Wine Punks

I shop for wine by the label because name, place and variety mean very little to me in the same way that someone who doesn’t know beer couldn’t tell you the differences between a Belgian dubbel, a US IPA or an Italian pilsner (though they are moving targets which get faster every day so many beer people couldn't get them right!). When a new wine shop announced it was opening almost opposite my flat I got all excited at the prospect of having a good selection of wines, beers (for it said beers would be on sale too), spirits and cigars. When it opened the beer selection disappointed; there was nothing I couldn’t get in the supermarket and there was nothing I’d buy (except Desperados!). But the wine selection, however, even with my limited knowledge, was pretty impressive.

Passing from bottle to bottle was like trying to watch a film in Japanese: I roughly knew what was happening but I had no idea of the intricate details. That was until I saw Battle Island which, keeping the Japanese film allusion alive, is the equivalent of someone standing up, pulling out a gun and shooting everyone while doing back flips (in other words, it looked impressive even if I didn’t know exactly what it was doing). I picked up the boldly labelled bottle and turned it around as if to feign knowledge or to find it, instead I saw a label which reads: ‘This is not an explanation. To join the storyline find www.furiousknivesofwine.com’ with a cool new-skool Olde English calligraphy logo. I knew I had to have it because I may just have found the BrewDog of Wine (unfortunately the website is still being built, which isn’t cool, but I like the idea that you need to go online to find out more - all they need now is their twitter handle printed on the cork).

It’s a 14.5% Australian Shiraz-Cabernet made by Some Young Punks for the Furious Knives of Wine (that alone sounds pretty awesome, whatever it is, and Some Young Punks have some great labels) which cost £8.99. It pours a deep, inky red and is a glassful of dark, red fruits. One luscious mouthful and it covers the tongue but remains wonderfully light for its amplified abv. It throws off masses of plumy fruit and blackberries, a little chocolate, some spice, a tannic dryness like cranberries and even a botanical bitterness – I liked it a lot.

As I don’t know much about wine I don’t know if this kind of edgy branding is unusual or not and I don’t know how the industry see them, but I’d like to know. I’d also like to try more of their wine on this display. But beyond any of that I’d like the Beer Punks of Scotland to collaborate with the Wine Punks of Australia because that could be very interesting...

I’m guessing most people drink wine at least some of the time but how do you choose them? Do you know certain varieties from certain places which you stick to? Or is it a hit-and-hope roulette based on choosing one with a good label? 

Beer and Wine

Pete and Dave both discussed this last week and I thought I’d add my piece to this interesting and complicated issue.

First of all, never tell anyone that beer is the new wine. Those old-school beer chaps don’t like it and jump right down your throat, aghast at the mere thought. But beer and wine, whatever you say, can be comparable and through a certain necessity, I think, need to be comparable.

In this I am not addressing John Smith down the pub supping his bitter. To him, beer is beer and nothing more. I’m also not addressing Jonty Smith, swirling and sniffing his vintage plonk. To him, beer is common man’s liquid bread. This is pitched down the middle at the discerning others. The way I see it, if you want to talk about beer then you need to use a certain type of language and that language has already been established: wine speak. Sure, we can ‘bloke’ it up, but we are essentially using the same technique to talk about what a beer tastes like and why it tastes that way. To most it probably doesn’t matter how it tastes or why it’s like that, but it does to me and I’m hoping, as you are reading this, that the way the beer in your glass actually tastes is important to you (whether you wish to describe it or not). To say that the aroma is fruity or the body is full or the finish is dry is to use wine speak. It’s something which beer has, like it or not, inherited.

A movie is a movie, some are better than others, some people intellectualise them, others watch them as pure release. I have a degree in ‘watching films’ so I often look a little deeper into them. To use Woolpack Dave’s examples, I like books too, and certain types of music, but I don’t care for cars or electronics. Beer is not the new wine. New wine is the new wine, if you get what I mean. Beer is beer - it always has been and always will be - but there is an interested section of drinkers who want to talk about it in a different way to others and just because they use a wine-established language does not mean that the two drinks are mutually exclusive.

Many argue that beer doesn’t want to be intellectualised, but why not? Why not add an element of understanding, a degree of interaction with the beer? The majority, as Pete Brown points out, don’t care beyond whether it’s red or white, lager or bitter, but sometimes a little nudge of information can go a long way. Did you know that grape only grows in Northern Italy? Did you know this beer is made using water drawn from an ancient well? Did you know those hops are a new variety? I’m all for people having more of an understanding about what they are putting in their mouths because it naturally creates a more discerning mentality.

Take food. If you understand it, how it works, how to cook things and how ingredients taste then there is a natural progression in what the eater chooses and that dish made with exotic ingredients suddenly becomes accessible. If you know a little about wine then you can also attempt to choose something to compliment the food. And how many books discussing beer and food compare a full-bodied red wine to a stout, a pale ale to a chardonnay, or discuss how hops in beer are equivalent to acidity in wine? This is because wine and food pairing is an established and appreciated practice. It’s not raising beer to a different level, it’s merely levelling it with wine on a flat playing surface: the dinner table.

Why can’t we look at beer in the same way as wine? Does it really matter if beer is held in greater esteem, if people talk about it like they talk about wine? To be honest, if someone wants to care about beer then they will, if they don’t then they will order their pint blissful in their ignorance in the same way that someone will order a glass of white because they are eating chicken and want some wine – neither are right or wrong, it’s the consumer’s choice. Ultimately it’s about the audience you are trying to reach. I can talk about beer in comparison to wine here because someone who wants to know more about beer is willing to search it out on the internet and if my language is familiar to them then hopefully I can be successful in championing beer.

Beer is changing. For most progressive breweries it’s no longer just four house ales and four seasonals. Brewers are doing more and expanding into different markets: look at corked bottles, 750ml bottles, bottle labels, the use of barrel aging, fruit, spices, different brewing techniques and increased levels of alcohol. Drinkers are changing too. It’s not the same as wine but it’s not a million miles away.

A good example of this is Sam Calagione and Marnie Old’s He Said Beer, She Said Wine book - the image at the top. It takes a beer guy and a wine girl, a number of different foods, and they each choose a beer or wine each to go with it. The book not only taught me more about beer but it also taught me more about wine.

Champagne

On Tuesday I went to a Champagne tasting. It was arranged for London Food and Drink Bloggers and held at Bibendum Wine. The email came in, I read it and immediately I was intrigued: four champagne houses; a non-vintage, a rosé and a vintage from each. Importantly the word ‘free’ was in there. We had champagne from De Castellane, Lanson, Moët et Chandon and Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin.

I arrived not knowing much, to the point that one of the first things I said was completely incorrect (for some reason I thought that Champagne went through an initial fermentation in oak before moving to the bottles?! I don’t know why). Thankfully Andrew (who I’ve drunk wine with before) was there to help me out (he’s also a Beer Swapper!).

I learnt a few things about Champagne that I thought were interesting (hopefully I will recount them accurately). It uses three grape varieties: Chardonnay (white grape which adds finesse), Pinot Noir (red grape which adds body and structure) and Pinot Meunier (red grape which adds fruitiness). It’s fermented in stainless steel like wine but then undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle when sugar and yeast is added (like real ale) – this is what gives the fizz (like real ale!). It’s initially bottled with a crown cap and racked with the cap facing down, it‘s then moved and twisted regularly so that the yeast collects by the cap. After a while (years) the cap is popped, the yeast is removed and a cork is fitted (sometimes an extra dosage of sugar/sweetness is added). Unlike wine or strong beer which will evolve, Champagne aims to keep a constant taste from when it’s bottled to when it’s opened (although some change is inevitable if kept for a long time - in terms of drinking time, the rule of thumb is that however long is spends on yeast in the bottle, it should be opened within that time again, so if it was on yeast for three years then it’s best drunk within three years). And did you know that Morrisons have slashed their Champagne prices and are now selling them for a loss? This was a sore point with the producers.

I don’t drink a lot of champagne as it’s one of those things you open for a special occasion (I’ve got too many special occasion beers as it is). As I don’t drink much, I don’t know much about the taste other than fizzy and dry, moving into yeasty and biscuity. What I found while drinking them was, like when drinking lager, it’s the little differences that really stand out.

Move past that initial hit of fizz and it reveals itself as light, elegant, crisp, fruity, sharp. It took me a while to readjust the taste buds, but I got there. Some were sweeter than others, some drier. Some had fresh apple sweetness and tang, others had a bitter lemon dryness to them. Some were bready, others less so. The size of the bubbles also became perceptible as we moved around, with the bigger ones feeling clunky and unrefined.

The Lanson rosé had a berry hint but between fizz and dryness it was a void, the Moët rosé was a taste of summer strawberries, the Veuve Clicquot rosé was sweeter and picnic-perfect. The non-vintages had a simplicity to them all with the Veuve Clicquot being my favourite with a nose that made me want to stick my head in the glass. Taste-wise it had more complexity to the others. more body because of a higher percentage of Pinot Noir, a zippy freshness to it. And the vintages, which ranged from 1998-2003. The 2002 Veuve Clicquot smelt like brie and sour apples, which I was reticent to say just in case shouting ‘mmm, it’s cheesy’ is a major faux pas, but it turns out this is normal. Interestingly, this opened out in the glass and after a minute or so it became bready and sweeter. Personally, I liked the 1998 Lanson Vintage the most. It was exactly what I wanted and expected from Champagne and had a great come-get-me nose of brioche, yeast and bread then an intriguing pithy bitterness at the end. That was the flavour I was hoping for, the extra complexity I wanted (maybe it was this ‘extra’ that made it stand out to me, preferring more to less, maybe it was a familiar bitter finish that caught my attention).

It’s great drinking wine with people who know and understand it and I learn a lot from them. Wine challenges me to begin but it’s very interesting to come from a beer perspective into a wine tasting like this and ultimately it’s just people tasting and drinking different glasses of booze. Strangely, it’s the similarities to beer which I always manage to pick out – an aroma, a taste, some sourness, that yeasty sweetness which I love in some Belgians. I guess the question is would I buy any of these? The Lanson vintage was £37 (overall the prices ranged from £25-£40+). That money would buy me a lot of great beer. I suppose it’d be nice to have a few bottles of fizz lying around though, just in case.

Brightwell Vineyard and a Few Bottles of English Wine

I don’t drink much wine. This is partly because I don’t know much about it and partly because I always have a fridge full of beer that needs drinking. When I was invited to go to a trip around a vineyard followed by a tasting I couldn’t resist (even though it was the same day as the Gillingham play-off final!). It was a blogger meet (and tweet) up arranged by Andrew at Spittoon and Spittoon Extra to celebrate English Wine Week. Also present were Helen from Food Stories, Niamh from Eat Like A Girl, Denise The Wine Sleuth and Jeanne from Cook Sister.
Having never been to a vineyard I didn’t really know what to expect. That was until I got there and it was exactly how you’d imagine it: rows of grapes arching across rolling green countryside. Brightwell Vineyard in Oxfordshire is where we went and it’s a gorgeous little place (the sunny weather helped!) which backs down onto the Thames. It was fascinating to see the different grape varities growing and learn more about the processes they go through, none of which I really knew about. They also have some really cute pigs. I love pigs.As I don’t know much about wine I was worried that I’d make a massive faux pas by saying completely the wrong thing (like trying a beer in front of the brewer and saying ‘it’s got a lovely buttery aftertaste’). I think I managed okay – beer and wine share many of the same flavour and aroma profiles. After the tour we tried five wines (check out Andrew’s blog here and here for much better tasting notes over the day). The Oxford Flint and Crispin were both a dry whites (a lot of whites are dry because there isn’t enough sun to make the grapes really sweet – I learnt that from Denise!), sharp and citrusy, although the Cripin was much fresher and easier drinking with lots of fresh granny smith apple flavour (good in wine, not so good in beer). Third was another white, Bacchus, which I thought had a really nice swaying balance between sweet and sharp with lots of peach and citrus, it also had a great, cheeky aftertaste of fruit salad penny chews. Fourth was Oxford Rosé which was full of cherry, raspberry and almond flavour and maybe even a hint of caramel (it was surprisingly like a lambic, for the beer guys). Finally we had Oxford Regatta, their red wine, and it was an unexpected hit: floral, spicy, pencil sharpenings, pepper, plums and the tang of blood. For me, the red was the best of the bunch.

After this we went back to Andrew’s place and a few more wines were opened. The best came from Davenport’s Vineyard. First there was Horsmonden, a dry white with a fruity nose of passion fruit, ripe tangerine, alphonso mango and fresh green peppers with the aroma following through to the palate. The other was the Limney Estate sparkling wine from Davenports. This was, for me and I think most of the others, the best wine of the day. It was yeasty and bready with lots of toasty oak and coconut flavour coming from the barrel fermentation. We followed this with Brightwell’s sparkling wine (which they didn’t open for us as part of the tour) and in truth the Limney smashed the Brightwell to pieces. Finally was a Balfour Rose with a nice peach, apricot, cherry and sweet coconut nose which didn’t quite come through so well in the mouth for me.
These wines were tasted alongside three cheeses and three gorgeous breads from a local deli. There was an organic brie from Simon Weaver’s Kirkham Farm (gooey under the rind and lovely), a Godminster vintage cheddar (so crumbly-rich and strong) and Cranbourne Chase Alderwood, a semi-soft cows’ milk cheese. Some of the matches were pretty good but as a beer and cheese maniac I couldn’t help but crave a nice bottle of Chimay Blue to go with these.

The most interesting thing over the day was how I picked out similarities between beer and wine in the aromas and flavours. For instance, some of the tangerine and tropical fruit aromas in the whites were very similar to good IPAs, the American oak aging of the Limney Estate sparkling wine gave off great coconut flavours that I’ve found in barrel-aged beers and the rosés both reminded me of a fruity-sharp lambic (I didn’t say this at the time though – Brettanomyces is not a sought after thing in wine!). This was a surprising find for me as I hadn’t ever thought of the two as parallels of each other. It also raises the question of why more people aren’t into beer as much as they are wine when there are these similarities…

I didn’t know what to expect from a day drinking wine (asides from getting a bit silly – that’s another thing beer and wine share!) but it was great fun and really interesting to try some English wines, something I knew very little about. I hope I managed to do the wines justice in my write up because I was pleasantly surprised by a couple of them and I’d want to drink them again. I enjoy wine but don’t know much about it so hopefully this will be the start of a new education for me. Now, is anyone up for a beer tasting?!

My camera packed in and wouldn’t work so I didn’t get many pictures. There are lots of pictures on Flickr though and you can check them out here and here and here (and yes, I did drink a can of super strong lager from the Spar on the train home!). The top two pics are mine. The group shot is Helen’s and the single wine is Andrew’s.