A puttonyio is a Hungarian hod.  Puttonyios means not “hods” but “hodded”.  So a 5 Puttonyios Aszu is a five-hodded Aszu.  I trust that makes everything clear.  It doesn’t?   Let me try again.  Aszu (pronounced rather like a sneeze) is Hungarian for “dried out” or “shrivelled.”  The word refers to grapes affected by botrytis, the “noble rot” that produces the world’s finest sweet wines.  A Tokaji Aszu is therefore a sweet Tokaji made from noble rot grapes, as opposed to a dry Tokaji (they do exist) or a sweet Tokaji made by some other method (they exist too, apparently). Read the rest of this entry »

I have just read The Judgment of Paris, by George Taber. This splendid book tells the story of the 1976 Paris wine tasting, at which a panel of distinguished French critics compared wines from France and California in a blind tasting. To everyone’s shock, the winners turned out to be Californian.

Every aspect of the story was hilarious. The organizer, an Englishman called Steven Spurrier, did his best to stack the contest in favour of France. Mr Spurrier owned a wine school in Paris, and had no desire to upset the people he did business with each day. So he chose the most distinguished white Burgundies (Clos des Mouches, Meursault Charmes Roulot, Bâtard-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet) and the most celebrated red Bordeaux (Mouton Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Léoville-Las-Cases), convinced that the judges would recognise them effortlessly. And to be sure, the judges had no doubt about what they were drinking. “Definitely California. It has no nose,” one declared, as he sniffed the Bâtard-Montrachet. “Ah, back to France,” said another, while sipping a Californian Chardonnay. Read the rest of this entry »

Those who are supposed to know about these things agree that times are getting tougher. Economies are ultimately shaped by how people feel, and right now the predominant feelings are gloom and foreboding.

For those of us who can remember the 1970s the present worries seem eerily familiar. Soaring fuel prices, terrorism, environmental hysteria, the fear that our society and culture are sliding into a moronic abyss - today’s headlines take me straight back to the happy world of my teens. Read the rest of this entry »

By general consent 2005 was one of the greatest Burgundy vintages. Some are calling it the greatest ever. The richness, complexity and sheer majesty of these wines have been praised universally, even by those normally sceptical about Old World vino. The result, inevitably, has been record prices. Good Burgundy was never cheap, but the 2005 top growths now fetch the same as vintage Champagne.

Billionaires will doubtless be very happy. So too will professional wine critics, whose job lets them drink the very best. That just leaves the remaining 99.99999% of us. Our acquaintance with the better-known 2005 Burgundies will be confined to a wistful stare in our wine merchant’s, followed by a vicious gasp as our gaze settles on the price sticker. Read the rest of this entry »

Though undoubtedly an art, winemaking is not Art with a capital A. It is one of the great crafts, like cabinet-making or ceramics. I know many people dispute this, especially the young, whose duty is to challenge all established categories. Having joined countless undergraduate arguments on this subject, I have no wish to set off another. I simply make the point that if you admit any difference between Art and Craft – and I think you should – then you must accept that winemaking belongs to the latter, not the former.

That said, Art and Craft do share many qualities. One is the ability to shake prejudice. For instance, this week’s wine has shaken my mild but deep-rooted prejudice towards Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian thinker and esotericist. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have come across Gewürztraminer, you probably know the Alsace version. Other places do make the stuff: the Italian South Tyrol claims to have invented it, and there are interesting variants from Spain, California and New Zealand. But these wines could never be mistaken for the Alsatian model. Their aromas may be as rich, but they are usually leaner and crisper; no less delicious, but in a different way.

So it is interesting to come across a Gewürz whose makers consciously strive for the Alsace effect. This one is from the Finger Lakes area of New York, the US’s third most important wine-growing state. Read the rest of this entry »

Suppose you are a sucker for white Burgundy. Suppose also that the subprime loan crisis has left you bust. The days when you could afford Montrachet are over. Meursault is beyond your reach. The New World alternatives are pleasant enough, but they lack the finesse you are accustomed to. What are you to do?

First, expect no sympathy. The world is full of envious Calibans enraged by the mere idea of expensive wine. Advertise your plight to them and they will only sneer.

Second, consider the Côte Chalonnaise. This is still Burgundy, but it is less well known, and it offers bargains.

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One handy rule of wine drinking is to steer clear of anything from European cooperatives. Generally speaking, the words “Cantina Coop. Soc.” on an Italian label or “Cave Cooperative” on a French one are shorthand for “Evil-tasting muck, indifferently produced by lazy, ill-shaven peasants stultified by government handouts.”

And as with all rules of wine drinking, there is at least one distinguished exception. The Cave de Tain was founded in 1933 by a hundred growers from the district of Tain l’Hermitage, on the Rhône. Over the years they were joined by growers from Cornas and Saint Péray, and they later merged with another cooperative, the Cave de Saint Donat. Today the Cave de Tain has 370 members and a total vineyard area of over a thousand hectares. Such a history ought to make for industrial quantities of awful wine, but miraculously it doesn’t.

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In my item on Condrieu I mentioned successful Viogniers from places other than the Rhône. I have now got round to sampling this one, from Middleburg in Virginia, and I recommend it warmly.

Its makers, Chrysalis Vineyards, have been in business for only a decade. They have all the exuberance of youth. “We are new, excited and energized,” their website tells us breathlessly, “as we combine the best of modern techniques with the traditional hand-crafted winemaking methods of the Old World.”
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One must always be careful with dry whites from Bordeaux. Far too many of them are sour, ill-bred nasties, guaranteed to leave your breath smelling like a drain. They are the unhappy result of decades of government subsidy, a system which debased much of the region’s wine and cheated everyone else both as taxpayers and consumers. (”Screwed front and back”, as a friend of mine put it.)

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