We were supposed to be having a little vertical of Annie’s Lane Clare Valley Shiraz at Hawksmoor tonight. Somehow, our hosts managed to forget them when heading from horrible, horrible Woolwich to the City. Consequently, I popped into Uncorked and scored these two. One was quite delicious, the other just a woeful example of over-blown tedium.

Auxey-Duresses Premier Cru 2006, Comte Armand
Quite a pale colour. A lovely nose of fresh, ripe fruit. The fruit character is quite complex by itself, but together with its earthy richness and extremely subtle oak treatment this is a properly pleasing nose. Perhaps not as ripe and powerful as the 2005 flavour of this wine that I’ve had a couple of times recently, but sometimes we appreciate refinement rather than power. Now that is an attractive palate. Its rigorous tannic structure is backed up with lovely, attractive fruit and a fine backbone of acidity. Again, not as powerful, nor as tough, as the 2005, but this great drinking stuff. I really like the fruit/tannin interplay, plenty to keep you interested here. There is length and complexity to the palate as well, with fruity, earthy flavours persisting for a long time after you’ve swallowed. Whereas the 05 was really asking for a bit more time in the cellar, you can extract a lot of pleasure from this right now. And we did. For £25 this this high-quality bargain Burgundy, well worth every penny.

Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ‘Blocks Road’ 2006, Kilikanoon
By arse, what an over-blown nose: heavy with dense, stewed, over-ripe fruit and a powerful alcohol burn. This smells like all that is dull and tedious about the Australian wine idiom: just because they want to harvest grapes that are ripe doesn’t mean they need to roast on the vines until they’ve been stewed to jamminess. I don’t really want to taste this, it just smells like it’ll over-whelm my delicate aesthetic sensibilities and leave me tired, shagged-out and generally bored. However, since I dropped eighteen fun tokens on this piece of over-rated rubbish I suppose some had better pass my lips. Yes, this is Cabernet soup mixed with slightly burnt jam. The tannins are over-ripe, there is no acidity to speak of and that fruit has just been cooked to buggery. I really feel offended by this wine. As Peter’s comments on another recent post suggest, this kind of Australian wine is perilously short of redeeming features: you just feel drinking it is far too much like hard work for little reward on the pleasure-front. Does anybody really enjoy these souped-up monsters? We are finding it really hard to finish this bottle even though we are heroes of the booze world who would normally require far more than two bottles of red to drink with our steaks. Clearly sub-interest; it is quite scandalous that people can sell dull, crap, monotonous wine like this for so much money. Dreadful filth. Many apologies to our hosts for supplying this bottle of tedious filth; next time remember to bring the wines you had planned!

I popped these on Saturday for the neighbours to enjoy and I have finally got around to typing my notes up. The Boxler was terribly good.

Pinot Grid Grand Cru Brand 2007, Domaine Albert Boxler
This has a rich, powerful nose of opulent white fruit which hints of being quite roasted. It certainly shows a lot of creamy minerality which makes this quite a complex and pleasing nose. The palate is also opulent and rich. Lots and lots of ripe fruit with some residual sugar clearly presently. The balance is just fine, though, as it has a real streak of screaming acidity running straight through it. So much acidity, in fact, that my poor, abused stomach is complaining about it. The minerality adds to the complexity of the palate and this persists on the rather long finish along with its fruit and acidity. For sure, this is a big wine, but it is balanced and throbs with interest.

Pinot Noir 2008, Delta
There is quite a lot of cherry and strawberry fruit on the nose, but not, if I am honest, that much else. The alcohol level is quite balanced, but this nose is mainly about being fruity and fun. The palate is also very fruity, and there is a reasonable tannic structure to it so it seems fairly lively. It has some length as well, but there is not much in the way of complexity to it. It is quite accessible and delivers some pleasure. As one of the cheaper wines in our ‘general drinking’ purchase I feel this is pretty much up to the expected level.

I doubt many people have noticed it, but on the right-hand side of each Elitist Review page, just under the photoblog widget, is a search box. Until about ten minutes ago there was practically no point in using this; the way my blog software implemented searching was just laughably poor. As I always strive to serve my readers better I have managed, with only moderate amounts of farting around and swearing, to get Google to power my searches. This will allow you, dear reader, to search the sites more effectively and find exactly the piece of vastly opinionated lunatic ranting drivel you are looking for.

Attentive visitors may have noticed the other changes that took place over night. In the hope of having a more consistent look to the sites I have fiddled about with the colour-schemes of the Twitter and photoblog widgets. They now should be less strident and blend in more with the rest of the pages. I hope both my readers view these changes as improvements.

The Elitist Review editorial team dropped by this annual trade tasting organised by Wine Australia, the venue being the rather swish Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea. We didn’t taste so many of the wines, partly because we had a lunch engagement to get to, but mostly because there were epic quantities of piss-boring, industrially produced wine aimed at the enjoyment-impoverished and the tight of wallet. So, what caught our attention?

There was clearly one stand-out producer who made wonderful, personality filled wines in a beautiful style that few other Australians can manage: Mac Forbes. I reported on one of their wines just over a week ago and it was a delight to try some more. His Riesling was really compelling with great acidity and lots of charming fruit; really tasty stuff. I liked the fact that the front label gives the amount of residual sugar in the wine (if only they’d do this in Alsace). The single vineyard Pinot Noir wines, especially the 2008s, were probably the best range of Australian Pinots I’ve tasted. I love their low alcohol and beguiling restraint. Lots of fruit, for sure, but these elegant little beauties were more about purity of expression rather than being fruit bombs that blow your head off at the first sniff. Clark Foyster Wines are the agent in the UK, so go to their website and order vast amounts of these lovely wines! Even the most expensive of the Pinot single vineyards, the Woori Yallock 2008, is undoubtedly worth every penny.

An old favourite producer, Moss Wood, also had some good wines on show. These were only enhanced by being served by the owner’s quite lovely daughter; she was a charmer, alright. The Semillon seemed a good, weighty example with a really pleasing backbone of acidity; it’ll age surprisingly well for a inexpensive wine. Their Chardonnay was reasonably fat, but with its good acidity it never seemed over-blown or heavy, this was definitely a classy Chardonnay which was still recognisably Australian. I have a bit of a soft-spot for Moss Wood Cabernet and the 2006 vintage was a really top example of the wine. We are told the ripening time for the grapes was longer than any in Moss Wood’s previous history and this, we are informed, is why the wine has such a depth of complexity. I think ‘depth of complexity’ might be over-selling it a tad, but I liked the impressive tannic structure that seemed balanced with the ripe fruit and quite unusually high acid levels.

Old favourites continued to provide the quality kit. The mighty and oft recommended Tim Adams had some new wines on show which I had not tasted before. His Riesling Reserve 2008 was a delicate entity of purity and exquisite attractiveness. Not very alcoholic, but its refinement… oh its refinement… A 2009 Pinot Gris was also on offer which had a pleasing opulent fruitiness, but thanks to its great acidity it seemed totally balanced and extremely drinkable. A top wine for the price. It appears the Cabernet I used to recommend to anyone who wanted a bargain but quality wine has become Cabernet Malbec, we tasted the 2006 vintage. It is still a winner, maybe a bit more rigorous than previous vintages with a good interplay between big tannins, fine acid and piles of fruit when you drink it. We have tried The Fergus, Clare Valley Shiraz and The Aberfeldy so many times we didn’t re-try them, instead we moved on to a new red wine for us: Tempranillo Reserve. This demonstrated that even brilliant winemakers cannot do everything right: it was utterly, horribly disgusting.

A few more Rieslings sucked us in. Mesh Eden Valley Riesling 2007 was fresh and focussed as ever; a really affordable Riesling that is an enlivening, vigorous pleasure to drink. Then we tried Jeffrey Grosset’s two 2009 Clare Valley vineyard-designated Rieslings, Springvale and Polish Hill. As usual, these were piercing, riveting wines that screamed with frightening acid-levels and exploded with vivacious citrus fruit. Perhaps it was because these wines were being served at such a young age that they seemed fruitier than normal, the citrus fruit was very primary. They seemed the best two examples of these wines I have tried.

I shall pass over the mundane and simply pedestrian wines we sampled, and there were too many, and move onto spewing invective about the actively nasty filth we mistakenly tried. Some of the most repulsive white wines I have ever been misfortunate enough not to have avoided tasting came from Leeuwin Estate. When sniffing the Art Series Riesling 2008 I just about managed to empty my mind of the over-whelming revulsion long enough to wonder whether making insecticide really was an art. It smelled like the Platonic ideal of fly spray. What fruit was there was really confected and this, together with the pronounced Raid characters, just wanted to make me cry and wail asking what terrible crime I had committed to have to stomach such an abominable wine. I don’t actually know what insecticide tastes like, but I’d wager Art Series Riesling is pretty close to the most vigorously toxic kind. The Prelude Chardonnay was a melange of confected fruit and clumsy oak; no balance, harmony or charm, too much like sucking a charred plank coated with foam-banana sweets. Vile. Then came the ‘ooh fancy!’ Art Series Chardonnay 2007, retailing for an impressive £47 a bottle. For this princely sum you’d get a boringly overblown Chardonnay with an expensive but awkward and inept oak treatment that just smacks you on the nose and palate with its aggressive, unhinged character. The palate had no redeeming features, being too oaky with strangely contrived fruit flavours and no hint of length or complexity. What a pile of horribleness for so much money.

Finally I want to roundly abuse a particular style of Pinot that some people in hot climates make. My examples of this style are made in the supposedly cool climate region of the Mornington Peninsula by the producer Ten Minutes by Tractor. We tried their 2008 ‘10x’ Pinot Noir which is a blend of grapes from their three vineyards and two 2007 single vineyard Pinot Noirs. They were such travesties of the noble Pinot grape that Ten Minutes should be first up against the wall when the aesthetic revolution comes. All these three wines were really hot and alcoholic, seeming quite unbalanced because of this. But, because the poor Pinot had been left to bake in the sun for too long the only characters that remained were utterly ghastly HP Sauce and Bovril-like qualities. These can often be found in Pinot Noir that has been left to roast on the vine far too long and Ten Minutes by Tractor had clearly got their technique of ruining Pinot down to a fine art. If you can imagine, oh I am not sure I want to, a mix of one third Bovril, one third HP Sauce and one third vodka then you would have the perfect recipe for overblown Pinot that would be terribly, shamefully close to these offerings. I hated them.

Still, the good wines were good and I don’t  have to try the bad ones any more today. Many thanks to the UK arm of Wine Australia for organising this event.

I’ve had some seriously good Rieslings in recent days; the two best ones in this flight were screamingly brilliant. Indeed, I’d go as far as saying that, Trimbach-style aside, Alsace Riesling does not get any better than these two. Shame about the knackered Z-H, but that is the risk you take when keeping these wines. The 2001 Z-H Rangen Riesling we popped recently was fine, but a 1998 popped a couple of weeks before was totally oxidised; do we have worries about the longevity of Z-H Rangen Riesling? Anyway, the notes!

Riesling Grand Cru Schlossberg Cuvée Sainte Catherine l'Inedit 2000, Domaine Weinbach
This has a livid, exciting but dense nose of fresh tropical fruit; passion fruit and mango. It is certainly big and buxom, but with all the intense minerality this displays it seems far from overblown. That creamy minerality really speaks of its origins, and its scale speaks of the ripeness of the grapes used in this cuvee. This is a passionate, sex-tastic nose that really begs you to have a taste. So I will. What a palate! Certainly big and powerful, with a noticeable amount of residual sugar, but it does not lack balance. The acidity is really impressive for a wine of this scale, giving it proper harmony. Its complex mineral character also shows strongly on the palate, and by my auntie’s nipples is it pleasing. Even though this does have residual sugar there is a savoury character to this which I always like in white wines. And I am yet to  mention the commanding fruit which dominates the palate, which I should do because it smacks a big smile across my chuffed visage. This is certainly up for drinking (with screaming pleasure) and I feel it is even better than the 2002 we had at The Ledbury on Monday night. Thrills, spills and orgiastic love from this wine; drink it and grin like an irritatingly smug person.

Riesling Grand Cru Brand 2000, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht
This also has a very large-scale, opulent nose, but the fruit is more like apricots and peaches rather than the tropical offering from the Inedit. The vineyard character, which my chum Jeremy accurately describes and being hot and roasted rather than mineral, is certainly present. There is a pretty serious alcohol burn to the nose, but with all of that fruit you don’t mind so much. The palate is a huge mouthful of sweet fruit, alcohol and just about enough acidity. There is quite a lot of residual sugar and given its merely passable acid levels this doesn’t seem as thrillingly harmonious as the Inedit. It is very tasty, though, and does deliver on the pleasure front especially if you like Rieslings to possess heroic levels of alcohol and intense, opulent fruit. Yeah this is properly good, but not as good as the Inedit.

Riesling Grand Cru Rangen Clos Saint Urban 2000, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht
A rather worrying shade of orange. A sniff: Yes, it is oxidised, past it and generally shagged out. There are hints on the pretty knackered palate that this was once a big, alcohol-and-fruit-driven wine with a lot of residual sugar, but it really is exhausted in the ‘nice drink’-sense.

Right, are you ready? Ok, let’s go!

Riesling Grand Cru Sommerberg Vendanges Tardives 2000, Domaine Albert Boxler
In contrast to the proceeding wines this nose of this seems a sculpted entity of pure finesse and beauty. There is some scale to it, and candied fruit hints, but its totally focussed minerality gives this an exquisite character which is mind-bendingly thrilling and exhilarating. To sniff this is not only to be taken on a roller-coaster ride of riveting intellectual excitement but also to be stunned by its visceral, sex-charged love-power. The palate is even more lewdly delicious. For sure, it is quite large in scale with a good blend of candied and fresh fruit, but its balance and focus boggle the mind. It has a really precise minerality, the totally clear-cut expression of which one expects from a Boxler Sommerberg; just so electrifying, man. The quite scary levels of acidity which slash their way across your palate keep even this clearly ripe, late-harvest palate in total harmony and bursting with pulsing, throbbing life. It not only screams balance, class and refinement, but also shouts how much it loves you and wants to make you happy. Easily one of the very best, most thrilling, rabidly exhilarating Vendanges Tardives Rieslings I’ve had.

Our final wine of the evening was a red to go with the partner’s excellent ragu bolognaise.

Cornas ‘Domaine Saint Pierre’ 1996, Paul Jaboulet Aine
A good, mature nose of soft red fruit and a pleasing earthy complexity. It is quite a polished and generally cleaned-up nose for Cornas. It certainly smells like it is in very good condition and generally up for drinking. And the taste? Ah, how disappointing, it suffers from ‘1996-syndrome’, which is to say the acidity levels are too high to be ultimately balanced. There is plenty of fruit, which is soft and charming, a good, rigorous but refined tannic structure, but that acid really bothers me. Not a bad wine, by any means, but the harmony is ultimately lacking.

Last night we had a brilliant meal at The Ledbury. The wine list was most keenly priced and we chose one top wine and one which was disappointing. Still, much fun was had; it is a great place to eat. Anyway, the wines:

Riesling Grand Cru Schlossberg Cuvée Sainte Catherine l'Inedit 2002, Domaine Weinbach
An explosive, decadent nose which just throbs with rich, ripe fruit and powerful minerality. Certainly a biggie, with concentration and power in spades, but not short on compelling, lovely charm (much like the winemakers themselves). It positively throbs with pulsing, thrusting life, no sign of oxidation at all. You’d have to be a pretty jaded Riesling drinker not to sniff this and chortle with mirth. The palate is also on the large-scale side. It has a powerfully rich fruitiness, a layered density of mineral flavours and searing but totally balanced acidity. What a palate! Big and weighty, for sure, but supremely harmonious. I’m charged up with aesthetic power after tasting this; to sip even the smallest taste is to love it and desperately want a bigger taste. Drink it now, boys and girls, its just scrummy.

Cote-Rotie ‘La Barbarine’ 2005, Gangloff
The fruit seems good and pure on the nose, but lacking a touch of the scented beauty I like in Cote-Rotie. Lacks complexity, too. It just seems a bit anonymous with nothing to really compel or draw you in to enjoy. The palate has a reasonable amount of fruit, but I don’t really go for the slightly over-extracted character it has. And those are pretty much the only characters the palate shows. It is short with no complexity to speak of. Deary me, a flat and boring Cote-Rotie from the great 2005 vintage, just what were they thinking when they made this wine? It didn’t take much thinking on our part to realise it was up to much. This ranks as ‘sub-interest’; if you want to buy good Cote-Rotie which is properly beautiful and complex stick to Clusel-Roch, Burgaud, Jamet or Jasmin.

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago Buckfast Tonic Wine was fingered as being a major cause of violence in Strathclyde, Scotland. I thought I had dealt with these hollow accusations quite well, but it seems that the monks who brew this euphemistic wine are now standing up for themselves.

They make some very good points, some of which I covered. Buckfast accounts for just 0.5% of alcoholic drinks sold in Scotland (1% in Strathclyde), so it can hardly be the main catalyst for alcohol-fuelled violence. The monks statement also says:

What is clear is that there are serious, social problems in some parts of Scotland and that in some of these parts there are people who abuse alcoholic drinks, including Buckfast Tonic Wine.

Deplorable as these are, it is hard to see how one product with only a small percentage of the market can be held responsible for all the social ills of such an area.

This seems a rather rapid leap of logic. Has anyone considered that the misuse of this wine by some could be seen as a symptom rather than a cause of such problems?

Much as it pains me to agree with theists, I have to say, “Well said, the Buckfast monks”. They are completely right and the bogus Buckfast problem has been made up by the deranged neo-prohibitionists and their cronies in the media.

This doesn’t stop some jumped up fart of a Scottish Labour MEP, Catherine Stihler, from sticking her nose in where it is not wanted by saying that alcoholic drinks that contain caffeine, like Buckfast, should be banned. She said, "Many consumers are unaware of the damage they are doing to their bodies." What a load of old twaddle. She is clearly part of the neo-pro fun-hating fringe that think anything entertaining is by definition bad and should be banned by the big state that looks after us because we cannot be trusted to look after ourselves.

People like Ms. Stihler really wind me up. They make me want to get blind drunk on Buckfast and threaten them with an empty bottle. Not that I would, of course, I have a very healthy relationship with alcohol that rarely involves getting blind drunk. Mind you, if it would irritate Ms. Stihler even slightly then it would be worth getting blind drunk and have a whale of a time doing so.

When it comes to Buckfast creating a serious problem in Scotland all that is left to be said is, “Move along, please, there is nothing to see here.” Well, I suppose you can look at Buckfast Abbey, which is quite baroque:

When we were putting together our affordable selection of wines for drinking this stood out as being worth snapping up thanks to recommendations from both Eric Asimov and that top geezer Gernot Schleiss. Elegant and terroir specific, we are told.

Blaufrankisch ‘Eisenberg’ 2007, Uwe Schiefer
A lovely nose of fresh plum fruit, not in any way overblown or heavy, and this fruit fits well with the other spicy, peppery aromas that are present. There is a pleasing amount of liquorice/aniseed/Thai holy basil* complexity as well. As I smell this so many memories of tasting with my old friend Gernot come flooding back: it smells like Blaufrankisch, good Blaufrankisch. The palate is really rather pleasing. There is a refined tannic structure intertwined with lots of lovely plummy fruit and bracing acidity. The fruit really persists on the rather long finish along with more of that peppery spiciness. It may only be a light-to-medium bodied wine but it has real depth of flavour and an impressive degree of complexity. All this from a £15 drinking wine? Brilliant! I could not possibly comment on its age-worthiness, but you can happily drink this now with a surprising degree of pleasure. Fascinating stuff and a good buy.

*Yes, I can write irritating lists of things in my tasting notes too, just like this arse.

In 2001 d’Angerville lost up to 70% of the production in some vineyards due to hail and subsequent sorting to weed out the damaged grapes. His net yields averaged less than 25hl/ha, which is seriously low. How did M. d’Angerville sum up the 2001 experience? “It was a difficult year.” Quite.

Volnay Premier Cru Champans 2001, Marquis d’Angerville
A pure nose of focussed fruit, very strawberry. It is a bit light and lacking depth, sadly, more anaemic than elegant. I’d hope for a few more aromatic jollies on the nose from a d’Angerville but clearly this is asking too much from this difficult vintage. The palate has plenty of that strawberry fruit, but hints of a dried-out, raisin character which is not terribly attractive. The acidity also seems a bit spiky, so the basic message we are getting is that this is not the most refined, balanced of palates. Bit of a pity, really, even the mighty d’Angerville sometimes does not reach stellar heights. That being said, this wine is not sub-interest; it speaks just enough about its place of origin, and much about the vintage, to engage the engrossed drinker of Burgundy. Drink as soon as possible before it loses its remaining charm.

I picked this up at a bargain price in the January sales (all gone now, sorry); its normal £30-40 price range would be too much for this wine. The partner tells me he views the recently popped Mac Forbes Pinot as better wine at a better price. Much as I hate to be down on a d’Angerville, he is probably right.

The heraldic device on the d’Angerville labels is most fun:

Today I was supposed to be meeting people for lunch at the brilliant Franco Manca pizza establishment which would have been, no doubt followed by some reports on quality beer from a decent drinking venue. However, on Monday morning I developed a cold of such impressive nastiness that it resulted in me spending the last 34 hours in bed. I feel absolutely rotten. Normal service will resume as soon as I feel less like death warmed up.

My long-time reader may recall that I have paranoid-schizophrenia; this is why I have a generally low-intensity life writing opinionated drivel about booze and food. I developed it during the late 90s whilst I was studying at Oxford for my doctorate. The screaming intensity of the paranoid delusions and hallucinations became so powerful and intolerable that at about this time (2am) on the morning of 24 January 1999, exactly eleven years ago, I tried to commit suicide by slashing my wrists in the bath.

As I am sure you can deduce, this attempt and my subsequent efforts were unsuccessful. It has been quite a struggle living with paranoid schizophrenia, but I remember this anniversary of my first attempt to kill myself because it reminds me that, no matter how difficult things have been, I have still managed to survive. So this is really a happy anniversary; well done me for keeping going all these years!

At the beginning of last year, after literally years of being on a waiting list, I started a course of psychotherapy (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, aka CBT*, to be specific). I cannot claim to have enjoyed the experience, but it was incredibly useful. I applied myself to working out different techniques and new ways of thinking to deal with my psychotic experiences and found that they worked a treat. My life has become a lot more tolerable, and whilst I still experience the paranoid delusions and hallucinations, I am not terrified and anxious all of the time. I am so happy to be able to be at home and not feel constantly harassed and scared. Good stuff, eh?

I may not be the thrusting academic I once was, and a low-stress lifestyle seems like the way forward for the foreseeable future, but I am quite happy to be celebrating this eleventh anniversary and even happier that I know I will not have to try such a thing ever again.

*When I told one of my more colourful friends I was going to have a course of CBT he looked rather surprised and said he didn’t think I was into that kind of thing. I asked him what he meant by ‘that kind of thing’. He revealed another use of the abbreviation CBT that he knew and I didn’t: Cock and Ball Torture. I am glad the National Health Service did not send me for that kind of CBT.

Difficult as it might be to believe this, we don’t always drink flash Burgundy at casa Strange. The partner has just received a case of affordable wines for general drinking from the Wine Society. If this first wine from his selection is anything to go by we will clearly have some fun, and reasonably interesting, wines to drink. Mac Forbes are based in the Yarra Valley, a which we are told is a good climate for Pinot Noir. Really low yields from the dry-grown vineyard that produced this wine, 14 hectolitres per hectare in 2007. Since the vines were only eleven years old at the time (2005 was Mac Forbes’ first vintage) these yields and the expressiveness of the wine are a pleasing surprise. It is bottled with a screw cap.

Gruyere Pinot Noir 2007, Mac Forbes
This is a very pale colour compared to those inky black Australian wines one so often sees; but as we know colour doesn’t tell you much about the quality of Pinot. It is distinctly fruit-driven on the nose, but not only is the fruit fresh and ripe, very far from being jammy, there seems a real sense of restraint to its aromatic profile. Its alcohol level is a remarkable 12%, so no nose burning as I am smelling this. If we are honest, the nose lacks a shade of complexity, but I am so pleased by its elegance and prettiness that I don’t mind, you can only expect so much from drinking wines. The palate also has lots of that charmingly fresh, ripe fruit, with perfectly good acidity as well (if not as much as you’d expect to find in a small-scale Burgundy). It is a pleasingly elegant palate for an Australian wine, reasonably well balanced, with the fruit framed by fine tannins and a hint of oak spice. This is undoubtedly a very good wine for the price, but I’m finding it a tiny bit odd. Let me explain: this is a very cleanly made, modern wine in what could be described as an international style. However, it is themed around pretty fruitiness, with a gently-extracted structure, light body and a wonderfully low alcohol level. I’m enjoying this more and more as I drink it. Certainly it is not the world’s most complex, thrilling Pinot Noir, but a wine with so much elegance and charisma suits me down to the ground.

I’ve been reading a new wine forum, Wine Berserkers, it is quite a fun place. People there seem generally enthusiastic and knowledgeable about wine, and they are a friendly lot too. One of threads I followed was a request for recommendations for sub-$50 Burgundy that is very Burgundian. The fellow posting had little experience of Burgundy and wanted to compare them with the wines he normally drank. Several people said that Burgundy can be quite expensive and that there are lots of different styles made, but we ended up recommending an excellent and well-priced example. You can read the thread if you want to know more.

This discussion reminded me of one of the polls I posted on here: which French wine region produces the best value wines? There were a couple of votes for Burgundy, which I thought was a bit enthusiastic. However, recently I’ve tried some really good Burgundies which have been bargain-tastic. Many people may disagree with this, but I feel that if you can get serious quality for less than £30 (which is about the $50 limit requested on the Wine Berserker thread), then that is a bargain in my book. So here are my suggestions for red Burgundies that provide a lot of of pleasure for not so much money.

Wine of the moment is certainly the Pernand-Vergelesses Premier Cru Ile des Vergelesses 2005 from Domaine Chandon de Briailles. I loved its beauty, refinement and poise. You can buy this attractive wine for £24.95 (or £23.50 if you order 12 bottles, which can be mixed) from Lea and Sandeman. Note: five days after posting this recommendation (and two days before I could afford more) this wine has sold out. Bums.

If you like your Burgundies to be slightly more heroic then you cannot go far wrong with Comte Armand’s Auxey Duresses Premier Cru 2005. A bold wine with lots of ripe fruit and a serious tannic structure. I feel it will age well for such a minor appellation. Also from Lea and Sandeman this costs £23.50 (case discounted to £21.50).

Some of you might be thinking that these villages are unheard of and so you might desire a more well-known village of origin; Nuits-Saint-Georges is a good place to go. The Premier Cru Richemone 2005 from Alain Michelot is very good, very Nuits-y expression of Nuits and a steal at £28.93 from Lay and Wheeler. Too expensive? Then how about Alain Michelot’s Nuits-Saint-Georges Vieilles Vignes 2005, an affordable taste of quality Nuits for £18.93 also from Lay and Wheeler. Just five pence under my price limit is the 2006 Nuits St Georges Aux St. Juliens from de Montille, a named vineyard at the village quality level. Like all de Montille wines this is elegant and refined, but this one is quite accessible and with very attractive fruit. £29.95 (or less if you buy a case) from Berry Bros.

If you know where to look you can find wines from highly regarded producers at a good price. I love Domaine Dujac wines and their ‘Fils et Pere’ range gives you a good taste of their style without breaking the bank. I think the Morey-Saint-Denis Fils et Pere 2006 is a damned-good wine, proper Morey of class and refinement for £28.50 (with a discount for unmixed cases) from Berry Bros.

Comte Armand are another flash producer, and they produce this well-priced wine from a more famous appellations than Auxey Duresses. The 2006 Volnay is a structured example of this village and again I feel it will age well. £25 (minus an unmixed case discount) from Berry Bros is a good price for a characterful Volnay.

Owning Dominique Lafon wines is normally a very pricey business. However, you can get his charming and fruity, if not stunningly profound, 2006 Monthelie Premier Cru Les Duresses Rouge for a surprisingly affordable £29 a bottle. This is a Burgundy that you can happily drink and enjoy on any occasion.

Berry Bros also sell the excellent wines from David Clark; he has minor appellations but he is focussed on producing the best wines he can from these vineyards, so treats them with more love and attention than most Burgundians treat their very finest Grand Crus. His 2007 Bourgogne Rouge is £18.35 (with a discount for unmixed cases), you’d be hard pressed to find a more compelling Bourgogne for less money than this.

Another beautiful Bourgogne Rouge is the 2007 from de Montille. It really is a baby de Montille wine, with all the elegance and harmony one would hope for from that producer. Berry’s sell it for a quite reasonable £20.40 per bottle (again there is a discount for cases).

Whilst we are on the subject of Bourgogne Rouge, Alain Burguet’s 2005 ‘Pince-Vin’ is a good performer at this quality level, and 2005 is a top vintage which should be quite mature and ready to drink by now. £20 a bottle from the Wine Society. The wine you really want from M. Burguet is his Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes ‘Mes Favorites’, this is one of the best village wines you can buy. When I popped a bottle of 2003 just after Christmas our lunch guests were compelled and charmed. It wasn’t in the slightest bit over-blown which can be a problem with some 2003s. At £29 a bottle from the Wine Society this falls a mere pound under my price limit, but it is worth every penny.

There we have it: an array of twelve different red Burgundies all of which are very reasonably priced for the quality they deliver. I suppose some might think my £30 upper limit is too high for these to be real bargains, but I’m afraid if you do you are wrong. Sadly wines of real quality are expensive these days, not only because of the limited production and high demand, but also the British peso weak pound has made all of our purchases from France at least 30% more expensive. These wines are as good as they get for as little as they get.

If either of my readers can suggest anymore bargain Burgundies then please leave a comment.

The first three bottles of Alsace Grand Cru Riesling were showing terribly well. Then we had a blind tasting challenge courteousy of the that excellent chap Captain ‘The Kid’ Peter, before we finished up the evening with a quite obscenely brilliant bottle of (again) Alsace Riesling. I present the blind-tasting challenge in the form of an a podcast, because I thought it would be fun to hear me being humiliated when guessing in real time; I wasn’t too embarrassed by my performance, if I may be smug for a moment, I was pretty close but thought the wine was slightly grander than its actual appellation and vintage would suggest.

Riesling Grand Cru Brand 2001, Domaine Albert Boxler
This has a really voluptuous nose of ripe fruit and spicy minerality. It is really buxom and charming. This stunning minerality and concentrated fruit character compel me totally, it is a  livid, lively entity of total desirability. I last had a bottle of this in September 2007 and thought it was time to drink. Judging by the expressive beauty and complex charm displayed by this nose I was wrong; it is full of giving, exciting life and will be for years to come. The palate is utterly beguiling. It has lots of powerful fruit, an incredibly pure and focussed earthiness and quite staggering amounts of acidity. There is so much to this palate, it has real size and scale, but it is totally, wildly, amazingly harmonious. The interplay between the intense fruit, searing minerality and dazzling, spectacular acidity just leaves me astounded. It is lewdly long and colourfully complex. Rarely do we get to drink wines this good, and we should treasure those moments when we are enjoying them, especially when we get to drink them with those who are important to us.

Riesling Grand Cru Brand 2001, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht
This has an even more voluptuous and exotic nose, it really has the extreme ripeness and power one expects from a Z-H wine certainly in terms of its rich, fruity profile. ‘The Kid’ and I suggest that, after the Boxler, this is lacking a touch of vineyard expression, but we could not deny the completely compelling nature of its myriad aromas. The partner thinks this is more expressive of the hot, roasted fruit character he wants from the Brand Grand Cru*. One thing we could clearly agree on after merely sniffing this was that this wine is going to be out where the big dogs eat, most definitely. Tits out for the boys, OK? Then we get to taste it. Wow, what a mouthful. The alcohol level might distract the ultimate Riesling purist, but if you try something so powerfully fruity and driven by passion you can forgive a bit of warmth. The minerality is certainly very exciting as is the acidity, even if, compared to the Boxler, they are not at the lewd end of experience. It is a commanding presence in the glass and on one’s palate. Great length, astounding complexity and really fun to drink. ‘The Kid’ and I preferred the Boxler because of its incredible harmony, the partner preferred this because of its opulent, exotic and complex character. Certainly these two are amongst the finest Rieslings I’ve had in… oh… a period of time.

Riesling Grand Cru Rangen Clos St. Urbain 2001, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht
Olivier Humbrecht was rather chuffed with this wine when the Oxford crew visited many years ago and tasted his range; I suppose I must have been impressed too otherwise I wouldn’t have scored myself a bottle. It has a really gorgeous nose of ripe, but not overblown, fruit. It has the minerality to make it properly interesting as well. Not as extreme in terms of intensity as the two Brand wines, but quite indulgent none the less. This is a lovely, really totally honestly, a lovely nose. Ah, I have a tiny bit of a problem with the palate now I’ve tasted it, there is the smallest suggestion of dirtiness to it and I don’t want that in my Alsace Rieslings. Sure, the fruit is lovely, the minerality compelling and the acidity quite well balanced, but I am a bit distracted by this vague hint of dirtiness. I’ll taste it again in ten minutes. [tick, tock…] And now I don’t get that dirtiness at all, that lovely ripe fruit and interesting minerality stand out much more. This is a seriously impressive Alsace Grand Cru, and whilst all three of us agree that this is not as stratospherically radiant as the two Brand Rieslings, it is a damned good wine.

After we had tried and re-tried all three of these Rieslings over a period of time we were sure that they were all some of the most wonderful examples of Alsace Grand Cru Rieslings we could wish to taste and drink. I was worried that 2001 Alsace Rieslings, especially the Z-H’s, might be over the hill (I have had a lot of prematurely oxidised Alsace Riesling of late): not a bit of it! Indeed, we all thought they were all quite youthful, fresh and lively. This was especially true of the Boxler, which seemed to be in a state of arrested development. No rush to drink these wines, boys and girls. I would go as far as saying that with the two Brand wines I felt that there was so little development showing in them one would probably get most pleasure drinking them on purchase. I’d like to do the experiment and keep them for ten years longer and see what happens, but I’ve only got one bottle of one of them left. Ah well, easy come easy go.

These three amazing, brilliant wines were followed by Peter’s blind tasting challenge. When he told me that he was bringing a bottle of Pinot Noir he said I’d get it right in one guess; I’m pleased someone has confidence in my blind tasting ability. To hear me rave about this wine and make my guess as to what it was click here.

For those who don’t feel the need to listen to my hideous Oxbridge drawl I shall reveal all. My guess was Domaine Dujac Morey-Saint Denis Premier Cru 2002, it was Domaine Dujac Morey-Saint-Denis villages 2004. Quite one of the most ravishing and charm-tastic 2004s I’ve had, really excessively pleasing. I was so moved by the allure of it I felt the need to give Peter and the partner a big hug for being part of the experience of this lovely wine. It has been a while since I popped an 04 red Burgundy and it is clear the the Dujac boys and girls delivered the goods in this not entirely easy vintage. Then we moved on to the final wine of the evening.

Riesling Grand Cru Sommerberg ‘D’ Vendanges Tardives 2005, Domaine Albert Boxler
This has a nose bursting with real late harvest character; a bit like candied fruit but fresher and more livid. It has real concentration but is not short on finesse and class. It is a totally gripping and unreservedly engaging nose. If you were poured a glass of this and didn’t love it the moment its aromatic molecules drifted up your nose then you can only be some form of really unhappy person who doesn’t really want to have a good time. I’m having a great time just smelling this, but I suppose I should get around to drinking some before the boys neck it all. Yes, oh yes, what a palate. For sure it is very ripe, with sweet, candied fruit present in spades, but as so often happens with Boxler wines it is the harmony which wins me over. The acidity would be terrifying in any wine less boldly structured than this, and the refined Sommerberg minerality adds to this expression of complete poise and equilibrium. It is a big, intense, indulgent mouthful, but not only don’t you get tired drinking it, you feel a burning desire to have more and more. I don’t have any left. Bugger.

*The story of the Brand Grand Cru: We are told that in the middle ages, Turkheim’s local dragon had a battle with the sun. The dragon lost and was banished to a cave under the hill behind Turkheim, specifically under the Brand Grand Cru. Since then the dragon’s fiery breath has kept the vineyard warm and this leads to the roasted, hot character of wines from the Brand.

I Tweeted about the ‘terrible’ problems that Buckfast Tonic Wine (and it is really wine in a euphemistic sense) seems to be causing in Scotland as reported on the BBC News website a bit earlier and in a documentary on BBC Scotland to be broadcast later today. We need to look at this is a bit more carefully.

Just about all we are told is that in the three years between 2006 and 2009 Strathclyde police reports specifically mention Buckfast Tonic Wine a total of 5638 times, 450 of which are violent crimes including 114 instances of Buckfast bottles being used as weapons.

However, a look at Strathclyde police crime statistics show that 1.33 million crimes were reported during this period, of which 34497 were violent. This means that Buckfast was mentioned in 0.43% of the total crimes reported on or 1.3% if you specifically look at violent crime. Buckfast bottles used as weapons in these violent crimes account for 0.33% of the total amount.

Furthermore, the information presented is totally meaningless as they don’t give comparisons of other kinds of alcohol being mentioned in crime reports. Consequently, we don’t really know about the over-representation of Buckfast as crime-fuel.

One might also wonder whether the following points might cast any further doubt on the statistical significance of the findings of the BBC’s fearless investigative journalists.

• It is one of the most deprived areas in the UK.
• Buckfast accounts of 1% total alcohol consumption in the area.
• Buckfast has long been the drink associated with the Scottish ‘Ned’ culture; ‘chavs’ as we now call them in England.
• Crime rates for young, poor, under-educated men are a lot higher than in the rest of the population.
• If Buckfast was to be magically removed from the shop shelves, it doesn’t take the sharpest tool in the box to realise its consumers would not suddenly realise the error of their ways and switch to carrot juice with wheatgrass extract, but rather switch to another iconic, cheap, high-alcohol drink. In five years time we would, no doubt, have the BBC preaching to us the evils of its chav-friendly replacement, no matter what it was.

I could go on, but I think I have wasted enough time on this sloppy piece of journalism which is unusually misleading and vacuous even by the generally laughable standards of the neo-prohibitionist cronies in the media.

Much better than this kind of drivelly old toss that the BBC report is the Daily Mash’s article on drinking in Scotland. I think it is better to laugh than be worried by the scare-mongering rubbish that is constantly forced down our throats.