Hegarty Chamans 'Cuvée 1' Minervois 2004

Back in early 2005 I started working for Oddbins, the once mighty high street wine retailer.* Remember high street wine retailers? They used to exist before the supermarkets took an interest in wine and squeezed them out, and were a great way for people like me with no castle/expansive cellar/butler to learn about wine. Anyway, plenty has been written on the subject and I'm not here to gripe about the unfairness of it all.

Hegarty Chamans, as I've mentioned before, was a favourite of the then assistant manager of the first Oddbins I worked in, a guy who taught me an awful lot about wine in the best way possible - drinking it with me. All this time later and I'm through four levels of wine qualifications, and I'm now officially allowed to put letters after my name to, as my mate put it, 'tell people I know things about alcohol.' This seemed an ideal wine to celebrate going from being a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed wine adviser (sort of) who knew absolutely nothing about wine to bagging myself a WSET diploma; which means I now know how little I really know.

Apart from all the sentimentality this is a lovely wine, I really like the rustic, herby Southern French style, they're a real demonstration of how you can get depth of flavour without over-ripening or a reliance on pure power. On the nose there's lots of red and black currant, and on the palate it's got a lovely herbal olive tapenade flavour.. Velvet-smooth nearly a decade after the vintage.

I paid £9.99 for this one back in 2005, which really was a bargain at the time. A more recent vintage is currently available in the UK through Adnams for £15.99.

* To give them their dues, Oddbins seem to be doing all right for themselves down south, albeiit on a smaller scale from when I started. Beer selection to be applauded too, according to London types on Twitter (Matt, drinking Rocky Head Pale Ale and London Fields Brewery Black Frost Stout to be precise).

Finally...

It's done. After over three years, I've finally got to the end of my WSET diploma. The results for the spirits exam, which had given me no seemingly no end of trouble due to missed deadlines and my own failings in the tastings, came through today and I passed. After so long (I was unmarried and not a parent when I got started) it feels like more of a relief than a cause for celebration, but I'm sure I'll warm to the idea once my working week finishes on Monday!

For a celebratory drink I think I'll go for a Greenall's Gin & Tonic. When I was struggling with the spirits exam I sent some rather embarrassing begging emails asking if anyone could help me with some tasting samples to practise with. These guys did, sending a couple of miniatures for me, and so this is by way of thanks.

Cheers!

A Rose By Any Other Name...

Well far be it from me to say that Shakepeare, through Juliet in this case, was wrong, but it wouldn't 'smell as sweet' because apparently you can't smell sweetness. It would, of course, still smell like a rose, so as an analogy it's perfectly correct, and I'm definitely not about to advocate the re-writing of Romeo and Juliet for the purposes of a bit of discussion on taste.

When I was sitting the tutored tastings for the wine diploma there was some discussion about the notion of whether or not you can smell 'sweet'. This had nothing to do with the shower facilities at the local hotels, as it turns out it's about associations. When we think something smells sweet, it's because we're associating that particular smell with something that tastes sweet. In wine tasting metaphors are of vital importance, and to a slightly lesser extent the same applies in beer tasting - and that only slightly lessened because of what you can add to beer. Thus, a Sangiovese can smell like cherries, as a beer that has never been anywhere near a grapefruit can taste like grapefruit.

Some good, some bad? Or just... different?

With a nod to Boak & Bailey and their referencing longer articles for further reading here's one on the confusion of taste and smell. It talks about how the palate can be distracted by the nose, and vice-versa, even if in the experiments they talk about rating how sweet things smell, which further confused me since as I understand it the first real detection of sweetness occurs on the tongue - we're back to the metaphorical again I think.


All of which leads me on on to this video. I don't think it's particularly revelatory to say It's the most interesting video on the subject of spaghetti sauce I've ever watched, and if you can spare quarter of an hour or so to watch it it might well influence you next time you get into a discussion about whether or not a beer is 'good.' If it's not enough to realise that our bodies are far from perfect at tasting things, then is it further damning to think that maybe we don't even know what we like? I'm off for a coffee; dark and rich, naturally.



Video stumbled across because of a re-tweet by Juel Mahoney.

Re-Release

I had a bit of bad news today, in the form of a letter from the WSET informing me I'd failed the spirits part of my Diploma because of a bad tasting component.

It's back...

This is the last part of the whole level four diploma I need to get through to pass what is a two year course that has gone into a third year. I've passed the theory twice, so I think my basic knowledge should be fine, but I just don't get to practice tasting spirits enough. So the plan is to devote a bit of love and attention to this blog, and turn it into, at least in part, a spirits blog.

So here's to a new adventure, and further education of my palate!

If anyone would like to help me out, please read the Help Wanted! page or get in touch through Twitter.

I Almost Always Drink Beer, But When I Don’t…

This is my contribution to The Session #59, as hosted by Mario over at Brewed for Thought.

The first thing to declare is that it's not necessarily true, or at least not all the time. Certainly at the moment while my other half is rarely drinking I am tending towards beer. For me beer offers a range of flavours to be explored and I enjoy doing the same with other things, particularly wine (I have spent two years studying for the Wine and Spirit Education Trust's Diploma) and, through personal preference, whisky. At other times I am happy to explore other things - a friend of mine became UK ambassador for Armagnac, which I found fascinating too.

If you regard this as heretical then that's fine, but I'd hope most people who really appreciate beer do so for the flavour, and so why close yourself off to other things just because they are made from grapes, or have been distilled?

So with this in mind I have already got a regret for 2012. I've had to let my membership of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society elapse because of that bane of all flavour explorers - cash! For those of you not familiar with the SMWS, they buy individual casks of whisky (occasionally other stuff) and bottle up those single casks as a one-off. So every whisky they put out (unfiltered, at cask strength*) is part of a genuinely limited run, when the cask is gone, that's it, it will not, and can not ever be seen again. Their tasting notes, as compiled by a tasting panel, are the most enjoyable stand-alone tasting notes I read anywhere (and that's across all genres). Having been a member for a while, and having been to some of their tasting sessions, I have had some of the most amazing whiskies, and I hope to be able to return to the fold soon. If you are interested in whisky at all, check out the website and have a look into joining - particularly if you think you'd be able to make their hosted tastings, they are fantastic evenings out.

I will continue to enjoy the whisky I have left, and to be inspired into running better wine tasting evenings and writing better beer tasting notes by these guys - cheers for the good times!

A Caravanserai on the Silk Road aka 35.58: 26 years in cask, one of 294 bottles.

* Geek note: All the bottles are packaged in the same way, simply with a number for the distillery, and a number for the cask, along with a few details of the cask itself. Between us, me and a like-minded friend managed to work out what all the distilleries were for ourselves (too much time on our hands.)

A+ Australian Wine One Day Wine School

Five in the morning is far too early to be getting up and thinking about wine, but this is what I found myself doing this week courtesy of an invitation to one of Wine Australia's inaugural 'A+' One Day Wine Schools in London, as set up in conjunction with the Wine and Spirit Education Trust.

I was unsure about how to do a write up for this as a day. Nick Stock, one of the guest speakers (the  others being Andrew Jefford and Tim Atkin MW) was on Twitter earlier and described it as 'epic,' which is no overstatement. If there is any criticism at all it is about the level of ambition. Fitting so much into one day was always going to be difficult, and when you add guest speakers that encourage the audience to challenge them with questions and in turn enjoy answering, then a packed day becomes even more so. This blog post is about the day itself, rather than the wine, which I'll talk about another time.

After the introductions the first main speaker was Andrew Jefford, who treated us to a lecture which, I assume, is a first glance into what his forthcoming book on Australia must go into in unparalleled depth. It was a more detailed examination of Australian climate and geology than in the WSET diploma, and so not for the faint hearted, but superbly presented and illustrated - with plenty of information provided for us all to digest at our leisure afterwards.



The focus of the day was how wine is being re-assessed in Australia, and how there is a movement away from wine as a commodity and towards something genuinely invoking a feeling of place. Nick Stock suggested that during the first Australian wine boom exporters had 'forgotten to take the back-story' which left them struggling once people had tried those initial wines and then said 'What next?' This is why Andrew Jefford's lecture (and the information surrounding the wines later) was so geared towards terroir, the feeling being that Australia has proved itself time and again with regards to technology-driven fruit expression, and is now moving forward.

A great wine is always enhanced by a good atmosphere and good company. Australia House certainly provided the atmosphere, and the guests were great company. As a self-confessed wine geek I'd have been happy to pay the train fare just to sit and listen to these guys talk about Australian wine, but there was nearly fifty wines to taste too.

 

If anyone in the wine trade is interested is even vaguely interested in how Australia is pushing itself forward as a home of something more than supermarket wine, then I would highly recommend you try to get on this course. Even if Australia isn't your thing then it is fascinating to see something that is now coming to light, and it will be interesting to see if other countries follow suit. There are lots of great books and writing about the 'Classic' wine regions. but this is in many ways a whole new discovery, and it is that freshness that makes it inspiring.

Notes on Notes

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. - Ira Glass

Writing good tasting notes, by which I mean ones that people will relate to, understand, and be informed and entertained by, to the point where they will keep coming back and reading more, is a creative process. Like any other creative work, it isn't easy (hence the quote above). It's the old 'walk before you can run' cliché, and it's why I thought Victoria Moore's piece in the Telegraph back in September wasn't particularly helpful. I think she overlooked the fact that the Wine and Spirit Education Trust diploma course that she thought was so prosaic, and therefore dropped out of, was a matter of writing to demonstrate understanding of fundamental things  for an exam. It is a starting point. There is also a difference in a purely personal tasting, and tasting with an audience in mind. I doubt anybody at the WSET is suggesting that following their rigid guidelines is likely to get you a column in the Telegraph, but most of us, when we take our first tentative sips, need to have terms we can immediately relate to. When I am trying to get people to examine the flavours of wine for the first time, articulating their thoughts is invariably the most difficult part - they are usually convinced they're 'wrong'. I always tell people that tasting wine is a learned skill, there is nothing particularly difficult about it to start with, and once people practice as a matter of course they'll get better and enjoy a more rewarding experience.

To someone with a will to learn about, but not a knowledge of, wine, an expressive Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is a fantastic wine because the flavours are so up front and identifiable. A similar sort of thing can be seen with beer. Pointing out hoppy and malty flavours may not be that interesting to readers of beer blogs, but without knowing such fundamental style differences your tasting notes will never improve, and indeed sometimes overlooking the basics can be as bad as being unimaginative. There are parallels in other disciplines that rely on both the creative and the mechanical, not least beer and winemaking. It's perhaps stretching the point somewhat, but few would argue that there is no art or creativity in architecture and the architect certainly needs to know the building they are designing won't fall down. Picking out an American IPA and saying to a beer novice, 'try this, this is what a hoppy beer tastes like,' might lead to a similar revelation seen with 'try this, this is what wine people are on about when they say gooseberry flavours!'

Villa Maria 'Cellar Selection' Sauvignon Blanc was the first wine I remember ever remember feeling like I could in any way describe the flavours of - I picked it for a staff wine sales competition with Oddbins and won (although I am sure I had some help from sympathetic colleagues). Since then I have been working through the WSET qualifications - the prosaic mechanics of educating my palate - and I hope eventually to fight my way through to the point where my work is as good as my ambitions.