Oxford Blind Tasting, 11 November 2007

Blind tasting explodes a lot of myths about wine that should well and truly have been exploded by now – usually bald claims about the impossibility of identifying a certain wine, or about other wines being unmistakable, or about how the New World is not a patch on the Old, and so on. I am always especially fascinated by the result of group blind wine tastings, where the conclusions of several people in relation to a wine presented blind say more about it than 100 back-labels ever could. Sunday was no exception, when I presented a bracket of 6 to this year’s batch of blind tasters at Oxford. Here are my notes on the wines, together with what the group said.

2006 Grove Mill Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, New Zealand)
Very pale, with a green tinge and appealing clarity. The nose is pungent, showing intense grassy aromas and a certain celery-salt herbaceousness. The palate is very clean and high in acid. Although it shows some tropicality, it is definitely at the herbaceous end of the spectrum, finishing with a clean mineral streak. All but one of the 10 or so of us there identified it as Sauvignon Blanc, but interestingly only two put it in New Zealand, and only one in Marlborough. Of the others, Sancerre was the common consensus, but personally I thought it was classic Marlborough (although of course I knew what it was beforehand). I do, however, see the point of the one candidate who placed the wine in Pouilly Fumé, which to me is the vigorous, slightly aggressive appellation that most closely approaches New Zealand in style, although personally I didn’t pick up any of Pouilly Fumé’s characteristic smokiness on this wine.

2004 Domaine Roches Pouilly Fuissé
Mid gold. On the nose, a heavy influence of New French Oak, manifesting itself in heady aromas of butterscotch and caramel, with some faint stone fruit and candied orange underneath. In the mouth the wine is as round and voluptuous as any number of fatties that Gok Wan can try to make look good naked (except with the curves in the right place for a change). I suspected that everyone would put it in the New World, but happily all but one had this squarely in Burgundy. An oxidative hint together with the heavy oak influence led one person to speculate that it was white Rioja. Close, but no cigar. I’ve made that mistake myself on a couple of occasions, but the oak was clearly French and there was none of the spicy, sherryish character that one associates with white Rioja.

2005 Hugel Gewurtztraminer (Alsace)
Light and clear, with a tinge of green, and hanging quite heavily in the glass, as one would expect. Highly aromatic – pear, lychee and orange zest on the nose, with rosewater and Turkish delight joining in on a fairly unctuous, oily palate, finishing slightly bitter. No prizes for identifying this one – and a good thing too, because everyone got it right.

2006 Wild Rock ‘Cupid’s Arrow’ Pinot Noir (Central Otago, New Zealand)
Mid- to dark-red, but still translucent. The nose has some dusty new oak on it, together with some sweet red fruit and a bit of alcoholic heat. The palate shows forward non-descript red fruit, together with pinot’s sappy greenness. Of the majority who correctly identified it as Pinot, only one had it in New Zealand, the others placing it in Burgundy, probably on account of the lack of purity on the nose rather than because it was stellar in any way. One had it in Beaujolais, although to me it wasn’t at all confected, as would be usual there. Interestingly, two very good tasters had it as Cotes du Rhone. Personally I would probably never have thought this, although it’s an interesting guess. I always think of Grenache as being heavy and “purple fruits” dominant, although I admit this is usually the case where it is heavily blended with other heavyweight Rhone grapes. One quickly forgets that in the more generic Rhone appellations, the wines can become thin in both colour and flavour, bringing Grenache closer to Pinot than one would usually expect to occur.

2006 Chapoutier ‘Les Meysonniers’ Crozes Hermitage
Dark red-purple. Jammy, confected nose, with the palate showing crunchy purple fruit, blackberry, boiled lollies and a tiny hint of white pepper. Guesses were all over the shop with this (only one person correctly identifying it as Crozes), but this is pretty unsurprising given how young the wine is. Its voice is nowhere near broken yet – the 2004 was still on the shelves only a matter of weeks ago. Interestingly, a critical mass of people mistook it for Loire Cabernet Franc. This surprised me, but I can sort of see the case for it now, with the tight, crunchy fruit, high acid and a certain leafiness to it as well.

2002 Petaluma Coonawarra
Ah, the welcoming scent of home. Opaque. Loads of mint on the nose, over layers of dusty oak and rich cassis. Cedarwood comes through on the palate with rich brambly fruit, dense fruit layers and ripe tannins. A unanimous verdict for Australian Cabernet Sauvignon (which of course it was), although interestingly the merlot content is virtually absent on the palate despite forming 49% of the blend. Happily for me, everyone said they liked it (most thinking it was the best wine of the tasting), even though they knew all along that it was Australian. No prejudices in this year’s group. That’s what I like to see!

Afterwards we went to the Anchor for dinner. Thumbs up for the steak and kidney pudding; thumbs firmly down for the thin, acidic Barbera d’Asti on the wine list.

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.