Info Mine - Grape Ripeness

The Wine Mine Blagging Toolkit - 5 wine nuggets with which to impress your friends...

1. Starting with the basics - the purpose of grapes is to entice birds to eat them and disperse the seeds, thereby propagating the grape vine. But they don't want to be eaten too early, which is why when unripe they are green (camouflage) and have high levels of tannins and acids (not tasty), turning an appetising red/purple-black when ripe. This colour-change process is known as veraison and is an indicator of chemical ripening within the grape. (Before you ask "what about yellow grapes", these have been shown to be the result of a mutation in the gene regulating pigment.)

2. Without wanting to get too technical, there are two separate, although related, types of ripeness in grapes - phenolic (or physiological) ripeness and sugar ripeness.

3. In a nutshell, phenolic ripeness has to do with changes in the tannins in the seeds, skins and stems and is influenced primarily by "hang time", the amount of time the grape is left on the vine. Sugar ripeness involves the breakdown of acids and the increase in sugar levels and has more to do with the amount of sunlight and warmth which the grape has experienced (which obviously varies from vintage to vintage).

4. Depending on climate, growers will harvest according to phenolic or sugar ripeness (depending on which tends to occur first). In warm regions, phenolic ripeness occurs after sugar ripeness, meaning it is farily easy to produce wines with high levels of sugar (and therefore potential alcohol), but the challenge is to ensure phenolic ripeness is not delayed so long that the wines become seriously alcoholic. By the same token, picking before phenolic ripeness is achieved to avoid excessive alcohol will leave a bitter green taste.

5. Some new world producers tend to err on the side of over-ripeness ("excessive hang-time"), rather than risk green, under-developed wines. This can produce sweet, sugary wines which are easy on the undemanding palate but have undesirable side effects such as high levels of alcohol and the so-called "dead fruit" phenomenon.

Bilbao - Tapas Capital of the World?

My goodness Bilbao has got a lot of tapas bars! What a fantastic way to spend an evening, sauntering from one establishment to another, an Albariño here, a cañita there, with a plentiful supply of jamon serrano and quails eggs on toast to soak up the booze the keep things on the right side of civilised.

On a recent weekend trip there we spent an evening making our way around the arcaded main square in the old town (known as the Casco Viejo). Children played by the fountains in the centre of the square late into the evening, while their parents (presumably) kept a watchful eye from behind servings of olives and crianza. The bars all have service hatches leading onto the pavement, meaning you don't even have to go inside to order. This turns the English "grab a corner seat and don't move all evening" mentality completely on its head - outside in the street is where it all happens.

On our second evening we visited a tapas bar-lined street in the central shopping district which someone had recommended. Again, the same challenge applied - i.e. how far can you make it along the street, putting in pit stops in all the likely looking tapas joints along the way? In our case the answer was less than 100 yards in about three hours!

Spanish friends tell me that as far as tapas culture goes, Bilbao has nothing on nearby Santander. Could there be a rival contender for the title of Tapas Capital of the World? One thing's for sure - I intend to go back and find out.

Sardinian Vermentino

On a recent trip to northern Sardinia I was surprised by the overall quality of the white wines. Even the bog standard house whites were highly quaffable, not to mention thirst-quenching in the sweltering heat.

On closer inspection far and away the most prevalent white varietal is Vermentino. Originally from the Iberian peninsula, Vermentino is now widely planted in northern Sardinia (the link with Spain is also cultural - the port of Alghero has strong Catalan roots and the language is still spoken and even appears on restaurant menus).

Sardinia's only DOCG is Vermentino di Gallura, upgraded from DOC status in 1996. Its typically aromatic, almost bitter palate apparently comes from the soil of sandy clay on a granite base. Check it out!

Info Mine - Malbec

The Wine Mine Blagging Toolkit - 5 wine nuggets with which to impress your friends...

1. Malbec is one of the 6 grape varieties permitted in red Bordeaux. Its primary function in Bordeaux is in blends with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

2. It is a thin-skinned grape, is darker in colour than Cabernet and has an earthiness on the palate, with touches of spice.

3. Originally from Cahors, Malbec is becoming increasingly identified as the signature Argentinan varietal. Most of the Argentinian plantings of Malbec are in Mendoza, which has the requisite high levels of heat and sun (partly due to its high altitude).

4. Synonyms for Malbec include Auxerrois and Cot Noir (in Cahors) and Pressac.

5. For a good entry-level Malbec check out the offering from Argentinian winery Terrazas de los Andes, retailing at around £7.25.

The En Primeur Game

Influential wine people have been railing against the Bordeaux en primeur system recently, on the back of record levels of trading for the recently released 2005 vintage. Ex-Petrus winemaker Jean-Claude Berrouet has called the system a "madness" and Jancis Robinson has understatedly lamented the "shortcomings" of the en primeur "game".

The financial argument against en primeur is roughly that "us poor drinkers shouldn't be forced to tie up our money so far in advance of taking delivery of the wine". As wine journalist Stephen Brook puts it, en primeur is a system "designed to transfer large amounts of cash from your pocket into the pockets of wealthy Bordeaux proprietors and merchants at the earliest possible moment". I don't actually think this cuts the mustard as a reason to get rid of en primeur. Any valuable commodity in short supply will give rise to a futures market. Like it or loathe it, the majority of buyers of top flight Bordeaux are primarily investors, not drinkers. The fact that it is not possible to predict exactly how good a bottled wine will be from a barrel sample is simply another variable to take into account if you want to dabble in an investment that is per se something of a lottery.

Economics aside, I believe there is a much better argument against en primeur in Berrouet's observation that wines now have to be "as seductive as possible far earlier, to the detriment of the Bordeaux style". If the crucial tasting moment becomes the moment of purchase, i.e. the time when the barrel samples are tasted by buyers, winemakers may feel pressure to create younger developing wines aimed to drink well at the moment of en primeur purchase (when they should still be in malolactic fermentation) rather than the ultimate moment of drinking. If this were the case, it would be a sad development for the world's top wines.

I am not qualified enough to know whether or not this trend is in fact yet the case but if it is, what can be done to modify the en primeur system? Presumably some sort of regulatory intervention would be required, either by the French government or at EU level. It is hard to imagine such intervention suceeding on economic grounds - as we have seen, there is no real consumer protection issue at stake and futures markets already exist for almost every conceivable commodity. Intervention would have to come from the wine/agricultural authorities and the case would have to be made on the basis of preserving the quality of the wine, for example by imposing minimum timetables for development of a wine before it can be offered for sale and requiring transparency of volumes produced and offered for sale.

We live in capitalist times and we do to an extent have to accept that. If there are people out there prepared to pay £3,000 for a bottle of wine then - at least in financial terms - that is what it is worth. However, regulatory powers can and should be used to safeguard quality, which, after all, should be the main concern of wine drinkers the world over.

Sources: O. Styles, Decanter

Info Mine - Pétrus

The Wine Mine Blagging Toolkit - 5 wine nuggets with which to impress your friends...

1. Pétrus is a red wine made principally from the Merlot grape in the Pomerol appelation in Bordeaux.

2. The vines on the Pétrus estate are only replanted after they reach 70 years of age. The grapes are hand-harvested only in the afternoon, once the morning dew has evaporated, to avoid absolutely any dilution of the grape juice.

3. Demand for Pétrus far outstrips supply. UK agents Corney & Barrow rigourously control primary allocations on the basis of how much dosh customers have spent in the previous year. Secondary market trading then tends to see prices shoot through the roof - for a bottle of the 2005 vintage today don't expect much change out of £3,000.

4. Photographic records are now kept of every bottle stored at the 11.4 hectare property to combat the growing phenomenon of wine fraud.

5. The company refused to allow the makers of cult wine film Sideways to use Pétrus as the wine which protagonist Miles can never find a special enough occasion to drink. Bah pourquoi?

Info Mine - Phylloxera

The Wine Mine Blagging Toolkit - 5 wine nuggets with which to impress your friends...

1. Phylloxera is a louse which feeds on the roots of grapevines.

2. In the late 19th century, Phylloxera destroyed the majority of Europe's vineyards, hitting France especially hard.

3. North American grapevine roots are tolerant of Phylloxera, whereas European roots are not.

4. The best way to evade the ills of Phylloxera is therefore to "graft" North American rootstock onto your vine (i.e. physically stick the roots and the upper part of the vine together).

5. The only countries in the world not to have been affected by Phylloxera are Cyprus and Chile - both of which are geographically isolated (the former is obviously an island and the latter is hemmed in by the Andes, the Pacific and the Atacama desert).