Bad Experience on a Tram? Get drunk to celebrate.

Have you had a bad tram-based experience? Perhaps your tram was late, or didn't provide an appropriate level of seating. Was your tram conductor rude, inappropriately dressed, or farting copiously? Did your tram support the wrong football team? Perhaps (topically) the tram wasn't really the problem, and rather it was an inadequately educated scumbag whose children are liable to become the most appalling human beings the human race has ever seen through no fault of their own apart from being born?

Whatever your tram-based experiences, celebrate multi-cultural Britain with cheap French plonk! To whit, here’s a great bottle of proper Champagne, worthy of a special occasion, for half the usual £30 price tag. A special occasion could include the birth of a child (although after up to nine months of not drinking you might find lots of gin on the rocks more appropriate), a new job, or just your day being ruined by some c**t on a tram who has subsequently gained national fame. For being a c**t.

Seriously though, I’ve no idea if it’s worth thirty quid, I’ve never spent that much on sparkling wine, but it’s definitely worth fifteen. Having had various boring proseccos and cavas recently I was beginning to think perhaps sparkling wine wasn’t special at all. Faith restored.

Offer ends 6th December at Sainsbury’s.

P.S. apologies to anyone reading this outside the tram-based media storm bubble which will undoubtedly become an irrelevance in all history. Except tram-based history, where everything was irrelevant to begin with. 

Tor del Colle Riserva Montepulciano D.O.C. 2007

Now some might suggest that as time goes on, when people are doing the same thing for a while, they may become complacent. They might suggest that, as I review more and more wines, my reviews will become shorter, more superficial, with fewer attempts at rubbish humour which, let’s face it, are undoubtedly missed by you, the stupid reader. Well, they’d be right. As you can tell, this mulling over is less a review of wine as a method of creating additional column inches which, given I’m not paid at all, let alone by the word, may seem foolish. However, as the astute among you would see, if I’d just stuck with the half arsed review then the number of lines written would be disproportionate when compared with the picture of the wine, affixed left. So, onto the review... It’s red. It’s nice. It goes with blue cheese. It comes from Italy. I like it. I have bought more.

*This was a singularly unfair review of a genuinely interesting wine - sorry Italy. On the other hand I didn’t even bother to review the Sangiovese I had last week which was crap and cost more, so on balance you’ve come off well.

Michael Shafer 1997 Riesling Kabinett

This wine is OLD. In two years this wine will be able to legally get married. In four years this wine will have the vote. Oh sorry, thanks for correcting me, it's a wine and is therefore unable to enter in to legal matrimony and is not technically a citizen. Yeah, THANKS, I wasn't aware of that. I certainly wasn't using personification for comic effect.

Anyway, apart from you being a pedantic cretin, this wine is as yet the oldest I have reviewed. It's fair to say that because I'm an epic loser, I mostly bought this wine because it was old. And cheap for its age. At £7 a bottle 14 years seems quite reasonable - 50p a year.

And what has 14 years of ageing done for this sweet little nugget of wine? Well, it's super balanced and super drinkable and as golden as... gold. It does rather lack intensity though, and compared with the pinot gris I reviewed a while back is a little less interesting. A nice wine, sweet and fragrant and entirely pleasant to drink, and balanced nicely with fairly a simple fish. Certainly worth the 14 year wait. And after all just think: in 1997, as Michael Shafer was brewing this wine in Germany, next door in France Princess Diana was being killed in a car crash.

A Majestic Tasting Experience

Last Wednesday El Sollinidor (let’s just call him Joe Bloggs, or Joe) and myself headed over to one of Majestic Wines’ London stores, with the express purpose of having lots of free booze. The key aim, underpinning the free booze (or ‘wine tasting’) event, was to learn a little more about whatever different wines there might be to gobble. The format, rather than just throwing lots of different vineyards and vintages in your face until you can’t stand, focused on a small range of styles, giving a good chance for close comparisons. For the whites were three chardonnays each coming from a different part of the world, but apparently more critically from different latitudes and altitudes. For the reds a small table with two Lebanese wines from Chateau Musar, and a table of six reds either from Bordeaux or from the new world but Bordeaux style, all cabernet sauvignon or blends with this as the primary grape.

Chateau Musar – Two wines here, both with the same grape blend and from the same producer. One was their flagship and used the best grapes and was a year older, the other was their ‘second wine’ and a decent margin cheaper. Having tried the cheaper one, we were pretty impressed. Then we drank the other and deficiencies became clear. The latter was better balanced, with more power in its complexity; velvet richness on top of layers of tastes and just as the tannin arrived, an explosion sweetness from somewhere to offset it. Surprisingly it had almost no finish, where the cheaper wine’s finish was impressive. The difference was huge and like the fickle bastards we are we instantly downgraded the scores we had just given to the actually very good lesser wine of the two. Cheateau Musar seems to be a well known producer and you can pick up a bottle from Waitrose if the minimum six bottles needed for a Majestic wines order puts you off. Alternatively, buy six.

The Bordeaux(s) – The first wine of these we drank, the Calicanto 2009 Vina El Principal, was perhaps the most interesting of the evening for me, and yet one which scored poorly. This may be a style issue. The wine was literally (not literally, metaphorically literally) bursting with fruit, subsequently identified as blackcurrants. I’ve never tasted such strong and distinct fruit flavours in a wine, which is why it was interesting. However, it was crap because the intense fruit masked a lack of complexity or subtlety, and failed to mask too much acid and a poor finish. Some would love this wine though, and I can see why, but it’s not for me. Next up were two unmemorable new world wines, following by a Chateau Griviere, which was memorably unmemorable for a 2002 from an apparently well respected producer. It seemed to do almost nothing for either of us - this may be because it followed some younger more intense wines and the subtle flavours were lost... or it may have been past its best drink by date, as indicated by the man pouring it. Finally two immense Bordeaux(s) both of which I found very good, although the slight difference in quality not accounted in the 30% price difference. Neither, for me, was as good as the better Chateau Musar.

Unfortunately we had the three chardonnays first, and my memory of them is poor. However, we did identify some great vanilla aromas which come from oak ageing and identified that we can’t agree on white wine yet. The Sauternes, which we had later along with very salty cheese, was perhaps the second most interesting wine of the evening. Joe, who's happy to say he doesn’t know his whites well and doesn’t like sweet wines, immediately bought a bottle. Impression made.

A Late Summary of some Late Wines

Il Barone Pinot Grigio 2010 - There are two possible options here

1 - It was underwhelmed by this Pinot Grigio, because I was already half cut when I started drinking it, and therefore its subtleties were lost upon me .
2 - This Pinot Grigio was underwhelming.

It ticks all sorts of boxes – crisp, clear, clean, colourful, other words beginning with C. However, it only ticked the boxes, and didn’t do any more. Compared with aforereviewed apply PG it didn’t quite stand up. That’s not to say it was bad, it was pleasant and well balanced and before my serious explorations – and this blog – began I’d have rated it above medium. But here we are.

Minervois – Intriguing, this. I was really looking forward to trying it. An interesting name, bottle, and coming from a system whereby the wine distributor funds the wine grower in a sort of mini cooperate (see Naked Wines for more details). I think this is the taste of a good wine drunk too young. The aroma was limited but what was there was intriguing, it was juicy on the palate with interesting fruit but limited complexity. At first it seemed ruined by a little too much acidity, perhaps suggesting a rest in a cupboard would have helped, I’m too much of a nubcake to be certain. After eating an orange, however, the acidity went away and I found it to be much more pleasant. I think this would have matured into a subtle and complex medium bodied fruity beauty. I’ll never be sure, but I’m giving it a thumbs up anyway. Someone else can prove me wrong, I’m not feeling patient this week.

The Society's White Burgundy, Macon-Villages - France, chardonnay

The Society’s White Burgundy comes from France’s AOC of Macon Villages. I’ve had Macon Villages somewhere before, possibly from Waitrose, and remember it being pretty good. In light of previous claims that chardonnay isn’t ‘really my thing’ is the contradictory statement that Chablis definitely is. And is made entirely of chardonnay. And so is this. The problem with The Society’s White Burgundy is it presents the danger of wine which could happily be mistaken for a Chablis at a mere £7.50 a bottle. Having polished off a whole bottle of red the day before I decided I would only have a glass, maybe two at most, of this delectable, fresh, crisp, balanced beauty. In the end I only had four, which constituted two thirds of a bottle. The rest will be going in my face later today. This is essentially the lower grade of the Wine Society’s ‘own label’ stuff, they also do The Society’s Exhibition bottles. If those represent anything like wine this good for its price, I imagine I’ll be drinking a lot of both. This also leaves me quite excited at the prospect of the Society’s Rioja, which is sitting under my bed making little ‘drink me drink me’ noises. A bit like a wine troll. Except in this case I’m the goat, and I’m drinking the troll. Or will be in about six hours. NOM.

Biferno Rosso Riserva, 2007

My first wine from The Wine Society, this is an Italian reserva from 2007 with montepulciano as the dominant grape. Wonderfully smooth and a fine accompaniment to a VAST plate of paste bake, it is generally pleasing warm and yummy. Don't let the bottle and description fool you however, it's less a big powerful red and more of a subtle little beauty, with mellow undercurrents and merlotesque reminiscences of fruit. It couldn't be much more drinkable - I've just had the lot. OM NOM NOM.