Côtes du Rhône Village Visan Veilles Vignes, Domaine La Guintrandy 2009

This is the second of three wines from La Guintrandy from the village of Visan in the southern Rhône - I was impressed with the entry-level Le Devès (reviewed here), but this is a rather more serious wine.

Made from low-yielding old vines aged between 30 and 50 years old, it is 90% Grenache with small amounts of two other southern red grapes, Carignan and the more noble Syrah.

The Guintrandy vineyard

The grapes for this wine are grown in the warmest part of the Le Devès area of Visan and, after a long maceration, the wine is aged completely in oak and is bottled unfiltered.

The end result is a whopping 15%; just pouring it into the decanter, I can already smell the rich nose of bramble fruit, prunes, tobacco, spice and vanillary oak. It's a heady combination - there's more of the same when sniffed from the glass but the palate is initially more dense and subdued. It's a big wine, but in a concentrated, old-world way without being too overcooked or perfumey.

With a bit more time, it opens up in the glass and shows more of the same rich cooked fruit, a sharp, sour-cherry acidity, some hints of truffley, woodsy undergrowth and pleasingly firm tannic grip on the finish.

It clearly has serious aging potential; with the bottle re-stoppered and sampled four days later it's still as intense as ever - more woodsy vanilla spice on the nose with a slap of leather and hints of coffee and menthol. On the palate, there's some sweet dark cherry fruit, pepperiness and spice and still plenty of grippy finish.

This is definitely a wine to lay down for a while to see it at its best, whereas the earlier Le Devès is drinking nicely now. There's also a strong sense of terroir here; Grenache usually makes big wines with perfume and richness, but little sense of restraint. By contrast, these old vines at altitudes of up to 230m have produced something much more focused and intense.

Like all the Patrimoine des Terroirs wines I have had so far, it is rounded enough to be drunk alone, but seems designed to go better with food and we found this matched well with simple roast lamb, seasoned with garlic and rosemary.

Links

Domaine La Guintrandy - http://www.vins-cuilleras.com/wine-domaine.htm

Patrimoine des Terroirs - http://patrimoinevin.canalblog.com/

More on Naked Wines - Offers and Competitions‏

As a Naked Angel, I get occasional emails from the company's founder, Rowan Gormley, with details of special offers and competitions to enter.

A while ago, I was tempted into buying a case of mixed wines for just the cost of the duty plus delivery - that worked out at the bargain price of about £2 per bottle.

I subsequently failed in my attempt to persuade Portuguese wine-maker Mário Negreiros that he should pick me as the winner of a competition to win a trip to visit his winery, but I learnt quite a bit about Portuguese wine in the process.

More recently, I was prompted into spending the £40 voucher I got when I signed up to the Angels scheme by the combined offer of a free bottle of D'Aquino Merlot (pictured left), apparently, one of just 400 available, along with 33% cashback (for Angels) and free delivery (overs over £100).

Naked's current competition, open to anyone in the UK, whether an Naked customer or not, is to declare their undying love to a sweetheart (just one, mind) on the Naked Wines site with a chance to wine a romantic prize, courtesy of winemaker Alessandro Botter.

Many years ago, I harboured ambitions of becoming a poet and scribbled down a few sonnets but common sense and financial realities subsequently prevailed and a career in accountancy beckoned.

It's a while now since I wrote any poems and, as someone who eschews the idea of over-priced gift-shop tat at this time of year, the closest I usually get to a declaration of love is surreptitiously supervising the kids making home-made valentine's cards for their Mum.

However, with the offer of a weekend in Venice on the cards, it's time to dust down those rhyming couplets and get composing - much harder than writing a tasting note.

Links

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

Naked Wines Valentine's Competition - http://www.nakedwines.com/groups/valentines-competition.htm

A Cup of Coffee in Vienna - Cafe Hawelka‏

For me, Vienna is synonymous with many things - the seat of the Habsburgs, the Holy Roman Empire, historic palaces and grand cathedrals, the waltzes of Strauss and clandestine assignations between cold-war spies and their spymasters.

So, it's hard to pick one thing that sums up the city - and that diversity and wealth of heritage is one of the reasons I love it so much.

One of the things I also loved when I lived there was sitting in coffee house, making a small cup of coffee last several hours, if I was in the mood, without ever feeling like I was being encouraged to move on.

In 1683, Vienna lay on the edge of civilised Christendom (some locals believe it still does); the Ottoman armies had lain siege to the Austrian capital and were only defeated when the combined forces of King Jan Sobieski of Poland and Duke Charles of Lorraine came to help.

Amongst the silk tents and banners left behind by the retreating Turks (who would take another 200 years to leave Europe) were sacks of mysterious brown beans.

Eschewing the other, more obvious plunder, one of the Austrian spies, a Polish-Ukrainian named Franz George Kolschitzky, took the beans and opened Austria's first coffee shop - mixing the thick, dark Turkish brew known as "Kahve" with milk and thus inventing the melange (ask for a cappuccino in Vienna and it will come with whipped cream on top).

The culture of the coffee house later received a boost from an unlikely source - namely, Emperor Franz Josef's eating habits; a bluff military man, he was a picky eater. However, as custom dictated that not only the sovereign be served first but also that everyone else stop as soon as he put down his knife and fork, this left many an attendee going hungry at what should have been a grand banquet and relying on a visit to the coffee house afterwards for sustenance.

Vienna's coffee houses have a rich tradition, then, of supporting courtiers, poets, musicians and even the odd exiled revolutionary, but when I lived in Vienna, my favourite coffee house was always the shabby but unhurried faded glamour of Cafe Hawelka - its Slavic name both indicative and typical of the mass immigration from the vassal states which Vienna experienced.

Situated just off the main pedestrianised street, the Graben, Hawelka epitomises gemütlichkeit - Austrian gentrified, down-at-heel cosiness; all the furniture has a reassuring romantic faded-glamour and a well-worn shabbiness to it and the welcome is as warm as any in Vienna.

One of the things we noticed living in Vienna was how low rents were compared to London. This is due to low land values, in turn as a result of a closed socialist economy.

It is these low overheads which allow a cafe in the centre of the city to welcome visitors for a coffee costing just a few Euros and not encourage them to leave the minute they have finished.

What I also like about Hawelka is how genuine it feels - in some cities it would have been turned into a quasi-tourist attraction, with a queue to get in, high prices and t-shirts plus other assorted souvenirs available for purchase as you exit through the gift shop.

That said, the Austrians are not too shabby when it comes to marketing themselves and there is a range of Hawelka merchandise available from coffee (obviously) to posters and playing cards.

In other cafes, you would feel the need or at least the obligation to move on as soon as you have finished, but here an atmosphere of relaxed, calm lounging pervades, in which it feels rude to move on too quickly.

This love of la dolce vita in a Germanic country confirmed my suspicions that the Austrians must be the missing link between the Germans and the Italians.

Yes, they like to lounge and they have a propensity for petty politics and scandal, but they can also make the trams run on time and keep the street clean.

It's one of the reasons Austria is such a special place for me and why, for me, coffee is one of the things that symbolises Vienna above all.

As the Hawelka website puts it: while the Glory Years may have passed, it is the outside world that has changed and not the Café Hawelka. It still provides a refuge for many artists, writers and musicians.

Links

Hawelka - http://www.hawelka.at/

Further Confessions of a Bin-End Browser - Actino Airén VDLT, 2008, Bodegas Juan Ramirez‏

When buying a bin-end wine for 25p, one's expectations are pretty low - hopefully, it's at least good enough for the cooking.

When it's an out-of-date, non-descript Airén - unofficially the world's most widely planted and dullest white grape - from "somewhere" in Spain (VDLT, Vino de la Tierra, is lowly, generic "country wine"), one's expectations are further lowered.

On opening, it has an earthy, yeasty toastiness on the nose and a pleasant lemoniness on the palate. Also on the plus side are that it's balanced and restrained. It pretty much goes without saying that there's not much in the way of complexity - texture and finish are pretty minimal too.

So, what there is here is enjoyable enough - there's nothing bad; it's just that there isn't much at all. I've had worse - usually at works' Christmas parties - but after a few mouthfuls, I decide that the rest can go in the cooking sometime and reseal the bottle.

Out of curiosity (I've never had Airén before), I sample it a couple more times over the next few days and, amazingly, it improves - after five days in a cool kitchen (it's currently winter in Cambridge), it develops a pleasantly minerally backbone, rather like a reasonable Muscadet.

It's still no show-stopper, but worth every one of the twenty-five pennies it cost me - realistically, I'd happily pay around four quid for this.

Finding the Bodegas Juan Ramirez website (see links), I see that some of their wines are prize-winners, but there is no mention of this one - the bottle itself has a plain "white-label" front and no back, so it is probably some kind of prototype trade sample.

Links

Bodegas Juan Ramirez - http://www.bodegasjuanramirez.com/

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

Chateau Les Vieux Ormes, 2006, Lalande-de-Pomerol

Lalande-de-Pomerol is a small region just to the north of the more well-known Pomerol, famous as the home of the world's most expensive wine, Le Pin.

Lalande-de-Pomerol is said to produce at least some wines with a distinct resemblance to those of Pomerol - however, lacking any familiarity with Pomerol wines, it's hard to know what that resemblance might be or establish whether it is indeed there or not.

So this bottle has to be judged on its own merits alone, and not in relation to any other, more famous neighbours. That said, it is made by winemaker J. Paul Garde of Domaine du Grand Ormeau (but does not appear on the domaine's website - perhaps it was a limited run of lesser grapes).

At five years old, instinct tells me this wine may be a little young to be showing its best, but we decide to try it anyway - there's always the decanter to help open things up if need be.

There is not so much on the nose, but the palate shows lots of ripe blackcurrant, bramble fruit and some spice; the texture is soft with good length. Overall, it is impressive in an enjoyable and well-made way, rather than being overly chewy or densely structured, as I had expected, or overly complex.

It has a Decanter Bronze, which feels about right.

 There is no indication of the grape varieties, but being from a right-bank AOC, it is likely to be mainly Merlot.

Price unknown, as it was a gift, but available from Freixenet (DWS) Ltd, Berkshire.

Freixenet (DWS) Ltd
Unit 23 / Wellington Business Park
Dukes Ride
Crowthorne
Berkshire RG45 6LS
01344 758500

Links

Domaine du Grand Ormeau - http://www.domaine-grand-ormeau.com/
Château Les Vieux Ormes on Decanter - http://www.decanter.com/dwwa/2009/dwwa_search.php?rsearch=FRX

Clos De La Bressande, Mâcon-Villages, 2009 - Domaine Sangouard-Guyot

Burgundy is perhaps the least homogenous of all French wine regions and is really four distinct areas lumped together as one.

The southern, white-wine Mâconnais area is generally dismissed as one of the lesser regions, albeit it does have a couple of slightly more regarded sub-regions- Mâcon-Villages and Pouilly-Fuissé.

If the geography and vineyard ownership of Burgundy is immensely complex - a legacy of the Napoleonic inheritance system which divided up plots of land into ever smaller sections - thankfully, the grape varieties are much more straightforward and familiar; essentially, Pinot Noir for reds and Chardonnay for whites.

These two, now stars in their own right, have vastly differing profiles - Chardonnay is every New World wine-maker's favourite and reliably produces vast quantities of tropical, buttery toasty whites, whilst Pinot Noir is the Prima Donna of the wine world, demanding just the right conditions to coax out its greatest performances.

It can come as quite a surprise then to remember that Chardonnay's spiritual home is actually France and not the Australian outback, but, once remembered, it should be no shock that the style of wine from this temperate-climate region is typically Old-World.

This Mâcon-Villages from Domaine Sangouard-Guyot, a member of the Patrimoine des Terroirs winemakers' association, is therefore quite different from a New-World chardie; there's not so much on the nose, and whilst the palate shows plenty of clean, refreshing lemony fruit and some elderflower, there is not the array of exotic, tropical exuberance that leaves one reaching for the Thesaurus.

There's no oak either, but this is no steely Chablis; rather, there's a mouthfilling, savoury richness; focused but rounded, it is - curiously but pleasantly - almost approaching a Riesling in style.

What impresses most, then, is not any vast variety of flavours or aromas, but the more structural matters - the mouthfilling texture, the rich-yet-refreshing balance between fruit, acidity, body and richness, and especially the depth, intensity and length of the flavour. Again, more like a good Riesling than a New-World chardie.


Re-reading wine-maker Pierre-Emmanuel Sangouard's notes on the wine, the reasons for this become obvious - the grapes are all hand-picked and gently pressed for freshness and quality and aged for 10 months on the lees in tanks to give a savoury, creamy richness.

Catherine Sangouard also explained to me that she feels the New World has done a disservice to the Chardonnay grape through excessive oaking and, as she puts it, "people are not so keen on woody stuff", adding "there is no oak at all, our Mâcon-Villages is aged in tanks; we strongly believe in the notion of terroir and it is important to work as close as possible to nature in order to extract the best of it. No need to add things (like wood) to make a good Chardonnay !".

The back label suggests this is a wine for early drinking rather than aging, but I suspect it will continue to improve for at least bit longer.

Chardonnay is one of the most food-friendly white wines around and matches well with roast chicken, white fish and almost anything in a creamy sauce.

Provided for review.

Links

Domaine Sangouard - http://www.domaine-sangouard-guyot.com/

Domaine de La Sanglière, Cuvée Prestige Rouge, Côtes de Provence, 2008‏

When you think of Provence, if you think of wine at all (rather than, say, retired middle class Brits in smocks doing art courses), it's probably of rosé.

A southern land of long, lazy lunches, a slower pace of life and the scent of oleanders and lavender, favoured by writers and artists, Provence is not generally known for its seriousness - or for any serious claims to be a classic wine-making area, either.

The local grapes do not generally help matters - one of the main red / rosé varieties, Grenache, is a big blowsy Essex girl of a grape with lots of up-front personality, but not too much class or breeding.

Recently, that has all started to change; although vines were first introduced to Provence over 2,500 years ago, it is only since the 1970s that cultivation of poorer varieties has been reduced and new technologies and methods have improved the quality considerably.

Domaine de La Sanglière, a member of the Patrimoine des Terroirs association, based in the idyllically-named Bormes les Mimosas, traces its history back to just 1980 when Francois Devictor moved from Vaucluse to start a winery here. It is now run by his two sons (pictured right, enjoying the fruits of their labours) and enjoys a Mediterranean climate with marine breezes which moderate both the high temperatures of the summer and the lows of the winter; production is mainly - inevitably - rosé, but also reds and whites.

This Cuvée Prestige Rouge shows an interesting mixture of styles - part blowsy Grenache, it has some more serious Syrah and Cab in the blend and is made from vines almost 30 years old, with fermentation in steel and aging in oak, so that at each turn there are elements of seriousness alongside pure fun.

The result is a wine that seems undecided on whether to waltz, or kick off its shoes and dance round a handbag.

Dark in the glass, it has a rich Mediterranean nose of garrigue herbs, ripe bramble fruit, toasty oak, woodsy forest floor and vanilla.

Decanted initially and then sampled over a couple of evenings, the aromas vary - first strawberries, then coffee and finally some tarriness.

On the palate, it is mouthfilling and juicy-fruity, with a pleasantly baked character and more toasty oak; it is very smooth and moreish with soft tannins. The long finish is mouthwateringly juicy with a final hint of tannic grip.

It matches well with the classiness of a roast beef dinner, but is equally at home with a simple plate of salami and cheese.

€9.50 - provided for review

Links

Domaine de La Sanglière - http://www.domaine-sangliere.com/

Patrimoine des Terroirs - http://patrimoinevin.canalblog.com/