Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition
In Competition No. 2700 you were invited to submit an example of pretentious wine-writing.
Peter Mayle’s account in the Observer of his first formal wine tasting, in London’s St James’s, gives a flavour of what I was looking for: ‘The first wine, so he [the wine merchant] informed us, was vigorous and well-constructed, even a little bosomy. The second was an iron fist in a velvet glove. The third was earthy, but generous. The fourth was a little young to be up so late.’ As the evening wears on, the comparisons become increasingly ludicrous: ‘oak, truffles, hyacinths, hay, wet leather, wet dogs, weasels, a hare’s belly, faded tulips, old carpet, vintage socks…’ The winners, below, were well up to the tâche and get £25 each, with Gerard Benson pocketing the bonus fiver.
Dining with my friend, the fabled vintner Gaston Marichaux, I was made acquainted with an intriguing vintage, light but serious, fruity but austere — a deceptive rouge. ‘A true test for a discerning palate. I’d be interested in your reaction,’ Gaston said with a half-smile. We touched glasses. The ‘nose’ was puzzling, unique, seductively pleasant yet secretive. The first sip was a revelation, like opening a book of rare prints, or digging a simple garden plot and finding a golden goblet inches below the surface. ‘Miraculeux, mon ami,’ I cried. ‘Notes of the Midi with undertones, correct me if I’m mistaken, that are surely Tuscan.’ ‘Bravo, my friend,’ he replied. ‘It is quite new, a hybrid grape derived from two nations, a true example of European co-operation. This elixir is from the premiere pressing. None but you has identified its twin sources.’ We addressed the carafe in convivial companionship.
Gerard Benson
The current crop of whites from the Carpathian vineyards around Bogrol bids fair to demolish the reputation of East European wines for possessing the oenological appeal of industrial paint-stripper. My personal favourite is from the Koöperativa Sanilava in the Harpika valley, a wine the colour of a late summer mist over the Danube. Its amiably disciplined liaison of the Grenache Blanc and the Pinot Gris entails a complex duet in which arpeggios of esters meld to create an effect like shot silk, both feminine and full, that alternates butteriness with Balkan zest beneath a grassy, biscuity overlay. More nuanced than the local varietals, yet with a coiled, latent audacity, its nose yields hints of tobacco, custard and goat urine, and its flavour bursts on the palate with the fruity intensity of a depth charge while enjoying a finish as long as the ancient regional folk saga, ‘Duk Rimblok’.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Visually complex on the palate, texturally challenging on the nose and recharting the boundaries of established taste, the neo-appellation wines of South Yorkshire are as defined by their terroir as the finest Burgundies. Climatic change, benefiting northern latitudes, gave the 2009 a lingering sooty depth previously unknown from a Muller-Thurgau rootstock, and allowed the granite undernotes, mossy allusions and hint of rhubarb in the aftertaste to define a new oenological stratum. South-facing slopes still fare better — the north-facing lack that distinctive prevailing perfume of unripened gooseberry married with dry biscuit head tones — and offer an insouciant demi-petillance while smuggling in a distinctive note of unwashed cress. The 2010, particularly from the acidic moorlands, promises greater muscularity and a longer finish normally associated with older vines. Buy en primeur if possible, before China discovers its grassy depths and sends prices into the stratosphere.
D.A. Prince
It was Montaigne in his essay on the sublime who first drew my attention to Château Coutechère. It was, he said, the defining essence of the absolute, unsullied by the vagaries of temporal existence. The 1995 vintage is just coming to maturity. It is glorious. The first taste of tobacco and leather-bound incunabula, subtle and redolent of half-forgotten worlds, gives way as gently as the fluttering of a dragonfly’s wings to an ethereal complexity of fruits and memories. It is to the taste buds what a Bach fugue is to the ear — a perfect compilation of delights where the sum of the whole consummates the individual pleasures of its many components. Monsieur Jeux-Menrichy, who owns the château, now exports heavily to China. What a delight it must be to sip this nectar by the headwaters of the Yangtze from the bowls of the Qienlung!
Jim Davies
Greece may be in debt to the world, but the world is in debt to Greece for this Dionysian delight. The spume-like exhalation upon opening the amphor-esque bottle evokes the mysterious allure of Homer’s wine-dark sea. Saline, though, this libation is not. One sip, and your nectar-tinged tongue will feel itself capable of wagging philosophically at an Athenian symposium — how wise the Hellenic habit of alembicating the driest subjects with their choicest vintages! — keeping pace with the tart enquiries of Socrates and the sweet seductions of Plato’s prose. After the second bottle is broached, you may well question the ancient custom of diluting their wines so freely with water, not to mention the Homeric habit of sprinkling in goat’s cheese, but these topics may be left to professional classicists as you blissfully imbibe this classic, feeling at one with Zeus on Olympus or the heroes quaffing in the Elysian fields.
Barry Baldwin
In the nose, this striving vintage is robust with undertones of belligerence, its assertive repertoire of mineral and fungal notes diverse to the point of cacophony. Its deep garnet colour, albeit commendable for clarity, is so sombre as to be well nigh surly. Muscular yet not oppressively heavy on the tongue, it presents initially as haphazard, but resolves itself into a confidently complex structure that balances mellowness with Marlovian bombast in the dialogue between dark loam and wood notes and brighter hints of blackberry, sour cherry, olive oil, and radish. Other reds of this region have been justly criticised for an earthiness verging on the plebeian, and it must be acknowledged that this one does not achieve an entirely regal or cosmopolitan affect. Still, an insouciant refinement defines its spicy, ebullient finish. Deftly avoiding excessive playfulness and over-earnestness alike, it pairs well with both undercooked and overdone meats.
Chris O’Carroll
No. 2703 song of dispraise
You are invited to submit a hymn entitled ‘All Things Dull and Ugly’ (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 June.
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