A tasting of Foncalieu wines hosted by Yorkshire Wine School

Tasting Foncalieu wines with Yorkshire Wine School

A fancy Big Mac style burger from Original Fry Up Material

This was a good way of cheering up a Monday night in February: tasting eight sunny wines from the south of France. From work I take a train from Bradford to Leeds, call in for a tasty hipster burger at Trinity Kitchen and then head up to the Radisson Hotel for the tasting. I'm always excited trying wines that are new to me. Life's all about retaining that excitement for new things isn't it?




The wines are from Foncalieu, a big cooperative of more than 1,000 wine estates, whose winemaker and marketing supremo Isabelle Pangault appears in person to help bring them to life. Yorkshire Wine School's Laura Kent is also on hand to provide expert titbits; Laura is hosting the event and has kindly let me experience it as a guest.

French wine often projects an image of bringing the landscape to the glass - terroir - but I'm interested to hear Isabelle talk a bit more pragmatically about how Foncalieu's agronomist (soil and plant man) Gabriel Ruetsch tailors the wines to the market where they sell them; in other words they look at what sort of stuff British drinkers tend to like and they try to satisfy that demand. That's not to say they aren't reflecting the land though - they have lots of different landscapes and microclimates to choose from, a mosaic of terroir as Isabelle nicely puts it, giving them scope to create different styles of wine. And it is encouraging to hear Isabelle emphasise that it's elegance and freshness they're looking for, in other words they're keen not to obscure the pure fruit with too much oak. The more I'm a wine fanatic, it seems the more I enjoy fresh tasting wines over big oaky ones.

I really enjoyed these wines - in particular the three from Chateau Haut Gleon we tried, especially the white - and it'd be great to try them again with a meal which I bet would make them even better. Here's a quick run-through of my thoughts as I tasted them on the night:

Le Versant Viognier 2013, Pays d'Oc
Smells champagney; tastes like peach, lemon and lime with elderflower freshness. Reminds me of vinho verde.

Le Versant Pinot Noir 2013, Pays d'Oc
Smells of strawberry, or maybe raspberry, and mint. Easy-drinking, a touch dilute?, round and soft texture, nice and fresh.

Griset Sauvignon Gris 2014, Pays d'Oc
Fresh, light rose coloured, a nice refreshing summer drink. Agree with the suggestion of watermelon, rose water and rhubarb from the YWS and Foncalieu tasting notes.

Les Illustres 2012, Coteaux d'Enserune IGP
Smells of Marmite, blackberries, oak and leather. Also brings to mind blackberries in the mouth with black plums and parsley and coriander! Dry finish, would be good with slow cooked beef I think.

Le Lien 2012, Minervois AOP
Smells great - to me of liquorice and lavender - which mixes with coffee and cigar smoke in the mouth. Tastes of expensive oak. Again would be good with beef. Enjoyed this more with a slice of the Friends of Ham salami provided on the table.

Chateau Haut Gleon Blanc 2013, Corbieres AOC
Really like this wine. Reminds me of an Australian semillon. Tastes of nuts to me - hazelnuts, almonds, pistachio with apricots. Really good.

Chateau Haut Gleon Rose 2013, Corbieres AOC
Also really enjoyed this one. Light but with a faint peppery spice, bit more to it than a standard light rose. Tastes and smells of strawberry and pepper, fresh tomato and gooseberry.

Chateau Haut Gleon Rouge 2009, Corbieres AOC
Smells of blueberry and blackberry or blackcurrant and scrubby herbs, rosemary and thyme, with a taste of liquorice.

As I understand it, Le Versant wines will cost around £7.99-8.99 in shops; Les Illustres and Le Lien around £25 (or £60 in a restaurant); and the Chateau Haut Gleon wines around £23-25 each.

Sir Alex Ferguson, his wine sale and David Moyes

A relaxed Sir Alex Ferguson, basking in the twilight of retirement and the limelight of success, is selling off some of the extremely expensive wines in his cellar.

David Moyes, meanwhile - embattled, furrowed brow, all to prove - is facing a task bigger than anyone realised, to rebuild a Manchester United squad of fading stars.

The problem when a big charismatic winner like Alex Ferguson or Tony Blair gets to choose their own time of departure, to go out at the top, their successor, Moyes or Brown, faces a struggle and a half to put the brakes on as they head down the other side. Like fine wines, the best footballers get better with age and then they reach a peak, fall away.

So one man battles for his job, the chance to chop away the dead wood he never bought, the other is pruning the fruits of the amazing success he achieved through the series of incredible football teams he created.

Speaking personally, I've been ridiculously lucky to be a Manchester United fan and season ticket holder while Sir Alex Ferguson was manager. Amazing, entertaining and winning teams he created. By the same token, I respect the scale of the job facing David Moyes.

And there's a curious contrast. The way Fergie filled his wine cellar seems so alien to the way he built his football teams! At least in the latter part of his reign, anyway.

To any fan who watched the games in recent years, his squad was obviously running out of juice - yet this supreme figurehead, this master of management, was somehow able to squeeze out every last drop. The entertainment levels weren't quite as high, but the titles still came.

Ferguson started to speak obsessively of the need to find value in the transfer market. Part of this was probably pragmatic - I think people underestimated what a pragmatist Fergie was - as there's no doubt he tried to get some of the top players but failed when they followed money over prestige. And his budget-buying seemed to coincide with the indebted Glazer takeover.

Even so, he meant what he was saying: he started to favour undervalued talents and young players of potential. As superstars like Beckham, Keane and Ronaldo left the stage, unknowns or less heralded performers like Anderson and Nani, Valencia, Jones and Smalling took their place. From a wine point of view, it's not quite going from Berry Brothers & Rudd to Bargain Booze, but it's a definite shift in what you're looking for. You might find some decent value, some undiscovered gems, but you might also end up with some duds.

Such a strategy can be successful, as shown in the brilliant Moneyball - but it relies on strengths other than quality and pure talent. Unity, the habit of winning, respect for or even fear of your boss. These are the things that so quickly drained away, like releasing the cork from a bottle, when Sir Alex retired.

Can you make sparkling wine in a SodaStream?

What happens if you put cheap white wine in a SodaStream and fizz it up? Well, apparently it can make for a decent sparkling wine. Helen McGinn, author of the Knackered Mothers' Wine Club blog, says here celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Heston Blumenthal are big fans of the technique.

(I'm guessing Heston whizzes his wine up to a specific RPM twice a day over a three-day period before freeze-drying it and serving it as foam over some really small fish and chips. Meanwhile you can picture Jamie in his kitchen with some cheap Italian chardonnay in one corner, a SodaStream in the other, and a dream of Pukka Prosecco! in Jamie's Italians everywhere.)

The best SodaStream wines

Helen McGinn found Aldi's Toro Loco rose to be the best of a selection she tried out in the SodaStream, closely followed by Waitrose Italian Dry White and Las Falleras Rose from M&S. So there you go - it might be worth a whizz. That's if you still have a SodaStream lying around. (Incidentally, after hearing nothing of SodaStream since about 1987, this is the second story about the brand I read in a matter of days: the other one was about Scarlett Johannson's decision to quit her Oxfam role due to conflict with her SodaStream advertising deal.)

How to aerate wine without a decanter

Anyway while I'm talking about whizzing up wine, I came across this other article about sticking your wine in a food blender. This time, the aim is to add air to it and open up the flavours. Apparently it's a very effective way of aerating the wine - no doubt despite the serious risk of looking like you're having a Basil Fawlty moment in front of your dinner guests.

Bottle shock

Incidentally both articles make me wonder whether you could "damage" your wine with a kind of bottle shock by whizzing it up like this. Then again, I suppose that's more pertinent with wines that are more expensive than your £3.69 bottle of Toro Loco.

A similar thought came to mind when I saw this YouTube video by Stephen Cronk, the British owner of French wine producer Mirabeau, which went viral. Again, I suppose you wouldn't want to be bashing your Chateau Cheval Blanc against a wall inside a shoe - but then I suppose if you're the person who can afford that then you're also the person who can afford a corkscrew, or at least one who doesn't lose their corkscrew every other day. Pass me the Toro Loco...

What is problem drinking and how do we tackle it?

Alcohol misuse has been in the news again this week after the latest set of official figures were released - I did a news story on it here and a lot of the main news outlets covered it, including an opinion piece by Owen Jones in the Independent headlined The drug we ignore that kills thousands.

This is such a complex area - beer writer Pete Brown makes the case against the stats and a general clampdown on booze here - that it's notoriously difficult to either a) work out how much of a problem alcohol is in society; and b) if it is a big problem, what to do about it.

People who do drink too much do it in different ways and for different reasons. A well-off pensioner who drinks excessive amounts of fine claret from breakfast onwards every day will have different motivations to a student who gets trashed in clubs every night, who is different again to an unemployed young bloke who drinks heavily at home on a night, and who is different again to a pub regular who downs six or seven pints a night without noticing.

They might all be causing various amounts of harm as well as pleasure, either to themselves or others, so how do you come up with one policy to help them all? Perhaps we need to segment problem drinkers: What are they drinking? Where are they drinking? Why are they drinking?

Do higher prices work? What about the fact that penalises safe drinkers too? Or is education the main thing - if so, how? Do we need a clearer message on units? What is or isn't safe drinking for that matter?

It's such a tricky area, how to reduce alcohol misuse without penalising safe drinkers. And moderate drinking can, of course, be such a positive thing for individuals and society. Studies have suggested it's good for health but, perhaps more importantly, it enriches life - something that's so difficult to quantify. Even drinking at home, you can enhance your wonder of the world through your wine glass. There's the sensual enjoyment, the learning, the conversation, the stress release of just a single glass. How can you ever quantify those benefits for society to offset the harm elsewhere? And then there's the positive benefits of decent pubs to working class communities, as acknowledged by Professor David Nutt:

@Simon_OH @OwenJones84 I totally agree re pubs and communities. All increase in alcohol consumption in last 20 yrs is from shops not pubs.
— David Nutt (@ProfDavidNutt) February 21, 2014

Drinking habits don't exist in a vacuum: perhaps all the talk of pricing, licensing hours and units is a bit of a red herring. Maybe the best way to curb the most severe problem drinking might well be to deal with wider social issues fuelling it. If people have jobs, and jobs that pay, if people live in warm housing, if they have hope and reason to get up on a morning, if they have more to lose, if they don't feel lonely or bored, won't it be less likely they'll turn to problem drinking? As long as you drink to add flavour to life and not to dull it, you're more likely to keep it under control. That's not to say your drinking can't go from there to becoming a serious problem on an individual level - it can, as it's a powerful drug - but maybe it's less likely.

One last note - I sometimes wonder about the effect of wine costing so much more in restaurants and pubs than in shops. People are trying £20 bottles of wine when eating out and wondering why it tastes no better than a £5 bottle at home. Wine in this country is so, so much cheaper when bought and drunk on its own than with food.

Novelty versus classic wine: the Eastern Med range from M&S

It was funny timing, buying these interesting looking wines on Valentine's Day with some M&S vouchers.

Not really funny as in hilarious.

We all fell ill with a nasty sickness bug the same day. This wasn't much more than the "24-hour thing" all sickness bugs are required to be by popular demand - but it was fairly extreme and a sickness bug does not go nicely with an M&S chicken jalfrezi and a Turkish red. When you're in and out of the bathroom with the shivers, followed by a fever and thumping headache, the mere idea of a chicken jalfrezi seems comically wrong.

Classic wine versus unusual wine

Our selection included a wine from Greece called Red on Black; Chateau Ksara from Lebanon; and Sevilen Okuzogu from Turkey, along with Italian red Lacrima di Morro d'Alba and a couple of bottles of Argentinian malbec, the reliable Vinalta on offer at two for £12.

As well as the sickness, it was also funny timing because almost as soon as we'd got the bottles home, wine writers were debating the merits of classic wines versus lesser known varieties. Just as we were looking to try some wines off the beaten track, Robert Parker and Jancis Robinson were saying "ignore the classics at your peril" (they mean regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy; grapes like cabernet, merlot and pinot noir, as opposed to wines from other areas that may have existed for even longer but earned less repute). Parker in particular was arguing that hipster sommeliers are going for novelty over quality. Others like Jamie Goode, on the other hand, disagreed saying variety is the spice of life and unusual wines offer better value in restaurants.

To those of us outside the south-eastern England wine bubble, they might as well have been arguing over an old Rolls-Royce and a new Ferrari. Don't bother with the overpriced old prestige car, they're old hat! You want to get yourself a flash new sports car instead - it's more interesting and cheaper! You know - don't bother with the £100 a bottle Bordeaux, get some of this delicious natural Serbian stuff for a mere £75!

In other words, all properly good wine whether it's new or old is so bloody expensive, in restaurants especially, that for most of us it's usually of interest only - excruciatingly - in an academic sense. This debate is a reminder of why, sadly, proper wine and wine analysis remains stuck in an echo chamber, the critics' slurps bouncing back in off the glass walls like a big spittoon. In short, really good wine tends to be so bloody expensive!

What does better wine mean?

I'm exaggerating, a bit. I actually think the unusual-wine-versus-classic-wine debate was of some interest, the protection of "unknown" and indigenous wine regions and styles being both exciting and really important. Also, to counter the 100-pointers and their classic wines, surely the better wine is only ever the one you personally find most compelling. The music of a given band or composer might be the product of a great talent, it might be objectively adept, but if you don't like it, you don't like it. Because let's not forget scoring wines out of 100 is just as daft as it would be to rate a film or a book or a cheese out of 100. Stuff tends to be amazing, good, decent and not good - as a combination of quality and your personal preference at that given time - and that about covers it.

Faulty wines and a nightmare bed

The wines from M&S's eastern Mediterranean range were not eyewateringly expensive but not bargain basement either at around the £10 mark. But at least with wine you do have the reassuring thing that the retailer should swap it for another if it's faulty; often they even pledge to do so if you simply don't like it.

This is reassuring, as we recently had a nightmare bed buying experience ('scuse the pun) with, yes, M&S. To cut a long and boring story short, the bed isn't level, it is uncomfortable and it is objectively not the same as the one we tried in the shop. We have bad backs. M&S sent out an "independent" inspector from FIRA to take a look. FIRA is an organisation funded by bed retailers to keep their returns to an absolute minimum efficiently deal with their customer returns, and their inspector acknowledged our mattress was not level. But this, it turned out, did not qualify us for a refund.

I'm not sure what the moral of this convoluted tale is. Apart from to spend your money on wine and not on beds. Classic or adventurous, cheap or expensive, either way you should at least be guaranteed a good night's sleep.

A good book for foodies: Edible Stories by Mark Kurlansky

"It smelled of so many things, different fruits and woods, that it seemed almost unnecessary to drink it. Whole five-course meals did not have as many flavors as a tiny sip of this wine, and a single sip kept tasting for minutes..."

Edible Stories by Mark Kurlansky (Gibson Square)

This novel starts with a chapter called Red Sea Salt - each chapter takes the name of a food or drink - in which a man is stuck down a hole in a pavement and has no clue whatsoever of how he came to be there or even who he is. Having lost his memory, and it turns out his sense of taste, he ends up becoming one of the top food critics and TV chefs in America.

Each chapter is really a short story in its own right and they all just about tie loosely together in a kind of tapas way, with the same characters popping up every now and then but the food theme never going away.

I loved how this novel spoke of a time and a place for specific foods. A girl's on a date at a New York Yankees baseball match and her new boyfriend has gone to the trouble of preparing a fancy picnic with Italian white wine - but secretly all she really, really wants is a hot dog to watch the match with, the meaty aromas tantalising her as they waft across their seats.

The book touches on snobbery, of daft social conventions but also important ones in food, of how it helps oil the wheels of family life and communities. In one amusing chapter (Osetra), a young gang member in the Bronx gets an insatiable taste for caviar and he can't stop shoplifting it; in another (Orangina), the arrival of Orangina in a town in south-west France is seen as a threat to the town itself, older locals fretting "this is a vin rouge town!" and calling for a ban.

Edible Stories is a witty and fun book and a clever reminder of how food and drink are at the heart of human relationships.

Why does wine on TV make geeks angry?

The BBC showed a programme last night called The 12 Drinks of Christmas, presented by brothers-in-law Giles Coren and Alexander Armstrong. I thought it was quite good.

This is a rare thing, a TV programme about alcohol. Surprisingly so, given how much time and money Brits devote to booze.

But one thing's for certain: every single time wine or beer is in the mainstream media, a backlash from experts and enthusiasts will follow.

Keeping an eye on Twitter as the programme went out, many (but not all) wine people were critical of the show.

Exactly the same thing happens with beer whenever it appears in papers or on TV.

They're talking about Blue Moon and craft beer! the beer people laugh. He said Bollinger is the best you'll get for £35! the coloured trouser wearers scoff. And so on.

(I even saw one comment last night bemoaning the fact beer wasn't covered on 12 Drinks, so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Though it was a fair comment actually. And interestingly it was suggested beer may've been excluded to avoid conflict with Armstrong's Shepherd Neame advertising deal.)

Why do these shows come in for such criticism? Does it come from a genuine desire for the information to be accurate? Maybe. Or is it a kneejerk response by geeks to separate themselves from the rest; to say I know more than this mainstream show.

I thought The 12 Drinks of Christmas did its job pretty well - it was entertaining enough and there was enough info to get people thinking more about what they taste. Surely this is the important thing for a non-specialist audience: as long as the basic info is accurate, the main point is to entertain, get people into good drinks to begin with, trigger something, and the bigger story can come later if they want it.

As has been said before, you don't have to be serious about something to be serious about something. Maybe sometimes, experts feel threatened by the masses discovering their niche interest, much like an indier-than-thou music geek realising their undiscovered band has gone mainstream.

How cheap should wine be?

What should be the cheapest price for a bottle of wine in the UK?

And should wine critics recommend very cheap wine?

I've been mulling this over after enjoying some pretty decent cheap wines lately with mixed feelings.

You might argue a wine critic's job is to recommend any wine that's good value, and the cheaper the better. The critic is meant to be on the side of the consumer.

But - a big but. What's good for the consumer in the short term - very cheap but tasty wine - might not be good for the winemaker and retailer, and in turn the consumer, in the long run.

What if it's a race to the bottom with winemakers getting less and less income until the decent ones who can't afford to take the losses drop out?

Should we be willing to pay a bit more per bottle to make sure the people who make our wines earn a sustainable living?

Or should we let the market decide: get the best wine we can at the cheapest price we can get hold of it, especially when we have very little money ourselves? After all, spending a few more quid doesn't bring any guarantees of ethical production.

I try to earn a living from writing, so I can empathise with winemakers who feel they're trying to do something meaningful or creative for little reward. I recently saw an advert for apprenticeships for 16-year-old school leavers with a couple of GCSEs, and the apprenticeships paid as well (/badly) as many freelance writing jobs. This is after you've got into debt studying and got work experience over several years; minimum wage territory.

So - I appreciate the frustration of winemakers or anyone else who cares about doing something properly and gets barely a liveable reward.

But in another sense, because of that I feel less bad about buying cheap wine, for now at least. If winemakers are paid as little as I am, I'm pretty sure they might, for example, choose to read a newspaper for free online instead of paying for a print subscription, even though journalists' jobs are dropping faster than vines in a storm.

I suppose what I'm saying is, the chance to spend a few quid less on anything is pretty useful for many people right now. It's a bit depressing, it leaves a bad aftertaste, but is it a necessary evil?

What is a fair minimum price for a bottle of wine?

A night of cheese and wine at Sam's Chop House, Leeds

Wine, cheese, good company, a nice restaurant - you can't go far wrong can you?

George Bergier

This was a great night made memorable by the brilliant George Bergier, sommelier at Sam's Chop House and its sister restaurants who gave a masterclass in the art of sommeliering (I'd like to think that's a word). He presented various wines to match the cheeses, constantly nipping out and coming back with a different bottle for us all to try, his generosity and knowledge carried so lightly yet flowing round the table so easily.


For some unknown reason I don't have a photo of the first cheese, though that's probably because it was quickly scoffed. It was a burrata, which is like a super-rich mozzarella made with double cream and it can be eaten sweet or savoury, a bit like mascarpone. It's like a very creamy yogurt, the kind of thing where less is probably more, pretty irresistible really. If you think of the unctuous and creaminess implied in those comically suggestive Danone adverts, and then add a bit, you're in the right ball park. It went very nicely with the lemony, maybe even honey-tinged Le Coste trebbiano.

La Croix Belle 2011

The Old Amsterdam cheese was next, my first thought being it was a kind of gouda/parmesan hybrid. Which is certainly a good thing for me. It seemed packed full of those savoury, umami type flavours you get from parmesan and perhaps a bit of caramel in there too, with George pointing out there was also a pineappley note to the smell. With La Croix Belle chardonnay this was a great match, and it also mingled nicely as an alternative with some good bordeaux - Chateau Bonnet 2008.

Some Swedish cheddar next, if that's not a contradiction. Vasterbottensost came with a legend about a milk maid getting distracted by a man and forgetting to stir the curd - I've heard similar stories about beers where brewers forgot to add hops and whacked a load in at the end - and whether or not it's true that that's how it was invented, either way I'm glad it was. It's a salty, gravelly iceberg of a cheese and it was paired with the aromatic Torres Esmeralda and the Berri Shiraz.


Epoisses. Wow, epoisses. How good is this stuff. The kind of cheese that sags and oozes into the cheeseboard as it sweats at room temperature, easing out its almost animal smell. As is probably often the case its taste isn't as strong as its smell; mellow to begin with in the mouth, slowly building to a crescendo with whatever wine you stick in there with it.

 The epoisses was amazing with the dessert wines George brought out - the Chateau du Seuil 2009, which I loved, and the Royal Tokaji 2007 which, well, I loved too. The French wine smelt clean and lemony and soft in the mouth with flavours of apricot, herbs and lime that went on and on. At least that's what my notes say. And the Tokaji was a dream match, an amazing aroma, old floorboards with a story to tell, but a fresh juiciness on the palate. Amazing.

I'm always a fan of gorgonzola and we had a picante version on the night which I really enjoyed; it had a faintly spicy, nutty note on the tongue.



Another highlight of the night for me was trying the Moon River pinot noir from Hungary - which had a really natural smell to it, if that doesn't sound daft - roses, undergrowth, that kind of thing. A wine of character. In that way it reminded me of the Mas Coutelou wines I've tried. There were little strips of sediment in the bottom of the glass.








I also enjoyed the fresh berry flavours of this sangiovese, one of the bottles George left for us to finish off at the end, rounding off what was a great night.

In the interests of disclosure, I was invited to this event by the people promoting Old Amsterdam and went away with a generous cheesy goodie bag. Which was very much a bonus as I thoroughly enjoyed the cheeses anyway.

At the event I also enjoyed the great company of Breadsticklers, Littleblondlife and Yorkshire Pudd.

Wine and the obsession with choice

Some wine critics are very earnest.

Like a pope standing between the masses and enlightenment, they taste wine after wine after wine and score each one out of 100. The suggestion seems to be it's a totally cold and objective process; they're scoring wines against set criteria for a public duty, a job that a well-programmed robot could surely do one day. Enjoyment doesn't come into it.

Which keeps things nice and simple. You might have a wine rated at 96, another at 94, another at 91 and another at 90.

Why would you ever buy the lowest-ranked wines? By this logic there is absolutely no reason to. Someone with encyclopaedic knowledge, and the memory powers to compare all that knowledge in one sip to within one percentile of accuracy, has told us which are the best wines and which are the worst. Which ones to buy and which to avoid.

This is the Ofsted of wine.

Thatcher's governments (and perhaps Reagan's in the US) - and each administration since - promoted an obsession with choice. And with league tables. Choice in public services. The freedom to choose. You can even choose which hospital to have an operation in. Again, as with the wine, I think I'll choose the good one please.

Supermarkets are masters at this. Shelves packed full with wine, loads at under £7 a bottle. You go into an independent wine shop and there might be only seven or eight bottles under a tenner in the whole store. A lack of choice, so it seems.

We're always chasing something better, sipping a wine while looking over the glass to the next label, and the one after that, wondering if they will be 1% better or worse and forgetting to enjoy the moment.

It's a bit like being lucky enough to experience an amazing event, a live concert or football match say, and spending more time worrying about capturing it on your camera than feeling it.

We're constantly choosing and comparing, and in wine this obsession's been fuelled by the 100-point scores.

The best thing in the world at a brief moment in your life - that fleeting moment - might be a cheap bottle of Cotes du Rhones with a plate of cheese. Whether the wine is a rustic 85 or 87 or a 93 or 95 may be irrelevant. The moment is what it's about, and moments are personal and social, and they're there and then they're gone.

Wine jargon explained!

Like any specialist subject, wine has its own weird and wonderful jargon. A quick look at tasting notes and you'll find wines are described in a very funny way - often as though they were people - precise... serious... focused... playful... feminine... approachable.

So I thought I'd do a handy guide to what one or two of these oddities might mean - to help you sort the Lafite from the Graff, if you will.

My tongue-in-cheek guide to funny wine terms.

• PRICE POINT - price
• WINE TRADE - wine business, wine industry
• FINE - usually 1) great; may sometimes mean 2) not heavy in texture; never means 3) decent, not bad
• SERIOUS - see FINE, above (antonym: quaffable)
• CROWD-PLEASER - I can see why people with poor taste like it
• QUAFFABLE or QUAFFER - nothing fancy but does the job
• OVERDELIVERS - is good value
• REFLECTS ITS TERROIR or HAS A SENSE OF PLACE - fits my preconceived idea of how wines from this region should taste
• GOOD TYPICITY - ignore the bit about terroir; tastes how I expect this grape to taste
• FOCUSED or PRECISE - a posh quaffer
• ON THE NOSE I'M GETTING... - it smells like...
• THIS WINE IS SHOWING WELL - this tastes good today

Waitrose signs up Phillip Schofield to promote its wines

Waitrose has signed up TV presenter Phillip Schofield to help promote its wine range, not long after its in-house magazine recruited Pippa Middleton as a food columnist.

The move got criticism from one or two wine writers, but I'm not sure it's totally justified. It is definitely annoying how a celebrity is seemingly attached to everything, whether you want one or not (Alan Partridge's Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank is totally un-far-fetched now). But celebrity sells - and if nothing else, supermarkets are there to sell.

If wine's a big part of your life, I doubt you go to the supermarkets for your main inspiration anyway. Supermarkets are generalists. If Waitrose thinks a celebrity and experienced presenter who loves wine is the best man to engage mildly interested shoppers via some online videos, then fair enough.

To those strongly against the decision to hire him: Waitrose is a supermarket! It definitely is a supermarket. It sells mass-produced products, it does half-price offers, it sells ready meals, sometimes with celebrity chef endorsements. It has checkouts, it does meal deals. In general it sells better quality stuff than most other supermarkets, its wine range is good, it's usually a nice place to shop, and its ethics are arguably better than most (though not so much if you clean parent company John Lewis's Oxford Street store), but it's definitely a supermarket.

The clever bit about Waitrose though is its customers can forget they're supermarket shoppers. Whether it's good old English snobbery, or simply a desire for a quality shopping experience, it's true. Some of the Phillip Schofield criticism spoke of that illusion being broken.

Brands that manage to make you feel exclusive, or cool - even though you're one of millions of customers buying the same products - have to expand carefully. If Waitrose is opening more stores outside its heartlands and adding to its celebrity element, its profits might well go up as a result. But - big but - is there a risk it becomes any old supermarket? Good news for most supermarket shoppers - it might raise the bar for other supermarkets - but what about its core following who like to feel that their shop, and by extension them, is something different?

Apple's a similar example. I've sensed a few cracks in the sheen recently, a few murmurs that make me think it's not quite the flavour of the month it once was. Apple has enjoyed a cult-like following - even though, again, this is just mass-produced electronics we're talking about; albeit high-quality ones. Nicely designed and generally work very well, but mass-produced in not-so-glamorous Far East factories.

You might argue this is more to do with Samsung, Google and others catching Apple up in quality terms (we recently bought a Note 10.1 tablet and it's blummin' great!). But it's not just about quality - brands are vulnerable to the fashions that made them a success to begin with. Has Apple become too ubiquitous? You can buy Apple products in Argos, in Sainsbury's and in Tesco. When do the cool kids decide a brand has become too popular? A cliche?

I say fair play to Waitrose and Phillip Schofield though - I hope it gets more people into wine.

Gallo Barefoot Shiraz in the Guardian… should wine critics recommend big-brand wines?

Wine critic Fiona Beckett mentioned a big-brand wine, Gallo Barefoot Shiraz, in her Guardian column today. For some people in the wine trade she might as well have suggested we all try mixing our Grand Cru burgundy with a splash of Fanta. To put it mildly, some people weren't impressed.

Why do people feel so strongly about wine writers recommending big-brand wines? I noticed two main reasons – distinct but linked – being raised and mixed together on Twitter.

Firstly, people said there are lots of smaller, worthy winemakers who care about their land and product and who are loads more in need of a mention in a national paper than a multimillion-dollar brand. Fair point.

Secondly, people said the same kind of thing but about independent wine shops – in other words they said a national newspaper wine critic should be focusing on indie retailers who care about wine, rather than faceless multinationals. Why does this factor come into it, you might think – we're just talking about an individual wine here aren't we, not where to buy the stuff? Well, because as a general rule specialist wine shops prefer to stock interesting wines from the smaller producers who care about where they grow the grapes, rather than huge mass-produced ones. Again fair point.

But my instinct is Fiona Beckett and others are right to recommend wines from all kinds of shops, from all types of producers, big and small – as long as they are good enough.

I've noticed this kind of thing causes people to heat up in the wine world much more than in any other industry I can think of. When someone like Jay Rayner reviews a well-known chain restaurant, which he does occasionally, you do get some comments from Observer readers saying why couldn't he find somewhere more independent/interesting to review that needs the help, but I don't think there's quite the same strength of feeling. I suspect most readers are interested to hear whether or not whatever ubiquitous chain he's reviewing is actually any good or not. And that's with food, where provenance is just as important as in wine.

Film critics review Hollywood blockbuster films all the time, films that are often fairly unoriginal and formulaic. They sometimes give them four or five stars. Does Hollywood need the help of critics? Or should critics only be reviewing small-budget films, or films from indie producers? How do we decide which ones are allowed in?

Music writers review loads of albums that, irrespective of their review, sell in their millions in supermarkets (as well as independent record stores), with huge marketing budgets behind them. Should music writers be handing out four and five-star reviews to Kylie's or Cheryl Cole's or Elbow's new record? Or should it be their job to solely spend their weeks trailing around small but authentic music venues – the natural vineyards of the music world – promoting the as-yet unheard talents that no doubt toil on without public acclaim? Clearly that should be part of their job, but should it be only that? Similarly, should independent record shops be selling mass-produced pop that has no soul, no sense of place? Or, frankly, is there nothing wrong with liking a bit of Kylie when you're in one mood and liking a bit of Bach when you're in another?

Independent wine shops, places I love to spend my (limited) money. They sometimes stock expensive wines made by super-wealthy producers in Bordeaux, Tuscany, California. A lot of people who end up drinking them won't really appreciate the nuances of the wine: they're buying it as a status thing. What are the mark-ups on those wines? Are all of those wines great? No, I'm sure they're not – some of them will be more about marketing than quality or authenticity – but that doesn't mean the whole category should be out of bounds.

My inkling is that most of the people criticising the column are people who work within the wine industry, rather than general consumers. And obviously we should listen to them as they have incisive things to say – people who work in the industry know what they're talking about. And they care.

But inevitably they also see things from the perspective of selling wine as well as buying it. Which changes their slant on things quite a bit (as an aside this is also a big danger for wine critics, I think – becoming part of the industry rather than sitting alongside it – as I notice some writers seem to come as much from an industry as from a consumer perspective at times, but it's a tricky balancing act).

Understandably, if you work in the trade it's painful to see people thoughtlessly chucking homogenous big-brand wines into their trolleys when you're spending your days passionately preaching about real wine, because you absolutely love the stuff and care about it. But for the general reader of the newspaper column – the kind of person for whom wine is a small, passing, enjoyable part of their lives (and a good escape from the recession) but nowhere near an obsession – perhaps they can be drawn in by mentions of the familiar brand and, if they find they enjoy the recommendation, they might just try one of the more interesting recommendations from the column next time round. I think the most successful wine critics of all, people like Oz Clarke and Robert Parker, have done so well partly because they've connected with general consumers rather than just wine geeks.

One other quick thought about how being passionate about wine changes your perspective so much. You might hate the idea of buying a cheap big-brand wine, or buying any wine from a supermarket. But do you live by that philosophy in every other part of your life? Do you only wear 100% ethically sourced, independent, artisan-produced clothes? Are they Fairtrade or made by a local tailor with non-sweatshop fabric? Was your kitchen put in by a local joiner using responsibly sourced wood? Do you have solar panels? Do you own an Apple product? Is your milk and butter organic and sourced from farmers who got paid properly for it? Is your fruit and veg all local? If so, shouldn't you be helping farmers in the developing world? What's the carbon footprint on our wine habits as individuals? Those questions are a bit facetious, but my point is I suspect most people try to do their best with most things but it's impossible to always support the ethical or worthy option in everything you do.

Apologies for the lengthy post – these thoughts have just come to me as I've been writing, as you can probably tell. Which I've done while drinking a glass of Ribera del Duero – which I impulse-bought a bottle of for £5.50 today just after I'd called into a national DIY chain, B&Q.

I bought the wine in a shop packed full of oddities. Aldi. That's pretty much an independent isn't it? Either way, it's not too bad for a fiver.

Half-price supermarket wines, double-price Sunday dinners and non-discount Laithwaites wine vouchers

I walked past a pub recently that had a big banner outside which read: "Two-for-one main courses all day Monday to Saturday!"

Imagine if that poster had actually read: "Double-price Sunday dinners every week!" I don't think it'd have had quite the same positive effect, but it would really be saying the same thing.

This week I received the latest mail-shot from Laithwaites Wines, who have some good value wines but who aren't scared to run a promotion or two. In the envelope was a brochure offering various mixed cases of wine, along with a couple of big, shiny vouchers. One was a voucher worth £50! And the other was a voucher worth £10.

Why would anyone opt to use the £10 voucher over the £50 one, you might wonder. Because they're not really vouchers as such: you can only use each one against certain cases of wines in the brochure. The £50 one, for example, could only be used against a selection of £89.99 cases that are actually part of 'Wine Plans' (Laithwaites then send you another case every three months at full price unless you opt out). The thing is though, you can order one of these cases for £39.99 direct from the Laithwaites website, without the voucher.

I don't mean to pick on just Laithwaites: as a nation we seem to have a bit of an obsession with voucher codes and discounts in general. Supermarkets are the experts when it comes to running discounts that aren't always quite as they seem. So-called half-price wines are nothing of the sort: the wines are priced artificially high for a few weeks to enable the dramatic discount. I've found that you usually get better value by choosing a supermarket wine that isn't reduced, than by buying a "half-price" one.

The problem is, all of this makes us more confused about the true value of stuff. Which might suit the companies in the short term (I don't know whether or not it does in the long term), but I'm not sure it's good for consumers.

There's definitely a place for promotions - I like to feel as though I'm getting a bargain as much as the next person. Shopping around can really pay off and you can pick up real bargains every now and then. When supermarkets run 25% off the whole of their wine range, for instance, it's certainly worth buying a case if you'd usually shop there anyway.

But are we becoming a bit too obsessed with the need to feel like we've bagged a discount whenever we buy something? Has the internet, which makes it so easy to compare prices, fuelled this obsession?

Shouldn't we just be happy to pay a fair price for stuff?

Is wine a more homosexual drink than beer?

This tongue-in-cheek thought was triggered today by wine writer Andrew Neather who, in his latest Evening Standard column, said:

"…there remains a more deep-seated suspicion of "expensive" wine among many Brits: a notion that it's a waste of money because you can't really tell the difference between that and the cheap stuff (and that anyone who claims to be able to do so is certainly "elitist", possibly homosexual.) It's ignorant tosh…"

I think he's talking homosexual from a male rather than female point of view here. You're in a pub with your mates, it's your round, and you come back from the bar with a tray of northern Rhône syrahs instead of beers. Even worse, you give the glass a good swirl without thinking and comment on its amazing peppery scent. And you get called gay. (We won't even think about what happens if you buy an even gayer wine like a Provence rosé.)

When you bought a round of craft beers the previous day and did a similar thing, talking with your mates about its hoppiness and its frothy head and its citrussy flavours, they didn't laugh you out of town. You were still a man's man! In a non-gay way!

How would you explain this difference to an alien from outer space, or at least to a non-Brit? Why is beer drinking manly and wine appreciation camp? (Come to think of it, on a related note, why do wine writers sometimes refer to certain wines as being "feminine" in style? Actually, save that thought for another day.)

Cost has something to do with it. You can enjoy the world's best beers for just a few quid, so they're way more accessible to the working man than the really interesting wines, which aren't cheap. So perhaps wine is traditionally associated with showy wealth. But it seems to be a cultural or class-based thing as well as an economic one. Working class people have better bullshitometers than the middle classes – and a lot of nonsense has been talked about wine in the past in order to make it seem more exclusive than it needs to be, so it turned off old-fashioned modest Brits. But we're in a new era now. Wine can be demystified. While not settling for anything less than well-made drinks, we don't need to be aloof or scary.

We're living in a time when it's quite common for people to take out finance to buy an expensive car or to spend £40+ a month on a mobile phone contract. And even if a cheaper second-hand car or a more basic phone would've done the job, they probably won't be called a snob, or homosexual as Andy Neather might put it, for stretching beyond their means to get something better. So why is it snobbish to spend a bit more on wine?

The War of Terroir: Beer vs Wine

Wine writer Tim Atkin triggered a debate on Twitter yesterday about beer and wine. Although he loves both drinks, he believes wine is more complex, is better suited to food and has a greater sense of place. Some beer fans said they disagreed – and so far I've seen one blogpost in response arguing that terroir does exist in beer.

I'll leave the complexity and food matching arguments (which I touched on here) for another day, but for now I have to say I agree with Atkin on his point about sense of place, or terroir.

What is terroir? Put simply it's the impact that the physical conditions of a specific location have on the grapes that are grown there. So the character of the wine in the bottle will reflect the character of the terroir (to some extent – many other factors such as grape varieties, the use of oak and other winemaker interventions play a big part too). There are so many different aspects specific to a vineyard's location that are said to affect the grape: the minerals in the soil; wind; rainfall; levels of sunlight; altitude; differences in day and night time temperatures. This is partly why wine, old world wine in particular, is often referred to by location rather than by grape type; the location is synonymous with the wine. Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rioja and so on. Just a mention of the words Bordeaux and Burgundy immediately conjure up images of certain types of wines. (For a further exploration of terroir, try here or here.)

Is the same true of beer? I don't think so. Not to the same extent. There are exceptions, but as a general rule a much more useful way of categorising beer is by style rather than by origin. Beer people tend to talk about porters, stouts, pale ales, lagers, bitters; less so London, California, Buxton, New South Wales or wherever. Yes, certain types of beer have traditionally tended to predominate in certain places, but overall with beer it's more a case of anything goes, hence less of a link to the physical locality.

Also, terroir in wine is said to be a very localised thing. You can get two vineyards within metres of each other that produce wines of different character when all else is equal. I'm no expert on either winemaking or brewing, but by its nature, brewing beer doesn't appear to be so intrinsically tied to the specifics of the land.

That's not to say it's a good or a bad thing, or even how significant it is. A lot of drinkers probably don't really care where the drink was made or if the local environment affected what it tastes like, they just know what they like. It's also debatable how much the concept of terroir is exaggerated, like a kind of placebo effect, a desire on the part of the wine lover to feel the soul of a place as they drink its wine. This is a powerful inclination when you really love wine.

It's also worth pointing out that terroir is not the sole reason for wines being very identifiable by region: in order to qualify for local denomination status, winemakers often have to adhere to strict rules that govern things like the types of grape varieties they are allowed to use. This is where human activity impinges on pure terroir. But nevertheless, in new world areas where there are no such rules, winemaking areas still show their distinct characters in the wine.

But beer fans shouldn't feel wholly negative about all this. Firstly, it shows that the beer world enjoys the freedom of the new world. Brewers can make what they like, where they like, and this leads to radical levels of experimentation, pushing at the boundaries of beer. Loads of new British breweries seem to be using exotic hops lately – which might not express much in the way of the terroir of the brewery, but it can produce some very tasty and interesting beer. Secondly, this isn't to say that beer can't ever have terroir. Perhaps if breweries really started to think local in every sense, a growing sense of terroir could develop further. The idea of vintages is already part of some beers, so why not take it one step further? More use of local or wild yeasts and local hops and of telling us how the local water plays its part. From a marketer's point of view as well as a drinker's, it could be a savvy move.

Also, all of this isn't to say that beer isn't hugely important to local communities. It is. But more in a social and cultural sense than a physical one. Like wine, beer brings people together; it melds communities; it smoothes out the rougher edges of life. And it can taste great. But for true terroir, it doesn't yet come close to wine.

Working on a new drinks menu at Dough Bistro, Leeds

At the weekend I was lucky enough to get a sneak taster of some of the new dishes from the June menu at Dough Bistro here in Leeds. Every single dish I tried hit the mark: perfectly fresh, local ingredients, skillfully cooked.

I was discussing the subject of wine and beer matching with chef/owner Luke Downing, who's looking to revamp his drinks menu. We made one or two interesting findings, and I'm in the process of thinking about some more potentially interesting matches for his food.


A light blonde ale with a subtle hoppiness worked very nicely with a lovely dish of hake and samphire, while a brown ale proved to be an unexpected top performer with various different dishes, perhaps showing the great versatility of that classic type of beer. As I ponder some more matches, I've got plenty of food for thought.

Balance – is it as important in beer as it is in wine?

I've had a few beers lately that I've really enjoyed and that, when I thought about it, shared a common characteristic: balance. Or drinkability, for want of a better word. Tasty, refreshing and with sufficient interest, but not hitting you over the head like a lunatic and saying how manly they are.

With beer, you could draw a straight line and write the word 'challenging' at one end and 'drinkable' at the other. Now I might be totally wrong, but I suspect there's a fashion at the moment in the craft beer world for stuff that errs more towards the challenging or extreme. Some of these beers can be really interesting to drink - but personally I sometimes find the first sip is the one I enjoy the most. And that's not ideal. After three or four gulps of a more extreme beer my palate can feel like someone's been at it with a steam-powered wallpaper remover. Interesting flavours, challenging, but not something I'd necessarily want to drink regularly. Perhaps this kind of beer is playing to a macho I-can-eat-a-hotter-vindaloo-than-you mentality. You can't imagine many women being daft enough to bother with some of these drinks beyond the first sip.

Of course it depends on the occasion; there's a time and place for a more extreme beer. And it's worth noting the caveat that more extreme beers can still be in balance; choc-full of flavour but with all notes singing in harmony.

But the beers I tend to enjoy most are the ones where everything is nicely in balance and that I don't tire of after a few gulps. And by that I don't mean boring; it's easy to confuse the idea of balance with lack of flavour. It's not that at all - sometimes it might even be the addition of more flavours, sometimes it might be fewer, to strike the balance. A food analogy would be using a pinch or two less of chilli powder to tone down the spice, or perhaps adding a squeeze or two of lemon to freshen it up.

Like anything sensual, it's of course subjective to some extent - one drinker's idea of balance won't be the same as another drinker's. Some of us prefer more bitter flavours, for example. It's all about personal taste, as well as mood, context, what you're eating (if anything) - the time of year, even. Which are some of the things that make food and drink so interesting.

So what were the finely balanced beers I've had recently that slipped down so easily? The first was the acclaimed El Bulli chef Ferran Adria's beer, Inedit, brewed by Estrella Damm – nothing exceptional you might think on trying it, but an intriguingly light mouthfeel, and just so damn tasty and refreshing. Perhaps a touch sweeter than I'd regularly go for and it may not be earth shattering but, as was intended with this brew, it's very food-friendly.

Another very nice beer I had recently was Stormstay Premium Ale, from O'Hanlon's Brewery in Devon, which is also a beer that I suspect might not satisfy the label drinkers looking to tick off the latest new world hop bomb. It struck that fine balance between hops and malt, with a subtle caramel depth underpinning the fresh green hop flavours. I really enjoyed this beer. If it was a stranger at a party it wouldn't skip quickly from person to person and talk about itself as certain other craft beers might; instead it'd be an understated but likeable presence with a touch of class. I thought it had a nice balance and a slight zip of acidity reminiscent of a good sparkling wine.

Going back to the fashion for extreme beers: it does seem to be specific to beer. Wine writers seem to be more preoccupied with elegance and structure. The reason for this difference, I'm not sure. It could quite simply be that when we drink a glass of beer or a glass of wine, we're looking for different things, and the difference in the tone of coverage reflects that. Perhaps an extreme IPA is only meant to be enjoyed for a few sips - that's the whole point, it's not designed for session drinking.

Or another theory could be that the craft beer revolution - for want of a less tabloidy term - is at an earlier phase than that of wine drinking (if that's the case it's ironic, given the long history of beer brewing and drinking in Britain). Perhaps the over-the-top late-hopped IPAs or quadruple imperial black quadruple chocolated stouts (I exaggerate) are the beer equivalent of the over-oaked chardonnays or the harsh one-dimensional sauvignon blancs wine lovers tired of to some extent in the 1990s and early-2000s, and beer fashions will evolve in much the same way over time. If this is the case, some classy but currently underrated more traditional British and Belgian ales, for instance, might enjoy a resurgence as beer drinkers become weary of yet another new wave British or American brew. When I drank a couple of Rochefort ales recently I was thinking what classy brews they were.

It's all about time and place. Sometimes the grapefruity hit of a New Zealand sauvignon blanc or an American IPA just hits the spot, just as a gin and tonic or a really very hoppy pale ale does, but at other times the moment calls for a deep, mellow porter by the fireside, or a savoury, herby syrah from the Northern Rhone. More often you're going to want the over-the-top hoppy pale ale as an aperitif as you would the G&T; the less extreme ales will more likely do you for a meal or a session.

But if beer wants to catch up with wine as a respected match for food, I think there might just need to be a slight shift in emphasis towards balance. Good Italian wine is often so very food-friendly thanks to its pure fruit flavours and fresh acidity (not to mention its sense of place), and it doesn't need to shout about itself. Over-oaked fruit bomb wines, on the other hand, are less likely to complement food quite so easily. I'm certainly not saying it's impossible to match foods with drinks that have extreme flavours, but it is more tricky.

The key point is that there's a time and a place for any well-made drink. But if beer wants to gain more respect at the dining table, and among drinkers generally, I'd say balance is an important thing to bear in mind in the long run. The craft beer movement will struggle to win over set-in-their-ways Stella drinkers on the one hand or set-in-their-ways Bordeaux drinkers on the other if it tries too hard and veers too far towards the extreme.

*The picture at the top is a pint of Timothy Taylor's Landlord on cask and some mini fish'n'chips. Lovely.

*Anyone in Leeds reading this can buy a 75cl bottle of Inedit from Latitude Wine for just under a fiver, or from Harvey Nichols for just over a fiver.

Oz Clarke on Robert Parker: "I do basically like the bloke"

© ozclarke.com

I couldn't resist asking Oz Clarke for his thoughts on Robert Parker, the American wine writer often referred to as the most powerful critic in the world. Parker is famous for his 100-point rating system, with a high Parker rating worth millions in sales to Bordeaux winemakers. A number of British wine writers, even those who deploy their own rating systems, have criticised Parker for the way he operates, in particular for apparently favouring a certain style of wine (big and full-flavoured), leading to the so-called Parkerisation of wines. Some have also questioned how he goes about tasting the wines and decides on his scores, with the suggestion that tasting some in the company of winemakers at their wineries is not necessarily conducive to objectivity. But then again – to play devil's advocate – all wine journalists go on press trips to wineries, and who knows how much those trips influence their judgments, either consciously or subconsciously?

I put it to Oz Clarke that Parker comes in for a lot of criticism from British wine critics. "Yes he does, but he asks for it, that's the trouble," Oz said. "Because he's so bloody rude to Brits all the time… and I can't understand… I've known Robert for donkeys' years, you know, we were quite good mates in the old days and we still would be if we ever saw each other, but he's too busy marking wines. You know we used to go out drinking and go to jazz clubs and drink beer, and I don't know whether we chased women together, perhaps not, but I certainly felt as though I did.

© erobertparker.com

"And you know, we had a really good time together. And I used to taste with him on his panels. And I just think poor old Robert's got, you know... when you're so powerful and so successful sometimes you lose slight touch with reality - or you don't, but all the people around you do. And I think he's got an awful lot of people… you know, some of the people around him are very good - people like Neal who's the English guy who works with him, but some of the people around him, you think, did you really want those people saying 'I'm the voice of Robert Parker'? Because I like Neal and Neal's a good taster and he does a good job in Robert's name as well as in his own name - he's not in any way a sort of sycophant for Robert Parker - he went out on his own and said this is what I think, completely different to Parker some of the time. But… basically I just think Parker… he's more powerful than anyone should be, but I do basically like the bloke and I do basically... I enjoy his tasting because I understand it, so I know what he's tasting, I know the stuff he likes, I know why he likes these kind of wines."

By "these kind of wines", does Oz mean Parker does favour the full-flavoured, what you might call fruit bomb style? "Well yeah, yes he does. But on the other hand I can interpret that now. Even now if I had to choose somebody and say, let's see what another critic says, I would probably think let's see what Parker says. Not because I'd necessarily agree with him, but because I know how Parker thinks and for me that's important to know how the guy thinks."

Oz Clarke: "If you're in a bad mood, it's really tough to taste red wine"

I got to interview Oz Clarke recently because he was coming up to Yorkshire for the Love Cooking food festival. It was absolutely brilliant having the chance to talk to him about wine - and he clearly still has so much passion for the stuff. I got his views on a number of interesting subjects: the best cheap wines; Robert Parker; his Christmas wine recommendations; his views on rating wines out of 100. We chatted about so many interesting subjects that I'm going to split this up into a couple of blog posts, otherwise this one would end up being ridiculously long.

What absolutely shone through is his passion, and without any hint of snobbery. That's partly why he's become such a successful wine writer and TV personality, I think - as wine writers develop their expertise, it must be very easy to lose sight of the fact that their job is to speak to consumers, not to each other. Oz very much speaks to consumers - he obviously gets to taste the very best wines in the world, and yet he is still able to enjoy a good supermarket wine. He appreciates there's a time and a place for both.

One thing that also came through quite strongly as we chatted was his love of a good drink that's packed full of flavour. I think sauvignon blanc was the grape he happened to mention more often than any other, and he also spoke with great passion about the bold crunchy fruit of Spanish garnacha, especially in the context of Christmas. As Oz himself put it: "The kind of stuff you slap into a glass and say 'here fellas let's have a glass of this' as against sitting around quietly and pouring out the Bordeaux and thinking, hey, let's talk about this. The garnacha you don't talk about, you just say bloody hell that's good, basically, let's have some more!"

Having said that, he did say red Bordeaux probably provides his greatest pleasure in the world of wine, when the mood takes him: "If I was rather more contemplative, quiet, you know mellow, wintry kind of mood actually; in December I'll be in a red Bordeaux mood."

I couldn't resist asking Oz about the scoring of wines - be it on a 20-point or 100-point scale, say - because it's one aspect of wine criticism that I sometimes find a bit daft. As much as I have great respect for professional wine writers' knowledge, giving an experience as romantic and subjective as a glass of wine a rating out of 100 seems both unwanted and misleading. Can you really be so specific? What does Oz think about critics publicly rating wines? "If that's how they wanna do it, let them, I mean, I just think it's all… it's not bollocks, because… I can mark a wine 89 or 90 or 91, I just don't wanna publish it. I might do that to help me over a range of 50 wines, thinking is that one just a bit better than that one, but I don't wanna put that down in black and white for the audience, I wanna sort of try and tell them why I like the stuff. Engage them."

 

And surely context affects the rating given to a wine? "Yes. Absolutely right. The idea of the context - a couple of points up, a couple of points down, with context. You can taste differently. Are you happy, are you sad, are you in love, are you out of love, you know, have you had an argument with your girlfriend, did you get out of bed the wrong side, is your mum playing up? All of these things change, you know. Especially with red wine - if you're in a bad mood it's really tough to taste red wine. You know, your mouth can taste bitter and dry and the wine tastes bitter and dry."

So is it better to opt for a fresh white wine in that case? "Yeah... or basically give up for the day and go to the pub, have a beer. That'll calm you down and you can go and do some red wine tasting." 

The original Leeds Guide piece can be read here.