This week The Joy Club member Roger Davies shares his tips and tricks on discovering your perfect wine.
We all love a glass of wine, at the right time, but if there is one thing that divides us all, it is what makes a great glass of vino. I suppose my love affair started way back in the late seventies. I was heading towards the unthinkably old age of thirty and my first choice of a drink was changing from anything measured in pints to being measured in glasses. I liked wine but had very little idea of what to order – in fact my first encounter with a sommelier had taken place a few years earlier.
I was in the Royal Navy at the time and had just married. Two weeks after the wedding we were flown out to Hong Kong on a two-year married accompanied draft. Then on our first wedding anniversary I booked a table in the restaurant in the Mandarin Hotel over in Kowloon. At the time it was rated as the second-best restaurant in the world. It was with trepidation that I led my wife into this magnificent place. The restaurant was on the top floor so up we went in the lift. I felt a little out of place as I was wearing my best (only) suit and most of the men were in dinner jackets. But we were shown to our seats and fussed over and settled. Then we were joined by the sommelier. With a flourish he produced the wine menu. I opened it and as far as I was concerned it was in a foreign language. I panicked and said the first thing that came into my mind. “We will have a bottle of Mateus Rose please.” He didn’t bat an eyelid “A fine choice sir.” I must say it went perfectly with the well-done steaks we ordered. To this day I give thanks to God that I didn’t ask for a bottle of Blue Nun.
Today, go into any supermarket, let alone any of the wine outlets, and the number of bottles on display is enough to throw anyone. The days of buying wine just by the colour are long gone. I do not claim to be an expert but over the years I have picked up enough knowledge to find my way around a wine label. In my opinion whenever you look at a label you are looking for the “W”s:
WHERE does the wine come from?
This covers a large amount of ground. You will almost certainly start with the country, but there is a lot more information than that. Each country is broken down into regions i.e. in France there are many regions from Bordeaux to Burgundy to the Rhône Valley, in fact far too many to mention here. But a red wine from each of the three regions mentioned will taste entirely different to one another. Then within each region there will be further divisions – Bordeaux covers sub regions like Medoc, Haute Medoc, Paulliac, and of course Margaux. (Not that I will ever be able to afford a Chateau Margaux.)
It really does matter where the vines are grown, as different climates, soils and terrains will affect the taste of the wines immensely.
Once, the only wines seen to be worth drinking, came from France, Italy, Germany and some parts of Spain and Portugal. These were followed by the emergence of the new world wines from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA. But believe me, Eastern Europe and South America are now producing some delicious drinks. On the subject of where, look on the back of the label to see where it has been bottled. If it says anything like “Bottled in the UK for ????” beware, this wine has been shipped into the UK in a road tanker and will be a mix of all sorts of wines and will not necessarily be the best.
WHAT type of wine is it?
For most of us the grape variety is very important. We all have our favourite types of wine, go back a few years and the grape of choice for many was the ubiquitous Chardonnay, the white grape of choice in the Burgundy area. But as it became more and more “oak aged” it seems to have fallen out of favour. Red Burgundy is pure Pinot Noir, whilst Red Bordeaux (Claret) is a blend of different grapes grown in the region, usually a mix of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and may be some Malbec. The white wines of Bordeaux will mainly be Sauvignon Blanc. Further south in the Rhone Valley they make some superb reds from Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre grapes (don’t be confused between the French Syrah and the Australian Shiraz, they are basically the same variety).
Over the years, many of these grapes have been exported and are now grown in suitable places all around the world, alongside the native varieties. A Chilean or Romanian Merlot can be as tasty as one from the Medoc and at a much more reasonable price.
When I first started drinking wine, if it was white, it was probably a Riesling, to bring these wines up to the “British” palette the producers would add sweeteners. For a while the most popular wine in the UK was Blue Nun. This was absolutely disgusting. It was many years later that a German friend of mine introduced me to the Riesling wines that the Germans themselves would drink. Sharp, crisp and fruity these were a world away from what I had been used to. For me “Hock” was no longer a dirty word.
An important rule is that white wine is best chilled, and red served at room temperature. However, I was once in a restaurant in Cherbourg, and ordered a Loire Valley Red, a Cabernet Franc. They served it chilled from the fridge. At first, I was dubious then realised that it was actually very good served this way and now with some light bodied reds, I will even do this at home.
WHO has made it?
There will be information on who the wine maker is. Obviously if the label says Chateaux Margaux, then you have got a great wine but if you have drunk wines from a named wine maker before, it will give you an inkling into what this wine is like.
WHEN was it made?
Even from the same manufacturer, from the same area of land, different weather over the years can mean the same wine will taste different from year to year. The better wines will also take different times to mature. A good Bordeaux may not be at its best for anything up to ten years after it is bottled. Conversely some wines can be delicious within months of being bottled; Beaujolais nouveau is a classic example. Most everyday reds will be ready to drink within a year or two of being bottled.
A relatively modern innovation on the label is the introduction of a scale from sweet to dry on white wines. This is indicated by a triangle of grapes with a number from 1 to 5 in the middle with 1 being sweet and 5 being dry. Red wine intensity is measured from A to D, light to full bodied.
Wine scales
My first real introduction to discovering the differences between wines came when I moved to Exeter and met Joyce who became my second wife. Joyce was a nurse and occasionally she and her colleagues would book an evening’s wine tasting at a local wine cellar. It consisted of snacky type foods and up to 10 different bottles of wine to taste. The sommelier there took it very seriously. We guests, maybe not so much. He tried very hard to educate us, but we were just out for an evening on the lash. When we were tasting both red and white on the same evening it could be problematic for those of us who would drink the red as some of the party only drank white and they passed their red on to the rest of us.
The sommelier would get us to swirl the wine in the glass, to see the “legs” – indicating alcohol strength, we would angle the glass over a white sheet of paper to gauge the age by the colour. Even white wines have very different colours. We had to slurp the wine noisily over the palate to introduce air into it to investigate the different flavours. He would then wax lyrical about herbs, blackcurrants and strawberries, before asking us what we could taste. One evening I joined in and stated that I was getting a very petrolic taste. He sipped his glass and said, “hmmm I see what you mean.” Then Joyce rained on his parade and pointed out, “Ignore him, he is a petrol station manager, everything tastes of petrol to him.”
In conclusion, in my own experience of wine drinking, wine is an individual pleasure. Experiment, taste different wines, find out what you enjoy drinking and go with that. Everyone’s taste is different so you can ignore what “the experts” say and just enjoy your own favourite tipple.