Wine Myths

Myth: If the cork crumbles the wine is corked

Fact: A wine becomes corked because of a reaction with the cork, but this does not result in the cork crumbling. If your wine smells of damp dog (that horrible musty smell) it’s corked whether there are pieces of cork in there or not.

Myth: White wines must be served straight from the fridge

Fact: Although some whites taste better chilled, many are better closer to room temperature as much of the flavour only shows when the wine is warmer.

Myth: White wine with fish and red wine with meat

Fact: While this is an easy starting point, food pairing is as much about the weight, the complexity, the provenance, the cost and so on of the food and wine than just red with red and white with white.

Myth: Sulphites are bad and should be avoided

Fact: Sulphites are added to wine to enable it to be transportable, as they act as a preservative. However, in any wine there is a possibility of there also being naturally occurring sulphites. One reason people are more aware of these nowadays is that the way in which they have to be labelled has changed in recent years. White wines tend to contain higher levels of sulphites than reds, as they do not have tannins to stablise them. Unless you are allergic to them, sulphites have not been proven to cause headaches.

Myth: The more expensive the wine the better it is

Fact: While a more expensive wine may have been made in a more labour intensive way, from grapes grown on harder to farm land, and will have more complexity to it, if you don’t like it, for you it isn’t a better wine. Just as a Ferrari isn’t the right car for everyone – for some a Smart car is much more practical.

Myth: All red wines will better with age

Fact: Some wines are made to be laid down so they can age slowly in the bottle, while others are made to be drunk soon. To keep one that is meant to be drunk young will result in you discovering it’s past it when you do finally open it. To drink young a wine that is intended to be laid down will leave you chewing on a mouthful of tannin.

Myth: The flavours people describe in wines have been added

Fact: Not at all – wine is made from grapes, but each grape variety has different characteristics and these are what people are describing using the words that closest describe the smells and tastes.

Myth: To make a rose wine you just mix white and red

Fact: Rosé wine is always made from red grapes, but as the colour in all wines comes from the skins, to make a rosé the juice is left in contact with the skins for less time. Indeed a white wine can be made from red grapes, so long as the juice never has any contact with the skins – Champagne is a prime example as it can be made from 3 different grape varieties, two of which are red.

Myth: Red wine must be drunk at room temperature

Fact: Firstly many red wines benefit from being slightly chilled, and secondly room temperature at the time when the phrase was coined was around 17-19°C, so to serve a red at 21^st century room temperature is to serve it too warm.

I love my job! A couple of weeks ago I received an email asking if I would like to go on a buyers trip to southern France. The trip was to leave from Gatwick on Monday 4^th July, and would last until Thursday 7^th July. As I was already going to be in London on the morning of 4^th July, it seemed the only wise course of action would be to accept the invitation and head to the heat.

And so I found myself at Gatwick with a group of people I hadn’t previously met (bar one who had been on the Swiss trip I went on earlier this year), all set to go on a flight to Marseille. More than that, none of us really knew, as the itinerary that we had been sent was sparse to say the least!

From Marseille we headed to a lovely hotel in Aix en Provence, our base for that night. First wine stop was chez Marrenon – a huge cooperative whose sales director proudly told us that they sell through Tesco. Why, we all wondered, had a group of independents been brought here?! Still, we tasted some interesting wines before wending our way to a restaurant in the wilds of Provence for dinner.

Tuesday morning brought the first “mini-expo” of the trip. 15 vignerons in a room, each with a selection of their wines for us to try. The 12 of us armed with a booklet in which to make our notes. 3 hours later everyone was looking suitably shattered – it’s amazing how tiring it is having a one to one with 15 different people, all the while trying to ascertain if these wines might work for your business. In French.

After a delicious buffet lunch, we were whisked off in the minibus to Chateau de Beaupre where, among other things, we tried a Pauillac, Chateauneuf du Pape, Coteaux d’Aix en Provence blend. Sounded like a potentially interesting mix, but sadly turned out to be a bit of an indulgence. We were agreed that if it were available for us to retail around £10 it might be worth a punt, but it was a LOT more, and as such came across as a bit of a winemakers game, rather than a serious wine to be sold.

Tuesday late afternoon saw us taking the TGV to Valence, where we checked into our hotel before heading out for a wonderful dinner at the Auberge d’Anne Sophie Pic – the bistro attached to a 3 Michelin starred restaurant. Suffice to say we did alright food-wise!

On Wednesday we had another “mini-expo” in the hotel. This time with wine producers from several different areas, including Savoie, which was great. I have long hoped to find a Savoie producer to import from, and think that in Domaine G&G Bouvet I just might have found an interesting one. However, the wines aren’t cheap, so I will have to test the water a bit and see if the wines stack up.

Lunchtime saw us heading off in the minibus to Caves St Desirat in the St Joseph area. A beautiful region, and a lovely lunch of guineafowl. Oh, and several more wines to try!

In the afternoon we went to the Caves de Tain where we were shown around and given the chance to try many of their well known wines. My personal favourite (and not one I’ll be importing, since it costs €45 ex cellars per 50cl bottle) was the Vin de Paille – a sweet wine made in a traditional method whereby the grapes are harvested and then left for around a month to further ripen, thus allowing the flavours to intensify. Delicious!

And so to Lyon and to an awful hotel overlooking the Part Dieu station, and wherein it was not permitted to lower the air conditioning below 21.6C, so the choice was overheat but have relative quietness, or have some air movement but hear all the goings-on of the station. Tricky one!

First though, dinner. Up to a restaurant on the hill overlooking Lyon and some stunning views (after some taxi problems involving a probably drunk van driver reversing into us!). Dinner was good, but maybe not quite as gastronomically stunning as I had thought we might get in France’s food capital. Still, the views from the restaurant were great, and the food still very very good.

Thursday morning required an early start so we could get to our next “mini-expo” in Beaujolais. I have to admit I felt a little trepidation at this – I sell very little Beaujolais, and find the Gamay grape somewhat samey, so the prospect of 3 hours of little else didn’t have me leaping with joy! However, I did get chatting to Herve Dupond, a vigneron himself but also one the people behind “Terroirs et Talents” – a grouping of several vineyards who have realised that to sell themselves collectively is more beneficial than keeping separate. In their number they count a couple of Beaujolais producers, along with a Macon vineyard and some others from the Cote du Rhone region and further south. A very useful find, and one that needs some following up!

Lunch on Thursday was at Georges Duboeuf. A large producer if ever there is one, and as such a place for us independents to relax as we won’t actually ever end up importing from them. Here we had the best meal of the trip, I would say – beef that was melt in the mouth cooked to perfection. Mmm! At Duboeuf they have a sort of wine museum, so we busied ourselves in the afternoon wandering around there, watching short shows about wine and so on, before yet more time in the minibus to get to Lyon St Exupery airport.

Our BA flight had a delay of an hour and a half, which I have to admit did not come as good news at all, for two reasons. Firstly, in a previous life I used to spend far too much of my life at Lyon airport, and secondly I was already not going to make it home until at least half past midnight. Secondly, this delay meant either get home around 2am or worse miss the last train and end up in a seedy hotel in Liverpool Street! Thankfully Heathrow was impressively quiet, so I made it to the last train and got home for 1.50am.

As whistlestop tours go, this one was well organised and very enjoyable, even if we never actually received an itinerary, and even if we were only told the very least possible information for us to be able to fulfil the next item on the agenda.

Right, better go and email those vineyards!

If asked to name some wine producing countries where would you start? France? Australia? Italy? New Zealand?

Or maybe Switzerland? No? Well, along with any number of other countries you mightn’t expect to produce wine, Switzerland has a thriving wine industry. From the north of the country, where many grape growers have their wines made by one company, Volg, to the Italian speaking south east where you can find the Merlot grape being used to make white wines as well as reds and roses, this is a country with a wealth of oenology.

Another country some will be surprised to hear has a strong wine making community is Canada. Particularly in the British Columbia region, where the micro climate is similar to that of the Alsace region of France. Here they produce some stunning icewines, among other things.

The former Yugoslavian countries are showing huge potential in their wine making with Croatia at the forefront from this region. They produce more whites than reds, and predominantly from grapes that are more or less unheard of over here (Plavac Mali anyone?), but the quality is constantly improving.

The same can be said for Hungary. A country known only (in wine terms) for the sweet Tokaji wines for many years, is now starting to export some very interesting dry wines. Across the country there are 22 wine regions, with the majority being planted to white grape varieties. These wines are definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

Even within the famous wine producing countries there are some surprises. Did you know, for example, that the Conca de la Barbera area in Catalonia, Spain, counts Pinot Noir, that classic grape of Burgundy, as one of its native varietals due to the Burgundian monks bringing it with them in the twelfth century?

How about Parisian wines? Again, we all know the famous French regions but Paris doesn’t spring to mind. However, wine has been produced in and around the French capital for centuries, with this region being the country’s most important in wine production terms in the seventeenth century.

So the next time you go to pick up yet another Australian Shiraz, New Zealand Sauvignon or Cotes du Rhone, why not just see if there’s something else out there. You just might find a real gem from one of these countries and regions.

The next May bank holiday is coming up soon, and whatever the weather does there's a fair chance people'll be having parties and barbecues. We've put together a BBQ pack including 3 bottles each of 4 different wines as we're pretty certain that what a great bank holiday needs is just 3 things:

• Good friends - this one's up to you!!
• BBQ food - we'll give you some pointers...
• Perfect wine - just buy the BBQ case and get glugging!

Tips for a great barbecue:

• Rather than waste wine marinading meat, why not just drizzle a mix of half a glass of red wine, a tablespoon of olive oil and some seasoning (if you have fresh rosemary get adding some) over your meats and burgers as you put them on the BBQ
• Any barbecue benefits from having interesting salads - why not put a tin of mixed beans with a tin of sweetcorn, mix it up with a little bit of olive oil and some seasoning - voila a delicious bean salad which is both healthy and delicious. Alternatively, spruce up a potato salad by adding some crumbled feta or some ham chunks.
• If your barbecue has a lid on it, why not roast your chicken on it? Place the bird on a metalic barbecue tray (available from supermarkets). Use the lid to create an "oven". Just remember to keep basting the bird and to watch out for rogue flames.
• Vegetarian guests? Bean burgers are very easy to make: put one tin of adzuki beans, a couple of slices of brown bread, a chopped onion and a teaspoon of marmite into the blender. Blend until it's chunkily chopped up, and shape into patties. Best to cook these on a metallic barbecue tray as they can disintegrate over direct heat.
• Mosquitoes circling your guests? Throw some fresh basil leaves into the flames - the bugs hate the smell.

ENJOY!!

A recent holiday took me so close to Chateau Haute Fontaine that it would have been rude not to pop in and visit! Paul and Penny, who run the vineyard, immediately suggested that Steve (my other half) and I stay the night, or at the very least have some lunch with them. As our overnight stays were already planned, we happily took them up on the offer of lunch.

As you'll know from my blog, I've been lucky enough to visit a lot of vineyards already this year, but for Steve this was a first, which was great - it gave Paul a chance to talk us through everything, safe in the knowledge that it would all be new information for at least one of us. For me this meant I heard far more about the vineyard and the processes they use than I may otherwise have heard, as there would have been an assumption on my part that I shouldn't ask, and on Paul's part that I already knew. One thing I've learnt from visiting vineyards, and generally from doing this job, is that you never know the full process, and you can always learn something from each winemaker.

Our tour started with a history lesson - it turns out the Haute Fontaine domaine used to be a place where monks planted crops as it has a natural water source. Much more recently the house was occupied by the Germans in the second world war, and used as a hospital. The then owners were banished to live in a little shepherd's cottage on the land. More recently, around the late 70s, Robert Vigneron bought the property and set about planting much of the land to vines. He had previously owned shoe factories, but had reached the decision that the French shoe market was going to suffer, so wanted out. My first introduction to the vineyard had been via M. Vigneron in summer 2004, when I met him at the Tignes wine fair in the Alps.

After learning more about the background to the vineyard, we were taken on a tour around some of the vines. It became apparent pretty quickly why Paul had wanted to wait until the 4x4 was brought back at lunchtime - we couldn't have got a standard car around there! I was amazed at how green the vines were already, and Paul confirmed that thus far they were a good 10 days ahead of a "normal" year. The worry now is that the weather will change at a crucial point and that the moisture from potential rain will cause disease. If it carries on being as dry and hot as it was when we were there, the grapes will also suffer. It's panning out to be quite a tricky year for growing grapes.

Next up our tour took us into the winery. I have been fairly blase to Steve about the stainless steel vats one sees in every winery, and the fact that on every tour people explain with great pride how their vats function, but to see it through his eyes made me re-appreciate how impressive the whole process really is. Certainly I don't think Steve expected us to be handed glasses and encouraged to taste the wine from the vat (via a little tap on the side), and I hope it helped him further understand the process.

While we were in the winery Penny was very kindly getting some lunch together - a light lunch of amazing local bread, fishy bits, salad and cheese ceased to be very light once we all got stuck in! But it was delicious. The only slightly disconcerting thing was being watched by many many cats as you dissected a king prawn, but actually the cats were very patient, only eating what was given to them in their bowl - Paul and Penny arrived with one very elderly cat, who has subsequently passed away, but have acquired a further 18 or so since being there!

At the vineyard they have some gites and a few rooms they run as chambres d'hote - if you're ever in the Narbonne area I can strongly recommend a visit - it's a stunning place.