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.

I’m normally happy to pop a bottle of Morey-Saint-Denis wine, but this is far from one of the most pleasing examples I’ve had.

Morey-Saint-Denis Premier Cru Faconnieres 2005, Virgile Lignier
The nose has a lot of very ripe fruit, which you’d hope would be quite attractive, but I am just finding it a tiny bit clumsy and poorly-focussed. I don’t think the oak has been handled with with much sophistication. Whilst there are no specific winemaking faults on the nose, it doesn’t really speak to me as a good Morey charmer. The palate has plenty of fruit and vigorous tannins, but where is the complexity? Where is the love? Again there are no obvious flaws, but it seems perilously lacking dimension, style and interest. If you are pleased by simple fruit and tannin concoctions you’d probably get on well with it. However, if you are a lover of beautiful, harmonious and classy Morey-Saint-Denis you should avoid this wall-papery entity of monotony, pop down Rue de la Bussiere and see if those lovely people at Domaine Dujac will sell you some proper wine. Alternatively, cross the Route Nationale and pay a visit to my chum Cyprien Arlaud. He makes proper Morey Premier Crus of real character and does not charge the earth for them. I’m a bit vexed that, considering the distinctly high price I paid for this, it is just seems to lack any significant degree of personality. I love good Morey, and this should have been good, so it pains me to taste it and realise I’ll have to rate it as sub-interest. I threw my money away.

The partner says I am being too hard on this wine. Given that it has clean fruit and no obvious faults he rightly points out this is better than an awfully large proportion of the wine made in Burgundy. However, just because something is better than unspeakable filth doesn’t make it worth buying. If I were feeling charitable (rather than perturbed that I purchased so poorly) I’d say this is indifferent at best, and I want to drink better wines than ‘indifferent’.

Unless I have been misinformed, the Virgile Lignier labelled wines are the negociant arm of Lignier-Michelot (please correct me if I am mistaken). I had the same premier cru labelled Lignier-Michelot last summer. Whilst I felt it was lacking a bit of complexity and clearly aimed to be a tits-out wine rather than an ethereal entity of beauty, there was more interest and charm to it than this distinctly tiresome expression of vinous tedium.

I’m very pleased to be drinking this. Not only do I love Boxler wines but also given my luck with Alsace Riesling recently I am very glad it is not the slightest bit oxidised and is in absolutely top condition. The L31DII designation was only used in the 2002 vintage for a plot of his oldest vines on a sector of the Sommerberg Grand Cru that has a unique soil type in the Grand Cru. The difference between the L31D (which appears every vintage) and the L31DII is just matter of how ripeness, the ripest grapes going into the L31DII. How do we know it is an L31DII? Look at the top-left corner of the label and squint at the tiny characters there.

Riesling Grand Cru Sommerberg ‘L31DII’ 2002, Domaine Albert Boxler
There is real power on the nose, all of that gorgeous ripe fruit and stunning creamy minerality give this an impression of scale. You can smell the old vines concentration and by all that is evil this has the nose of stylish wine that simply oozes class. Good as smelling it is, it is not enough; I must drink! The palate is big, with weight and density but also some of the most frighteningly high acid levels I’ve experienced in Alsace Riesling outside of the more linear Trimbach wines. Wow, that acidity is quite serious. The minerality seems rich and powerful and there is a excellent concentration of fruit. Despite its size there is no question that the balance is anything other than superb. It is beginning to mature but there is no rush to drink this wine, it’ll be around for a while yet. I am totally compelled and generally smitten with yet another dazzling wine made by the great Jean Boxler. Please never do a Deiss and lose your winemaking marbles, M. Boxler.

Brilliant, I tell you. Stunningly, mind-warpingly, lewdly brilliant.

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.  

*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.

This is one of the most compelling bottles of Burgundy I’ve tried in recent periods of time. I was surprised by how good a wine from such a, let us be honest, lesser village (albeit the best vineyard and the best producer in that village, from a top vintage) could be. It charmed our lovely friends from New Zealand (hope the journey goes well tomorrow, Mike and Vanessa, we were really happy you had the time to see us tonight), who are unused to drinking such rarefied Burgundies. I was terribly pleased it hit their pleasure centres. And terribly pleased it tickled my fancy, too.

Pernand-Vergelesses Premier Cru Ile des Vergelesses 2005, Domaine Chandon de Briailles
Quite pale in colour, but of course we couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about the depth of colour in red Burgundy. What a nose! Pure, fresh strawberry fruit that is just ravishing in its beauty-quotient. There is a super-refined minerality there as well which excites my intellectual faculties, but it is the gorgeous exquisiteness of this nose, its sculpted, pure refinement which does it for me. Yeah. And I do mean ‘Yeah’ in a deep and meaningful sense. There is more of the lovely strawberry fruit on the palate and it is bright and fresh; elegant but again beguiling in its loveliness. The tannins are present but they are silky and in total harmony with the precise fruit flavours and wonderful, enlivening acidity. It is a supremely focused palate which has a slightly firm character on the finish; these characters keep it tasting alive and vibrant. The finish is certainly long and quite the charmer even though it is firm. For the lover of elegance, harmony and sophistication this is giving one hell of a lot of pleasure now, but I’d suggest it is only going to keep on improving over the next five years or so. Its is a far more charming and pleasure-filled wine than even the flashest Cortons I’ve had from Chandon de Briailles, although it does make me think positive thoughts about the magnum of Corton-Bressandes 2005 I have from them. Maybe, when I feel it’ll be mature, I’ll finally get to try a red Corton which is actually lovely. I await popping that mag with interest, but until then I’d be a fool not to purchase more of this.

I’ve occasionally been asked how I got into wine. This is a bit of a difficult question to answer as I started so young I am not really sure what was the initial spark.

My parents were not at all interested in wine, there was not much wine consumed in the home environment. I didn’t get my love for wine from them.

I’m told that my mother got a free copy of The World Atlas of Wine from a book club when I was about five or six. Apparently, even at that tender age I would pour over this for hours, reading about all the wine regions and different producers. Why I found this so fascinating I cannot recall.

I do recall the next step in the genesis of my love for wine very clearly. Just before my ninth birthday my mother and step-father visited Alsace. They did not taste many wines, but brought back a bottle of Riesling Cuvee Frederic Emile 1979 from Trimbach. I’d read about this wine and producer so I asked if I could try some to see what it was like. I was given a small glassful and as I sniffed and tasted it galvanised me with its lively, exciting set of flavours. I am quite sure my appreciation of it was not terribly sophisticated at the age of eight, but I remember saying to my mother as I tasted it, “Wow, wine really can be good. This one tastes of so many things*”. I love Alsace Riesling to this day.

After this deeply compelling experience I tried to get my mother to buy more wines and let me try them. At that point she was yet to develop her appreciation for wine so joined the unspeakable Sunday Times Wine Club and ordered the filth they sell without realising these were dreadful wines. None of these had such a profound effect on me as the CFE 79.

I was extremely fortunate to be close friends with a boy at school, Daniel Cadbury (are you out there, Daniel?) whose parents loved wine, and in 1985 they had a family holiday in the Bergerac/Monbazillac area of France. They went to a few tastings and some of the wines we tried were pretty good; I was chuffed to score myself a bottle of 83 Chateau de Monbazillac.

The most amazing part of the holiday was when we took a day trip to Sauternes and Barsac to try the 83s and 84s. We visited La Tour Blanche, Climens, d’Arche and (quite incredible that, as a family group, we blagged our way in here) Chateau Gillette. The differences between the producers and vintages were clear when I tasted so many in one day. Once again, I was moved by the power of quality wine.

Sadly, then it was back to the dross from the Sunday Times Wine Club (with the occasional bottle of good stuff from the Cadburys) until I looked old enough to buy my own wine (it is handy being a tall person at times). That is when things really took off. I read more, purchased widely and tasted with great pleasure. My local wine merchants, Oddbins and Bottoms Up, still had a lot of interesting wines in those days and I would frequently buy something well-reviewed to drink with my school teachers. I didn’t view my fellow students as being enlightened enough to merit having any these precious drops of nectar; I wanted to talk about wine and other teenagers just knew nothing about it. I soon became aware that the teachers didn’t know that much either, but at least they were articulate.

Sometimes the discoveries were quite serendipitous. I went to the Australian Wine Centre (just off The Strand in those days) for the  first time when I was seventeen (with my mother’s credit card) to buy some St. Hallett Old Block Shiraz; I’d read a lot about it and thought it worth trying. I went to pay for my few bottles and the frankly enormous Australian fellow behind the counter said, “You don’t want to buy those, you want some of this.” He pulled out a bottle of Tim Adams Aberfeldy Shiraz, pulled the cork and poured me a slug. I tasted it and said, “I’ll take four bottles. Does this Tim Adams chap make anything else good?” He grinned and said, “Yeah, I think I do.” The man himself was visiting England and doing a stint in the shop. We chatted about wine as we drank most of the bottle of Aberfeldy and I was so impressed by both the charming Mr Adams and his wines I knew I would be sold on them for as long as he continued to make wine. I was right, I still drink and enjoy Tim Adams wines and recommend them to anyone who wants keenly-priced, quality Australian wine. I met Mr Adams at the London Wine Trade Fair a few years back (he is still extremely tall) and related the anecdote, he remembered!

Then I went to Oxford University and started tasting more wine than I ever thought I would. I was a member of the Oxford Wine Circle, a winning captain of the blind tasting team**, turned up to the merchants’ tastings when they tried to sell wines to the colleges and had weekly tastings with a select few people in evenings which will forever be burnt in my memory as the ‘casa Schleiss tastings’. Not all the wines I tried were the very finest, but a surprisingly large number were considering we were poor students. My chum Mr T and I once went through all of our notes for the past year and were both surprised and pleased to realise we had tasted over three thousand different wines. Good going, but a shame it included a lot of dull, cheap Clarets aimed at the conservative college buyers. This epic wine experience taught me well; I know that Burgundy is best, but good Riesling, Sherry, Champagne and others can also deliver the goods. I even liked the very flashest Clarets we tried, and some of them were incredibly flash, but soon learned they were too expensive for my tastes.

I do not try as many wines these days and largely limit myself to wine styles and producers I enjoy. I confess to being pleased I no longer have to regularly put New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in blind tastings to try and teach people to recognise it. That being said, my knowledge of wine is still broad and I get a lot of pleasure out of blind tasting. A few years ago I was working for an unmentionably filthy wine merchant (I lasted almost two months before the inevitable ‘going totally insane and trying to kill myself’-experience which has characterised all my 9-to-5 jobs since developing paranoid schizophrenia; this was the longest I managed to hold down a regular job since 1999) who paid for their employees to take the Wine and Spirit Education Trust Advanced Certificate exam. I skimmed the course text book, finished the exam in quarter of the time allowed and passed it with a distinction.

So that, dear reader, is the story of my early years with wine. As I said, I cannot pin down the initial spark that made me want to learn about wine, but I am slightly amused that I have  been compelled by properly fine wine from the age of eight onwards.

*I’ve had CFE 79 on many occasions since becoming more deeply educated about wine and wine tasting, and I was clearly right with my first assessment, it always has tasted of a lot of things.

**I’m told I was a very demanding blind tasting instructor. When someone (who shall remain nameless) said that a rather large Australian Shiraz was Beaujolais I laughed so much I fell off my chair. I don’t suppose that was terribly supportive or encouraging.

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.

The initial idea of tonight’s little tasting was to expand our knowledge of Gevrey-Chambertin villages-level wines. One of the two was so utterly horrible I felt it insulted our guest, so a better wine was popped.

Gevrey-Chambertin 2001, Domaine Maume
Very pale in colour. A reasonably attractive nose of strawberry fruit, but not that much else is there. Some people rave about this producer so I was hoping for a bit more on the aromatic fireworks front. The palate is utterly disgusting. There is bugger all fruit and no charm. The tannins are harsh and bitter, and there are quite mind-buggering amounts of acidity present. There is no harmony to this palate, it just revolts the sensibilities of the lover of proper Burgundy. Thin, acrid and horrible. The nice-ish fruit on the nose is this wine’s only positive feature, the palate is just filth. We gave this a serious swirl in the decanter in the hope it would become less tough, but the balance was never there. Avoid, and have strong words with Mr Maume if you should be unfortunate enough to meet him.

Gevrey-Chambertin ‘Mes Favourites’ 2001, Alain Burguet
Now this smells like proper Burgundy: bold and fruity with a great depth of character. There is clearly quite a lot of concentration present on this nose, a real old vines personality here. The palate has a very pleasing tannic structure: for sure it is quite tannic, but those tannins are rather ripe and silky. There is plenty of fruit here to keep you smiling and, whilst it is concentrated and powerful, it doesn’t lack elegance. This is a really serious village level wine which dishes out a lot of pleasure. Yum.

Chambolle-Musigny 2007, G. Roumier
This nose throbs with charm and loveliness. The fruit is just sex-tastic and there is a pronounced minerality to it. It is still bursting with youthful attractiveness. Yeah, this is another damned-good village wine. The palate is silky and svelte with really refined tannins, perfectly balanced acidity and tits-out fruit. For a village wine there is plenty of complexity and real style. All of those lovely, harmonious flavours persist on the finish for a long time and when they finally fade you just want to drink more. This is clearly a very good vintage for Roumier Chambolle and we are really enjoying it. Not necessarily better than the Burguet, it is a different wine, but it does provide a minging load of enjoyment.

I was at the Howard Ripley 2008 Burgundy tasting last night. It was most interesting, many thanks to Sebastian Thomas for squeezing me in at the last minute.

Generally, the vintage seems quite successful. The best wines have a pronounced sense of place, with nice fruit, pleasing acidity and good structure. These are perhaps not wines for forgetting in your cellar for decades, but in the medium term they will develop well. The very best wines will age well.

Shock of the tasting was a Jean Grivot wine that actually had charm as well as tannin. I was surprised, and even more surprised that it was a Clos de Vougeot which are normally on the tough side. It had real Grand Cru presence and lots of class. If you ever want to buy a flash Grivot that won’t leave you thinking “Why oh why did I buy that?” now might be your chance.

The other Clos de Vougeot on show was from Hudelot-Noellat. This was was even more charming with a real nervous energy to match its power. Good value for the quality. I thought. There was a Vosne-Romanee 1er cru les Suchots from them on show as well and this impressed me no end. It is also keenly priced for a Vosne 1er, snap this and his Beaumonts up.

I enjoyed the Fourrier wines I tried. The basic Gevrey-Chambertin seemed like it has some future ahead of it and it was quite serious for a village wine. Chambolle-Musigny 1er cru les Gruenchers was a tiny bit on the tannic side for a Chambolle but I liked its acid/fruit/tannin interplay enough to order three magnums. I think it’ll charm more after a bit of age. Gevrey-Chambertin 1er cru Clos Saint Jacques was quite delicious; structured and fruity with great length.

The final two wines from the tasting which really stood out came from Comte Armand. The Auxey-Duresses 1er cru was impressively complex and engaging considering its lowly status and bargain price. I’m buying some. More expensive, but clearly one of the best wines of the tasting, was Pommard 1er Cru Clos des Epeneaux. This was really expressive with a great Pommard character. The fruit was perfectly integrated with its impressive, but not harsh, tannic structure.

Of course, I would also recommend the 2008s from the producers I visited last summer. These were: Domaine Dujac, Domaine Arlaud, Mugnier and Roumier. Eagle-eyed readers will note I tasted at Domaine des Lambrays when I was in Burgundy. The cask sample of 2008 I had there was a bit difficult to judge, as were the samples at the Howard Ripley tasting, so I find it hard to recommend outright. Moreover, much as I’ve loved many of their wines I’ve had in the past (I own a reasonable amount), I feel they are getting a bit pricy.

There are some impressive and lovely red Burgundies from 2008 which are well-worth buying. Don’t let the promise of flasher 2009s put you off from buying some 08s; you will enjoy them.