Mosel Tasting with Weingut Scholtes at Cambridge Food and Wine Society

It was an evening of firsts for me - I have had quite a bit of Mosel wine before, firstly on a driving and wine-buying holiday (reviewed here) and more recently a tasting at the London Fine Wine Fair (reviewed here). However, I had never previously tried sparkling Riesling or German Cab, or had a German Pinot Noir that I really liked.

The Cambridge Food and Wine Society is on something of a run of having producers come and present their wines, as GianPaolo Paglia presented his wines from Poggio Argentiera earlier this year (reviewed here).

Hans-Peter Scholtes of Weingut Scholtes comes from a wine-making family going back 300 years and runs a genuinely family business making a range of wines from 6ha of vineyards in Minheim in the Mosel.

A view of the Mosel

The Mosel valley is a bucolic stretch of meandering river with steep terraces on either side; the river winds so much that it takes 40km to cover a straight-line distance of just 25km - how very un-Germanic.

In fact the Mosel does not fit neatly into any German stereotypes; quietly rural, with rolling hills, it is neither urban and industrial nor mountainous and forested with no beer halls or oompah bands.

The first wine Hans-Peter presented was a Champagne-method sparkling Riesling, something I have never tried before; it was crisp, refreshing and delicate, with fine bubbles and honeyed notes, very different from a yeasty, biscuity Champagne. Hans-Peter explained that whilst the secondary fermentation in bottle is Champagne method, he does not blend across years to achieve a house style (as is done in Champagne) but allows each year's vintage to express itself. With an (again un-Germanic) sense of irony, he suggested that a blending approach results in predictable and boring wines.

From this point, we tried the wines in pairs: the first pairing was two dry Rieslings, a from 2009, the first light and everyday, the second a spaetlese (literally, late-harvested) from old vines which was riper and fuller.

German red wines to me have historically been little more than a curious novelty - often the most notable thing about them is that they are produced at all. However, a pair of reds, a Pinot Noir and a Cabernet Sauvignon) were notable in their own right.

Light, yet complex, balanced and rounded, the 2010 Pinot was unfiltered and had aromas of cherries, vanilla and classic Pinot farmyard.

Cabernet is frequently tough, tannic and unapproachable in its youth - especially if it is good - but this 2007 was soft and well-balanced. Hans-Peter explained that he had grown the grapes as an experiment and, on first tasting the resulting wine, was disappointed with the results. He then put the wine into barrels of various oaks (US, French and Hungarian) and eventually decided that one year in new US oak followed by a year in new French oak was the best combination.

The next pairing was two off-dry whites - a Johanniter which was refreshing and clean and a Riesling spaetlese from old vines which was again fuller and fleshier.

Wine fashions seem to move in opposite and equal cycles and the current trend for unoaked and crisp, dry whites seems to have resulted in a preference for oaked and off-dry reds, so it's hard to know what the zeitgeist will make of these two off-dry white - as with all of Hans-Peter's wines, they were well-made, well-balanced and a delight to drink, if more suited to the garden than the dining room.

The last three wines were all stickies; first a delicious-but-light sweet spaetlese from 2007, followed by a pair of aged sweet auslese wines from 2003 and 1990 respectively.

The younger of these had a distinctly pungent nose of botrytis whilst the second had the classic aged Riesling nose of kerosene. Like many of us approaching our middle age, whilst its essential character was unchanged, the dramatic urgency of its youth had mellowed into something more rounded.

Hans-Peter explained that all his wines have a story to tell and the 1990 was the last vintage he made with his father.

Finally, Hans-Peter presented a grappa made from Riesling; pink in colour from aging in ex-Cab barrels, it was powerful and fiery.

Somebody apparently once said after seeing a picture of England football captain David Beckham modelling designer clothes, "That guy is talented, I hear he plays soccer, too !"

Hans-Peter is equally talented - after hearing him give an informative, entertaining and witty talk in a foreign language, I was impressed to think he also makes great wines too.

The food for the event was Germanic - if not actually German - and came from Kipferl, London's only Austrian delicatessen (more details here).

Links

Weingut Scholtes - http://www.scholtes-weingut.de/

Cambridge Food and Wine Society - http://www.cambridgefoodandwinesociety.org.uk/

Kipferl - http://www.kipferl.co.uk/

Exploring German Regionality‏ at the 2010 Fine Wine Fair, Chelsea

A while ago, I went wine-buying in the Mosel Valley and was very impressed with a clutch of wines I bought there, so I was keen to visit the Wines of Germany stand at the recent Fine Wine Fair in Chelsea in London.

Generally, for Germanic whites I tend to look either to Austria (for historic reasons - I used to live there) or Alsace, so whilst the grape varieties of Germany are familiar to me, I am less aware of the nuances and regional variations.

Riesling is the white grape most associated with Germany - it originated in the Rhine region and is considered highly "terroir-expressive", that is highly influenced by and expressive of where it is grown.

To me, Riesling is the great white grape variety - when made well (and dry) it is crisp, thrilling, slatey and minerally with honeyed undertones it is refreshingly complex, mouthfilling and extremely food friendly.

I first fell in love with Riesling from Austria, with its warm climate and fashion for fully-dry wines; I am less familiar with German Rieslings so I was keen to find out more.

The first wine was a spaetlese trocken from Sybille Kuntz. The basis of German wine law is a system of classifying not places (such as Bordeaux) or grape varieties (such as Shiraz), but grape ripeness - i.e. sugar content and potential alcohol level. In the case of this wine, spaetlese means the grapes are (literally) late-harvest, but trocken indicates that the wine is fully dry; like all the wines here, it was a textbook Riesling, with grapefruit and apple on the nose and a tight, limey finish.

The next wine was a von Buhl Riesling from the Pfalz, further south and sunnier than the Mosel. It was noticeably fuller and fleshier than the previous more northerly version.

Next up was another Mosel Riesling from Dr Loosen; with a clean, flinty zippiness, this was similar in style to the first.

The following wine was from the Rheingau, east of the Mosel, and was again riper and fleshier than the two Mosels.

The last two Rieslings were both from the Mosel again felt leaner. The first of these was a zesty and herbaceous Fritz Haag was harvested at spaetlese levels, but fermented to dryness whilst the final one was a light (just 8.5%) and crisp wine from Max Ferd. Richter.

One of the great things about a wine fair is the opportunity to dive into a relatively specialist area and come out with a much greater understanding of its nuances, to spend half-an-hour or so being guided through a range of wines on an one-to-one basis.

What I really noticed with these wines is how bracing and minerally the Mosel Rieslings are with an unmistakable crisp, racy nose whilst those from the Pfalz further south are slightly fuller, fleshier and more rounded.

As with the Bordeaux section, it was really informative to focus quite narrowly (a single grape here, a single region there) and explore the nuances in more detail.

All the wines at the German stand were delicious and, with only one partial exception, fully dry yet balanced on the finished and not too bracing.

Ironically, given that German wine law does not recognise the concept of terroir or even regionality, I came away with a much deeper understanding of the differences between regions.

The Wines

Riesling Spaetlese trocken, Sybille Kuntz, Mosel (£13.95) from OW Loeb
Riesling Qualitaetswein, Reichsrat von Buhl, Pfalz (£9.99) from Laithwaite's
Riesling Qualitaetswein, Dr Loosen, Mosel (£9.49) from Laithwaite's
Riesling Kabinett trocken, August Kessler, Rheingau (£12.75) from Justerini & Brooks
Riesling QmP, Fritz Haag, Mosel (£13.75) from Justerini & Brooks
Riesling Kabinett, Max Ferd. Richter (£12.50) from Fortnum & Mason and others


Links

Fine Wine Fair - http://www.finewinefair.org/

Wines of Germany website - http://www.winesofgermany.co.uk/

OW Loeb - http://www.owloeb.com/

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

Justerini & Brooks - http://www.justerinis.com/

Fortnum & Mason - http://www.fortnumandmason.com/

East India Sherry - Bodegas Emilio Lustau

A while ago, I presented a couple of sherries to some colleague at a wine tasting - the dry oloroso was wonderful but bombed with an audience for whom oaked whites are seriously out-of-fashion; however, the sweet one proved very popular.

Sweet sherry is stereo-typically the preserve of old maids or your auntie who likes a nip of something sweetened and made for the UK market alone (think certain "cream" sherries).

However, true sweet sherry is an absolute delight and, when well made, like this one from Lustau, is almost a dessert in itself. Oily and dark in the glass, with a rich, heady nose of toffee, nuts, dried fruit and caramelised sugar, it is like drinking Christmas pudding.

Several things mark this out as particularly good; the depth and complexity of the flavours themselves - the richness of figs, toast, nuts and dried fruit - but also the balance and smoothness from aging in the solera system which mixes younger wines with ever older ones to maintain balance. It has a long rich finish and is cut through with just the right amount of acidity to keep things in check.

The name "East India" refers to the journey the wine used to make to the colonies where it gradually acquired a rather wonderful cooked flavour - like Madeira. In both cases, sadly, the process no longer involves sailing ships and the oceans, but the recreation of conditions in a humid cellar or garret somewhere.

Bodegas Emilio Lustau was founded in 1896 and owns two Vineyards in the area of Jerez. The Viña Montegilillo, located on the north of the “Jerez Superior” zone in an area called Carrascal whose albariza soil is ideal for growing the Palomino grape to produce dry wines, such as Manzanilla, Fino, Amontillado and Oloroso.

Near the coast, between Sanlúcar and Chipiona, the sandy soils of the Las Cruces vineyard provide the Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel for the production of sweet wines.

This is a blend of 60% dry oloroso (which originally started life as a Manzanilla) and 40% Pedro Ximénez and has an IWC Silver medal.

When matching dessert wines to puddings, the trick is to keep the wine sweeter than the pudding itself or else it will taste overly acidic. Typical matches for something as rich as this are fruit cake and sticky toffee pudding.

Below, however, is a very simple recipe for roasted nectarines which goes perfectly with a glass or two of this.

Roasted nectarines with clotted cream ice-cream

Allow 1/2 nectarine per person for a small portion or a whole nectarine for a more indulgent serving.

Halve the nectarines and remove the stones

Put enough butter in the bottom of a roasting dish to make a thin layer and place in a pre-heated oven until it melts (a few minutes).

Add the nectarines to the roasting dish, sprinkle on some vanilla sugar and add a squeeze of lemon juice and a little of the sweet oloroso sherry

Roast at around 150C for 45 mins, turning once or twice and adding more vanilla sugar at each turning - the nectarines should be gently roasted and the liquid should have caramelised,

Place the cooked nectarines on a plate, top with the clotted cream ice-cream, drizzle over some of the caramelised pan juices and finally pour on a drop more sherry.

Serve with a glass of the sherry.

Links

Lustau - http://www.lustau.es/index_en.html#bodegas_lustau

Drinks with Colleagues - Eulennest in Vienna, Austria

A few years ago, I lived and worked in Vienna - present-day Austria's capital and the historic imperial city of various empires (Austrian, Holy Roman and Austro-Hungarian). It's a beautiful place and at the time was undergoing something of a quiet, steady revolution, and transforming itself from a sleepy, time-warped, patrician capital into a vibrant and sophisticated city.

It was the type of place where amongst the imposing Gothic cathedrals and sprawling Imperial palaces of old Vienna, you would find sophisticated wine bars and fusion restaurants of new Vienna; a great place to try Austrian wines which have improved dramatically since the anti-freeze scandal of 1980s.

Austria is in almost every sense wedged between Germany and Italy - it has a Germanic thoroughness, precision and obsession with process, yet a decidedly Italian sense of well-being, lifestyle and of life lived out outdoors (at least during the long, hot summers). It was also a regular meeting place for the spies of east and west and has a Balkan love of spicy foods, strong liquor and scandal, but those are different stories.

At the time, Vienna had a number of restaurants which in my youthful naivete, I thought were rather good; now older and wiser, I realise they were brilliant and worthy of at least a Michelin star, in some cases more.

Occasionally, I would get a visit from someone from our London head office and since the best work conversations are had not over the phone or in meetings, but relaxing out-of-hours, I would arrange a meal in one of my favourite restaurants after which we would head off to chew the fat over a few glasses of something local at a wine bar.

My favourite was always Eulennest - the name means Owl's Nest and the cosy interior is decorated with owls of various sorts attached to the rafters, with a few seats outside when the weather is good (basically April - September) and an ever-changing range of wines by the glass or bottle.

I became enough of a regular there to get to know owner Florian Deutsch, a very welcoming and genial host, and we would always chat for a while about the new wines he had in the shop and which to try first.

Florian does meet-and-greet with great charisma whilst wife Andrea Papez Deutsch oversees the deli counter stocked with Italian prosciutto and salamis, Austrian and French cheeses and also makes light pasta dishes and tapas.

Official opening hours always seemed more of an aspirational guideline than a strict formality (again the Italian winning out over the Germanic) and when the conversation was flowing, as often it was, I often watched Florian gently encouraging some of the more talkative regulars that it really was time to be heading off before quietly admitting defeat myself and wandering back home.

The wines stocked at Eulennest change regularly and seemed to come from the smaller independent Austrian producers, as there was rarely anything I had tried before.

In late 2008, Eulennest opened its second branch just off the ring on Operngasse.

Eulennest: A-1010 Wien, Himmelpfortgasse 13, and A-1040 Wien, Operngasse 30

Links

Eulennest - http://www.eulennest.at/

Eating out - Hotel Du Vin, Cambridge

It was a day to mark in the CWB household which called for something out of the ordinary - central Cambridge is a beautiful place and a regular feature on the tourist circuit, but rather as a result of this, the quality of restaurants in the centre of town is not generally that great.

However, in recent years, the city has smartened its act up a little and with ever more London commuters living in and around the city, demand for decent restaurants has increased.

A few years ago, hoardings went up in front of a row of late-Victorian townhouses on Trumpington Street just opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum. What emerged shortly afterwards was Cambridge's newest sophisticated bistro and luxury hotel, the Hotel Du Vin.

Hotel Du Vin is an upmarket chain of 14 hotels (at present) owned by the Massey Partnership which oddly claims to be a PR firm, albeit specialising in luxury travel and luxury goods. The Hotel Du Vin website talks of "quintessential British style. Elegant and unpretentious. Combine this with great spirit, wit, an unquestionable devotion to wine, and you have captured the essence of Hotel du Vin".

I had popped in there a few months ago for a quick, informal business meeting with a contact after work and was very impressed by the quirky and sensitive use of space and the cosy, yet modern and unpretentious feel.

The Hotel Du Vin wine cellar


For this visit to the bistro, I was attracted by the homegrown and local menu on offer and wondered what seasonal east Anglian produce might be on offer in late autumn.

One of my principles of eating out is to try something different from what we might normally have at home and more or less as a result of this, our choices for all three courses were made for us. Eschewing the pumpkin soup (with Hallowe'en just over, we'd had plenty of this) and sausages (a staple of CWB dinners), we went for pork pie followed by pollock.

The pork pie was dense and meaty, with a satisfying pastry crust; it was served with garnished leaves and a delicious plum chutney with just the right amount of spice and a great balance between sweet and sharp.

The pollock came with chorizo and a gently spiced tomato sauce with again, a noticeable-but-restrained flavour of cumin, and sat on a small bed of wilted dark green leaves.
 
As it was lunchtime and we had two small and demanding children to get back home to, we limited ourselves to a couple of glasses of Manzanilla sherry; salty, dry and pungently yeasty, it was also superbly well-balanced with great length and depth of flavour.
 
When the dessert menu came round, we had already decided and ordered the sticky toffee pudding and chantilly cream without hesitation. Like the rest of the meal, it was simple yet full of delicious flavour and excellently made - the pudding light, just the right amount of rich toffee sauce not to be too cloying and the sweet chantilly cream balancing it all out perfectly.
 
And thinking back, that balance was the theme of the meal - nothing too flashy or obviously crowd-pleasing, but really well-cooked and well-balanced food kept simple yet sophisticated.

In a city like Cambridge with so much passing trade, it takes a certain degree of confidence, if not bravery, to serve food which impresses not with immediate flashiness but with quiet, understated confidence. As a Cambridge resident - and not a tourist - it's a decision I appreciate.

A lunchtime meal for two from the Homegrown and Local menu with drinks, service and charitable donation cost £60.

Links

Hotel Du Vin - http://www.hotelduvin.com/

Massey Partnership - http://www.massey.co.uk/

Arabella Reserve Shiraz Viognier 2008, South Africa - Naked Wines

I first came across Syrah/Shiraz-Viognier as a blend relatively recently in a very impressive wine from New Zealand (reviewed here).

At the time, it was not (to me) an immediately obvious combination - Syrah (re-named Shiraz in the New World) produces mineral and tannic wines in its spiritual home of Hermitage in the northern Rhône, whilst Viognier (also originally from the Rhône) is something of a peachy, apricotty Chardonnay wannbee - but somehow it works, the two going together "like carrots and peas", according to the Naked Wines website.

This South African example from the Robertson Valley is the second wine I have tried from Naked and I was very impressed with the first - a Pfalz Riesling, reviewed here - so expectations were high for this one.

On the nose there are the typical Syrah/Shiraz aromas of blackberry, damson and plum, with hints of liquorice and pencil shavings, plus some vanilla from oak-aging.

The palate shows more fruit, some peppery spice and hints of coffee and chocolate with a wonderfully smooth texture and good length - as with the previous wine from Naked, it feels extremely well-made and balanced.

It is almost too easy to enjoy, but whilst there is some noticeable "new-world" style ripeness here, there's enough of a contrast from the toasty oak, coffee notes and smooth tannins to make it balanced, complex and "grown-up".

We could easily have finished the bottle off in an evening, but in the interests of seeing it develop, we re-corked and sampled the remainder over two more days. On days two and three, it was increasingly fuller, more complex and nuanced, with less of the obviously crowd-pleasing fruit and more of the interesting savoury aromas.

Based on that, I would happily lay this down for at least a year and expect something even more impressive to emerge.

Winemaker Stephen de Wet is based in Robertson Valley - a hot, dry inland area of South Africa.

In his 2004 Pocket Wine Book, Oz Clarke describes Robertson as undergoing a red revolution and Stephen is clearly one of those young Turks. However, he is also the 15th generation to be making wines on his farm - so much for this being the new world ! - and has a clutch of awards including Double Gold Veritas Wine Awards 2008 and Michelangelo Double Gold 2007. He also won Best Value Wine Award for 3 years running, Wine Magazine, 2006 to 2008.

Involved in wine-making from a tender age, Stephen started his Arabella winery from scratch in 2006 and with the help of his children Nicky and Jamie, turned it into a family business.

The Arabella name is a reference to the Arabian horses which Stephen keeps as an enthusiastic endurance rider.

£9.99 / £6.66 for Angels - provided for review.

For more details on Naked Wines' "Angels" scheme - see this summary from US blogger Arnold Waldstein, here.

For a review of a more recent vintage, see Old Parn's review here, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Arabella Wines - http://www.arabellawines.com/

Arnold Waldstein - http://arnoldwaldstein.com/

Old Parn - http://oldparn.com/

Wine-buying (and dining) in Vienna, Austria; Wein & Co

A few years ago, I used to travel to Vienna regularly on business - it's a wonderful city, not that easy to live in as a foreigner, but great to visit.

It's also where I learnt about how wonderful Austrian wines are - even if very few people are aware of it. I have written elsewhere about the recently history of Austrian wine-making, the glycol scandal of the mid-'80s and subsequent clean-up of the industry and shift towards a fully-dry style.

Austrian wines are now some of the best in the world and quite unique - the Wachau produces Rieslings that are full and ripe, yet crisp, minerally and completely dry from the likes of Prager and Knoll; in Styria, Tement and Polz cultivate more aromatic varieties, such as Sauvignon Blanc, that are fully ripe yet piercingly dry, due in part to the long growing season, in vineyards up to 650m above sea level; the Neusidlersee region of Burgenland, with its ideal conditions for botrytis, produces some of my favourite dessert wines of anywhere in the world from Velich and Kracher.

This is not the place to give a history of Vienna as the seat of the Habsburg monarchy and later capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but suffice it to say that the city was important enough for long enough to have quite a few nice buildings - rather more than quite a few, actually.

Prague may be the favourite historic city of back-packers and stag-nighters and Budapest may have the new buzz, but Vienna remains classy, elegant and sophisticated, if still resolutely traditional and old-fashioned in some ways.

Austria shook off the slumber of 40 years' independent isolation in the mid-1990s by entering the European Union; since then, it has become an increasingly vibrant country, leading to a feel of there being both a "new" and "old" Austria co-existing in the same physical space.



Stephansdom, with Haas Haus
in the left foreground

Just one example of this can be found on Stephansplatz, the centre of Vienna, where the beautiful gothic Stephansdom stands opposite the controversial, post-modern Haas Haus - a shiny, curved shopping mall with a restaurant favoured by Nikki Lauda at the top.

Just round the corner from here is Wein & Co's central Vienna wine shop and bar - this independent Austrian chain of upmarket wine merchants has just under 20 branches, mostly in Vienna but also in other major Austrian cities such as Salzburg, Innsbruck and Klagenfurt.

Wein & Co seems to epitomise everything that "new" Austria stands for, without losing any of the charm of "old" Austria. It stocks an excellent range of new-wave Austrian wines and also has an extremely sophisticated website which includes their "Movie Stars" series of podcasts - short films of telegenic Wein & Co staff presenting the company's wines.

Another innovation is the Wein & Co bars, of which there are three in Vienna - the flagship Stephansplatz branch was a regular haunt for me not just for buying wine, but also for dinner after work.

The concept is simple yet brilliant - half the floorspace is given over to a traditional wine shop, whilst the other half is a bar; the wines available in the bar come from the shop and the mark-up is just €2. For that, they will even chill your white wine down to cellar temperature in a couple of minutes.

The menu is typical bar food - simple, but well-made and full of flavour, and as you'd expect, all well-matched to a range of wines; each item on the menu has a coloured sticker to indicate the type of wine suited to it (red, white, light, full-bodied etc) and then there is a suggestion list for each style of wine.

Austrian food is traditionally stodgy and heavy central European fare reflecting the tastes of the various vassal states over which Vienna held sway - Hungarian goulash, Czech dumplings, that sort of thing. You won't find any of that at Wien & Co, however, and the food tends to be more Italian-inspired, with pasta dishes and fish frequently featuring. Just the kind of food that washes down well with a ripe-yet-dry, minerally and crisp Riesling from the Wachau.

After all that modernity and "new" Austria, you then step out into the street opposite the front of the Stephansdom from where a wander up the Graben to the Hofburg is the perfect round-off to an evening.

And suddenly it all makes sense; the "old" and the "new" co-existing harmoniously and producing something infinitely more interesting than either on its own, just as the wines themselves seem at first contradictory - harsh and forbidding, yet balanced and full - but on closer acquaintance show great balance and concentration.


Wein & Co, Wien Stephansplatz, Jasomirgottstrasse 3-5, 1010 Wien

Links

Wein & Co - http://www.weinco.at/

Knoll - http://www.loibnerhof.at/

Prager - http://www.weingutprager.at/


Polz - http://www.polz.co.at/cms/start.php

Tement - http://www.tement.at/index.cfm?action=intro

Velich - http://www.velich.at/

Kracher - http://www.kracher.at/