Thursday
August 21st
An invitation from the importers
Woodford Bourne to a tasting of Ornellaia at Ely Wine Bar. A famous
and famously expensive wine that you don’t get to try everyday so this
is not an opportunity to be missed.
Ely
has been around three or four years now and was a really exciting addition
to the Dublin dining scene when it opened as there were so few places that
really did wine well and in particular wine by the glass seriously in my
opinion. Thankfully others have opened since but because of its
iconoclastic status it has a place in my heart and I imagine others too.
That
said though, as nice as the people there are, I do find it a little
pretentious, as if the customers are being judged as much as the wine.
Perhaps there are just too many people wearing ties. But this kind of
atmosphere made it the perfect choice of venue for a tasting of a luxury
Italian wine. When wine costs this much an element of are you good enough
for the wine creeps in. Are you clever and experienced enough to
appreciate its beauty or are you a ‘I know what I like’ type?
‘Emperors new clothes’ was a phrase that kept flitting through my mind
as the tasting progressed. I thought I caught a whiff of bull in the air.
The
deeply tanned and suave sales manager Alexander Belson hosted the show and
she talked of Marchese Lodovico Antinioris’s passion and commitment to
quality, the exceptional terroir. There was even a handout with phrases
like ‘Brainstorming every day under a clear sky.'
I
was reminded of the fine gold thread used to sow the emperor’s coat, so
fine that mere mortals couldn’t see it. I never met a winery
representative that didn’t claim that their wine was borne of
dedication, passion, talent and exceptional dirt.
When they espouse this it’s as if they think it’s a point of
difference and that all the others just churn there’s out like tins of
baked beans. I wish producers of expensive wine would just say something
like “Yeah, we thought we’d made a pretty good wine and so we reckoned
we’d flog it for as much as we possibly could especially after Parker or
the Wine Spectator gave it 95 points. There’s a market out there for
conspicuous consumption and we aim to tap it.”
The
tasting started with Poggio Alle Gazza, their sauvignon Blanc based wine
and we were informed that this was its last vintage as the vineyard is
being converted to red wine production. No bad idea I’d say as the
average Chilean reserve sauvignon at half the price is a better wine. Next
up was La Volte, their accessibly priced red, although €18-20 is luxury
priced to most of us. At first I thought it might be faulty – with a
touch of Bret but it got better and the acidity was painfully sour. Better
with food I was told. Better with something else in my glass altogether, I
felt.
Then
the centrepiece, two vintages, 1999 and 2000, of Ornellaia and its second
wine Le Serre Nuove, both blends of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and
cabernet franc. For a while there, I thought I too could see the beauty of
the emperor’s coat. They were both stunners, most preferred the 1999,
but I liked the riper fruit of 2000. Finally, the icing on the cake, the
crown , Masseto, a 100% merlot that should retail for around €170. All
around me people cooed and gushed. I felt like the little boy who finally
said out loud, the emperor has no clothes on. It was big in a bruiser sort
of way. The label said 14.5% a.b.v, but it felt like more as the alcohol
burnt my tongue. I’d rather have six bottles of top Barossa shiraz or
decent Pomerol any day.
Comparisons
with Pétrus made by some are nonsense. Pétrus is rich but balanced and
elegant. It’s fashionable to knock big wines and Parker’s love of them
but I generally like them too, however not this. It was so concentrated as
to be painful, completely unsubtle and over the top. If you plant Merlot
and it has ripened by late august to 14.5% to 15% potential alcohol then I
think you’ve planted it in the wrong place. Great wine is made on the
margins, when the when grapes just manage to ripen properly. Otherwise
Riverina and North Africa would be the world’s finest grape growing
region and they’re not. They grow it in Pomerol as it’s an early
ripener and they struggle with cabernet, not because they want a wine so
thick you could stand a spoon in it.
As
I said, a tasting not to be missed, for a variety of reasons.
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Wednesday
August 6th
12pm Dublin - Radisson hotel for a tasting by Super Valu of some of
their New World wines. They've pushed the boat out - smart hotel,
fancy lunch, free bag, colour booklet that must have cost a fortune and
for just three producers with about 20 wines between them! Daft really, I
think ham sandwiches in a more simple, more central hotel would have been
fine. Are we journalists really so callow and malleable that our opinions
and propensity to write nice things can be bought with a fancy lunch? No,
don't answer that. I certainly hope mine can't.
Nugan Estate from Australia was a new one
to me and the wines were just fine and fairly priced. Aresti, their
exclusive Chilean was even better and much more interesting than any bland
own label that I've had from UK supermarkets and then there was Neil
Joubert from S. Africa. Good and dull in equal measures. Pinotage is hard
to get right and he hasn't quite got it but the shiraz and chardonnay were
good enough.
Found myself sitting next to Ernie Whalley, the new editor of Food and
Wine magazine. This could have been tricky as the new broom has been
reviewing his budgets and so amongst several changes he's dropped my column. I
decide that life is too short to hold grudges as he's only doing his job and
balancing the books, so I chat and smile through teeth that are only a
little clenched. Oddly, having just sacked me he professes to like my
writing style and has passed my name on to someone else looking for a new
columnist. Just as well I hadn't laid into him and that I hope the revamped magazine sinks and him with it, which
had been my initial wounded gut reaction. Actually I like Ernie and to
prove it here's a link to this website www.forkncork.com.
2.30pm Skip dessert and race off with a
couple of bottles in my bag to taste on air on News Talk 106fm.
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