English Wine Producers St George's Day Tasting

This annual tasting took place last Friday at Chelsea Football Club. Unusual to have a trade tasting on a Friday but it was scheduled to coincide with St George's Day. Despite some perfectly acceptable whites (of which Three Choirs' basic "English House Dry" stood out as good value for money at £5.85), I still think the future of English wine is sparkling.

The pick of the sparkling wines came from the more "established" producers. Camel Valley from Cornwall (07 Brut), Nyetimber from West Sussex (01 Blanc de Blancs) and Denbies from Surrey (02 Greenfields). All had fairly searing acidity as you would expect and autolysis was pleasantly restrained in favour of some good primary fruit characters, suggesting English sparkling wine is not simply moulding itself in the image of Champagne. There were also some interesting vegetal notes in wines with higher proportions of Pinot Noir.

Prices remain high however, with some sparkling wines nudging £30 retail. The euro exchange rate has pushed prices of Champagne, Cava and Prosecco up over the last 18 months but this is still expensive enough to make consumers think twice before buying. Relying on the novelty aspect of English wine is not a viable long-term strategy and even those consumers who want to buy English wine need to feel they are getting value for money compared to EU and new world alternatives.

The one important and unforgivable negative is that the labels are almost universally awful. With the exception of Chapel Down, which has a smart black and red label design (see pic), the rest really need to pay some attention to presentation. Asking premium prices for English wine is hard enough but when the packaging is so unappealing producers are doing themselves no favours.

Wines of Portugal 2010

Went to this today at Lord's, with net practice on the sunny Nursery Ground providing a truly spring-like backdrop. Fairly quiet when I arrived but was filling up by lunchtime. There were themed tables showcasing the Alvarinho, Touriga Nacional and Moscatel grape varieties. The Alvarinho was mostly from the north west - Vinho Verde and the Minho (non-DOP) region - but also some from Lisboa (the new name for Estremadura). The star Alvarinho for me was Quinta dos Loridos' 2008, with good minerality, highish acidity and a refreshingly low 12.5% abv.

Of the Touriga Nacionals, the Pedra Cancela 2008 stood out - dark ruby coloured with ripe red fruit flavours (raspberries with some violet), fine, grippy tannins and fairly high acidity (pic below).

Sarah Ahmed did talks "every hour, on the hour" on various aspects of Portuguese wine. I saw one on the Dao and food matching. Sarah mentioned that the high tannin and acidity mix in the Dao makes for particularly good foody wines. She described the Dao as rugged and mountainous, with elevation ranging between 200m and 900m, large diurnal temperature variation and high rainfall which means vines build up good reserves for the dry, hot summers.

I am always impressed by Portuguese wines but they still account for less than 1% of the UK off trade wine market (and most of that is Mateus Rose!) The wine-drinking public has no real image of Portuguese wine (positive or negative) and the indigenous grape varieties are perceived as hard to get to grips with. Hopefully some of their generic marketing efforts will pay off and the public will wake up to what are increasingly impressive wines. The Douro is maybe the most exciting area, and probably has the best potential for branding, on the back of consumers' regognition of Port.

Some Italy wine facts

Revising Italian wines for an upcoming exam. Here are some interesting facts:

- Pinot Grigio accounts for ONE THIRD of all wine sales in the UK off trade (supermarkets etc).

- The quality seal DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) was introduced in the early 1980s in an attempt to create a super-DOC status. The requirements to qualify for DOCG are the same as DOC, with the added hurdle of a blind tasting carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture.

- Prosecco is a grape variety not a region (the region, recently conferred DOCG status, is Conegliano-Valdobbiadene). The Italians were so worried about other countries selling wine bearing the name Prosecco that, in a bid to protect it (and in a wonderful application of EU beaurocracy), they have just renamed the Prosecco grape "Glera" and the region itself "Prosecco".