you wind up with horsemeat.  If you are happy with crap, buy crap with my blessing.  If you want to avoid it, your local independent wine merchant offers you the best chance of cutting that risk to a minimum.  And does it with heart.

Champagne - Rasselet & Lallier

There’s nothing quite like Champagne.  Sure, there are plenty of fizzy wines out there, but sometimes only Champagne will do.  As Lily Bollinger once famously said "I only drink Champagne when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty".

You have to be careful though because it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of being blinded by branding.  Champagne is dominated by several big names (which will no doubt be familiar) yet a drive through the Montagne de Reims or a short detour off the main D3 along the Vallée de la Marne will reveal dozens of smaller producers making Champagne on a much smaller scale.  Hidden from view are also hundreds of simple grape growers who do nothing else than concentrate on the viticulture of their land and who sell their entire harvest to larger players.

It’s worth seeking out the producers who see the whole process through from start to finish.  They tend their own land, grow their own grapes and make their own wines.  Look for the letters “RM” in front of some numbers on the bottom of the label, they stand for Recoltant Manipulant and mean that the chap who grew the grapes also made the wine.  “NM” stands for Negiociant Manipulant, where the grapes have largely been bought in from smaller growers.

I passed through the Champagne region a couple of years ago on the way back from a family holiday in the Dordogne for a pre-arranged visit to Champagne Lallier in the village of Ay – a small set up employing about a dozen people.  Though they buy some grapes in from other growers, Lallier only make Champagnes from grapes grown on Premier Cru and Grand Cru designated vineyard sites.  Their quality is exceptional.

Buy Lallier Champagne online - click here

 

JW and son at Champagne Lallier in 2011

More recently I visited Rasselet Pere et Fils based in the tiny village of Oeuilly (say it as if you’re The Fonz and you’ll be pretty close) a small family firm run by Joel Rasselet and his wife Edwige whose Champagnes we have shipped direct for many years.   

Buy Rasselet Champagne online - click here.

Joel & Edwige Rasselet with JW in May 2013

Sue and I were well looked after and following a tour, tasting and lunch Joel and Edwige dropped us off back in Epernay at the cellars of Mercier where we did the Mercier cellar tour and tasting.  At Mercier you pay for this of course; such tours are big business.  The experience itself is worthwhile – a video presentation, a descent by panoramic lift into their 18km of cellars followed by a tour on a laser-guided train, all accompanied by a succession of multi-lingual fashion models….  The trouble is that after all that the tasting at the end is a bit of a let down.  Certainly Mercier Champagne is acceptable enough, but there is no depth of flavour, no concentration and just a hint that you’re tasting something that’s been rather rushed to market.  To be fair, you could claim that this is in keeping with the aspirations of their founder, Eugene Mercier, whose dream it was to make Champagne accessible to a wider audience.  Fair enough I suppose, but unless the drink is as memorable as the tour, why would they buy it again?



This is where the smaller producers like Lallier and Rasselet win.  They don’t put you on laser-guided trains, or try and sell you tea towels and baseball caps so you can advertise their brand for them, they simply put a quality product, made with skill and dedication, in a glass in front of you and let you make up your own mind.  The care and dedication to quality always shows through.  The only variable is you of course, and whether you are able to see beyond the brand names… 

The good news is that if you are able to recognise the similarity between the Emperor’s New Clothes and the big branded champagnes it will save you some money too.  On our recent trip to Epernay my wife and I paid more for a bottle of one of the well-known brands in a slightly scruffy bar (all they had and it was €57 – acceptable “mais rien especial”, the frites were free….) than we did for a bottle of Lallier Grande Reserve Grand Cru (€45) in a small local restaurant that served up one of the best meals we have had in recent years (if you want to know more about this restaurant just ask me and I’ll give you the details). 

Equally, wandering round the Eurotunnel terminal at Calais on our return journey I spotted Veuve Clicquot NV at about the same price as the multiples offer it in the UK (free of duty perhaps, but not free of big fat greedy profit margin it would seem).  For about a fiver less (more if the Clicquot isn’t on offer – though it usually is – draw your own conclusions…) Rasselet Brut Reserve sits on our shelves at £27 which makes it both cheaper and better than the celebrity labels and, if entertaining or giving it as a present, also shows a degree of effort on your part too since you have unearthed something relatively unfamiliar rather than lazily bought the one that gets sprayed over Sebasian Vettel every couple of weeks…

Joel Rasselet doesn’t make vast quantities of Champagne but what he does make is great value for money.  He has customers in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Holland and Italy though we are the only people bringing his Champagne into the UK.  Last year he sold his surplus production to Veuve Clicquot which may tell you all you need to know.  After all, that’s the bit he didn’t want…

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