Blog de blogs

Blog de Blogs

Blog de Blogs returns with a round-up of some of the best blog posts from the past few weeks, including the irrationality behind supposed value in wine and how buying too much cheap wine can be the vinous equivalent of King Tut’s curse.

One blogger sings the praises of a new graphic novel about wine and there’s a frank assessment of the supermarket’s own label brands.

Finally, news from a blogger based in Italy recounts how changes in Chianti have left him “irritated” and “perplexed”.

Les Caves de Pyrene

The latest blog from Les Caves de Pyrene, a UK retailer that has made its name as an ambassador for natural wine, examines the art – and pitfalls – of tasting.

Arguing that even in the trade, prejudice often prevents tasters from truly understanding the wine in their glass, the blog observes: “The most receptive tasters know how to balance analysis and enjoyment. They ‘feel’ the wine rather than score it for correctness.

It goes on to offer tell tale signs that reveal a poor taster, such as “pseudo-intensity manifested as over-agitating the glass” and allowing themselves to be endlessly distracted by a mobile phone. Likewise, it warns: “Parroting tendentious half-digested WSET dogma indicates a taster who examines wines on a narrow spectrum and reduces everything to a standard Manichean good or bad.”

Calling on tasters to avoid becoming stuck in a rut in how they approach a roomful of wines, the blog concluded with the stinging criticism: “One should always be humble. Few professional tasters are.”

The Sediment Blog

A desperate struggle with no end in sight

CJ at The Sediment Blog is going through an Edgar Allen Poe-esque nightmare involving a case of rather too cheap Côtes du Rhône bought on a recent trip to Calais.

Having spied the wine for £2.69 a bottle and rather rashly bought 12 bottles (it turned out to be hideous), he’s now finding it difficult to finish the remainder and, no matter how many are being used, the number seemingly refuses to go down, “it’s guerilla warfare, in which the kitchen has become French Indo-China and I am forever swatting back the forces of the Viet Minh only to see them regroup in larger numbers in a slightly different part of the wine rack,” he says.

Googling has not worked, with the suggestions to make casseroles, wine jelly or to bathe in it proving: “Interesting but somehow not persuasive.”

Worse still, with no wine tasting good anymore and memories of an awful Egyptian whisky (called “Marcel”) weighing on his mind, CJ believes even forsaking booze may not be enough to lift what he clearly sees as a curse.

He explains: “Man forswears wine, takes to whisky instead. Whisky slowly begins to taste like Marcel, whatever its provenance. Man moves on to gin, brandy, vodka and beer. They all become undrinkable.”

And so do they all until, “soon, tapwater is all that’s left, but when he cannot keep that down, he dies of thirst, the last thing he sees being the mocking labels of the oh-so-affordable Côtes du Rhône he acquired at the beginning of the story.”

timatkin.com

Writing on Tim Atkin MW’s website, wine commentator Robert Joseph explores the subjective perception behind what really represents good value in the world of wine.

Drawing parallels with how (ir)rationally people assess the worth of other non-essential purchases, from watches to concert tickets, Joseph considers how a producer might go about convincing people that his wine is worth £100, despite the premise that “it is almost impossible to spend over $25 on making a bottle of wine, and pretty damn difficult to run up a bill of over $15.”

For the winemakers who does achieve this feat, Joseph warns that “his new £100 wines might not actually be as close to his personal taste as the wine he’s currently making,” and the winemaker “may have to part company with some of the people who are buying his wines today.”

Despite these issues, Joseph balances them against the benefits of a shift into the super-premium playing field. “People who pay high prices tend to be a lot more loyal than the bargain-seekers,” he remarks, citing a number of wines which, in his own view, have achieved a strong following despite a price tag at odds with their quality.

For all the allegorical lessons about emperors and new clothes, Joseph argues that, on balance, persuading customers to pay more for your wine is a positive step. “I’m now happier to see people getting pleasure out of spending their money as out of saving it on half-price bottles in British supermarkets,” he concludes.

Jameson Fink

Jameson Fink is singing the praises of “The Initiates: A Comic Artist and Wine Artisan Exchange Jobs”, which, he says is, “one of the best books about wine I’ve ever read, period.”

The graphic novel by Etienne Davodeau follows his time working on the estate of Rchard Leroy, who makes Chenin Blanc at his winery of Montbenault in Anjou.

As Fink explains: “Davodeau’s time in the vineyard is spent pruning and listening to Leroy explain small production farming, working organically and biodynamically, and the trials and travails of being an artisan in a world of commodified wines.”

In return, Leroy visits comic conventions and goes to editorial meetings with publishers and the perceptions of both men, “bring a refreshing perspective to each other’s craft.”

Fink concludes that there is little “quid pro quo” exchange but the book is more about the “rewards of remaining curious and thoughtful when it comes to your life’s work, and what you can learn from others by listening and observing.”

Matt Walls

Intrepid young wine blogger Matt Walls does the hard work so we don’t have to this week, energetically tackling the wine wall the average shopper faces in the supermarket by slurping his way through 92 supermarket own-label wines.

With supermarkets occupying a giant 81% slice of the UK off-trade wine pie and Tesco selling an average of five million bottles of wine a week, whether we like it or not, the wines on sale in the supermarkets represent a large proportion of what the British population glugs at home.

Concentrating on Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Aldi, Walls chose to hone in on the value end of the own-label market, with all but three of the wines priced between £3.89-£5.99, and a large number coming in under the UK average bottle price, which recently crept over the £5 mark to £5.06.

So how did they fare? Refreshingly honest in his assessment, overall, Walls was more impressed with the reds he tried than the whites. Within his chosen price bracket, price became a strong indicator of quality with those at the upper end performing better than their cheaper relatives.

According to Walls, both Bordeaux and Pinot Grigio showed “really badly”, while Spain and Australia were his “top performers”. As for the individual supermarkets, Aldi came out on top in both the quality and value stakes, with Asda putting in a “solid” performance in second place.

Walls was less impressed with Tesco, describing three of the wines he tried in its Simply range as “very bad”, while Sainsbury’s fared least well of the quartet, with Walls dubbing four of the wines in its House range as “shockingly bad.”

At the end of the blog, Walls urges consumers to up their spend to increase their chances of getting a good bottle: “Spending the current average of £5.06 per bottle in the supermarkets might not guarantee you something brilliant, but it greatly increases your chances of avoiding the worst offenders,” he says.

Among Walls’ supermarket own-label gems were Tesco Simply Riesling 2012 (£4.79), Aldi Minarete Ribera del Duero 2010 (£5.49), and Asda Margaret River Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2012 (£5.98).

Berry’s Wine Blog

David Berry-Green

Italy-based David Berry Green expresses his frustration this week on Berry’s Wine Blog having just heard news of the latest plans by Chianti Classico.

Rumours of an “authentic revolution” by the Consorzio appear to have been unfounded, he writes, as the organisation announced nothing more than a restyling of the Gallo Nero Black Cockerel logo as well as the introduction of a new level called “Gran Selezione” – to be used for estate-only fruit and longer ageing.

Describing the term as “naff”, he captures the mood in the region, “The producers are dismayed: yet another example of bureaucratic tinkering without adding any real value to a product they’ve slavishly refined over the years.”

Having spent two-days tasting his way through the wines of the region, he states, “I too am irritated and perplexed.”

Continuing, he reports, “The quality of Chianti Classico has never been higher and, more importantly, the identities between the different villages have never been more clearly defined… And yet all the Consorizo can come up with is a new picture of a rooster and the words ‘Gran Selezione’!”

His suggestion? “Italy’s fine wine regions (Consorzi) must move forward and up the quality pyramid by identifying, delimiting, and communicating their brilliant terroir and rich patrimony, rather than remain bogged down in the very soil they should be talking about.”

He then lists a range of stylistically distinct communes within Chianti Classico, and the best producers within them.