Friday afternoon miscellany

Here are a few notes about what I’ve been drinking so far this weekend. I’m going up to my old college ball tonight, so unfortunately that means my Saturday drinking will consist entirely of seedy cocktails made from rotten fruit, cheap rum, and served in plastic cups. Nevertheless, this small Friday afternoon bracket more than makes up for what I will have to deal with this evening.

2003 Amayna Chardonnay (San Antonio Valley, Chile, £17)
When as a kid we used to go on long driving holidays through places like Gundagai, we used to stay at country town Motor Inns – the sort of place that boasted having ‘COLOUR TV’ as one of the facilities. The breakfast menus at these places used to offer, quite incredulously, ‘Compote of Fruit’, which was code for an ungenerous spoonful of tinned fruit salad with little cubes of some sort of yellow fruit (peach?) some sort of white fruit (pear?) and cherries, coated in thick syrup. Back then I thought this was the poshest thing in the world (I was probably 4 at the time). I was devastated when I eventually learned that ‘compote’ is a legitimate culinary term that should evoke orchard-fresh fruit lovingly combined with sugar and spice and all things nice and slowly reduced in a copper pot atop an environmentally unfriendly Aga in the kitchen of a 17th century stone cottage, that had been fraudulently deployed when used to describe fruit salad ladled out of a 5 litre tin by a stinking man in a wife beater. Anyway, this wine has a weirdly fruity nose of rhubarb and cream, toasted marshmallows, and – there it was on sniff number 3 – Gundagai Motor Inn Compote of Fruit. Then there are aromas of baked fruit – possibly even a caramelised apple/tarte tatin character. Only when you taste it do you realise it is an alcoholic beverage (very much so at 14.5%) – with a fleshy palate, bordering on the flabby. Yes, it does taste like a Chardonnay (and a good and interesting one) but to my mind not acidic enough to deal with the Golden Circle train wreck that is the wine’s opening gambit.

2005 Jean Daneel Signature Chenin Blanc (Stellenbosch, South Africa, £17)
Now I’m not the world’s biggest fan of either Chenin Blanc or South African wine, but I do like this (indeed I’ve liked the vast majority of Jean Daneel wines I’ve tried), and it is allegedly the best Chenin produced in South Africa. Nose of butter and caramel, with dried apples in the background and that characteristic South African pong (which, in fairness, is very faint and you only notice on the first sniff). The palate is ripe and full, with caramel, apricots, viscous melons and butter, and a searing acid finish leaving a hint of caramel behind it. It is, however, a very attention-seeking wine (at 15% alcohol), made almost as if it’s there to prove a point, and you do have to concentrate very hard on it. I’m not sure I could drink this wine and hold a conversation with someone at the same time.


2004 Jean Luc Colombo Crozes Hermitage ‘La Tuilière’ (£12)
This is the third Jean Luc Colombo wine I’ve tried in the last week or so, and although they are all quite good wines the opinion I’ve formed is that they’re rather characterless. The white Cotes du Rhone is quite didactic in the way it sets out benchmark viognier characters. ‘Benchmark’ is one of these words that looks like a compliment when it isn’t one. Although the initial sentiment is that it is something by which others are judged, the implicit sentiment is that one is always hoping to come across something better. Just as the Cotes du Rhone was benchmark viognier, this was benchmark Crozes Hermitage. Nose of white pepper, and forward red fruit, perhaps even a little confected. The palate leads with black peppercorns and straight forward, clean red fruit. Well made, but ultimately not a wine for showing off. The sort of wine that could fairly be included in a blind tasting match, but that you just don’t get that excited about having a second glass of.

2001 Marchesi de Frescobaldi Castel Giocondo Brunello di Montalcino (£30)
This was presented to me blind, and to think that Marc quibbled with my identification of it as being a Tuscan Sangiovese. Is Brunello not another word for Sangiovese? Can anyone tell me definitively whether these are merely synonyms, or if there is actually a botanical difference between Brunello and Sangiovese? Anyway, that’s beside the point. The wine is a lustrous red. A nose of cherries, chocolate, fragrant lavender, anise, and a hint of cedarwood. The palate is less complex than the nose might lead you to expect, but is big and full, fruit driven and chocolatey, finishing with full, ripe tannins. A really impressive wine.

But my favourite wine of the day was the second Tuscan Sangiovese I tried, a 1999 Le Fioraie Chianti Classico. Perhaps I was just a bit excited that I had bought some bottles for £10 each, a substantial discount from its usual price, or that maybe I just like a mature old-style Chianti Classico, but it was just lovely. Subtly perfumed nose of dried and fresh cherries. Smooth, full palate, creamy, with cherry liqueur and a slight charry/cigarry dimension, supported by supple fruit and ripe tannins. My flatmate Andy said it reminded him of those little ‘Campino’ strawberries-and-cream lollies you can get on the continent, and I think he’s exactly right. It’s probably at the peak of its maturity now, and even after being open for about two hours it began to turn a little sour, so drink up now.