Mataro

I had decided before setting off for New Holland that M is for Mataro, as Alfred Hitchcock so nearly said, because I had been educated to believe that the variety grown and known in France as Mourvedre and in Spain as Monastrell, was treated similarly here as Mataro.

You can say what you like about Australians (no, really), but I had an experience whilst searching for this week's wine in Sydney, that I am unlikely to have had in London.

Early in the week, in fact the day of my arrival, I started my search in a bottle shop (or even more Aussie sounding 'bottle-o') in the same block as the apartment in which I had billeted called City Cellars. I asked the manager, a friendly chap named Jason, if he had any Mataro.

I learned that he had only taken over the shop a couple of months ago, that the owners were connected to McGuigan Estates (there was plenty of evidence to support this claim on the shelves), that he had worked in the USA, that he would welcome me to his Friday afternoon tastings and that he hoped I enjoyed my stay in Ostraya, wherever that is.

I also learned that he did not have any Mataro.

In most bottle shops the owners / staff were friendly enough, but most of them told me I was really looking for Mourvedre. And perhaps, in a way, I was but I wanted Mataro. (You say bananas and I say pyjamas, you might think, but I can be quite stubborn. Ask The One.)

Eventually I cracked. In 'CBD Cellars', a slightly more up-market off-license, I bought a bottle of The Black Sock Mourvedre, Magpie Estate, Barossa Valley 2009. $31.99 (~£18).

I took this to an impromptu, end-of-day, bring a bottle gathering to share with some colleagues. They all brought either white or sparkling wine, so I shared half the bottle with myself before joining a more formal gathering on the phone back to mission control.

Ninety minutes later, alone and having only had a 'cheese, wine and crisps' supper, I generously shared the other half with some more cheese. Quite a balanced diet, in some respects.

This was a very enjoyable wine. Easy drinking but interesting. 14%abv but not heavy. Oaked and slightly spicy.

Later in the week with a group of workmates I returned to City Cellars to pick up a bottle of anything that we could share (honestly) in one of our apartments. This was necessary because it is party season and every bar and restaurant within comfortable walking distance provided the type of entertainment that required its patrons to be either skilled lip readers or thirty years younger than me. Preferably both.

Now here is the thing. Not only did the manager, Jason, remember me, but he asked if I had found any Mataro. I said 'no' and he said 'because I got some in for you!' Quite impressive. I had not ordered it and not even said that I would buy it if he did get some. 

So, although I had already had one candidate M, this one is the real Wine M (2013): Kay Brothers Basket Pressed Mataro 2010, from their Amery Vineyards, McLaren Vale, South Australia. $40 (~£25). 13.5% abv.

It comes from a vineyard planted in 1890 by two brothers, Herbert & Frederick Kay (the clue is in the name), who made their first vintage in 1895.

They died a year apart in 1947-8 and their son Cuthbert 'Cud' and now their grandson Colin have maintained the family business.

I am grateful to Jason not only for the customer care, but also for picking a good one.

The back label is a masterful example of 'prove me wrong' flavour descriptions, claiming:

Blackberry, liquorice and white pepper on the nose with a briary, roast chestnut and glazed nectarine palate.

Firm gravelly tannin structure finishes this full and generous wine perfectly.

All of which is probably true, but once again I have no idea what the combination of briary, roast chestnut and glazed nectarine should taste like.

It is only three years old and I suspect it will develop further, but it already has a well-balanced and complex character and reasonably long finish.

I am tempted to set Jason the challenge of finding me next week's white N, because I am struggling. I am fairly certain that from next week we will be back to single bottles.

Loureiro

It is curious how investigating one interest can lead you to another. I have always been interested in music, of many types ranging from Baroque to Rock, via Folk, Soul, Blues and many other variants along the way.

I seem to be drawn to subjects where the more I learn, the more I realise I know almost nothing. Like wine.

The Loureiro I was looking for is a white wine grape, cultivated mostly in Northern Portugal and the Spanish region of Galicia, but the one I found first was Kiko Loureiro a Brazilian heavy metal guitarist who has since the early 1990s played with Angra. I still know almost nothing about him except that he has some undeniable talent (that you can watch by clicking on his name, above) and that he started playing at the age of 11.

I'm sure there is much more to learn about him and his music but, like some wines, my first taste wasn't sufficiently compelling for me to abandon my search for other examples that may be more suited to my palate.

Having dealt with the brazilian I continued my search and found the real object of this week's interest, the Loureiro grape, and I selected for week L (2013) Solar Das Boucas,Vinho Verde DOC 2012. Laithwaites at Vinopolis £8.99

Vinho Verde is the northern Portuguese region whose name translates to 'green wine'. This is not because of the colour of the region's wines, but because traditionally they are made to be drunk young, or 'green'. The style, therefore unsurprisingly, is fresh, light and acidic. Also characteristic is some slight fizziness to the wine, which shows itself in the glass as small bubbles clinging to the sides, and in the mouth as, well, a slight fizziness.

Loureiro means 'Laurel' or 'Bay' and the wine is said to smell of Laurel flowers. It may well do so, but I don't know what Laurel flowers smell like. If they smell like crisp green apples with a hint of orangey citrus and a lesser hint of peach, then I will agree. Because that's what this wine smells like to me.

It is light and almost colourless; the shades it does have are in the pale lemon with a very subtle something-like-green end of the spectrum. It is also light in alcohol, at 11% abv.

I enjoyed it, but a chilly November evening is probably not when this shows its best side. I can imagine it being just what is required at the start of one of what I hope will be a great many barbeques and other al fresco dining experiences next summer.

As for Kiko, I think if I was wanting to hear something like his style of guitar I would go for Joe Satriani.

Kanonkop Kadette

Plenty of K's, but none of them refer to the grape variety.

Whilst researching my options for week K (2013), considering this week needs to be red, I found myself heading back towards Hungary.  But I was torn between sticking to my preference for selecting the weekly wine on the basis of grape variety and pursuing variety of a more general nature. 

Red Ks don't seem to occur very frequently away from Hungary and, if they do, they tend to be the varieties that are used in Bull's Blood.  I used that to solve a similar problem for week E (2013).

I decided to head south and week K (2013) is Kanonkop Kadette, 2010, from Stellenbosch SA. Bought from The Savanna, Liverpool Street station, £14.99.

The major component in this week's blend is Pinotage, a South African specialty crossing that was an attempt to produce a grape with the better qualities of both its parents. The complex, delicious subtleties of Pinot Noir and the easy to grow, high yielding and more robust character of Cinsault. 

Its critics say the resulting wine can taste disappointingly like paint and I have had that experience, but Kanonkop is one of the best wineries in South Africa and has a reputation for output that beats Dulux hands down. Unless you are my friend Bob, of course, with his unusual decorating preferences. (See my 'we got both kinds' page.)

Kanonkop produce a range of blends and this Kadette is a 'second wine', a term used more frequently in France (and especially in Bordeaux) by producers to persuade the drinker that he is getting good quality at a more reasonable price than can be demanded for their top flight offering. Mouton Cadet is a reliable Bordeaux sales of which topped 15 million bottles in 2002, so perhaps the name choice hints at the intentions Kanonkop have for this wine. 

The full recipe is Pinotage 44%, Cabernet Sauvignon 41%, Merlot 9%, Cabernet Franc 6%, which means that it is slightly more than half Bordeaux blend and nearly half pure South African.

It has spent 14 months in 225l French oak (from Nevers) barriques, having been fermented in open vessels at 29 C, with the cap manually punched down daily.

It is a fairly full-bodied, dry red wine, with a surprisingly long finish and mostly 'medium' everything else; colour intensity, acid, tannin and alcohol, although the label tells me it is 14% abv . Lots of red fruits with cherry and raspberry lingering longest. I don't think this will develop much in the bottle, so it goes in the 'drink soon' section of the cellar. This is particularly appropriate for my 'cellar', as I don't have the facility to lay down anything worthwhile or the unallocated cash to buy it in the first place. Drink soon is also a personal preference

We know where the 'Kadette' name comes from and the back label helpfully explains the 'Kanonkop'. The 'Kop' part means 'hill', whereas the 'Kanon' part means,........and it is a reference to the days when a canon would be fired from the hilltop to announce the arrival of dutch trading ships into Cape Town harbour.

Jacquere

Some of my more easily beguiled acquaintances assume I must have read a lot of books, or been particularly diligent at school, simply because I often guess well in quizzes. Wrong on both counts. I like book shops, but find them daunting because there are just too many books. How do you choose? Until the invention of the Kindle, which makes it dangerously easy to buy the electronic equivalent of books, I would usually leave empty handed. I needed a method to make selection simpler.

Before learning anything about wine, I would reduce the wine selection problem by trusting the words 'appellation controllee' on the label to be a guide to reliability. It allowed me to discount a lot of bottles.

Week J (2013) is Domaine des Ardoisieres, St Pierre de Soucy, Argile Blanc 2012. From Vinoteca, Farringdon. £20.50.

                                                                                                                            The first thing I noticed about this IGP qualified wine (that's one made outside of the Appellation Controllee regulations and, therefore, considered a step down in quality) is that the capsule encasing the cork is made of wax, rather than lead or plastic.          I rather like the appearance, but have no idea if this is done for aesthetic, practical or cost reasons. The label reveals little other than the information required by EU regulations. However, a bit of investigative effort on the internet is richly rewarded.     I had chosen this wine because I had already found out enough to know that it is made from 40% Jacquere, 40% barrel fermented Chardonnay and 20% Mondeuse Blanche. I now know that the vines are 40 years old, yielding 40 hectolitres per hectare, from a vineyard of 9 hectares of which 2 are devoted to this blend. I could go on (S.Coogan, Pool Supervisor,1994), but I might just as well give credit to my source: Vine Trail . If you take a look, you will find all manner of information about the care taken from vineyard to bottle all of which is very impressive, especially of a wine alleged to be of 'lower quality'. 

So let's see if we can get the wax off and the cork out to see if all that care is justified.

First impressions are of a lively, bright, citrus lead flavour. Very mouth-watering and certainly got the appetite keen. The barrel fermented Chardonnay makes its presence felt with some softer, oak-influenced notes, but I have no knowledge of Mondeuse Blanche and can't tell comment on whether 20% is the right share of the blend. As the overall effect is very pleasing, I will accept Brice Omont, the vigneron, knows not only much more than I do but also his blending onions.

It was consumed with a chicken, mozzarella, prosciutto and sun-dried tomato affair which is much more Italian than French, but Savoie is in that general direction so that probably explains why the match was close enough.

This wine confirms that my old habit of only choosing French wines that had earned AOC status was misguided. The problem this gives me is that the number of wines needing to be tasted is now even greater, but it was an impossible task anyway, so I'll choose to see this as a good thing.