Rhone

I am a regular golfer. This is not to everyone's taste, but it gives me a lot of pleasure, outdoor exercise and social interaction with a reasonably broad range of personalities. I do try to play to the best of my abilities although I have become comfortable with the idea that the only thing that is truly consistent about my playing is that I am inconsistent. Consistently inconsistent.

So it is with what I type. Only last week I told myself that the reason I write this blog is to encourage myself to try new wines and not always stick to those I already know and like. Well this week we have a wine I know I like. It is a staple of my vinous shopping list. It is:

Week R (2021) E.Guigal Cotes du Rhone, 2017. Various ~£12. 

It is such a regular choice of mine, and I know that I have made reference to it somewhere in this collection, that I had to use the search facility in my own blog to confirm that I hadn't chosen it as the weekly wine previously. Either I haven't or the search facility isn't what one should expect from a Google product.

Why is it such a repeated choice? Unlike me, it is consistent. It is good value and it can be relied upon to please guests, should we ever invite any.

It comes from the Southern Rhone and is somewhere towards the lower tiers of the classification hierarchy, not being even a Cotes du Rhone Village which requires the grapes to be sourced from a given set of locations. That means the grapes could come from anywhere in the Southern Rhone and you might think this would reduce the quality of the wine. It doesn't. It just means that it can't be sold as having been made from grapes grown in a more specific and limited place.

Guigal do make wines from the length of the Rhone Valley, including some very highly regarded sites in St Joseph and Cote Rotie, and of those I have tasted they all give great enjoyment.

In the Southern Rhone there are many wines made from a blend often referred to as GSM, standing for Grenache, Syrah & Mourvedre. Guigal have taken a slightly different approach as their's is a SGM blend, giving precedence to the Syrah. Regulations require that where more than one grape variety appears in a blend then they must be listed in descending order of proportion. The blend here is 50% 40% 10%.

They produce about 4 million bottles a year of this wine and I think it is a remarkable achievement that the contents of each bottle is predictable in terms of its characteristics.

The makers say it goes well with cold meats, meats, game bird and cheese. Also Twiglets, I think.

Buy again? Absolutely!

Quercus

Being a child of the 1960s I hit my impressionable years at the time when Monty Python's Flying Circus was in its prime. I have always had a good memory and I put this to good use in my school years by learning, verbatim, the dialogue from the Python sketches that appealed to me most. I was not alone in this endeavour, but I do think I was better at it than most. On reflection, half a century later, I do wonder how different life may have been if I had devoted just a little more of my time to whatever it was my teachers were trying to teach me and a little less to the frivolities that I enjoyed so much.

Why is this relevant? Arguably, it isn't and that illustrates the point that this particular leopard has retained its spots rather well. The tenuous link is that, much to the surprise of many by-then twentysomethings, in 1985 John Cleese took the role of Sherrif Langston in a western movie called Silverado and that is the Californian town where the following is produced:

Week Q (2021) Bread & Butter Chardonnay 2019. Majestic £13.99.

I like Chardonnay and have in these notes previously poured scorn upon those who take pride in drinking ABC (Anything But Chardonnay). I don't need to repeat myself here, their folly is their loss.

I like Chardonnay for the same reason that it has become one of the world's leading and most popular varieties. It is immensely versatile and can, and is, used to produce steely mineral Chablis, mellow and smooth White Burgundy and a wide range of styles between those two and the tropical fruit flavoured wines from warmer regions.

Bread & Butter produce a range of single varietal wines, red, rose and white, sparkling and still, which they market with the advice 'don't over think it' and 'a good wine is one you like'. I rather like that. The downside for me is that advice puts in a nutshell why this blog and so many like it are almost entirely pointless. At least pointless from the point of view of the reader. And that's you. I get something out of it and that is the simple motivation to try more wines for my own pleasure rather than settling always for a few that I know I already enjoy. If you want to stick with me, please do but don't blame me for its quality. A good blog is one you like.

I appear to have gone off the point again.

My bonus daughter introduced me to this week's wine. It was rather pleasing to have another member of the family enthuse about wine, as that doesn't happen very frequently. Daughter No 1 enjoys Sauvignon Blanc and, indeed, other bright and fruity wines, but she would not agree about this one.

The key point of disagreement would be the use of Oak, which also happens to be the reason it qualifies for Week Q as Quercus is the genus which defines Oak trees. There are over 500 species in the genus, which like the wine, makes my head spin. 

Oak really features in this wine. It is not at all subtle, instead choosing to be up front and allowing the drinker to decide whether this is a good wine or not. In terms of the style of Chardonnay we are certainly not dealing with a Chablis wannabe and the oak is so prominent it is more like the wines produced 20 years ago in Australia than those from Burgundy. My first taste was a bit of a shock. It would be going too far to say that it was like being hit in the face with an oak plank although it did have a powerful effect. I like delicacy in wine, usually, just like I like dark and malty beers rather than larger, but there are times when a cold larger hits the spot better than an Old Ale. That's why I choose to call this a good wine. Not for its subtly, but for its attitude. To quote Gloria Gaynor, 'I am what I am and what I am needs no excuses!'.

Buy again? Yes, for the right occasion and to wine brownie points from the bonus.

Pink

Being a bit of a recovering wine bore I still enjoy the complexity of wine. Not just the complexity that is derived through the processes involved in converting fruit juice into a delicious alcoholic drink, but also the complexity in the language used to describe the products. However, along with the fun of untangling the meaning buried in this complexity there are also risks:

Week P (2021)  Healy & Gray Zinfandel Rose. 

This is not a memoir of wine expertise. It is a reminder to myself that despite all of the courses, the reading, the pretense of understanding and the ego, sometimes the obvious is more easily spotted by those who don't have much of an interest in the subject.

Together with The One, I recently ventured towards the frozen North to attend an event based around a celebration of the focus of my other hobby: cheese. To make the trip less of a mission and more of a short break we traveled to the event on the night before and had booked ourselves into a local pub for Bed & Breakfast.

It was a nice enough pub. The room was named 'Dolly' after one of the seven Llamas living in the garden, and all the facilities worked as designed. No complaints at all.

We had booked a table for an evening meal as the pub was not really near anywhere else other than a nice looking hotel of which I was unaware at the time of booking. Next time, perhaps. Not because I am that much of a snob, I like pubs, but because a night away for a trip based around cheese needs to offer something to all of those traveling.

We took our place at the table and ordered pre-dinner drinks. A pint for me and a Rose G&T for the lady. On arrival the young waiter politely announced 'a pint of Cheshire Cat and a Grapefruit G&T'.  We exchanged glances. 'No, sorry, we ordered a Rose gin, please'.  'Yes, that's right, it's a grapefruit gin', said the young man. Hmm,... after some more discussion a replacement was delivered. It was gin, but the rose element was lacking. No bother, it will do.

Then the menu. Should we choose a la carte or take advantage of 'Burger night' which offered two burgers, of various styles, plus a bottle of wine all for £30? I love a bargain, so burgers it was. The wines offered were: 1. Sauvignon Blanc, 2. Pinot Grigo, 3. Merlot, 4. Zinfandel.  So, two white and two red, I thought. I made my choice and The One expressed surprise at my selection. 'Oh, no' I explained, 'it will be a robust red, made from Zinfandel which is also known as Primitivo'. 

It wasn't. This was worth every penny I spent on it. That is, two burgers for £15 each is about right, down South, so the wine was 'free'. 

I am not an advocate of teenage drinking. I'm not allowed to be, even though I was keen on it in my own formative years, but I do think the idea of educating young people in the joys and dangers of alcohol is sensible. I understand the French are good at this. The alternative is that teenaged girls, at whom wines like this must be aimed, will discover these sugary alcoholic fruit juices and dice with all manner of unintended consequences. It was, put simply, horrible.

Finally, the coffee served at breakfast alongside an excellent sausage sarnie. Undrinkable.

Otherwise it was a great trip. For me the highlight was that after having watched James Martin prepare four excellent looking cheese-based recipes in 40 minutes we later watched Marco Pierre White take the same amount of time to scramble an egg. Together with the gin episode, the undrinkable wine and undrinkable coffee, we have lots to look back on and laugh.

Buy again? Never. Absolutely never.

Oxford Landing

The City of Oxford was a paddle steamer that plied its trade up and down the Murray River until one day during a storm that raged across South Australia, it came to grief. One piece of wreckage was washed up on the banks of the river near to the site where vines for wine grapes were recently planted. This week's wine is named in honour of that unfortunate vessel:

Week O (2021) Oxford Landing Chardonnay 2020. Waitrose £6.69 

I have tasted this wine before as I included it in my selection of wines to illustrate the range of styles that are produced across South Australia, and the little introduction above reflects the blather I delivered to cover the silence between tasting and evaluation on that occasion. That was seven years ago this month and, apart from the label, nothing much has changed. It is a well flavoured wine with a blend of stone fruits, tropical fruits and a bit of citrus. It doesn't pretend to be competing with white burgundy, Chablis, or any other classic Chardonnays but it remains good value, easy to drink and enjoyable.

Compared to the 2014 tasting, which was of the 2013 vintage, this wine is a tad more acidic in terms of pH value, but has marginally less total acid per litre. Curious that, and I can't explain that little paradox. Both wines were 13% abv and both the weather conditions and winemaking processes are described similarly in the maker's technical notes.

This all fits the profile of a wine that is made to be consistent, year-on-year, as it is aimed at a market that expects Oxford Landing Chardonnay to taste like Oxford Landing Chardonnay and has little interest in the potential variations that wine geeks choose to find fascinating.

I find myself short of much more to say about it so I will jump to the end. Would I buy it again? Yes, mostly because it is very good value if what is required is a white wine for slurping with friends, probably in a casual party kind of way.

Seven years ago I paid £7.99 for a bottle at Majestic. I expect I bought it with other wines to get the 'mix six' price. This year I bought the same wine for £1.30 less. Inflation has been low in the time between the two transactions, but there has been some. Wine Duty has increased, too, so a 16% reduction seems like a bargain. The Aussie dollar was worth about 54p in 2014 and is the same today and so the difference isn't about currency fluctuations. I shall, therefore, simply be grateful.

It also makes me think that this would be a good time to go back down under, which would be nice, assuming that the pandemic doesn't kick off again. How can that be made to happen? Hmmm,....

Ned

I first came across The Ned as a friend's recommdation for a well-priced and enjoyable New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. He turned out to be correct. I have been aware for some time that there was a stablemate but had not previously tried it, so:

Week N (2021) The Ned Pinot Noir 2020. Waitrose £13.49 

The price of the Pinot Noir is about double that of the Sauvignon and I hoped it would mean that it would be twice the value. Let's see.

In previous posts I have expressed a penchant for Pinot Noir and especially those of the supposedly new world as they tend to be more reliable and available at a price point I can manage. This one is good. A little more acidic and perhaps a touch less smooth than my 'go to when available' Errazuriz Coastal Series, which is a lot cheaper, but still enjoyable and not unreasonably priced.

Apart from that it doesn't leave me much to remark on. I like it, but it hasn't rocked my world.  I drank it over a couple of days and it did, perhaps, soften slightly after being opened and depleted by about 50%, but it was not a significant change.

I have a couple of bottles of a red Burgundy from Aloxe Corton, 2009 & 2010 respectively, sitting in my 'cellar' and I have been waiting for the right time to open them. I can't remember where I bought them (was it Costco?) although I think they were keenly priced. I like to think that when at last I pull the corks I will be rewarded with a complex and delicate wine that will knock this week's selection into the proverbial cocked hat, however, if that doesn't happen I suspect it will reinforce my prejudice in favour of new world Pinot Noir. If it does then I will have to reassess my wine budget! 

If I remember, I will report back.

Buy again? See above.