my New Year wish to you

May peace break into your house and may thieves come to steal your debts.

May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet of $100 bills.

May love stick to your face like Vaseline and may laughter assault your lips!

May your clothes smell of success like smoking tires and may happiness slap you across the face and may your tears be that of joy.

May the problems you had forget your home address!

In simple words...

peace.

the peculiar thrills of Gruner Veltliner

"Go on then, thrill me" he replied, "& have some more Gruner Veltliner."

Oh yes. Gruner Veltliner is an Austrian white wine made for dark thrills.

Searing acid yet luscious fruit. It's creamy skin under black leather. Elegantly depraved.

A new favourite for jaded tastes.

Welcome back Austrian wine.

post-election postscript

Wake up to a new world. 

And a cigarette.

Hang on. I need some water. 

Those Californian wines last night were high in alcohol...

Human, all too human. 

& thank God for that...

Link: This is Our Next President

Previous post: election nerves

simple tastes...

Last month, WWS delighted in Falanghina.

But I should be more honest with you.

This is not the only great white wine from Campania. Falanghina's other sisters are just as stunning: both Greco di Tufo and Fiano d'Avellino.

Part of me, selfishly, wants to keep these three wines a secret; but, the sheer nature of these wines are so generous, making it impossible not to want to share them.

And yes, I am missing the sun.

Link: Guide to Italian Wines - Campania

kisses sweeter than wine

From Sydney with love

Yay!

Face Hunter is in Sydney... the spacey fashion, the eerie trees, the relaxed, warm weather.




Link: Face Hunter in Sydney

Bois Blond, Parfumerie Generale (limited edition)

I wore Bois Blond for months. Just to get me through. And I believed - because it was so good - I believed the man behind Parfumerie Generale, Pierre Guillaume, had trained as a winemaker.

Well, I was wrong. So why did I believe this? I don't know whether the sales person had told me this...

Or was it the deep woody, sherry, cognac notes I find in their perfumes? Like a bourbon barrel from Kentucky gives a sherry edge to some Scottish whisky.

Not only that, but the perfumes are numbered without names; just like bin vats for wine barrels in the winery.

Ah well.

I wrote to PG about the wine connection and this is my delightful response:

The father of Mr Guillaume he is a wine collector and as a child PG visit a lot a Chateaux in Bordelais, Bourgogne and Midi of France with his father to discover and taste Wine culture... He share the passion of his father but, never "work" himself in wine making.
For information, Mr Guillaume is crazy about woody and oriental note and he's always working on it a lot, trying to discover newones...
He also use a lot of ingredients usually found in food aroma, not only in perfumes.
Bois Blond, it is a fragrance of sunny woods with memories of summer dusks, awaiting the summer monsoons.

This is a limited edition perfume, so get your hands on it (if you can). It's like suddenly finding your own space in the peak-hour crowds. The country in the city. Or a ray of sunshine coming out just the moment you walk outside for your break.

Link: Parfumerie Generale

what to drink during a financial crisis

"My clients' enquiries: "Which wine is best to numb the pain and transport you most effectively from your woes?" What, for example, might the chief executive of the world's fourth-largest investment bank pull up from his cellar, dizzy, reeling and nauseous, knowing that the jobs of 24,000 employees, a proud 158-year commercial history, over $600 billion and the reputation of an entire profession were about to go up in smoke?"

I'd recommend a white wine from the south of France. A Picpoul de Pinet around £4 a bottle.

Or better yet, crunch the credit card and buy a serious Champagne. One that asks questions and gives pause to reflect.



Link: What to drink during a financial crisis

Diana Vreeland in her wonderful Garden in Hell

At the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Hayward Gallery was an interview of Diana Vreeland in her apartment. Extraordinary.

Talking from her sofa in her Fifth Avenue apartment - decorated as a"Garden of Hell" - she talks to an academic about how she was the last person to see the Mona Lisa before it was stolen at the Lourve.

A fascinating conversation with many other superb anecdotes.


Link: Andy Warhol, Other Voices Other Rooms at the Hayward Gallery

Bowmore 16 year old 1990

Let me share with you my tasting notes. Although, as the tasting progressed, they look less like notes and more like boozy heiroglyphics.

Starting out with calm, triple-distilled lowland single malts and irish blends, the day ended with some unrestrained darkness from the island of Islay.

What I wrote for the final Islay whisky, Bowmore 16 year old 1990 (53.4% alc):

"Like being violently dumped by a grey Atlantic wave face first on a rock pool covered with barnacles, waking up a few seconds later to cough out sea-water, seaweed and splinters of charred plank."

After some pause, my tutor decided to accept my note, "Ok, that's pretty much it. Great, isn't it?"

Yes, no doubt. But, by then, the fumes had curled up into my brain. Hanging on the wall, water colour paintings of Islay distilleries by the "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" artist, Ralph Steadman.

When I first arrived and saw them in the tasting room, I found it hard to believe an artist inextricably linked with Hunter S. Thompson could paint a landscape so lunar quiet.

But after a day of tasting Scotch, the hushed washed-out colours now made a lot of sense... as in the bottle, the expression of the land.



Link: Ralph Steadman's trip to Scottish distilleries blog

Brian Eno: the key to a long life

"I believe singing is the key to a long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, greater intelligence, new friends, increased self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness and a sense of humour. There! That got your attention."


– Brian Eno

Link: Ode Magazine, Freestyling

Castello di Ama: chianti, architecture and art

Nestled in the commune of Gaiole in Chianti, in the province of Siena, lies one of the most beautiful modern wineries I have ever seen.

The premier Chianti Classico estate, made of mirror, is a modern building, not beautiful in itself. What makes it beautiful is the idea it reflects along with the non-stop undulating olive-clad hills and vineyards.

The building becomes a complete merging of the Chianti landscape into the winery.

Apart from the inspired architecture, it is also home to an excellent collection of contemporary art. Owners Marco Pallanti and Lorenza Sebasti showcase their wines amongst music and art works.

"An important work of art will live on through time and will always have something to relate to the viewer, just as a good bottle of wine will age with style, harmony and balance, and still communicate its unique history..." (from Decanter Magazine).

Metaphorically, Chianti di Ami's architecture is the greatest expression of terroir I have ever seen: where the land reflects itself through the winery, and finally, expressing itself in the glass.

Bellissimo.

Link: Castello di Ama

crisp

Link: All things Quentin Crisp

Marchesa Luisa Casati

"With her pet cheetah on a diamond-studded leash, her Lalique flask of Absinthe and tendency to go out in little else than a fur coat, it’s not surprising the Italian aristocrat caused a sensation from Paris to Hollywood during the 1920s..." from La Vie on Rose blog

All the stock market schadenfraude makes me wonder: maybe we have just been through the equivalent of the decadent 1920s? Maybe it's history repeating. And then, there's the unrepeatable and unique... the Marchesa Luisa Casati.

After a life of parties at her home Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on Grand Canal in Venice, after patronising the major artists of the time, she had amassed a personal debt of $25 million. To satisfy her creditors, all her possessions were auctioned. In the bid room, Coco Chanel.

The Marchesa fled to London, where she lived in comparative poverty."She was rumoured to be seen rummaging in bins searching for feathers to decorate her hair."

She died in London in 1957, buried amongst the illustrious dead at Brompton Cemetery. The epigraph on her tombstone is from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety."

"She was buried wearing not only her black and leopardskin finery but a pair of false eyelashes."

Link: quotes from Wiki article, Marchesa Luisa Casati

I sit by the window

I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you've got caviar?
The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass
and turn you on--no need for coke, or grass.
I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.
When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn't often.

....

Link: Part of I sit by the window, Joseph Brodsky

"Perfumes to evoke memories" (Canadian interview)

Warning:
may want to translate the perfume's name
before splashing on...

Much fun had last week when Mz Harris interviewed me for her great article published across Canada - Perfumes to evoke memories - about the trend for some perfumes to smell like a specific time, place or experience.

Something close to my heart and, I know from your lovely emails, for many other Wine Woman Song readers.

Here is my original post about the terrifying memory recall I had when trying on the perfume Secretions Magnifique in the perfume department of Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge. Yes, a strange experience.


Link: Perfumes to evoke memories article

cruel summer: Burgundy 08

"No decent Chablis this year? Time to rob some banks..."

Another cruel summer in Burgundy. Now it's gone.

If you see a lonely White Burgundy on the shelf from the 2005 vintage - snap it up.

The next best are 2006s.

They're not good, but they're not bad. Steer clear from the fat 2003s. If you remember, that's the heatwave year when not only the vines, but people, died.

Chablis needs its mineral, crystalline architecture of acid to get to its great heights. And that only happens when the fruit is not overripe and swollen by heat-loving sugar.

For those with moxie, pick these vineyards for 2006 Chablis - in a few years, once everyone realises the poor 2007 and 2008 vintages, you may need to rob banks to buy them:

Grand Cru

Les Vaudesirs
Les Grenouilles
Les Clos

Premier Cru

Les Montmains
La Montee-de-Tonnerre
Les Vaillons

R.I.P. Didier Dagueneau

A black hole in the wine world with the sudden death of the great Didier Dagueneau; he crashed his microlite in the Dordogne on Wednesday.

As Jancis Robinson initially posted, somehow it seems like a fitting way to go for such an adventurous person. Still, what a great loss.

As I wrote only a few weeks ago, he was one of the great eccentrics of the wine world...

R.I.P.


Link: Didier Dagueneau dies in Decanter Magazine
Link: Eccentric Winemaker Series, Pt 1: Didier Dagueneau, the wild man of Pouilly

shadow world

Sun Ra Arkestra "Shadow World" West Berlin


Link: A space odyssey via Astralis and Sun Ra

champagne and real pain

"Captains of industry, great generals, artists of genius, even politicians, are often just people who have discovered that alcohol can enable them to make economic, tactical, creative, or political decisions whose implications would paralyze a sober individual." – John More, in sub-TERRAIN

Finest example: Winston Churchill.

Pol Roger released Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill Pol Roger Vintage Champagne in 1984 to recognise Churchill's attachment to Pol Roger, who "insisted on enjoying the wine at the most dangerous and dark periods of wartime".

My observation is Pol Roger is not as well-known the LVMH (Moet, etc) champagnes; Vintage Pol Roger, even less so, but preferred by people who have drunk too much Veuve Clicquot in their life.


Link: Sir Winston Churchill and Pol Roger

Eccentric Winemaker series, Pt 4: Lalou Bize-Leroy, Burgundy

astrological principles guide the world's most illustrious winemaker, Lalou Bize-Leroy

"Wine is from a cosmic inspiration, it has the taste of the world matter." - Lalou Bize-Leroy

Lalou Bize-Leroy is the person behind some of the most expensive, sought-after, imitated and adored wines in the world.

Her Burgundies are breathtaking, ethereal and out-of-this world.

Yet she has to be one of the most idiosyncratic and eccentric winemakers on the planet. Lauded by her critics, shunned by her neighbours, loved by her buyers and collectors.

Controversially, Lalou manages her wine on horoscopes and phases of the moon - she is one of the first exponents of bio-dynamic management of wine based on a cosmic, Steiner philosophy.

Madame Bize Leroy doesn't just think big, she thinks cosmically big. And let's the rest of the world catch up.

You may not believe in it, you may not understand it, but she must be doing something right. You don't get a page of superlative praise from the world's biggest wine critics for no reason:

"the greatest domaines of Burgundy today must be those under the control of Lalou Bize. The sheer concentration, depth and intensity Lalou Bize manages to squeeze into her bottles is breathtaking" - Clive Coates

"Lalou Bize-Leroy stands alone at the top of Burgundy's quality hierarchy. Because she is a perfectionnist, and because she has had the courage to produce wines from low yield and bottle them naturally, without fining or filtration." - Robert Parker Jr

"Lalou seeks a degree of purity, allied to extraordinary concentration, that is almost unmatched by any other producer." - Matt Kramer

What you need to know

Name: Madame Lalou Bize Leroy

Winery: proprietor of Domaine d'Auvenay and Domaine Leroy, Vosne-Romanée, Burgundy, France

Interesting fact: Lalou was instrumental in developing the world's most sought after domaine, Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. That is, until she was booted out by her sister after a disagreement about marketing. Again, a family dispute in Burgundy changes the face of wine in the region (perhaps this is why it is so difficult to keep track, and understand, Burgundy).

Link: Domaine Leroy

This is England

One year in London to the day.

"Posh Dinosaur" (an advertisement on TV here) sums up my experience in the wine industry here quite neatly, thank you very much.

If you would be so kind as to watch it I'd be ever so pleased.

Splendid. Wonderful.

Much love, xjmd

Eccentric Winemaker series, Pt 3: Anne Gros, Burgundy

Now, you may think, why Anne Gros? She is certainly not as outlandish as the previous two winemakers I have featured in Wine, Woman and Song's Eccentric Winemaker series.

This is true. She is from a historic Burgundian family stretching back to the 1830s, making wines in the blue-blooded part of Burgundy, Vosne-Romanée.

Yet, there is something unique about Anne Gros. To be an eccentric you must dance to the beat of your own drum. Anne Gros is certainly doing something different, right under the noses of the the old guard.

In an extremely traditional area such as Burgundy, even the most imperceptible tremors and changes result in huge waves.

Just look at her label. It's modern - blue! - no fancy script or complex descriptions of proprietors over the vineyard name. It clearly states the region and the Domaine name. How different it looks compared to the traditional Burgundy bottles.

To the wine itself: her wines are lightly filtered; unfashionable at the moment. They are unashamedly feminine. Arguably, most wines from Burgundy are perfumed, but her wines are even more like an eau de parfum on the wrist evolving over a long, slow day.

Do I have to say it, yes, she is a woman. In a man's world. I know how it feels to be often the only woman in the wine industry. It's weird. By default, it is unusual in itself to be a grand winemaker in a male industry.

However, French wine's great ambassadors traditionally have been women. Just look at Veuve Clicquot (widow Clicquot) and Lalou Bize-Leroy. It's important, yet, I don't want to emphasise it too much; then again, I don't think it should be totally dismissed, either.

All in all, amongst the rows of traditional Burgundy on the shelf, her blue-labelled wines stand out. Modern, idiosyncratic wines that tell a story - not only of the changing face of Burgundy, but also, her very interesting story - her wine - unfolding in your glass.

What you need to know

Name: Anne Gros
Winery: Domaine Anne Gros
Where: Estate in Vosne-Romanée, Burgundy, France
Stand outs: Bourgogne under £20 is difficult to come by; her Bourgogne is one of the best value wines in this difficult price range.

Wines: Concoeur (Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits, Rouge & Blanc); Vosne-Romanée Les Champs d'argent (Bourgogne, Rouge & Blanc), Les Glapigne (Bourgogne, Rouge & Blanc), Les Pasquiers (Bourgogne, Rouge & Blanc), Les Barreaux Le Richebourg Grand Cru; Flagey-Echezeaux, Echezeaux Grand Cru; Chambolle-Musigny, La Combe d'Orveau; Clos Vougeot, Le Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru.

Next post:

Pt 4: Lalou Bize Leroy, Burgundy

Previous posts:
Pt 2: Sparky Marquis and the Carnival of Love
Pt 1: Didier Dagueneau

Website: Domaine Anne Gros

Eccentric Winemaker series, Pt 1: Didier Dagueneau, the wild man of Pouilly

""You idiot" are Didier Dagueneau's first words to me....

I ask him why he chose Sauvignon Blanc to work with – "you don't even ask yourself the question," he says. "I had a few scores to settle with the family, so I decided to make wine, to make better wine than them. That was my first motivation. So I decided to make the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world. Not at all pretentious for someone who's been making wine for two years."
- Decanter magazine

You need strong opinions to break through traditions in the Loire, the classical heartland of France.

Known as the "Wild Man of Pouilly", Didier has been breaking conventions in the Loire for so long now it doesn't really matter what people say - he's now the benchmark for Sauvignon blanc around the world.

The Blanc Fume de Pouilly (above) is the entry level Sauvignon Blanc, followed by Pur Sang (label shown below) and then the benchmark for Sauvignon blanc (and you could argue, the Pouilly-fume region): Silex - named after the excellent slate soils.

The wine to covet? Asteroide; like it's namesake, it only comes around every so often. From a micro 10-vine plot on non-grafted vines, they are so fragile they need constant supervision and love.

If you can find these wines... lucky you; as you can imagine demand is high. And output is low. Not because Dagueneau is cynically playing the market and withholding wines, but because he is a total perfectionist. Slowly horse-tilling the vineyard so tractors don't compact the soil and hurt the vines... and the wine. And you imagine, in turn, his soul.


What you need to know

Name: Didier Dagueneau

From: Saint-Andelain, Pouilly-Fumé in the Loire, France.

Style of wine: dry white wine but using oak.

Entry level wines: En Chailloux, a blend from several vineyards and then, Buisson Menard

Superstar wines: both single vineyard wines and barrel fermented (unusual for Sauvignon blanc in most parts of the world) - Silex, and Pur Sang (french for thoroughbred; the vineyard is horse-tilled).

Strange fact: the front of the winery has a clock with a provocative gesture as the hands of the clock - a message to his neighbours and critics, perhaps? Excellent. Is he Mad man or genius?

Link: Eccentric Winemaker Series

Next link: Part 2: Sparky Marquis and the Carnival of Love

5 eccentric winemakers you need to know

So, you thought the wine industry was stuffy and full of pretensious tossers who like to say Claret instead of red Bordeaux? Well, you may have something there, but not everybody fits this depressing stereotype.

Especially, the artists behind the wine: the wine makers.

There's not much pretense with the wine makers I have chosen to feature everyday over the next week. No pretense to tradition, no pretense to politeness and definitely no pretense to slavishly follow the market.

Initially lambasted, against the odds, these wines have become benchmarks in their own right.

I hope you can join me.

Starts Monday 1 September, 2008.

Pomegranate Noir, by Jo Malone (2005)

scene from Metropolis

"The inspiration for Pomegranate Noir came to Jo Malone after she saw one of her friends dressed up in a red silk dress at a middle eastern hookah party all the while stuffing dollar bills in her cleavage." – reviewer, Base Notes

If you have been invited to an eccentric 81-year-old billionaire's party in Convent Garden as a thank you for helping him hide in your cellar from his ex-wife's (famous you-know-who) lawyer serving him notices for over £50 million, then wear Pomegranate Noir.

The invitation says the party is to "commiserate a dissolute, wasted, wanton life. But fun. No flowers - come if you can."

No flowers - come if you can. An apt description of Pomegranate Noir; debauched fruit, almost bruised, and dark frankincense mixed with the eternal smells of decadence: musk and patchouli.

More noir than pomegranate fruit, it almost scars the memory with it's wickedness. In a fun way, of course.


Link: Base Notes

Fate is great: flirtations with pink champagne

"Fate is Great"

As fate would have it, the man who told me the story about the Romeo y Julieta Cuban cigars (previous post) was from Verona.

As we stood beside a display of Champagne, I asked him which was his favourite Champagne.

"Billecart-Salmon".

"Me too! (FATE!) I love the Billecart-Salmon Rosé."

"You must drink a lot of pink champagne..."

Why (insecurely checking my lipstick)??

And he moved very close and said, "Because your lips are so pink."

Ah!

And how does this star-crossed tale end?

Let's just say, as they do in Romeo and Juliet, that I was the very pink of courtesy.

Of course.

Link: Billecart-Salmon House site

Romeo y Julieta (and other great Cuban cigar names)

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.

Take a deep inhale from a Romeo y Julieta Cuban cigar box in saint-seducing gold.

The smell is pure old-world romance. Even "cigar-box" as a note in fine Cabernet Sauvignon; I absolutely adore it.

And the names of Cuban cigars are romantic. Romeo y Julieta, Montecristo...

Where did the names come from? A clue is the lector (reader) stood on the factory floor and read from a novel to the the torcedores (cigar rollers) in the factory.

Apparently the names of the cigars are named after the torcedores' favourite stories. I believe it, but then I believe in romance to lift us from the humdrum everyday.




Link: official site of Habanos cigars

For sensualists: Vosne-Romanée, Burgundy

Domaine Jean Tardy et Fils "Les Chaumes" 2000,
Vosne-Romanée premier cru, rouge (Burgundy, France) £40

"But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest: and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection." – Marcel Proust, from Remembrance of Things Past

All pleasures I have known: it all came back in the first taste of this excellent wine - whenever there has been a good meal with good friends, excellent conversation and a beautiful bottle of Burgundy. It all came back: friends I see, friends I no longer have the chance to see and friends who are no longer.

After the first shock of recognition, what I admired next was its "refreshing" quality, not heavy, my spirit is lightened for a while afterwards.

This wine is still very young at 8 years old, with mostly fruit - yet it developed in the glass before my mouth so that every taste was different, evolved, multi-faceted.

If you are uptight, yes, you could decant. But just enjoy it. Burgundy is not a commodity, it's made for absolute delight and pleasure. I was lucky enough to enjoy this wine with someone who had navigated the difficult Bourgogne labels and vineyards; vineyards that change hands and proprietors from decade to decade, wife to wife.


Link: more wines from the commune of Vosne-Romanée

breakfast of champions

"Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne."

– from Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday, Kurt Vonnegut

10 things I wish I'd known 10 years ago

1. Three martinis are enough, really
2. Always leave parties before saying goodbye
3. Dawn is always going to happen again
4. Boring people are boring even if they speak a foreign language
5. Don't waste liver space on average wines
6. Memory is important, look after it
7. Cosmopolitans are sad-girl drinks
8. Champagne is excellent with food
9. Experience only creates deeper and better experiences...
10. No regrets - ever!

My heart belongs to Calon-Ségur

"I make my wine at Lafite and Latour, but my heart is in Calon." - Marquis de Seguer

In the late 1940s and early 1950s few Chateaux could match Château Calon-Ségur. After 1953, not another profound wine was made until the famous 1982 vintage.


Link: Château Calon-Ségur - a vertical tasting, Jancis Robinson

Australian wines in London: assessment

Someone is asleep on the watch. And like the Rover Thomas painting (above) of Cyclone Tracy 1974,* the Australian wine industry needs to wake up and hear the warning sirens.

"Who is responsible for the crazy selection of Australian wines on the shelves?" That's the first question I had when surveying the premium Australian wines stocked in wine shops in London.

My cri de coeur led to even more questions:

1. Why are there so many Australian Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noir on the shelf?

It's not something Australia excels in. Australia is not New Zealand. Hello. Yes, we do some good Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir but we also do outstanding wines NO ONE ELSE can:

• Hunter Semillon
• Shiraz - cool climate shiraz
• Eden or Clare Valley Riesling
• Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon

But they are hardly to be found.

2. Why is there so much Margaret River wine on the shelf?

Margaret River (photo below) have brilliant wines. Part of the reason is Margaret River has very similar growing conditions to Bordeaux, even to the same latitude and longitude (but on the opposite side of the world, like a mirror). The wines are inherently softer than big, bold Barossa or other South Australian wines.

Margaret River

Is it because premium wine drinkers can only understand Bordeaux here? Perhaps, the palate is educated so it can only understand Bordeaux. But I doubt it; I give wine drinkers more credit that that.

3. Why are apples compared to oranges? ie. Why are generic South Australian reds next to premier cru Bodeaux such as Calon Segur or Mouton?

Premier cru wines are unique compared to just about any wine in the world, even other places in Bordeaux itself. There is an perception here, amongst shops and consumers, along the lines: Australia produces great £10 wines, so why pay anymore?

No one is giving an adequate answer to this question from Australia. There is an element of truth in it, because there are no clear examples of what Australia does best on the shelf.

Australian wines are a victim of their own success in the cheap and cheerful market. But I long to see and taste Mount Langi Ghiran Shiraz, Coldstream Hills Riesling or a Mount Pleasant Hunter Semillon. People who should know better don't know these at all. And it's a loss for everyone.

I was even asked, does Australia even have vintages???

I am trying not to take this personally. But I hate ignorance, especially when it is cloaked in authority.

Is this down to the education wine professionals have here? There is only one or two sessions devoted to Australian wines at WSET (the industry qualification everybody must have to work in the industry).

Great wine can't be offered with the depth of knowledge needed for serious wine drinkers. They can't even be in or out of fashion if they are not on the radar.

Or is it not the education, but the wine merchant buyers? Is it the winemakers? Is it that stupid Fosters beer advertising ruining it for everyone?

I not interested in bellicose Australian patriotism - but there's something seriously wrong in the representation of Australian wines in the premium end of the market. It's essentially incorrect.

And quite simply, I miss the taste of eucalypt in my dark dark reds and I think Riesling is a more interesting wine with many exciting stages for ten, twenty years. I am bored of blasting NZ sauvignon blanc (75% of Marlborough is owned by French companies) or their counterparts, Sancerre whites.

Who is in charge here? Is it London wine merchants, the Wine Education Trust, or Australian winemakers?

Cheers.

* Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that wiped out the city of Darwin, (Northern Territory, Australia) during the night of Christmas Eve, 1974.

Best-selling Manga comic about wine: Kami No Shizuki 神の雫

Two brothers on a quest to find the ultimate classic wine.

A wine-critic father challenges his two sons to find 12 legendary wines. The father dies, suddenly; and it becomes a race to succeed, for whomever finds them all first will inherit the father's £9 million cellar...

Kami No Shizuki – The Drops of God – is a 10-volume Manga series so popular in Japan and South Korea sales of the featured wines shoot up 30% after they are mentioned in the series.

"Any individual wine lucky enough to be name-checked can expect to sell an extra 50 cases within 48 hours," reports The Daily Mail.

The wine descriptions are brilliant: 'Just like a classic rock concert!' says one brother after taking a sip of a 2001 Mont-Pérat made by French winemaker Thibault Despagne.

Here is a part of the comic about Rosso Miani from Fruili-Veneto region in Italy. The region is more well-known for their white wines (pinot grigio, ribolla gialla), so this is a very interesting choice, yes, and a very interesting red wine...


Apparently there is a spin-off video game, called Sommelier... let's just hope it's not, erm, too violent.


Link: Kami No Shizuki 神の雫

Nina Simone dance

Link: Live at Montreux, 1976 DVD movie

Cinematic Wines - Pt 6: A Space Odyssey via Astralis (and Sun Ra)

The final Cinematic Wine Series ends with a bang, a BIG BANG: Clarendon Hills Astralis 2002.


The tagline for the original Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey can equally apply to this amazing red wine from South Australia, Astralis:

Let the Awe and Mystery of a Journey Unlike Any Other Begin

Valued at £200 in London, this is an intense drinking experience now until 2050. Yes, you read right. Best drinking around 2025 - 2035, my friends.


What were you doing in 1988?


Not reading a blog on the internet, I bet. What do you think you will be doing in 2028?? Hopefully drinking Astralis (well, that is my wish for you anyway).


Kubrick's idea of the future in 2001: A Space Odyssey has many hopes and fears about the future, and now, long after 2001, the film is beguiling for its foresight and ability to even imagine such ideas in 1968.


The same applies with Astralis.


Astralis is a lot more than Science Fiction. Like all the great wines, this is time and space travel in ideas and potential.


As this is all future for me at this point in time (!), I will leave you with the official tasting notes:

Astralis Syrah

2002 Clarendon Hills Astralis (Shiraz) (98-100)
The 2002 Syrah Astralis Vineyard is akin to midnight oil. A viscous, unctuously-textured, full-bodied wine of remarkable intensity that represents the essence of a particular varietal as well as vineyard, it will need 8-10 years before it begins to develop. It is a legendary Syrah that those lucky enough to taste in its prime (circa 2025-2035) will give the respect it most certainly will demand. Thankfully there are people in the wine world like Roman Bratasiuk who make wines for future generations as opposed to those that offer immediate gratification. But let none of us who care about quality dismiss the purists and non-compromising winemakers such as Bratasiuk who are trying to do something beyond what has ever been accomplished. This may be his finest wine to date. Anticipated maturity: 2015-2050

Link: All 6 posts from Cinematic Wines Series in July

water no get enemy

If there's no wine left, I'll definitely try water. Just as Fela Kuti sings, water no get enemy (see song below).

A real treat in Paris, apart from the excellent African musicians in the Metro (if I am not listening to Fela Kuti on the ipod), is the huge range of water on sale at the local supermarkets. They all have different tastes from the downright funky to soft-as-a-pillow.

Today I had a pristine English still water called Hildon. It is the purest water I have ever tasted. Totally palate cleansing. It is even in a 750ml glass bottle, perfectly complemented to the size of a bottle of wine.

Apart from San Pelligrino, with more calcium than milk, this is my new favourite water. It also has high calcium content. I know there are a lot of people against bottled water, and I know the ancient Greeks didn't have much good to say about any water, but water has got no enemy here - bottled or tap.

quiz: what wine are you?

WW&S is Pinot Gris

More hip than most, you spot trends before they even really get started. If something is new and unique, you know about it... and you've probably tried it. You have a good number of projects, interests, and relationships - but they are all fleeting. The world is so appealing and diverse, you can't help but seek variety. Deep down you are: A true flirt Your partying style: Exclusive. You only party with people you've personally selected.

Link: Quiz: What Kind of Wine Are You?

honkeyfinger: invocation of the demon other

"Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help." - Mahalia Jackson at Rick Saunders breaks his silence

On my first or second night after arriving in London I heard about a night called, Not the Same Old Blues Crap, and you know I got a bit upset when I saw it, almost offended. That's my music you're talking about. You punks!

Ha! OK, the blues is a loaded word in itself, meaning different things to different people. Sure, I agree – there are too many boring Budweiser advertising types play their three chords at their 5oth birthday party... blah.

If that is you, no need to read any further.

Still here? Good. Then you'll like Honkeyfinger's new album called Invocation of the Demon Other. It is listening in the n'th dimension. This is what the harp sounds like very far away in another galaxy. The minor blues keys in distortion twanged the aorta vessel in my heart so much it hurt.

That's pretty much my working definition of the blues (when you're thinking evil).

A few songs grabbed me by the neck and wouldn't let go: Margarine Man, Trouble, The Sloth, True Believers and Burning Skull blues, amongst others.

If you know, love, or ARE the blues you will have your minds opened to possibility and your ears reconfigured. Run, don't walk.

And if you are in Minneapolis, check him out at the Deep Blues Festival at Lake Elmo, July 19.

Link: Great myspace page and website.
Link: Blues in London: interview with Honkeyfinger

get your fizz on

Courtney Love gets her fizz on

A new book on the history of hooch: Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol, By Iain Gately. Gotham Books.

"Real French Champagne was sweet but still. When the English imported it to their warm cellars in the 1660s, it went through a second fermentation and turned bubbly—sacrilege to the French, but soon de rigueur overseas....

One of Drink’s most fascinating subplots, as it turns out, is humanity’s apparently universal contempt for water. In ancient Greece, water drinkers “were believed not only to lack passion but also to exude a noxious odor”"

Link: A History of Hooch - New York Magazine

Fattoria Le Terrazze and rainy day women

Bob Dylan: "they'll stone you at the breakfast table"

Fattoria Le Terrazze Rosso Conero Sassi Neri 2003

On the pavement outside a pub on 4-lane Whitechapel Road in peak hour under an ominously dark sky. Feeling like a Rainy Day Woman.

Friend walks past with a half a bottle under his arm. Works in the City. Half cut from schmoozing with clients at some big buck$ lunch. In a 45 minute lunch ordered £500 worth of wine (4 bottles for 3 people??). Sure, I'll drink your capitalist scraps. Especially if it's a Fattoria Le Terrazze red.

Fattoria Le Terrazze are the same people who make Bob Dylan's specially requested wine, IGT Planet Waves.

Damn my champagne tastes on a beer budget.

Rush inside pub and grab a couple of wine glasses. This wonderful subdued Montepulciano wine hums along to the call to prayer from the Whitechapel Mosque across the road.

After 5 years in the bottle, the cedar oak beautifully integrated with the fruit; now light as red silk. Things slowed down. Even Whitechapel Road.

Pub hates me now. (Well, I had tried to order a wine from them but all they had was RED). Anyway, it was worth sneaking in a glass or two. Friend said, just blame the City schmuck. You shouldn't take it so personal, as Bob Dylan says. It's about the wine. But okay, I will...

Not so much Rainy Day Woman #1,2 & 3 5 after this.





Link: Fattoria Le Terrazze

Cinematic Wines - Pt 5: Champagne and Casablanca

As everyone is waiting, stuck in Casablanca, what else is there to do? Might as well drink more Champagne.

Good idea.

Casablanca is soaked in Champagne. Champagne features in nearly more scenes than the film's star, Humphrey Bogart. I'm amazed Champagne isn't featured in the credits as a character.

From the first moment we meet Rick (Humphrey Bogart) playing chess against himself in his saloon, Rick's Cafe Americain, he is seen drinking Champagne in a Marie Antoinette glass.

But of course, he never accepts drinks from anyone else.

"Waiter, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot 1926, a very good wine," orders the Captain for the visiting Nazi Major.

Then there's the bottle of bourbon Rick drinks while he waits for an explanation from his ex-lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman).

"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."

Rick sits in the dark remembering happier times. With the arrival of the Nazis in Paris, Rick, Ilsa and Sam drink through their last three bottles of Mumm Cordon Rouge.

Ilsa would rather pour the Champagne in the garden than let the Nazis drink it.

"Here's looking at you kid," as they toast their last toast together. Ilsa knocks over the Champagne. An ominous sign!

Meanwhile, everybody at Rick's Cafe Americain is drinking non-stop Champagne cocktails, Hennessy Cognac and French 75s.

It doesn't stop until the plane leaves for Lisbon.

Here's looking at you, kid!


Previous Posts in Cinematic Wines Series:
Part 4: Mad Max reds
Part 3: Gerard Depardieu
Part 2: Francis Ford Coppola Director's Cut
Part 1: Bandol and Bardot



Link: Casablanca film review

warm leatherette

Grace Jones at Meltdown Festival, Royal Festival Hall London, June 20, 2008:

'Warm Leatherette', one of the songs that broke her out of the underground in 1980, is a JG Ballard-derived track that sexualises a car crash. Tonight it is a singalong. 'You sing "warm", motherfuckers!' commands Jones, holding two cymbals up threateningly.

It's always tempting to use "WARM leatherette" to describe some red wines. Sometimes I have a secret desire to yell out WARRRM at red wine tastings in sterile tastings room. And also, my other favourite line:

Quick, let's make love before we die!


Link: Live Reviews: Thoroughly modern millinery - Guardian

Cinematic Wines - Pt 4: Mad Max reds

We were somewhere out in the desert when he said, “You know South Australia has the highest ratio of serial killers to population?"

The driver, a travelling winemaker, pointed to the dry hill exposed like a half-buried bone, "They found six people buried just over there."

Riverland, South Australia. This is Mad Max territory.

Out past the Adelaide Hills, the misty home to Grange, and keep driving for a few hours. You get to where there is only orange sandy desert. Then an hour later, endless rows of bright green vines.

The drought, and new sophisticated irrigation practices, are only some of the reasons why Australian wines have gone from an average of 12.5% to 13.5% in the past decade.

Of course, certain influential U.S wine critics don't help when they *cough* consistently give more scores for full-bodied monster truck reds.

Mad Max wines: full-bodied, full-throttle, ball-busting reds.

And it’s not just Australian wines inching up in alcohol. There’s wines from the Napa Valley also averaging at 14.5% alcohol.

Let’s see if this is just a fashion for macho wine or the end of the world is nigh (with Global Warming, who knows?).

But a backlash is brewing from big chain buyers. Marks and Spencer are not the only ones wanting them out. There could be a showdown.

Mz Darkly sez, "No censorship. Each to their own!"

Here are four Mad Max wines that'll stomp in your mouth wearing a black leather suit (if you like that kind of thing, that is):

• Tait The Ball Buster Red 2005 - 15.8% alcohol, Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot from the Barossa Valley is a purple bruise of a wine.
• Carnival of Love Shiraz 2005 – winemaker Sparky Marquis’ vivacious personality is apparent in this 15.8% alcohol Knight Rider from McLaren Vale. Ranked number 8 out of 100 in Wine Advocate. 99 points from Robert Parker.
• Shafer Napa Valley Merlot 2005 - 14.5% alcohol - not as high as it has been, but still enough to pack a powerful punch of fruit.
• XVI du President 2006 RED France - 16% alcohol from a hot 2006 vintage in the Catalan Hills.

Don't say I didn't warn you.


Previous Posts in Cinematic Wines Series:
Part 3: Gerard Depardieu
Part 2: Francis Ford Coppola Director's Cut
Part 1: Bandol and Bardot

Cinematic Wines - Pt 3: Gérard Depardieu

"I'd far rather work with wine-makers than actors. They don't talk as much. If you have to explain a film as an actor or director, or even your wine as a winemaker, you lose the mystery.

"It is like asking Mozart where he found all those notes and what made him put them in that particular order."

Unlike Depardieu's famous character, Cyrano de Bergerac, it appears Depardieu's nose has done him well.

With women... and wine.

Since the early 80s, Gérard Depardieu has been making wines in partnership with renegade winemaker, Bernard Magrez. He has seven labels made from vineyards in Bordeaux, Languedoc in the south of France, as well as in Spain, Morocco and Argentina.

Depardieu unashamedly lives large. His wines have a New World taste, even the French wines have a happy, almost jolly, fruit-driven feel.

The Gérard Depardieu Toro Spiritus Sancti - from Spain, Castilla y León, Toro – is a 100% Tempranillo. Very dark and smoky with coffee and toasty oak.

The moral of Cyrano, as well as, Depardieu and his wines?

Be brave, be yourself and LIVE LARGE!!!!!!

Next in Cinematic Wine Series: WWS goes full throttle to the end of the world.

Previous Posts in Cinematic Wines Series:
Part 2: Francis Ford Coppola Director's Cut
Part 1: Bandol and Bardot

Link: Gerard Depardieu's nose for wine