Rousseau de Sipian, 2005, Medoc - Cambridge Wine Merchants

This 2005 red Bordeaux from Rousseau de Sipian, purchased at Cambridge Wine Merchants (£12.99 for a single bottle, but case offers take it well below a tenner), was, I thought, the best of the wines from a recent tasting I arranged for some colleagues and although it was well-liked at the time, the appreciation seemed more polite than enthusiastic.

To be fair to both the wine and my colleagues, it was one of a number of wines we sampled and probably did not show at its best due to a) following very crowd-pleasing and easy-drinking southern French Carignan b) not being allowed sufficient time to breathe c) being served without food.

So, I decided to get another bottle, give it a couple of hours in the decanter and see how it showed on its own with a simple roast dinner.

The Médoc is an area on the left bank of the Gironde in Bordeaux where Cabernet Sauvignon dominates. Cab tends to produce darker, chewier, more full-bodied wines than the Merlots which dominate on the other side of the river, but as this is a blend of the two in roughly equal proportions, there is the fullness of the Cab with the perfume and fruit of the Merlot.

2005 was one of the great years of the decade for Bordeaux, and this wine retails for a few quid more than its 2004 equivalent. However, I decided that, although this took the price well of "everyday wine" territory, it was worth the extra money for the year and the two medals it has garnered - a silver from the Concours General de Paris 2008 and a silver from the Concours de Bordeaux Vins d'Aquitaine 2007.

First off, this is still quite young, even at 5 years, and needs a bit of time in the decanter before it really opens up. Deep red, almost inky in the glass, it has a rich nose with a blast of blackcurrant fruit with vanilla, cedar and hints of earthiness and spice.

The palate is full and soft with dark berry fruit, liquorice and pencil shavings but what impresses the most is the texture - rich, dense and  mouthfilling, it really is quite special - something I am learning to associate with good Bordeaux and which tends to make otherwise very good wines seem thin and two-dimensional by comparison. There is a good finish with some acidity and a firm tannic grip that benefits from some food.

According to CWM's website, this wine was recently selected by Tim Atkin MW in his Guardian supplement as one of only 3 Bordeaux wines in his choice of the 36 best value wines currently on offer from France and describes it as "an attractively drinkable claret".

Bordeaux is generally something of an old-school wine - it is not showy or flashy, but has subtlety, restraint and balance and it not only tends to need food, but somewhat old-school food, such as plain roast meats.

Our accompanying meal therefore had distinctly old-school overtones, too - but it was by no means plain or boring; a leg of rare-breed lamb from a smallholding in Willingham seasoned with salt, pepper, chopped rosemary and crushed garlic, then slow roasted and served with potatoes, carrots and celery all roasted in the same pan as the meat.

We followed this with roasted nectarines served with clotted cream ice-cream and a glass of Lustau East India Oloroso (see here).

£12.99 for a single from Cambridge Wine Merchants, discounted to £9.52 per bottle for a case of 12.

Links

Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/

Tim Atkin - http://www.timatkin.com/

JMS Sauvignon Blanc, Bordeaux 2009 - Laithwaites

I have never quite seen the point of aging Sauvignon Blanc in lots of new oak - in its unadulterated form, it has such a strong and distinctive personality that it doesn't really need the addition of oak. A good SB is crisp, aromatic and herbaceous - a really good one will also be minerally and full-bodied, too.

So then, what does oak bring to the party - on the plus side it will fill out the wine, giving it more body and texture, but it also blunts the aromatic edge, makes all those green, zingy, nettley aromas less pronounced. Far better, in my book, is to source grapes from more marginal climates so that the slower ripening gives the wine more body and complexity. Styria, in southern Austria, does some stunning examples, piercingly crisp, yet also full-bodied, minerally and balanced on the finish. Away from Oyster Bay, NZ also does some full-yet-crisp-and-minerally versions, too.

The Laithwaites website crows that this is a "remarkable, oak-aged big brother to Laithwaite Sauvignon - white wine fans must try this! ... only a few barrels made!"

Hmmmmmmm, for me this is (like most Laithwaites wines) well made and pleasant enough, but somewhat bland and overpriced; at £9.99, it certainly is not an everyday wine, but I would want something a little more impressive for a special occasion.

The Laithwaites website notes that the wine has an IWC award - well, strictly speaking it does, but what it actually has is a commendation, this being the lowest of the awards the judges can give for between 80 and 84 points out of 100, which is rather a case of damning with faint praise. It also has a nod of some sort from Decanter.

Links

Laithwaites - http://www.laithwaites.co.uk/

This wine on Laithwaites - http://www.laithwaites.co.uk/DWBase/jsp/article/index.jsp?productId=prod820815

The final mystery - Domaine des Cottereaux, Sancerre from Laithwaites

This was the last of my mystery-case wines from Laithwaites - and the most expensive.
Sancerre, from the Loire and always made from Sauvignon Blanc, is rarely if ever cheap - it trades heavily on its name which is why neighbouring Touraine, just up-river and also made from SB usually provides better value.

Sancerre and goat's cheese is a classic combination, so for this wine, I chose a soft, creamy goat's cheese with an edible rind and served it simply - as a starter with a little rocket seasoned with salt and olive oil.

Salty, creamy cheeses need crisp zingy wines to cut through them whilst the green rocket leaves matched with the herbaceous aromas of the wine; the oil provides a touch of pepperiness to match with the rocket and liven things up generally.

It was a hot summer's evening, we had guests and a crisp white was just what was needed. Served well-chilled and poured immediately on opening, it was relatively neutral on the nose with only subtle hints of the typical Sauvignon aromas of freshly-cut grass, gooseberries and nettles.

On the palate it was taut, crisp, focused and classy in a full-yet-restrained way - good structure and some mineral backbone on the finish along with slight hints of flint and gunsmoke.

It started to open up a little more and gain weight towards the end of the bottle - would have been nice to try a second bottle and given it an hour or so in a decanting jug first, but at £13.49, I probably won't bother.

McPherson Family Series Andrew's Shiraz, South Eastern Australia, 2008 - Laithwaites

Another Aussie Shiraz from Laithwaites - I had one of these in each of the two mystery cases I bought recently. This is the second bottle - the first seemed pleasant, but rather so-so, a bit like many of the Laithwaites wines, if truth be told.

This one seems rather better somehow (bottle variation ? palate variation ?); it's from South Eastern Australia - a gigantic Australian zone that incorporates all producing areas in New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria, and parts of Queensland and South Australia. It essentially covers 95 percent of Australia's vineyards. It allows wine blended from grapes grown in the various indicated regions to use this name on their label.

There is bramble fruit, cassis and vanilla on the nose, more black fruit, eucalyptus and lots of peppery spice on the palate, well-balanced with soft tannins and a good smooth finish. According to the Laithwaites website, it has seductive red berry and cinnamon aromas. Ripe mulberry and blackberry flavours and a peppery richness that makes it superb with food.

Hmmm, I'd probably agree with most of that.

At £6.49 a bottle (plus delivery) it's reasonable value.

The Company Summer Party at Regent's Park or Easy on the Sherry, Auntie

When I was asked to do a wine tasting for my company summer party, I decided to pick some good, classic but perhaps not so trendy wines to see if people preferred them to the usual Kiwi Sauvignon or Pinot Grigio. With hindsight, I guess it was always going to be a bit of a gamble - my wine tastes are, if I'm honest, distinctly old school and I rarely have wine without food, so I tend to choose food-friendly, rather than quaffing, wines.

I was also working to a budget that was more sensible than restrictive, but which precluded any decent Pinot Noir or impressive labels; that meant, in general, wines from humbler origins which would have to impress on their own merits alone. In the end, there was a mixture of value wines from southern France, inland Spain and the Loire, some stuff from the New World and one double medal-winning Bordeaux which slipped over my £10-per-bottle limit.

One of my unstated aims of the event was to challenge a few conceptions and present stuff that I thought my audience (around 30 successful PR professionals) would not perhaps necessarily expect to like, but might actually rather enjoy. With this in mind, I had given my by-now-usual supplier, Cambridge Wine Merchants a brief to help me choose a good range of wines which would cover most of the basics for grape variety and country, match my budget and, hopefully, impress. I am pleased to say that Matt Boucher at the Mill Road branch did an excellent job with some great recommendations, even phoning around to locate additional supplies when we had found something we liked, but of which there were not enough bottles in stock.

The setting for the event was ... interesting - based in a place called The Hub (picture opposite), we found ourselves in a room full of gym equipment with a distinct whiff of locker room in a Teletubby-land setting in London's Regent's Park; I was amazed, however, at how quickly and efficiently a few people transformed it into a setting for a wine-tasting with table cloths, glasses and spittoons, plus a supply of water, crackers, bread and seasoned olive oil for dipping.

The plan had been to start with a game of rounders in the park with a picnic, and then move indoors for the wine tasting; in the end, the main challenge for many people was just to find The Hub itself as it is in the middle of the park and around a mile from the nearest tube station with no obvious direct route; even as we were preparing to start, I took several calls from colleagues along the lines of "I'm on the Inner Ring going clockwise - how do I get there ?" or "Is it anywhere near the zoo ?".

We started with a dry oloroso - many wine enthusiasts (myself included) continue to bang on about how good and underrated sherry is; sadly, my audience was not convinced and it was universally (and entirely undeservedly) disliked. For me, it was a lovely, warming aperitif, with aromas of toasted almonds and pecans, a distinct saltiness and good length, but for my audience it seemed to be a challenge too far.

This was followed by a Touraine, a better-value alternative to Sancerre. This proved much more popular and was even voted best white of the evening - leaner and steelier than the stereotypically lush NZ style of Sauvignon which was ultra-fashionable a few years ago, it was perhaps a reasonably familiar style to many.

We followed this with an Alsace Riesling which proved more popular than I had dared hope - I am a big fan of Riesling and in these post-Chardonnay days, I don't understand why good, dry examples are not more popular. This one had a typical nose of white stone fruit and mineral, good acidity and balance on the palate and a crisp finish. Again, with the benefit of that wonderful thing called hindsight, this perhaps needed some rich, Alsace-style food to show its best.

We followed this with a rich, buttery Chardonnay from Chile which I had expected to be something of a crowd-pleaser. Surprisingly, it was not at all popular, with people describing the nose as musty washing. My conversion to drinking chardie came about probably just around the time it started to go out of fashion in favour of unoaked wines like Sauvignon and more latterly Pinot Grigio, so perhaps I am a bit out-of-step with the times (a few amongst the audience also said that it was the character of Chardonnay from the TV series Footballer's Wives that had put them off).

We finished the whites with a lovely, off-dry NZ Pinot Gris from Spinyback - I have reviewed this wine here before and, whilst it was generally popular, no-one guessed that it had won a medal.

Moving on to the reds, we started with a Monastrell from Yecla in Spain - inland Spain is a great place to go for good value wines (much more so than Rioja for example), and this was beautifully made if a somewhat unusual wine with, paradoxically, both finesse and a slightly rustic character that most people picked up on. We then tried an Italian red which seemed to divide opinion - a Barbera from Oltrepo Pavese, it was more of a quaffing wine than a Chianti, but still had plenty of acid and tannic grip on the finish; some liked it, some didn't.

Next up was a wine I used previously at a Cambridge Food and Wine Society event and had been very impressed by - an old vines Carignan from Herault. Southern French wines can be real crowd-pleasers, ripe and fruity, often with aromas of plums and prunes and a soft finish, they usually make a good quaffing wines, but also have the body and complexity to go with food such as sausages or roast chicken with herbs. This wine was an instant hit and was subsequently voted best red and best wine overall with quite a few people wanting to know where they could buy it. Interestingly this wine has just received a commendation in Decanter's World Wine Awards 2010.

I followed this with something more classy altogether - a double medal-winning 2005 Bordeaux from the Medoc. Even at five years old, it was still quite full and tannic, and the style was definitely more subtle than the wine before; whilst most people quite liked it and quite a few (perhaps politely) said it was very well-made, it was perhaps a less obvious crowd-pleaser than the wine before and definitely needed some air and some food to show its best.

I have always liked red Bordeaux - it was basic-but-good red AC Bordeaux bought from a French supermarket and costing around four Euros that got me properly into drinking wine around a decade ago - and moving the up the scale more recently, I am finding it has a complexity and a texture that few other wines can match; however, this is perhaps not always not immediately obvious on first acquaintance and maybe it takes a few bottles, each with some plain roast meat, to discover this.

We finished the reds with a Syrah from Languedoc - I had thought this would prove popular, but perhaps palates were jaded at this point as, despite a wonderful nose of plums and prunes and a good, balanced palate, it was not so well received. Or maybe it just suffered by comparison with the much more textured wine served immediately before.

The final wine was an East India sherry - again, an attempt to challenge preconceptions. After the dry oloroso had bombed, I was very wary about this wine, but it proved very popular (despite being made largely from oloroso, with just some Pedro Ximenez for sweetness).

As this was as much a fun event as a serious wine tasting, I had also devised a quiz - asking people to guess the price, year, alcohol, content, age and medal status of the various wines. After a few early howlers (guesses for the oloroso ranged from 4% to 30% - the correct answer was 18%), people very quickly got the hang of it and there were some pretty accurate guesses later on; and whilst no-one spotted the two medal winners, there were a few people in each case who noted these as their favourite wines. I was also impressed at some of the pockets of knowledge - some people immediately spotted the rustic nature of the Monastrell whilst others noted the length of the Carignan. Frankly, if you can do that, the rest is just background details.

The Wines - all sourced from Cambridge Wine Merchants

1. Barbadillo Oloroso Seco, Spain
2. Domaine de Rablais, Touraine, 2008
3. Nostros Chardonnay Gran Reserva, Casablanca Valley, Chile, 2007
4. Riesling Reserve, Cave de Hunawihr, 2007
5. Spinyback, Pinot Gris, Nelson, New Zealand, 2008
6. Castano Monstrell, Yecla, Spain 2008
7. Cantina di Casteggio, Barbera, Otrepo Pavese, Italy 2008
8. Mont Rocher Old Vines Carignan, Herault, France 2009
9. Rousseau de Sipian, Medoc, France, 2005
10. Gayda, T'air d'Oc, Pays d'Oc, France 2008
11. Lustau East India sweet oloroso, Spain

All wines cost around £7 - £10 per bottle (before case discounts), except the Medoc at £12.99 and the sweet oloroso at £17.99

Mount Brown tasting at Cambridge Wine Merchants

Earlier this week, I went to hear Catherine Keith, Sales and  Marketing Director of Mount Brown, a small, recently established family winery based in the up-and coming Waipara Valley on the South Island of New Zealand, present her own wines alongside some from other producers at the Mill Road branch of Cambridge Wine Merchants. There was probably an element of pragmatism in her decision to show not just her own wines, since the Mount Brown range is currently quite narrow with just four wines at present.

According to their website, Mount Brown is owned and managed by the Rutherfurd family. Tony Rutherfurd heads the commercial side of the business, his son Mike runs the vineyard operations and Catherine is responsible for sales and marketing. Tony apparently has been involved in horticulture since 1990 and viticulture since the late 1990s. Mike is the vineyard manager and Catherine who has lived in the UK since 1998 sells the wines directly to independent wine merchants throughout the south-east of England.

So, along with the Mount Brown Sauvignon, Riesling and Pinot Noir, were a sparkling rosé, plus a Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and Cab/Merlot blend from CWM's stocks.

I had tried the Sauvignon and Pinot a few weeks ago at an in-store tasting and Mill Road manager Matt Boucher invited me to come along to the event.

The sparkling rosé was something of a revelation for me - sparkling wines I can generally take or leave, whilst rosés I usually prefer to leave, but this one from Lindauer was yeasty, well-structured and reasonably complex with a good finish.

The first of Catherine's wines was a Sauvignon - it was highly aromatic and herbaceous on the nose with refreshing acidity and a good, clean finish. It hails from the Waipara Valley, further south than the more well-known Marlborough with a more restrained and leaner style as a result.

This was followed by a Chardonnay from Mahi which, for a wine aged in oak barriques remained surprisingly crisp and steely, but with some butterscotch on the finish. Catherine explained that the malolactic fermentation had been minimised, leaving crisper malic acid in place instead of it being turned into the more buttery lactic acid. I rather like buttery Chardies, so for me, this was a case of less is less.

We then tried a Pinot Gris from The Edge in Martinborough; with white stone fruit on the nose, refreshing acidity and good balance on the palate followed by a slightly off-dry finish, it seemed to be halfway between the lean and steely style of Pinot Grigio and the lush, perfumed tropical style of an Alsace Pinot Gris.

I am an unfashionably big fan of Riesling in either the Austrian style - ripe and full-bodied yet also minerally and completely dry - or the similar but slightly-less-bracing Alsace style. Catherine's Riesling was more in the German style which I am less familiar with - lighter and with some residual sugar, but still crisp and well-structured and as Matt Boucher pointed out, a great match for smoked salmon.

The star of the evening was the Pinot Noir - I had tried it at CWM a few weeks earlier and was impressed again by the hedonistic nose of truffles, woody mushrooms and forest floor. Garnet in colour, it is quite light on the palate with aromas of cherries and smooth, well-integrated tannins from some oak aging.

As Catherine pointed out, this wine comes from vines that are only 6 years old - mere infants, really - and yet it has won a Decanter Bronze. Expect subsequent vintages to keep improving as the vines age and produce more concentrated flavours - the same is probably true of all the Mount Brown wines as the Pinot vines are actually the oldest, being the first ones planted.

We finished off with a Bordeaux blend from Main Divide in Marlborough. Primarily Merlot-based, there were plums, dark forest fruit and vanilla on the nose from oak aging, a smooth rich palate of plums and a finish of well-integrated tannins.

All the wines were well-made, characterful, appealing and complex; some seemed to deliver rather more on the nose than on the palate, but this may well have been due to the specific local climatic conditions - it was a hot, close evening that night in Cambridge, resulting in the wines being perhaps a degree or two warmer than ideal serving temperature and therefore showing better on the nose than on the palate.

The event was very well attended with a range of people and some interesting comments and questions posed. One person tasting the Riesling said he was getting raw tuna on the nose (which I could sort of see) but also asked if there was any Merlot in the Chardonnay (there very obviously wasn't). Another, who explained it was her first wine-tasting, asked if tannin was a good thing and what did it taste like (the answers being yes if it's balanced and stewed tea respectively).

Links

Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/

Mount Brown - http://www.mountbrown.co.nz/

Lindauer (website) - http://www.lindauer.co.nz/

Lindauer (rosé tasting note) - http://www.pernod-ricard-pacific.com/TransferData/tastingNotes/pages/ICP-Communication/Communication_PRNZ/Tasting_Notes_PRNZ/Lindauer_Rose_NV.pdf

Warburn Estate Premium Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Barossa 2008 - Laithwaites

The New World generally, and Australia in particular, doesn't traditionally do terroir - wines there are considered to be expressions of their varietal characteristics, rather than of the soil types, aspect and climatic conditions where the grapes are grown. This is certainly true at the lower end of the price spectrum where most wines are labelled simply "South Eastern Australia" and can come from pretty much anywhere in the country.

Further up the quality scale, there are distinct areas of Australia which are better for grape growing than others - and Barossa is just about the best of these. So when you see the words Estate (with its connotations of specific, and therefore superior, growing areas), Barossa and Premium Reserve, you are expecting something a little more sophisticated. Throw in some oak-aging and it should be quite special.

This wine from Warburn Estate has a rich nose of cassis, vanilla and eucalyptus, the palate is full, rich and complex, well-rounded from aging in oak with lots of juicy, slightly jammy, blackcurrant up-front, but with more eucalyptus and spice, well-balanced with smooth tannins and good, long finish.

This wine is rather like a super-model who happens to be a member of Mensa - lots of up-front appeal, but actually rather sophisticated behind it. Certainly an enjoyable bottle, but for me, I would rather lose some of the alcohol level and gain a bit more subtlety. Pairing with food is a little tricky, however - the texture and complexity make this a food wine, but the jamminess risks overpowering most obvious matches, like plain roasted red meat - maybe a slow-roasted joint with a fruit sauce would do the trick, such as shoulder of lamb with redcurrant jelly.

£7.99 per bottle (plus delivery), available from Laithwaites.

Links

Warburn Estate - http://www.warburnestate.com.au/

Laithwaites - http://www.laithwaites.co.uk/