Two Years Old Today

It is now two years to the day since I started the CambridgeWineBlogger, so it seems appropriate at this point to have a brief retrospective.

I started it during some down time at work as a way to record my experiences as a member of and occasional presenter for the Cambridge Food and Wine Society.

Things were pretty slow at first until several things happened all around the same time:

- firstly, I got into the habit of regularly reviewing wines online and found I could no longer "just drink" a wine, but had to make an assessment of it, even if only mentally (this is what Philip Goodband MW calls "building a taste memory")

- secondly, I got blogger stats and developed and unhealthy fascination with seeing which of my posts were being read and in which countries.

- thirdly, a few whizzy PR agencies with a digital brief started contacting me with press releases and invitations to review wines (which I always disclose).

As a result of the blog, I have rekindled my love of Austrian Wines at the Institute of Directors, travelled up to Naked Wines HQ for a speed tasting and met one of the greatest wine writers of all in person.

I have also made virtual friendships with a number of fellow wine enthusiasts, bloggers, professionals and a couple of MWs whose advice, comments and general wisdom have encouraged and challenged my thinking; there are now several posts on this blog that have come about directly as a result of online discussions on topics such as blind tasting, promoting Portuguese wines, texture and aeration.

I have never made any money out of the blog - it's still just a hobby for me, albeit one that periodically allows me to meet talented and passionate winemakers and sample a far wider and better range of wines than I would otherwise be able to.

I have also met many people in the wine trade - some with huge amounts of experience and knowledge, others doing completely new and innovative things.

In the two years of the blog, I have probably learnt as much about writing and communicating as I have about wine. I have learnt a bit about social media, too, but consider myself far from being an expert.

My ambitions for the blog are still not fully formed - my only thought is to keep writing and posting for as long as I enjoy it.

And so, on its second birthday, I raise a glass of something appropriate and say "Happy Birthday" to the CWB.

Slow Wine Tasting - Italian Artisan Wines

Until recently, Italian wines were something of a closed book to me - I knew the theory and the names of the various grapes and regions, but somehow had not quite "got" why the wines are so great.

My "road-to-Damascus" moment occurred at a tasting of Italian wines with GianPaolo Paglia, a winemaker from Poggio Argentiera in Tuscany, presenting to the Cambridge Food and Wine Society (see here). As GianPaolo explained that for an Italian, the wine is just another part of the meal and plays a supporting role to the food, suddenly, it all made sense - the characteristic intense, rasping, linear acidity of Italian wine is there to cut through the food that it is to be matched with. These are not wines with lots of easy-going fruit aromas for simple quaffing - it's about structure, rather than flavour.

At the recent Slow Wine event in London to promote the launch of the Slow Wine iApp (reviewed here), I got a chance to try a range of artisan wines from all over the country; in general, most of the wines were traditionally food-friendly in style but with a balanced freshness - a good mix of the traditional and the modern. All were well-made and proved to be at least very good, if not excellent.

Although Slow Wine's criteria for accreditation focus on inputs (vineyard practices, production techniques and winemaker values) as much as simply on outputs (the quality of the resulting wines), this just seems to prove that if you get things right up-front, good results will follow.

Veneto

I started with two single-vineyard Soaves from Leonildo Pieropan; from 2008, they had a little bottle age and were particularly good examples - with lemony elderflower on the nose and palate, they were fresh, mouthfilling and minerally.

Marche

Bucci Classico, a Verdicchio from Bucci, was rich, leesy with some lemony savouriness on the palate; very food friendly, it would match perfectly with wild mushroom pasta in a creamy sauce.

The Riserva, a step-up which had some toasty hazelnuts on the nose and hints of elderflower on the finish, was blended from a mixture of old vines for richness and younger vines for freshness.

Senor Ampelio Bucci then poured me a sample from a bottle that had been open for several hours and the improvement with some air was striking - it felt noticeably more opened up and had a much longer finish.

He then showed me how he gauges the development of his wines with age - after rolling a tiny amount of wine around the inside of the glass, he leaves it for several hours, coming back periodically to check the development of the aromas.

Piedmonte

The 2006 Barolo Ravera from Elvio Cogno was smooth and elegant with lots of cherry fruit, some tobacco, spice and vanilla; well-structured with impressive length and pleasantly approachable.

Tuscany

Altura's wines from the rocky island of Giglio off the Tuscan coast are grown on terraces on stony soils with an all-natural process with no artificial fertilisers in the vineyard and low sulphuring in the winery.

Their single-variety Ansonica was rich, savoury and full, with a real depth of flavour; by contrast, their red wine, Rosso Saverio, features up to 15 grape varieties yet had a homogeneous feel with aromas of cherries, spice and white pepper and a good structure.

Baricci make two wines - a Rosso Di Montalcino and a Brunello; being a relatively small winery, they use the same quality of grapes for both wines and the differences are merely in production. The basic Rosso from 2006 was impressive with a rich cherry and vanilla nose, some forest fruits and hints of spice; on the palate, there is a good tannic structure and balanced acidity.

The Brunello, aged in Slovenian oak for 36 months, felt like a real step-up with greater richness and intensity.

After a few enthusiastic tweets from wine blogger Robert McIntosh, the Rosso was snapped up on the same day for UK distribution by Naked Wines and is now available for sale on their site (here).

There were also two wines from Il Paradiso di Manfredi, Brunellos from 2003 and 2004; both wines had a Pinot-like funkiness of forest floor and mushrooms on the nose with cherries and hints of tomatoes on the palate with balanced freshness and a good tannic grip on the finish. I preferred the darker 2004 which felt more intense and firmer, whilst the 2003 felt more integrated and harmonious.

Abruzzo

The most interesting of the whites for me was a Pecorino from Cataldi Madonna - grown at an altitude of 400m, it was fresh and crisp with elderflower aromas, a great structure and a minerally finish.

Distinctly modern in style and technically very well-made, it combined an up-front New-World appeal with cool-climate restraint and sophistication.

The red, Toni, was equally modern, with lots of fresh acidity, cherry fruit and pepperiness, but still a serious wine.

A 2005 Montepulciano d'Abbruzzo from Praesidium was ripe and mouthfilling yet also restrained with a rich nose of oaky vanilla, lots of bramble and cherry fruit on the palate and a long grippy finish.

Campania

A Ragis Rosso from Le Vigne di Raito on the Amalfi coast made mainly from Aglianico had a complex nose of cherry fruit and shrubs with aromas of liquorice and cocoa on the palate.

Puglia

The Primitivo di Manduria from Attanasio was a heady, sensual delight - made from Primitivo grapes grown in vineyards warmed by the mistral, it had a rich nose of ripe, jammy fruit, leather and eucalyptus with sweet spices, balsamic and vanilla on the palate and a smooth, jam-and-custard texture; despite all this exuberance (and 16.5% alcohol), it had balanced acidity and a dry finish.

The sweet version of this wine, made by drying out the grapes after picking, had all the good qualities of the dry wine, but was even riper and more baked and more hedonistic with an intense sweetness.

Sardinia

Capichera is located on the north of this Mediterranean island, not far from the coast where the sea breezes keep the vineyards naturally free from pests.

Their Vermentino was fresh and modern with floral notes on the nose, lots of fruit on the palate and good minerality.

The Assaje carignano was also perfumed on the nose, with cherries and dark berry fruit and hints of eucalyptus and a rounded mouthfilling palate and long finish.

A dessert wine from Tondini, Lajcheddu, which I had spotted earlier on, was perhaps the perfect way to end the tasting - baked, toasty, rich, marmaledey and intense, it had a balancing and fresh linear acidity.

The Foods

There were two food stands at the event - an intensely flavoured Grana Padano cheese and some Italian-style salamis from Peelham Farm in Scotland.

The organic salami was rich and intense with a dense, smooth texture, some sweetness and a lingering after-taste; the chorizo added to this a thwhack of paprika and spices, whilst the Italian added a strong flavour of fennel seeds.

These were some of the best salamis I can remember having recently, very much following the Italian approach of combining strong, simple flavours using really high quality ingredients.

The Wines

Leonildo Pieropan - Soave Classico Calvarino 2008, Soave Classico La Rocca 2008
Bucci - Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico, Villa Bucci Riserva 2007
Elvio Cogno - Barolo Ravera 2006
Altura - Ansonaco 2009, Rosso Saverio 2008
Baricci - Rosso di Montalcino 2009, Brunello di Montalcino 2006
Il Paradiso di Manfredi - Brunello di Montalcino 2003, 2004
Cataldi Madonna - Pecorino 2010, Montelpulciano d'Abruzzo Toni 2007
Praesidium - Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva 2005
Le Vigne di Raito - Ragis 2008
Attanasio - Primitivo di Manduria 2008, Primitivo di Manduria Dolce Naturale 2007
Capichera - Vermentino di Gallura Vigna'ngena 2009, Capichera Assaje
Tondini - Moscato Passito Lajcheddu 2007

Links

Leonildo Pieropan - http://www.pieropan.it/en/
Bucci - http://www.villabucci.com/
Elvio Cogno - http://www.elviocogno.com/
Altura - http://www.vignetoaltura.it/
Barricci - no website, baricci1955@libero.it
Il Paradiso di Manfredi - http://www.ilparadisodimanfredi.com/en/
Cataldi Madonna - http://www.cataldimadonna.it/
Praesidium - no website, vinipraesidium@tiscali.it
Le Vigne di Raito - http://www.levignediraito.com/
Attanasio - http://www.primitivo-attanasio.com/English/AziendaENG.htm
Capichera - http://www.capichera.it/en
Cantina Tondini - http://www.cantinatondini.it/
Peelham Farm - http://www.peelham.co.uk/

Launch of the Slow Wine iApp‏

The Slow Wine iApp, which I was invited to see demonstrated at a pre-launch event in London last week, is perhaps designed for people like me who want their technology to be powerful, familiar and easy-to-use all at the same time, rather than simply for technophiles who just love gadgets for their own sake.
 
Starting with the 1,000-odd page Italian-only Slow Wine guide to Italy publish in hardback last year, the book has first of all been translated into English, then turned into something with all the functionality and logical structure of the original reference book plus a few extra clever bits that simply can't be done in print.
 
Click on a map of Italy for an introduction to a particular region's wine-making styles and grape varieties, click another button for a list of all the wineries accredited by Slow Wine in that region, select one of the wineries and there is a description of the terroir and a list of all the wines currently on offer with cellar-door prices.
 
And that is just the start, there is then an assessment of each wine, a link to the winery's website, to Google Maps for either driving directions or a view of what the countryside is like and finally space to add in some notes.
 
With one of these in your pocket or briefcase and a daily commute to pass, you can read up on Italian wines, decide which are of interest and then plan and book your driving holiday by checking out which wineries offer accommodation, the driving distances between them and emailing then to reserve a room for the night.
 
The list of wines and note-taking function then allow you to keep records of what you sampled and liked for future reference - assuming you are either fully living the dream and doing the trip in an open-top, two-seater sports car with no room for purchases or, alternately, have children in tow and a bootful of luggage and toys.
 
As something of a newcomer to iApps, I was particularly impressed not just by the volume of information, easy navigation and level of integration of different functions, but also how beautifully done the whole thing is; screens are laid out not as bald typeface but rather to resemble blackboards with lists of wines chalked up; regional maps are stylised and colour-coded; the main navigation pages are laid out as signposts over an idyllic background of rolling fields.
 
It is a superbly-presented labour of love and whilst this is not surprising given its Italian heritage, unlike say a supercar from Modena, it is easy to use on an everyday basis and actually works reliably.
 
The App is currently undergoing final approvals with Apple for planned launch in a couple of weeks for download into iPhone and iPad at an expected price of £5.99; it is also available from the App store in a free trial version, allowing access to the “Everyday Wine” sheets (wines that have been highlighted by Slow Food for their excellent price to quality ratio), complete with all the basic tools to memorise favourites, consult the wine maps, share wineries and wines on Facebook and allowing access to the complete list of reviewed wineries.

I asked Olivia Reviglio of Slow Wine how many copies of the App they hoped to sell to cover the clearly not insignificant development costs and was stunned by her response - they hoped for just 500 downloads and had agreed a revenue-sharing deal with the developer.
   

I suspect it may prove to be a bit more popular than that.
 
Links
 
Slow Food (UK site) - http://www.slowfood.org.uk/
 
Slow Food (US / international site) - http://www.slowfood.com/
 
Slow Food (Italian site) - http://www.slowfood.it/

Australian Tasting With Noel Young Wines At Cambridge Food and Wine Society

Australia seems to be having something of an identity crisis at the moment - having given the world oaky Chardonnay and fruity Shiraz in the 1980s, it now seems unsure whether to continue along that path with ever riper (and sweeter) wines or turn its back on all that and concentrate on wines with a more restrained, cool-climate feel.

For the vast majority of the population right now in the UK, oaky Chardonnay is completely out of fashion and everyone seems to want crisp, refreshing unoaked wines with a bit of mineral backbone - for this reason, you'll find Pinot Grigio as many pubs' house white.

In the decade or so that I have been going to Cambridge Food and Wine Society tastings, I cannot recall there ever having been an Australian event so I was looking forward to hearing Daniel Young, manager of Noel Young Wines in Trumpington present a selection of wines from his shop, including some made by eponymous brother, Noel Young from his joint venture Magpie Estate in Barossa.

Unfortunately, a diary clash meant Daniel had to pull out and I ended up being his far-less-qualified stand-in for the evening. Armed with print-outs and a bit of general knowledge, I kicked off.

Fortunately for me, I was amongst friends and a number of the audience chipped in with their own observations and knowledge - one person even downloading maps onto his iPhone to explain references to coastal breezes in some of the tasting notes.

The first wine was a Hunter Valley Semillon - a modern classic just as much as oaky Chardonnay, typically the wines it produces are waxy with a texture of lanolin, but this one felt crisp and light with just 11.5% alcohol.

Initial impressions from the audience were of it being rather unexpected and a little underwhelming - a more thoughtful assessment showed some good minerality coming out on the finish, but it was not until I re-sampled at the end of the formal tasting that it fully opened up and became a interesting wine with the kind of complex, mouthfilling structure to justify a price tag of well over £10.

And this became a consistent theme with all the whites to come - generally from the most recent 2010 vintage and sealed under screwcap (which inhibits development far more than natural cork), they were far too young to show much of anything straight out of the bottle and would have benefitted from a few quick swirls in the decanter.

The second white, an even lighter Vermentino, with just 10% alcohol, had an unusual dieselly nose but little else to offer either initially or even later on and was generally not well liked.

A Riesling, grown at altitude in Eden Valley, was said to be in the Germanic style and certainly felt lighter than my preferred Austrian style. With a classic petrolly nose and limey on the palate, it showed good mineral length on the second run-through.

Finally, moving onto an oaky Chardonnay, there was another surprise - instead of the expected ripe tropical fruits and toastiness, we got something much more restrained with the acidity of granny smith apples and complex layers of butteriness.This again continued to improve during the evening, but for me, whilst well made, was somehow lacking a little of the complexity I look for in a really good chardie.

The first red - a Pinot Noir from Tasmania - was again not exactly typical; with no Pinot aromas of farmyard, mushrooms and cherries present, it had a nose of red fruits, a soft texture on the palate and a sweet, clean finish. Pleasant enough and easy-drinking, certainly, but not a textbook Pinot, and despite being from much further south, it felt more like a warm-climate wine, which is not what Pinot likes.

We then moved on to Noel's wine, a blend of northern Spanish grape varieties Mouvedre and Grenache - these two have a particular affinity for each other and, when made well, produce crowd-pleasing wines with plenty of berry fruit, some spice and a soft, quaffable texture, so it's perhaps no surprise that this was subsequently voted best wine of the night.

A Cab, for which some of the grapes had been dried on baskets Amarone-style, was complex, impressive and almost as popular, with lots of blueberry, plums, cedar and minty eucalyptus, but I am quite old-school in my tastes and would have preferred a little more balance and restraint.

The final wine was a real step up in terms of price and quality, but did not prove to be quite so popular - a Shiraz from Clonakilla, it has drawn some rave reviews, but tended to leave most people underwhelmed.

The tasting notes recommend decanting or up to ten years' cellaring and although we gave the wine a few minutes in the glass, the initial impressions were all about structure with dense, tightly-packed tannins and a peppery, spicy inkiness.

I got a chance to re-sample this right at the end of the tasting and almost two hours after initial opening, it was still only just starting to open up and show some plummy fruit on the nose and a smooth custardy texture. For me, it was perhaps the best wine of the night (it was voted joint second with the Cab), but I would struggle to justify the price when there are so many other good wines around at well under £20.

I mentioned this to Dan Young later and he explained that with a high exchange rate and changing fashions, Australian wines are really struggling at the moment. Having for years had a built-in price competitiveness due to a weak currency, Australia is now faced with the double whammy of its wines becoming more ever expensive whilst its signature styles become ever less fashionable amongst the vast majority of "ordinary" wine-buyers.

He added that brother Noel is able to absorb some of the effects of currency fluctuations for his own wines as he ships it directly from vineyard to store - and as one of the cheaper wines we tried on the evening, it was certainly also one of the best value.

The Wines

Keith Tulloch Semillon, Hunter Valley, 2010, £12.50

Mitolo Jester "Madame d'Or", McLaren Vale, 2010, £12.30

Pewsey Vale Riesling, Eden Valley, 2009, £11.30

Innocent Bystander Chardonnay, Victoria, 2010, £12.99

Pirie South Pinot Noir, Tasmania, 2009, £12.30

Magpie Estate, "The Call Bag", Mourvedre-Grenache, Barossa 2007, £12.39

Dandelion "Pride of Fleurieu", Cabernet Sauvignon, Fleurieu, 2008, £11.99

Clonakilla "O'Riada" Shiraz, Canberra, 2007, £26.99

Links

Noel Young Wines - http://www.nywines.co.uk/

Orval - Trappist Abbey and Beer‏

Belgium has no wine-making tradition but more than makes up for this with its many and varied beers of which the Trappist ales, made at one of the country's six Trappist monasteries, are amongst the best.

Too northerly for viticulture, Belgium was originally a region of city-states whose monasteries were bastions of knowledge with their libraries, herb gardens and beer and cheese-making.

After a day spent visiting Bouillon (see here) en route to France's wine regions, we stopped by Orval Abbey for a mixture of sightseeing and beer-purchasing.

The original Cistercian monastery dates from 1132 but is now in ruins after being destroyed in 1793 by French forces - its contemporary replacement, dating from 1935, is unadorned and futuristic - and also not generally open to the public, so we contented ourselves with a wander round the much more beautiful and atmospheric ruins.

Afterwards, exiting through the monastical gift shop, there were opportunities to buy religious trinkets and imagery, but more importantly boxes of Orval beer (we passed on the Orval beer glasses and decided the Orval cheese, whilst good, would not keep during our journey).

The beer itself is quite strong, 6.2% alcohol, and is fermented using Brettanomyces yeast. Like many Belgian beers, it undergoes secondary fermentation in bottle meaning it has a sediment and is extremely fizzy, so out of a small-ish bottle of 33cl, around a quarter is lost.

Many bottle-conditioned ales improve with age just like a fine wine and finding this to be the case with the Orval, after the first few bottles, I tucked the rest away to be sampled periodically over the next 18 months or so.

Early bottles were crisp and refreshing, well-structured and balanced with orangey, coriander-seed hints.

The development from bottle to bottle every couple of months was barely perceptible but after a year or so, it had become noticeably fuller, richer and more strongly-flavoured, but still did not appear to have peaked.

Moreover, with a little of the gas escaping via the crown top, it was a little less explosive on opening.

This then, is a beer for cellaring - for at least a year or two, so if you happen to be passing through the Belgian Ardennes, it's worth stocking up with a few cases.

Links

Orval Abbey - http://www.orval.be/an/FS_an.html

A Short Visit to Bouillon‏ in the Belgian Ardennes

A few years ago, I decided to break up the travelling on a driving and wine-buying holiday to France by stopping off in Bouillon in the Belgian Ardennes.

About a 3-hour drive from Calais, the Belgian Ardennes in the south of the country is an unspoilt, somewhat forgotten land of gentle hills and rural woods.

Bouillon, a very small market town, is set in a magnificent horseshoe bend of the river Semois surrounded by a natural amphitheatre - its other claim to fame is an extensive ruined castle on a hilltop in the centre of the town - much of it carved out of the rock itself.

In 1082, the castle was inherited by Godfrey of Bouillon, who then sold it in order to finance the First Crusade (accompanied by some unlikely companions - his mother and Peter the Hermit). The castle was later fitted for heavy artillery by Vauban, Louis XIV's military architect in the late 17th century.

We made a day of it by first seeing the castle, then going for a walk up to the top of the surrounding ridge where a viewing platform takes you several storeys up, above the height of the trees, for an amazing view over the town.

After all this exploring, our accommodation for the night was La Ferronniere, a former forge as the name suggests which I had found in the Logis de France guidebook and which gets the guide's top-level 3-chimney rating.

The hotel, set halfway up a hill leading out of Bouillon, has superb views of the town centre and the castle and is an extremely pleasant place to stay.

Owners Wim and Angélique Philips have an eye for tasteful detail and, having picked out a beautiful building in a great location in 2000, have given the interior a classy and elegant but understated feel.

This approach extends to the food, which was not just innovative, but extremely well-flavoured and imaginatively presented.

We had a trio of cold starters - gazpacho, cream cheese with chives and parma ham and water melon - whilst the hot starter was a beef tomato with snails and pesto, before a main of oven-baked cod with courgettes and a dessert of pistachio cake wrapped in pain perdu.

We chose an Alsace Riesling from just across the border to get us in the mood for the next few days and it was, if I'm really honest, a little expensive and slightly disappointing - plenty of typical Riesling character, but somehow a little unfocused.

I often find this problem - you almost always do better going for something local and this means that in non-wine-producing countries you accept you'll probably pay a little more for something that is not quite so good.

However, in the context of the stay - and especially of the superb food - this really is a minor quibble.

Belgium is, of course, a land of beer - especially crafted Trappist ales - and the next day, we got up and went in search of what drinking in Belgium is really all about.

Links

Bouillon website - http://www.info-bouillon.co.uk/
La Ferroniere - http://www.laferronniere.be/
Logis de France - http://www.logishotels.com/en.html

Image Credits

Photo of Bouillon by Jan Roegiers - link here
Photo of Bouillon Castle by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT: link here.
Photos of La Ferronniere from hotel's website.

Speed Tasting with Team Naked Wines

Naked Wines recently invited me to a speed-tasting event, sampling around 30 speculative trade samples and new vintages from existing producers at Naked HQ after work one evening.

I was not the only outsider invited; there were also Carlos Rodriguez, one of Naked's regular winemakers who had flown in from Spain for a blending session the next day, plus a couple of journalists from Belgium.

I have reviewed a number of Naked's wines previously - either as samples or my own subsequent purchases as an Angel (see here) - but this was quite different from my usual reviewing approach of trying a wine over an evening.

For the first sample, I swirled, looked, sniffed, sampled, spat, sampled a bit more, considered and tried to think of an apt metaphor - by this point, everyone else was on wine number 2 and I quickly realised this would be a swift canter rather than a leisurely stroll.

And thinking about it, that makes perfect sense; when faced with large quantities of diverse wines to be reviewed and assessed, one is looking for broad-brush indications, not minutely-described nuances - is it a good wine overall, is it pleasant, interesting and priced sensibly ?

What was also interesting for me was to see the non-qualitative assessments that need to be made - do we already have a similar wine at a similar price in stock, is it the sort of thing that gets good reviews from our customers ? Is it a better-value alternative to a particular classic style.

As we whizzed through wine after wine, the idea of reviewing a bottle over several evenings to see how it evolves with time and air seemed quite academic and ivory-tower, almost indulgent.

When presenting at a wine-tasting event, I will typically plan on spending 10-15 minutes on a wine before moving on to the next one and even at trade shows and wine fairs there is a presenter on hand to provide a bit of background on the wine and chat in more detail, so that you don't have to rush through the wines.

Back at Naked HQ, there was simply a table with a long row of bottles to be worked through.

The wines had been put in a fairly logical order - lighter whites, the more aromatic ones, then the oaked before the rosés and finally reds, but they still represented quite an eclectic mixture of grape varieties and regions.

We moved too quickly for me to remember all the wines, let alone take any notes, but included were a very neutral Italian Pinot Grigio, a flowery Torrontes, three Loire rosé blends from Naked winemaker Joost de Villebois, a range of Chardonnays from one producer in Limoux and a clutch of Portuguese reds.

My first experience of speed-tasting felt a little like the difference between studying a language and speaking it; you might spend years memorising vocab and learning grammar, but visit the country itself and there is no time to think - you just have to make yourself understood, even if you get your dative plurals wrong or forget to use the subjunctive.

And so it proved at Naked HQ - you might miss out a nuance here or there, but the aim of the tasting was a quick, high-level assessment of each wine.

And moving around so many different wines was also a lesson in quickly recalling the key characteristics of each grape or region and then assessing the wine against this.

And that was a lot easier where the wine fitted, for me, into a familiar pigeon-hole - Pinot Grigio, Loire Sauvignon or oaked Chardonnay.

It was rather harder to make quick, definitive assessments of unfamiliar wine styles such as the Torrontes, the Fiano or any of the Portuguese reds.

Having a number or slightly different samples (either slightly different blends or different oakings) also helped draw out the key characteristics of each wine, noting what changed and what stayed the same from bottle to bottle; one Loire rosé blend had a slightly sweaty tang on the nose ("Heavy on the Malbec", commented Naked founder Rowan Gormley), the second seemed a little harsh on the finish whilst the third was the most balanced.

There was not time to make any notes or even record the wines - of the 30 or so we tasted, a small handful were more or less good, plenty were middling and the rest were either either not interesting or, in the odd case, not pleasant.

What I remember much more are the stories behind the wines - the newbie producer whose wine 5 years ago was undrinkable but whose latest vintage is a best-seller or the awkwardness of dealing with a charming producer with a great story to tell whose wines turn out to be actually rather unpleasant.

But more than that, Naked HQ has a sense of a business where anything is possible.

In a simple and rather plain, L-shaped open-plan office overlooking the very grand Norwich cathedral, team Naked is quietly getting on with fundamentally changing the world of wine production and retailing.

Each member of the team is experienced enough to know what they are doing, but not so long in the tooth as to be set in their ways and there is an easy-going, confident, can-do vibe.

Having worked for several large, indeed iconic, American corporates, I know what it is like to put up company logos and merchandise everywhere and get everyone pumped up about the brand right down to the cleaners.

But that's not the British way and Naked does not feel like that; the offices are actually rather plain and unadorned except for a few IWC trophies on one shelf. I was met on arrival not by a glamorous receptionist but by the IT Manager whose desk is at the top of the stairs leading into the offices.

Plain, purposeful and focused, what it particularly has is a non-hierarchical feel with no separate offices (the CEO has a corner desk, but nothing more) and the buzz of a successful and growing start-up.

Founder Rowan Gormley is ex-Virgin, having set-up both Virgin Money and Virgin Wines. Working for such an iconic and entrepreneurial company is great training for going it alone - especially when you are able to recruit some of your former colleagues to come along and help you set up and run your new venture.

The difficulties come with the next stage of growth - as the business grows, it needs more layers of management and the people you bring in may not be quite a strong and entrepreneurial as the hand-picked team you started with.

Moreover, once you achieve a certain size, your competitors start to take a much greater interest in your activities.

However, with over 45,000 people signed up as Naked Angels and contributing a regular monthly amount and constant improvements to the company's website based on feedback directly from Naked's highly engaged customer base, it looks like Naked will be just fine as long as Rowan Gormley stays in charge.

Links

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

For more details on Naked's Angels scheme, see here - http://cambridgewineblogger.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-becoming-naked-angel.html