I’ve blogged about how I got started loving wine, which I did from a hilariously young age, but what keeps me drinking it these days? Here are my top ten reasons why I love wine:

1. Each wine experience is unrepeatable. This is one of the things I love most about fine wine as an art form. Even if you have many bottles of the same wine and pop them one after another the experience of each will differ slightly. It may be due to bottle variation, the wine breathing for different times after opening, or personal factors like who you are tasting with, where you are tasting, how drunk you are and the condition of your palate. When you taste a bottle of fine wine that is a unique experience, never to be repeated.
2. There is an every-expanding amount of wine to taste and learn about. New producers come along all the time, existing producers may go up or down in quality, you can discover new regions and every new vintage in every region has its own quirks and qualities to learn. It is good to learn new things and wine provides a continually changing landscape for the lover of wine things to focus his or her mind on.
3. Sense use in appreciation of wine. Sure, you look at wine just like you can look at everything but real appreciation of it uses senses that are more ephemeral and transient: smell and taste. Most people pay cursory attention to what they taste and almost none to what they smell, yet these are very visceral senses which, if you concentrate on them, can move, delight, intrigue, excite, enlighten, thrill and compel just as effectively as vision or hearing. So neglected are our senses of taste and smell that it normally takes some training to get the most out of them. I was so lucky to attend and then run the Oxford University blind tasting team training sessions; they have forever expanded my appreciation and enhanced my abilities with these ephemeral senses.
4. Wine is great to share. Whether it is a simple bottle popped in front of the rugby or an obscenely fine wine shared with oenophiles wine is clearly at its best when shared. On a basic level the alcohol in wine is a good social lubricant, but just as a good meal will fill your stomach it will also provide things to talk about. Its qualities can generate views and opinions in all but the most unspeakable of philistines.
5. Wine is a good partner to food. Of course, not every wine goes with every type of food, but sometimes the match between the two will enhance the appreciation of both. When I’m noshing on a big piece of meat the tannins in red wine denature the free proteins in the meat and make eating and digesting it easier and more enjoyable. The pleasure I get from the synergistic combination of lamb and Pinot Noir is so enjoyable that it moves a meal with these two to a much higher level of sensory experience.
6. It gets me drunk at the right rate. The alcohol in wine is clearly something to be enjoyed, and the concentration of it suits me very well. If I am drinking beer I normally feel ‘beered-out’ pretty quickly; too bloated and exhausted by the sheer volume of the stuff one has to consume. Spirits are too alcoholic for me; I don’t often enjoy the experience of drinking them and they get one drunk very quickly. Wine, on the other hand, has not so much alcohol in it that you get instantly whammed, but enough so that over an evening spent drinking only wine you can end up pleasantly newscasted. You can drink wine over a long period in a style you cannot do with beer (too voluminous) or spirits (too strong).
7. Wine is marked by its maker. I’ve visited and tasted with a lot of winemakers, and in the very best wines the personality and ideas of the winemaker are displayed by the wine he/she makes. The Fallers at Domaine Weinbach are as buxom and charm-filled as their wines; Christophe Roumier’s refined, thoughtful wines reflect those qualities of the man himself. The interesting ideas of interesting winemakers show in their wines, making a strong connection between the two which undoubtedly enhances the drinking pleasure*.
8. Wines also have a sense of place. This may apply less to the more international-styled wines available today, but a carefully made wine of interest and style will give you a little glimpse into where it came from. Taste a frighteningly acidic but totally harmonious wine from Egon ‘Yoda’ Muller and you are terribly aware that it is the incomparable Scharzhofberger vineyard which you are tasting and is giving you this intense experience. This sense of place can be shown in all wines from refined little Burgundies to bold Zinfandels of heroism.
9. Wine is a great gift. On a simple level, a bottle of decent fizz is a simple gift which is generally appreciated; even indifferent fizz will please the unfussy. But if you know a reasonable amount about wine there are many more options. For example, you can chose a wine that you know will suit the recipients tastes but is more obscure than their normal purchases so they are unlikely to have tried before. If you introduce someone to a new producer or wine region which they really enjoy it can give both giver and receiver a lot of satisfaction; you’ve shown someone a new expression of pleasure.
10. The ‘free meal’ factor. Some areas of knowledge are more acceptable to discuss in social situations than others. If you can manage charm as well as knowledge then wine provides a brilliant topic which will see you right in almost any setting. I have lost count of the number of dinner parties I have been invited to not only because I’ll bring along good wine, but also because I’ll talk about it in an intelligent and amusing fashion. If there are any awkward pauses in conversation I can be relied upon to perform and talk about a subject that pretty much everyone has either views on or questions about. I hasten to add that at dinner parties I largely talk about things other than wine, but it is a remarkably successful conversation topic in so many situations.

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*It is not necessarily the character of the winemaker which shines through in a wine; many years ago the rumour was that the wines of Marc Kreydenweiss had the character of his current wife.

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:

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.

Eric Asimov of the New York Times has a brief but interesting report on some Austrian Blaufrankisch wines. He makes the very good point, which I agree with whole-heartedly, that  Blaufrankisch is best when made in a lighter, more elegant style, rather than a super-ripe, super-extracted, ‘international’ style. I don’t drink that much of the stuff these days (Gernot my old friend, why did you have to leave us? We all miss you and your excellent taste in wines, please visit), but those I have had always seemed best when they were elegant, refined and more expressive of where they come from.

Some grape varieties lend themselves very well to making bigger, more international wines. There is nothing wrong with making wines like this from grapes and regions that can manage it; a lot of people love that style and good luck to them. However, this is not a recipe for success everywhere with any grape. These days it would be technically possible to harvest, with the right clones and vineyard management, obscenely ripe Gamay in Beaujolais, make it in an extractive style with rotary fermenters, season it with some expensive oak  and push it as ‘new wave Beaujolais’. But it would be disgusting. Gamay is just not up to managing such international-style winemaking treatments.

You probably would not be surprised to learn I also think that the wonderful, wonderful grape Pinot Noir should not be treated in such a manner. If you’ve ever had a super-ripe Australian Pinot that just smells of Bovril mixed with HP Sauce, or a 15.5+% monster from California which has had all character apart from jamminess baked out of it you should realise that Pinot needs a light hand. I’ve had truly vile Australian Pinot that has been blended with the world’s ripest Shiraz grapes; a waste of both grapes. Some consultant oenologists  in the US will suggest to their clients that they blend a proportion of Zinfandel in with their Pinot in the hope of scoring lots of points (although it is unlikely a winery will admit doing this). Again this misses the point of Pinot and, if you ask me, of Zinfandel too*. The Pernand-Vergelesses we had with our lovely friends last night shows the utter ravishing beauty and vast amounts of pleasure that light to medium-bodied Pinot can, and should, be delivering. Sure, Burgundy Grand Crus or the best producers in warmer regions (I love the Californian single-vineyard Pinots from Calera and that brilliant Australian geezer Gary Farr’s lovely Geelong Pinots) will produce somewhat more powerful wines, but Pinot is always about elegance and refinement. Beauty is a marvellous thing, as I hope you would all agree.

Back to Blaufrankisch. I’m out of the loop with decent producers these days so if any of my dear and much-appreciated readers are more up-to-date with what I should be looking out for then please let us all know in a comment.  

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*Californian Zinfandel can have so much personality, even when it is quite large scale, all of that lovely brambly fruit and power is a lot of fun. Big Zin is clearly a regional style unique to California and if people are growing the stuff they should be celebrating their fortune at being able to produce a properly Californian wine. As Paul Draper of Ridge has conclusively demonstrated, there are more sympathetic grapes that can live in Zin with far more harmony and the arranged and frankly scandalous marriage of Zinfandel and Pinot.

My Tweets have mentioned Pete Brown’s excellent series of articles which demolish a lot of lies told by those who wish to brow-beat us into not drinking. I thought they were so good and worth reading that I’d write a quick blog post to praise them more fully and hopefully bring them to the attention of a few more people.

It is very easy to fall for some of the neo-prohibitionist publications, they are invariably given uncritical coverage in the popular media. When you actually read things like the recent Health Select Committee report on alcohol you find they are filled with bogus statistics, unfounded assertions and contradictory conclusions. For example, we are so often told that alcohol consumption is increasing in teenagers; the HSC report repeats this ‘fact’. Very rarely does this statement come with any supporting data. If we look for some hard evidence about teenage drinking we can go to the Office of National Statistics; it has the following to say about 11-15 year olds’ consumption of booze:

In 2006, 45% of pupils said they had never had a proper alcoholic drink (a whole drink and not just a sip), an increase compared to 39% in 2001

In 2007, 20% reported drinking alcohol in the week prior to interview, down from 26% in 2001

So far from teenagers drinking more their alcohol consumption is actually falling. How often does that get reported? I don’t recall any newspaper or television news program mentioning this when another scare-mongering piece of toss repeats that same old lie.

Pete Brown’s latest blog post mentions this and examines more fully the suggestion that alcohol advertising encourages children to drink. He reports on the studies done that have started from the assumption that advertising has this result. Unsurprisingly, neither study could convincingly show alcohol advertising does influence children significantly when it comes to alcohol consumption, even though the studies’ authors wanted this conclusion. These studies were mentioned in the HSC report, but because they didn’t give the results the HSC wanted they tried a different way of demonstrating that advertising affects children.

The HSC’s weaselling strategy is to say that advertising makes children aware of alcohol. It is manifest drivel to equate awareness of something with a desire to use it. Unsurprisingly, the HSC give no hard data that awareness of alcohol leads to consumption of it by children, but this is the conclusion they draw based on ‘expert testimony’ from members of the anti-drink lobby. These experts are apparently trusted solely because they disagree with experts from the drinks and advertising industry.

Rules about alcohol advertising are incredibly strict in the UK; it is duplicitous to say alcohol adverts target children when the law already prevents them from doing so (no one under 25 can appear in an alcohol advert, drinking to excess cannot be mentioned and adverts cannot claim that booze brings social or material success). The only way drink advert regulation could get any stricter, as Pete Brown points out, would be if they were totally banned.

I hope Pete Brown does not mind me distilling his latest post here. I do so to draw attention to his excellent work and hopefully get some people to read more of his articles on the neo-prohibitionist agenda. If we know how they are mendacious we can answer back when they try to infringe our liberties.

Get over to http://petebrown.blogspot.com/ now, read his posts and start being appalled by the lies told in order to demonise what is a healthy and cultural experience for the vast majority of us.

Last New Year we opened three bottles of Champagne, and they were all buggered. It seems a similar thing is happening a year later. OK, the Dancer wine was merely boring rather than faulty, but we didn’t want to drink boring wine so we popped a bottle of Paul Pernot Puligny Folatieres 2000. It was the most corked wine I have ever encountered; smelling utterly vile. So we’ve tried another vintage, the 2002, and on pouring it has an incredible collection of stinky, reductive, rotten egg aromas. Even after a good shake and much time in a decanter to try and get rid of this complete nastiness it is still more horrible than I feel capable of expressing. I am too disgusted by this to taste any, but Daniel has and says it is horrible.

Later today I am off to the Fat Duck for a meal to celebrate the partner’s birthday. “Hooray!”, you might be thinking. I was thinking it too until I had a look at their wine list on their website. Their wine pricing policy is totally scandalous.

It seems they just multiply the retail cost of a wine by three and a half to come up with a frighteningly inflated price for every wine. Why do restaurants do this? It doesn’t cost them proportionately more to serve you a more expensive bottle, so why should they be proportionately more expensive?

I hate sommeliers who do this. It is totally un-necessary and puts people off drinking the things they would like to drink. Sure, a three-star may not be trying to attract nut-case wine-writers with no cash, but that doesn’t automatically mean good wine should be priced so only the obscenely rich can afford it.

This pisses me off so much I am tempted to take the sommelier to task. I can be highly articulate when I am angry.

I keep thinking I should write a ‘hilarious bargains of the wine world’ post for here. Two wines that would feature near the top of that list are Manzanilla sherries from Hidalgo: La Gitana and Pasada Pastrana. Earlier we drank some of the Pasada Pastrana with dinner at Salt Yard and I was, once again, stunned by its savoury, characterful and thrilling charms. Top stuff.

Of course, Hidalgo make other sherries as well. His dry Amontillado from the same vineyard as the Manzanilla Pastrana is is a similarly classy, stylish drink. The vintage-dated Oloroso I tried at the London Wine Trade Fair a few weeks ago blew my socks off; quite delicious. Then there are the very old, dry Oloroso and Palo Cortado sherries which cost serious money but are such exciting, burning entities of intensity that you cannot help but love them.

I admit, I have a bit of a soft spot for Hidalgo sherry. The generous and charming Javier Hidalgo gave a tasting in Oxford about fifteen years ago which will forever be burnt on my memory. All those wise enough to turn up were stunned by the expressiveness of his wines and ratted after getting through the vast quantities he insisted we all drink. Lovely fellow, lovely wines.

But the fun you can have with sherry extends beyond even the mighty Javier’s offerings. Lustau have an excellent range, which includes the novel, and delicious, East India sherry. This sweet sherry is said to be the only type that will improve with age in the bottle. I have one in the cellar to test this. Pick any bottle from their range of Almacenista sherries (wines sourced from small producers) and it will be an exciting pleasure.

Valdespino also have good stuff; it was the sherry which fortified me whilst working for one particular employer. Fino Innocente is a top bunny-grade sharpener. Their Pedro Ximenez sweet sherry is one of the few wines my mother has got through a case of (OK, I helped a bit). It may have been sweet action-a-go-go, but it certainly exceeded the quality of most sugary wines in its price bracket.

The final producer I’ll mention is Gonzalez Byass. Tio Pepe is a passable drink, but some of their other stuff is properly good. The thirty year old Amontillado del Duque is a good example of the style, nice and dry. Clocking in at the same age is the Matusalem sweet Oloroso: a really stylish, complex drink. My chum Dan really loves the super-sweet Noe Pedro Ximenez, which I think is a bit too crazy to sit down and drink for any extended period of time, but you’ve got to be impressed by its wacked-out bonkers-ness.

All of these wonderful things to buy and drink, and sadly most people in this country think that sherry is either Harvey’s Bristol Cream or something from Cyprus (which it most certainly isn’t, it isn’t ‘British fortified wine’ either, am I clear? I mean this very seriously). Get out there, spend a few quid on a bottle of La Gitana, stick it in the fridge then when it is cool pop it and be perked up. If, on a warm summer’s day, you cannot enjoy something as delightful and refreshing as a good bottle of Manzanilla or Fino then there is probably something wrong with you.

I’ve mentioned before that I am not the biggest fan of Zind-Humbrecht wines, all too often they are booze-tastic monsters. I’ve seen them clocking in at 16.5% in the past and this is not how I like my white wines. So imagine my surprise when I saw this on a bottle of Riesling Clos Winsbuhl Vendange Tardive 2004:

9%! I’m amazed! Fermenting with natural yeasts in a cold cellar does lead to some unpredictable results. I bet it’ll be very sweet, I hope it has the acidity to match. 9% is the kind of strength you’d expect in a German Auslese, I wonder how similar in style this will be. I’ll give it a few years before I find out.

Yesterday we were at Lord’s having a whale of a time watching England thrash the West Indies by ten wickets. Ha! We drank some good wine. We started off with a bottle of Gosset Grande Reserve which was totally lovely: weighty, dense and stylish. It had deposited more tartarate crystals than any bottle of fizz I had ever seen. I don’t mind this in the slightest, shows the wine hasn’t been mucked around with.

After lunch we popped a bottle of Morey Saint Denis 2004 from Domaine Dujac. My long-time reader may recall this was one of my candidates for the best village level Burgundy in my poll. I didn’t vote for it at the time, but after trying the 04 I feel I should have done; it was bloody marvellous. Great fruit, silky tannins, perfectly balanced acidity. A really serious village-level wine that delivered an incredible amount of pleasure. We both kept saying how much we were enjoying it. Peter, you were absolutely right, Dujac Morey provides so much happiness. It has done in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Well done the boys and girls at Dujac!

I’m just engaged in a little exchange of text messages with a chum. He asks if he should buy 2005 Jamet Cote-Rotie for £20 a bottle. Brilliant wine at an extremely keen price; I told him to snap them up. He then asked about 2004 and I said that was a bit less interesting but worth a few bottles.

Then it occurred to me that there is absolutely no interesting Claret for £20 a bottle, certainly nothing as thrillingly, mind-bendingly delicious as Jamet 05 or even 04. Yet, those money-grabbing Bordelais who sell their tedious shite for £20 will be producing epic quantities of wine from their large estates, far more than Jamet will make from his tiny patches of Cote-Rotie, and have vastly lower production costs as well. Bordeaux is over-priced and dull; buying it only serves to further line the pockets of people who have too much money to start with.

In my review of Valvona and Crolla I had a go at the corkscrew issued to our waitress. Just so we can be abundantly clear, the kind of corkscrew she used, which is the worst kind in existence, looks like this:

The screw with the spike running down the middle just pulls the centre of the cork out. This is a totally useless kind of corkscrew, which no one should own. It should certainly not be issued to staff working in a cafe that prides itself on its wine.

I suppose this post will not be complete until I name a better kind of corkscrew. This one is just great:

A ‘Pullups’ two-stage job with a worm rather than a drill. You won’t go wrong with one of these.

This government has been unprecedented in its desire to erode civil liberties and criminalise perfectly ordinary people who just want to get on with their lives, and maybe have a bit of fun now and again. Their war against people who have a perfectly healthy attitude to alcohol takes another step forward, apparently; this article utterly appalled me.

I was in Lancashire last weekend for a wedding to two lovely friends of mine. We paid a visit to the amusingly named town of Clitheroe to go to the excellent wine merchant D. Byrne. It was filled with an embarrassment of riches which were generally very reasonably priced. My chum Jeremy Seysses saw this wine on the shelf and told me I should buy it as it had rave reviews from some American journalists. It was only £13 so I thought why not? When I had paid I noticed it was 16.5% alcohol and so I challenged Jeremy, who I know to be a lover of beautiful wines, on why he had recommended lighter-fuel for me try. He came clean and said he knew I would hate it, but he likes to read my torrents of invective about horrible wines. He had knowingly got me to buy despicable wine. Thanks, Jeremy, thanks a bunch. So do I hate it? Read on...

Shiraz "The Boxer" 2006, Mollydooker
By arse, I've smelled less confected jam than this. This smells of alcohol, wood and jammy fruit; it is depressingly simple and horrifically overblown. Smelling this for more than a couple of seconds burns my nose. There is nothing even remotely attractive about its aromas. No. Oh no. Really, no. For fuck's sake, the palate is truly horrible. Sweet, flabby, painfully alcoholic; how can people like shit like this? It is vile filth. OK, if you want monster-get-pissed-fast, soupy, unbalanced, sweet mouthwash, this will do. If you think wine should have redeeming qualities like elegance, style and, let us be honest, drinkability, you'll find this as offensive as I am as I try to choke back enough to write this tasting note.

Which leaves us wondering what sort of wine journalism recommends this kind of crap. I am reminded of how I used to chose girlfriends whilst at university. Tall or short, beautiful or ugly, clever or stupid, it didn't matter to me as long as they had big tits. That was all that mattered - huge bouncers. Of course, this is a terrible way of viewing women, just as viewing over-ripe monstrosities like this as the pinnacle of wine-making is a shameful view of wine. Complexity, style and balance are to be applauded, and simple, booze-tastic, beasts are to be pilloried. I am disgusted to think that someone could recommend something as shamefully crap as this.

Picking the best bottle I own is more problematic than deciding that Mambourg from Deiss is horrible; what constitutes the best?

Heroic formats can be compelling. I have a jeroboam of Pommard Premier Cru Clos des Epeneaux 1999 which is just a hilarious thing to own. It will provide a lot of pleasure on a dim and distant birthday celebration.

Rarity may also lead one to cherish a bottle. I have a magnum of Nuits Saint Georges Premier Cru aux Thorey 2005 from Domaine Dujac. This was the only vintage of this wine Dujac made, so it is as rare as hen's teeth. Having it in a magnum is particularly pleasing.

The most compelling reason to choose a favourite wine is probably sheer quality. I have a bit of a thing for 2001 red Burgundy and have some shit-hot bottles from this vintage. Domaine Dujac Clos Saint Denis and Bonnes Mares are two of the best Dujac wines I've been lucky enough to try. I tell you, man, they are buttock-bitingly good. My only bottle of Domaine de la Romanee Conti wine, La Tache, comes from this vintage. I am yet to taste it, so whilst I am convinced it will be top bunny, I cannot really call it my favourite wine.

Which brings me to Musigny 2001 from Freddie Mugnier. I've had some mind-bendingly good Musigny from M. Mugnier, the 1999 and 2005 were utterly, utterly beautiful and charged with charm and complexity. However the 2001 had an extra dimension of unadulterated loveliness, which left me deeply moved. I've only got one bottle of this wine which will cause much thought about when to crack it open, but it is, as far as I am concerned, the best wine I own.

In the early nineties Jean-Michel Deiss was making spell-binding, exciting, thrilling Riesling; I snapped up all I could find and afford. Then, for some presumably psychotic reason, he decided that Riesling wasn't good enough on its own. He turned his interest to making field blends of different grape varieties, picking, fermenting and ageing them together. These wines have always been repulsively disgusting; they have confused flavours and unsatisfactory ageing profiles. They are also distractingly laced with residual sugar. I feel Jean-Michel has let down all the fans of his very best wines by producing such filth.

At my last tasting chez Deiss I hated every wine we tried, and I have to say I didn't take to the man himself largely because of the crap he spewed justifying his bonkers wine-making philosophy. One of the wines we tried was notably horrible, the 2000 Mambourg Grand Cru blend. It was oxidised and lacking any form of character that one would hope to be charmed by. Deiss himself claimed that this was the best wine he had ever made. Totally bonkers, I tell you. But not as hat-stand as me, it turns out. When I saw a bottle of this on a wine merchant's shelf I committed an act of pure insanity and purchased it.

I blame this screamingly butt-hole-crazy action on a residual degree of respect for M. Deiss; after all he had made some of the best Alsace Riesling I have had. But this is not really a good enough excuse. I'd tried the wine and it was mind-bendingly horrible. I have to stand up and say I made a horrific mistake and thrown good money away. I am worthy only of mockery for having purchased this shameful travesty of a wine. I'll age the wine as long as Deiss said it would last (15-20 years! Ha! What a twat) and pour it with the knowledge that I'll have opened and finally got rid of the worst bottle of wine I will ever own.

No, it is not being expected to drink Claret; that appalls me.

In recent days the head of the Cheshire police force has been calling for an increase in the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 to help combat underage drinkers. Firstly, increasing the drinking age is a foolish idea, as it increases the view amongst those too young to drink that they are doing something special and "cool".

If one wants to encourage responsible drinking, surely it would be better that alcohol use be portrayed as a normal part of life for adults. Youth will not feel the need to go and get violently drunk if they do not think there is anything special about drinking alcohol.

Secondly, the idiot chief constable conveniently seems to have forgotten that those pesky drunken kids causing a problem in his area are already underage and so covered by existing law. Raising the legal age would only increase the number of underage drinkers and with it the burden of policing that he would have to carry.

Finally, it is unacceptable for the police to call for a change in the law like this, even vicariously. It is their job to enforce the law, not to dictate what laws they enforce.

Moreover, he has called for a ban on drinking in public places, which further takes drinking out of mainstream behaviour and penalises the majority of people with a responsible attitude to alcohol. Again such a change in the law would only make alcohol seem special to underage people and not encourage them to see it as a normal part of adult life.

It really irritated me that the ravings of this police officer have been reported entirely uncritically by the media. He has been given free-rein to speak without anyone pointing out the obvious flaws in his demands, which make him seem misguided about drinking culture at best and pernicious in his attempt to change the law at worst. He should get on with his job of policing the laws that exist and stop trying to abuse his position of authority to interfere with our lives.

I've pretty much got all of the 1996 Champagnes I need, especially after this morning's delivery of a bottle of Billecart-Salmon Grande Cuvée. This is a prestige cuvée I've wanted to try for a while, but as this is a 1996 I'll have to wait until I open it. I've only purchased three 1996 prestige cuvées (as they are freaking expensive) and each one has come in over-blown packaging. The Grande Cuvée has a particularly silly 'crocodile-mouth' box:

The first thing I do when I get extraneous packaging like this is throw it away; it certainly doesn't make it to one of my cellars. I can see how the makers want people to think that they are getting something special for their obscene amount of money spent, but surely the wine should be special enough? I'd rather spend a few notes less and just have the bottle of wine.

Ah 1996 Champagnes, such good things. I'll be drinking my small but perfectly composed collection over a very long time. This means I'll have to try some later vintages, hmmmm... I've had Billecart-Salmon Cuvée Nicolas François 1997 and Bollinger Grand Année 1997 and found both to be terribly disappointing; they seemed so forward, mature and lacking rigour. 1998 is more of a 'classic' vintage (although the one I have had was bloody awful); I'll order some Pol Roger.

I only own one bottle of red Bordeaux and I have decided that is all I am ever going to own. Even if I become fabulously rich I am never going to buy another bottle of Claret.

Why? It is simply that Claret rarely interests me. The bottles I have had that I have found interesting have all been mind-bendingly expensive (generally supplied by friends) and I just don't feel the need to spend that much money on wine, even if I had that much money. As good as something like La Mission Haut-Brion 1975 is, can it really be worth six hundred pounds a bottle? Never six hundred pounds of my money, that is for sure.

More affordable Claret I find to be dull. They lack charm, interest and excitement. Yes, they may be balanced, elegant and intellectual, but loveliness is a character usually absent. I like wine to be an intellectual pleasure, but I also want to feel happy when I have a glass of it. Red Bordeaux is perilously short on hedonistic pleasure.

Even when mid-range Claret is made in a modern (dare I say Parkerised?)-style it is simply a big, tannic wine, it doesn't gain any charm. These wines might be riper than more minimalist Clarets, but they are not any easier to drink and still lack that all-important loveliness-factor.

Cheap Claret is, of course, utterly undrinkable. Hard, miserable and tannic, often thin and fruitless. When I have worked for various wine merchants I have always had uncharitable thoughts about people when they have asked for a sub-ten pound bottle of Bordeaux; the wine will not simply lack pleasure but be actively nasty. Cheap Claret is not even worth buying for the sake of getting drunk.

My distaste for Claret will not prevent me from drinking bottles provided by others, I cannot dictate what other people want to open, but I am simply not going to buy another bottle of red Bordeaux in my life. I'll drink the single bottle I own when I take it out of the cellar this summer (and find it charmless); after that my wine collection will be forever Claret free. Good.

When I first got into wine as an enthusiastic youth I used to have a bit of a thing for Australian wines. I would hate to classify all Australian wines as 'beginner's wines' but at the prices I could afford they tended to be well made and fun. As I grew older and my budget increased I found I could afford more interesting wines, largely from France, and I pretty much gave up buying Australian wines.

This weekend we have a guest staying with us who is not as rabidly obsessed with wine as me; opening nice drinks will do. Given the emptiness of my wine cupboard at the moment I had to go out and buy wine. Just for a change, I purchased Australian wine.

I got a range of styles and prices of producers I know are good, some old favourites. I hope I find them less completely tedious than when I have had them in recent years.

As part of the humorous 'taste crap wines' weekend that included the quite worryingly disgusting Blue Nun we also purchased a bottle of Frascati. It was quite an expensive bottle of Frascati as far as the supermarket's selection went: a whole fiver. It had some fruit, a degree of bitter-almonds character and alcohol. It wasn't bad, but it was sub-interest.

I was almost impressed when I first tried it; I didn't feel immediately sick. However, I was incredibly bored by it. It was characterless, bland and incredibly one-dimensional. There was nothing beyond the the simplest of flavours there. It was so dull it wasn't even refreshing.

Wines like this will always be sub-interesting, no matter how well-made or expensive they are. The last bottle of Burgundy I opened was sub-interest because it only had big, slightly unripe tannins, and nothing else. There was no earthy complexity or charming fruit. It was just a dull, tannic monster.

This does not mean that actively unpleasant wines (like the Blue Nun) are not sub-interest because they are so aggressively horrible that they are interesting. I'm not interested in nasty things, and nor should you be.

On our trip to Calais we visited a huge hypermarket, of its ninety-odd aisles about five were filled with wine. The selection appeared to suffer from what I have seen in many other French super/hypermarkets, namely an excess of undrinkable dross.

It seems very important to the big supermarkets that they cover as many of France's innumerable appellations as possible. Even really obscure appellations are represented in the bigger shops. However, it only appears that having many wines is important, there is no quality bar that has to be cleared.

When in the shop yesterday there was in excess of twenty minor St. Emillion wines on offer in one area of the wine section. Most of these were from unheard-of producers and those that were recognisable were evil filth. The Burgundy section was over-flowing with vile rubbish that would probably only be suitable for putting on chips. It was actually depressing to see so much dross, and so much being purchased by people who were clearly going to have a rotten time when they popped the bottle. I am not sure it is true that people buying the stuff don't know any better, the wines were shockingly poor and anyone would be able to tell that when forced to drink them.

Strange as it may seem, I think British supermarkets do a bit better in their wine selection. Not that they lack dross, but they generally tend to have a smaller selection of well-made wines that will appeal to a wide selection of people. The French model of simply trying to cover all bases, even if it means retailing rubbish, seems a strange idea for a country that produces the best wines in the world. By selling so much swill they damage the name of French wine.

Australian wine makers often say, "I make my wine with ripe fruit". The insinuation is that European wine makers don't use ripe grapes and so make weedy wines. I call this 'crap' and it gets me very irritated because:

• Some of the best wines are made with perfectly ripe grapes yet are low alcohol and not lacking any concentration. Obviously German wines fit into this category, yet this is true of other wines too. The de Montille Burgundies I've had recently have all been 12% and have been full of ripe fruit with plenty of depth. Last night's Engel Vosne 1er cru was only 12.5%. Jean-Marc Roulot's village wines are all sub-13% and are models of stylish beauty. I've had good sub-13% Claret. Grapes for Champagne are only just ripe and they can be incredibly weighty and concentrated.
• 'Ripe' does not mean 'over-ripe'. Lots of these 14-17% monsters are bloody awful. They often reek of alcohol and have nasty, hot palates. The fruit is jammy, the tannins soupy. The real beasts are not good candidates for ageing.

As I've said on many occasions, I like loveliness, harmony, and beauty. I suppose this is why there is such a dearth of tasting notes for Australian wines here. No Recioto either. I have a soft-spot for many new world wines, but they tend to be those that are light in alcohol, balanced and harmonious; lovely wines, as they are also known.

In response to my post Burgundy is best someone commented that Burgundy at the bottom of the pile is not as good as Bordeaux for the same money. I couldn't agree less. I think Burgundy is a bargain relative to Bordeaux.

Some wines I've had recently demonstrate this very clearly. Today I popped a bottle of Domaine Arlaud Morey-St.-Denis 2001 that cost me a mere twenty-one pounds. It was quite lovely and would have only improved with another five years in the cellar. It'd easily hang about for longer. The Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin aux Echezeaux was a pound more expensive than this, but was a terribly good bottle of village wine that provided a lot of pleasure. Armand's Auxey 2001 was a bargain at less than seventeen pounds a bottle; my next-door neighbour lapped it up ad asked where he could buy some.

These are three producers who make very good wines at very affordable prices. They also have more basic fare than these wines that are all perfectly drinkable. They, and other people like Jean Boillot and Robert Chevillon, make excellent wines that are real bargains in the thirty pound-bottle price bracket. If you are willing to work a bit and find out which producers are good, rather than simply buying dull negociant rubbish, there is an embarrassment of riches at perfectly affordable prices. This is even true for those on incredibly restricted incomes (like me) as long as you would rather choose quality over quantity. Elitist Review is all about quality.

This brings me on to the price of Bordeaux. I am not sure exactly what Bordeaux you can buy for twenty notes, but I doubt it will be as good, and certainly not as lovely, as a well-chosen bottle of Burgundy for the same price. Even if you move up to the thirty pound price bracket there is no chance of getting a serious producer in a good vintage. I would much rather drink Armand Clos des Epeneaux 2001 than Lynch-Bages 2001 (two recent purchases, thirty-five pounds a bottle) for the same money. The Armand is clearly a much more serious, far more charming and seriously more age-worthy than even this (super-)fifth growth claret in a dull vintage.

Burgundy is a bargain. It is also much nicer than claret. Buy Burgundy.

I opened a bottle of wine with the neighbours last night. No note I am afraid, I was not feeling up to it whilst drinking. The neighbours enjoy wine, but are not completely obsessed with it like I am. As I poured the wine I asked them what information they could extract from this label.

They were both at a complete loss. They couldn't even name the grape variety. I am well aware that this label means that the producer is Schloss Gobelsburg, the grape Grüner Veltliner and the vineyard is named Lamm, but if knowledgeable and enthusiastic people find this label informationless it seems pretty poor to me. Obviously no one is ever going to buy this wine if they don't understand the label.

The wine was nice enough, though, but perhaps not worth the outrageous price asked. It was nice to visit the neighbours for a drink, I was feeling pretty rotten yesterday.

I've said this before, but there is no harm in saying it again. Recently I've had a few heroic wines that I've quite liked, the Morgat Savennières and the 2001 Tempier spring to mind, but these are really not the wines I drink out of choice. I like my wines to be harmonious, balanced and refined; ideally bursting with charm and loveliness as well. The Cathiard and the two Arlaud wines I've had over the past two days have fitted this description perfectly. They have been concentrated and flavourful, but never overbearing or hard work. As I sit here finishing off my glass of Arlaud Ruchots I just feel charmed, happy and excited to be drinking it, I don't feel tired. Balance and harmony, that is what we like. In view of this I shudder in horror at the prospect of opening the bottle of Australian Zinfandel I picked up today; it is sixteen percent. Oh dear.

One of my favourite philosophers wrote a paper in a philosophical journal, the paper was called 'Relativism is absolutely false'. Not only is this hilarious, it is also right. I get occasional nagging doubts that on here I am too dichotomous; wine is either sub-interest or lovely. I am of the opinion that nice things are nicer than nasty things, and so nice things are worth a bit of time discussing. I hope that my notes indicate that when I like something I don't think it is as good as everything else that I've liked, but there is some qualification about its degree of loveliness. I suppose one wine has to be ranked relative to others, but in no way do I think a linear scoring method can assist with this. If I were to give scores I can see that much as there can be five-star Grand Cru Burgundy, there can also be five-star Savennières, and five-star Sancerre (made by l'homme Vacheron, of course). To suggest that these wines exist on a comparable scale seems downright weird to me. The world of wine is a rich, varied thing with plenty of unique facets and interesting styles and within that melange I think it best to compare like with as like as possible. Words seem more useful than numbers when describing this scheme of over-lapping qualities. So, much as giving a number after each wine would seem to confirm my disclaimer that when it comes to wine there is an objective reality out there, I'd much rather write a bit and describe exactly why a wine is objectively scrummy and how it displays that charm.

Sometimes I worry that my tastes are somewhat narrow. I like French wine, Burgundy most of all, and a few villages in particular. I've written up four Domaine des Lambrays wines on here and I've just ordered another bottle for general drinking over the up-coming weeks. I do really like Morey-St.-Denis wines, I'd drink a lot more Dujac on a regular basis if it was freely available. Well, I do drink quite a lot of Dujac wines, just not whilst I've been writing this blog. Is this bad of me? I suppose not; I've admitted this is a very personal site so I may as well stick to what I like.

I did suggest I might put more jokes up, so here goes. Two parrots were sitting on a perch and one of them said, "Do you smell fish?"

Whilst drinking this Riesling from Boxler my thoughts turn to how much I love Riesling. It is just such a versatile grape, from dry, linear excitement, via rich, fat jollity to elegant sweetness it covers most of the bases one would want in a white wine. I admit, it doesn't do oaky power, but it does power in its own way. When one gets to try a wine as thrilling as this Boxler one can really see that other white grape varieties are less necessary than one might have previously thought. There are plenty of Chardonnays, and the odd white wine from other varieties, that I do enjoy, but given a choice a bottle of damned fine Riesling really hits my lewd spot. Pinot for red and Riesling for white, hooray!

Of my rather minimalist achievements this year some of the best have been to get on the private clients' list of a few producers. On my visit to Alsace this summer I arranged to buy from Domaine Bruno Sorg and Domaine Albert Boxler every year. I was surprised when Boxler said my allocation could well be larger than the UK agent's annual allocation. I doubt this is true since I'll only be buying two cases per year, but it does seem a shame that such great wines as his are not reaching a wider audience. I greatly look forward to when the Sorg 2002 Riesling Pfersigberg will be delivered to my cellar in Burgundy.

Perhaps the best wines to be making it to the cellar come from Burgundy. I feel extremely privileged to be on the list to buy Meursault from Roulot and Chambolle from Mugnier directly. Both of these people make extremely beautiful and elegant wines; they are really lovely. To think I'll be getting a yearly allocation which can age in a perfect cellar only to be removed when it is time to drink makes me very happy. Now all I have to do is save wildly for buying these wines when the offers come out in the spring.

This is where they all end up, my cellar in Burgundy:

So said Brillat-Savarin, and he has had a cheese named after him so he must have been a gentleman of taste and style. When I think back to some of the wines I've savoured and reported on in this spume of drivel I have to say I agree. I recall wines like the various Clos des Lambrays, the Rousseau Chambertin, all of the Boxler Rieslings (that man is some form of demi-god) and the Mission '75 I remember the incredible pleasure they gave me. Pleasure like that is almost tangible, it thrills, excites and charms me to a nigh lewd extent. This is why I take notes to remind me precisely how much nicer nice things are than nasty things.

Much as these wines are excellent in themselves, to extract maximum pleasure you need people of taste to share them with. I am very lucky in that I have a partner who is extremely knowledgeable about and interested in fine wine. A bottle shared, discussed and loved with my love is a particular pleasure that few things can touch. Friends are good too. When I opened the Lambray 2002 our shared smiles as we put glasses to our noses were a delight. Wine is a very good social lubricant; to share such wonders makes everyone happy, more engaged and more social. As Richard Burton put it, "I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink."

Wine is such an ephemeral pleasure. Those few mouthfuls you get from a glass will be the only time you try that wine in that condition; the next bottle will be subtly different. To pop a fine bottle of wine is to have a fleeting grasp of perfection; you have to be awake to all the possibilities your small measure will provide. Miss the chance and you'll never have that experience again. I've occasionally joked that alcohol is a magic potion: it makes you funny and popular. The inherent interest in a bottle of fine wine probably makes it a magic potion: its interest rubs off onto the company consuming it.

With christmas coming I have a few damned-good bottles planned along with plenty of top food. These will be shared in good humour with my partner and friends. We'll be happy and feel good.

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day - Frank Sinatra

It is my birthday soon, sadly. A few friends are meeting up for a nice meal and the wines have already been decided upon. Oddly there will be a lot of Burgundy consumed. As I muse upon those lovely wines that will be consumed in great company I find myself thinking about how good things can be.

Britain has historically been a great trading nation, and this has done wonders for our fine wine trade which is still one of the most dynamic in the world even now we are largely a comedy nation. We have invented a number of wine styles throughout history including Sherry, sparkling Champagne, Madeira, red (as opposed to rosé) Bordeaux and fortified Port. Yet, the British are notoriously shy and retiring, not people given to the visceral, sociable pleasures that wine provides.

The cunning solution of the British wine lover was to turn the pleasure of wine into an intellectual one. Rather than drinking fun wines, the fine wine market has until very recently been almost exclusively obsessed with red Bordeaux. Whilst Bordeaux can be be complex and interesting, it tends toward the hard, lean, austere, not-much-fun end of the wine spectrum. The best wines are undoubtedly great, but not always designed to put a big smile on one's face.

So, one might prefer to drink riper, fleshier, more fruity wines, such as those that come from Australia and the USA. These wines often provide a lot of visceral pleasure but frequently lack that extra dimension that I, as a British wine lover, seek: interest. There are some very complex, very interesting wines made in this style, really quite a remarkable number considering the very short period wines have been made in these areas, but sadly they tend to be too expensive for your humble narrator. Moreover, drinking more than a few glasses of them often leaves me completely paralytic. Strangely, getting completely news-casted is a pleasure I rarely seek.

The solution is clear: drink Burgundy! Burgundy is fleshy and fun, yet complex and interesting. It speaks about the area it comes from, it cheers me up and I can think about even more clearly after a couple of glasses because it is not booze-tastic. Simple village wines even from serious producers can be deeply affordable, if one buys carefully, yet will provide an awful lot of pleasure. People claim that Burgundy is difficult to understand; idleness seems a poor reason to miss out on some good experiences. I certainly do not mind applying myself to maximise the pleasure of myself and my guests.

As one of my favourite wine makers puts it, "Burgundy is best!"

The last wine written up is my idea of a fine wine. It is balanced, interesting and beautiful. I admit some good wines may lack one of these factors, but if something is really going to do rude things to my sense of smell and taste it has to hit these spots. This is a lovely wine, it spoke of the place it was made and spoke in a thrilling and exciting manner. I was compelled; I still am compelled with what remains in my glass. I don't feel tired or generally shagged-out when drinking a wine like this, even though it is quite big and ripe, but I want to dive in for another taste and witness the interest of the cepage, thrills of the site and the skill of the winemaker. So, this tickles my fancy in a 'tits out for the boys that is lovely'-way and it is intellectually stimulating as well. What more could a growing boy ask for?

This is not going to be a tasting note, it is going to be a rant. Partly because I feel so personally offended by this wine, but largely because I have been obliged to drink half a bottle of the booze-tastic horror.

Macon Villages Cuvée Tradition E. J. Thévenet Domaine de la Bongran, Jean Thévenet
By arse, what am I doing drinking this lighter-fluid? It is 14% at the very least, in the name of all that is evil! Now, I am all for wines of heroism, but I like them to have some form of balance. The only balance this has is a large amount of alcohol to balance out the large amount of alcohol. Honestly! Where is the elegance? Where is the refinement? It is just a big glass of booze. I know Australians who'd be floored by this monster. I like my wines to have harmony, to speak of something more interesting than a mere glass of tart-fuel. This cannot speak because its speech is too slurred. I see no pleasure in drinking what is effectively a large glass of raw booze. There may be some acidity there, but it hardly competes with the whacked-out, crazy, booze-tastic monster that is this alcohol-fuelled frenzy of a wine. I am whammed even slagging it off. But, far, far worse than that, I am bored by having to drink it. No thanks.

The worst thing is, I've bought bottles of this before and hated them just as much. I am such a fool buying another bottle of bloody awful, completely atypical Macon. Cuvée 'Tradition'? Tradition my arse.

I welcome comments on this entry as I know everyone in the entire world has consumed this wine. This must be why the world is in such a state; everyone is pissed.

There will be a slight bias toward Burgundy in this blog and there will be many rants about my burning passion for the best stuff. I fancy a good glass of de Courcel* at the moment, but as I don't have any here I will have to content myself with a quick demonstration of my love for Burgundy in the form of the distribution of wine from different regions in my collection:

One third Burgundy, and most of it red. We are told the first quality of wine is that it should be red....

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*Yves Confuron who makes de Courcel wines is a lovely chap, an incredibly gifted winemaker but, on occasion, just a bit of a curmudgeon.

Every single wine book claims to de-mystify wine, be for 'the common man' or makes laughable claims about the incredible ubiquity and cheapness of fine wine. I have no interest in spouting such drivel. I am very much of the opinion that nice things are nicer than nasty things and as such I want to focus on the best wines, with only the occasional dig at filth. I am sure, dear reader, you are enlightened enough to realise that best does not equate with most expensive, I am not a snob interested in burning money. I am interested in drinking damned-good wines. So if you prefer your wine columnists to pander to your erroneous opinions that Jacob's Creek is a fine wine then I suggest you head with alacrity away from here.