Château D’Aiguilhe, Côtes de Castillon 2005
26th April 2009
The other night I opened a red from Moulis en Medoc. It smelled like a rugby player’s socks and tasted like oven cleaner. “Oh well,” I told myself philosophically. “Duff bottle. Can’t win ‘em all.”
But if we are to believe a story that ran throughout the British media last week, the fault was entirely mine. Apparently I had opened the bottle on the wrong day of the week. On another day the same wine would have smelled of tulips and tasted like nectar, or something like that.
At any rate, that is the line being put out by several British wine retailers. They now ask critics to taste their wines only at times when the calendar decrees they will be at their best. Not any old calendar, of course, but a special one drawn up for the last 47 years by a German lady called Maria Thun.
Frau Thun categorises days as “fruit”, “flower”, “leaf” or “root”, according to the moon and stars. Apparently fruit and flower are good for tasting, leaf and root bad. The retailers therefore only want their wines sampled on fruit and flower days.
Frau Thun has drawn up her calendar on biodynamic principles, following the precepts laid down by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may recall my post on Zind-Humbrecht wines, which are grown according to these precepts. As I made clear then, the doctrines strike me as nothing more than ethereal bunkum. And I am doubly suspicious when I hear wine retailers peddling them.
After all, one can see how this notion of fruit and flower days would be very useful for anyone selling wine. If you charge a fat price for some wine on the grounds that it is rich, complex and aromatic, and a disgruntled client comes back complaining that actually it tastes like pond water, Frau Thun has armed you with the perfect reply. “Terribly sorry, but you obviously tasted this wine on a root day, and our description was based on a fruit day tasting. So no, you can’t have a refund.”
Perhaps I am being cynical. All the same, I would claim that this week’s wine will taste very good indeed on whatever day you drink it. Château D’Aiguilhe is from the Côtes de Castillon, an area just east of St-Émilion and south of Fronsac. It is a robust, chewy wine, offering aromas of brambles and oak and a fine array of blackcurrant flavours. It needs to breathe a good while before drinking, but will amply reward the wait. Very good value at $38 (£25).
