Wine’s a natural product right? I mean it’s just grapes, with perhaps a bit of added yeast if needed and some of those sulphite things that all the bottles have on them and that’s it….

Well not quite actually, it’s just that wine labelling is badly regulated so the vast majority of ingredients used in winemaking don’t need to be mentioned on labels and as such the vast majority of winemakers when asked won’t admit to any of them… so that begs the question what could be in my wine?

 Well obviously sulphites - which are really important - too little of these babies and wine in the bottle will quickly get oxidised and be no good at all, but other things that can be added include various enzymes (to help break down the grape to juice, delay malo-lactic fermentation or break down B-Glucan from mouldy grapes), Acacia Gum (slow precipitation of colour from the wine), Copper Sulphate (prevent reductive taint - rotten eggs smell), Citric Acid (adds acidity to a flabby wine), Metatartaric Acid (prevents deposition of tartrate crystals), Sorbic Acid (stops yeast fermenting), Ascorbic Acid (anti-oxidant in conjunction with Sulphur Dioxide). Plus of course sugar to make sweet or higher alcohol wines in cool climates. If a wine needs extra acid added to it, I think I want to know - it tells me more about the wine, if I find that the wine is too acidic and it’s because extra acidity has been added then it tells me something about the wines made by that winemaker.

In addition to all these additives, other products can be “used” but theoretically are completely removed before the wine is bottled - more on these another time.

The point however is that in no other area of the food industry can you get away with not telling people what you are putting into something they will eat or drink except in the alcoholic beverages market who for whatever reason can use potassium ferrocyanide in winemaking - a pre-cursor to cyanide! AND NOT TELL YOU ABOUT IT! Quite frankly it is disgraceful, at the moment I open a bottle I have no idea so I cannot make a choice whether I want these things in my wine or not - that choice ought to be mine!

Think of a country to produce world class wines and Canada is perhaps not at the top of your list – too cold right? But what they have managed to do is exactly what the UK wine market needs to do – they’ve made a niche for themselves which in the case of the Canadians is to make Ice Wine from either a local hybrid, Vidal or better examples made from Riesling.

Put simply thick grape syrup freezes at a much lower temperature than water so when it gets cold and the grapes freeze you can press what is essentially concentrated grape juice from a grape, leaving extra water remaining frozen and from there can produce quite simply some of the finest sweet wines in the world. So when Alexander from Corkr (www.corkr.com) contacted me to ask whether I would like to sample Pillitteri Estate’s Riesling Icewine which had recently won a trophy for Best Sweet Wine over £10 trophy at the Decanter Wines Awards I have to say it wasn’t a hard decision. There are wines which I won’t sample – I just don’t have time for them all but Corkr.com have a lovely range of wines that cover most bases and all the wines I’ve been sent by them have been worthwhile.

Gary Pilliteri came to Canada from Sicily in 1948 and soon founded a vineyard, growing grapes for other producers until he was persueded to make his own wines by winning a gold medal at Niagara’s amateur wine competition for his icewine. His first vintage was in 1993, but having already learned to produce high quality fruit in his vineyards winemaking was a lot easier with the quality of fruit he was able to produce.

But enough chat – onto the wine! Was it actually any good – or was it a much trumpeted disappointment? Thankfully it was the former – or as my wife declared on her first taste OH MY WORD! This really is something rather special. Yes it might cost £40 a half but you know what – it’s worth every penny of it and some!

A medium gold colour with a pronounced nose showing lovely complex aromas of honeyed ripe citrus particularly orange, apricots and white peach. Fully sweet, with high acidity bringing wonderful balance to the wine which shows flavours of apricots honey and marmalade on the palate. 93 points out of 100.

Daniel Etienne Defaix makes exquisite Chablis, and this is no exception. He manages to get wonderful depth and richness by aging on lees for 12 months and stiring every month which can give an almost oaked flavour but which comes purely from the lees and malo.

Medium golden in colour, apples, melon and pear fruit on the nose with almost a slight hint of coffee (I know I thought it a little wierd too - but it works!) and a slight chalkyness. On the palate a lovely mouthfeel is followed up with rich fruit, a steely inner and some lovely minerality which makes this a really great Chablis. Some find them expensive but to be honest what Defaix manages with his basic Chablis many others only achieve in the premier or even grand cru vineyards.

A really lovely red, that is 5 years behind current vintage from the estate. Deep garnet coloured with slight bricking at the irm and some fairly slow legs. A jammy nose of redcurrant jelly, sweet fruits and a slight meatiness and some lovely aged character with spicy touches smooth integrated tannins and acidity that brings much more finesse to the palate than you get on the nose. Very good (88)

I grabbed a half of this to drink on my birthday as a little treat - medium gold in colour with complex aged aromas of buttery nuts and sweet, honeyed fruit. Very fresh on the palate with amazing acidity working away and a little malo flavouring and toasty oak nuttiness - though not at all overpowering the citrus fruit flavours with hints at melon. A full bodied effort with a long finish that ought to continue to improve for a while yet - this is a wine only just beginning to hit its stride. (89)

Well it all looks sorted now - if anyone finds any issues then please let me know and I’ll do what I can to fix them!

As anyone trying to access the site in the last few days will be only too aware, I’ve been having some fairly major problems with wordpress and the control panel on my webhost - however being a good boy I had a full backup so things are getting back to normal - you will notice that I’ve dropped the sponsors banners for now - that’s because I couldn’t quite get them working as well so have removed them temporarily. Everything ought to be back to normal over the next couple of days.

 Tim

An aged Bordeaux that a friend bought from a private cellar and gave me for my birthday, a blood red wine with a slight orange rim and a few legs. On the nose the wine shows some aged characteristics with redcurrant and plum fruit and more complexity from tobacco, cedary spice and old saddle leather - perhaps even a bit meaty. On the palate the tannins are now smooth and integrating nicely - if anything it could use a little more grip and structure. The acid is fresh and appealing with some red fruit flavours, slight porcini mushrooms and other vegetative notes which the wine finishes on. 86

So the long awaited changes to the Champagne region have finally been made, and 40 communes have been added - effectively enabling the region to produce more Champagne to meet growing demand - of course the houses have already put hefty price rises on and this news is unlikely to stop them doing the same again next year. At the same time landowners in the new communes have found themselves sitting on a goldmine as their land prices will have gone through the roof now that instead of simple agricultural land they find themselves holding Champagne growing land. From around 3000 Euros per hectare, the land will become worth around 1,000,000 Euros per hectare, whilst the growth in size sees 2500 acres added to the current 80,000 acres - not a huge jump in size.

Bear a thought though for the landowners of Germaine and Orbay who find themselves in the opposite direction having been booted out of the appelation and whose land was worth a million euros per hectare last year and now finds itself with some of the cheapest land around. Orbay are not contesting the decision, with no local growers - the vines are owned by Vranken and Moet and as the mayor of the commune put it “are a lot of trouble for not a lot of benefit” - however Germaine will contest the decision with many growers such as the Verdonk family who currently rent out less than an acre of land for 800 Euros per week - an income that will now disapear.

Some of the worlds finest wines come from California, you just need to mention names stug as Ridge Monte Bello and Stags Leap to understand the quality that is available, from Napa Cabernet onwards there are some truly brilliant wines. Unfortunately the Americans also invented the idea of marketing, and so these top wines also come at a price, a very hefty price which given that a lot of them are made in relatively small quantities is fine. But the problem is that a little lower down the scale there just isn’t the value there ought to be.

Once you’ve moved on from the cult wineries, it’s hard to find really good wines that don’t cost far more than they are worth, as mediocre wineries market themselves as cult boutique wineries and charge the earth for complete mediocraty. And dispite the poor state of the dollar, when you pay not much for a Californian wine, what you get is not much, not much flavour, not much pleasure and not much value - consider what you get from (much further away) Australia for between £7 and £12 compared to what you can expect from California and you are left wondering why you’d ever bother. Ok so there are some good value wines, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and even when you start paying a bit more, £20 or £30 you are far from guaranteed to get something worth the money. Obviously part of the reason for this is that for a country the size of the US, wine production is pretty small (compared with say France or Italy) and the country large so they get through most of the good stuff themselves, and then add in the fact that a large quantity of their volume is made up by the likes of Blossom Hill, Gallo and Two Buck Chuck. (In fact a few years ago Gallo starting making more wine than Australia!!), meaning that their actual “quality” wine production is very small when compared with their “quality wine drinking population”

There are however some value wines to be found, Zinfandel for instance can be great value, look out for Ravenswood wines, or I recently discovered Francis Ford Coppolas Diamond Zin at around £12 - and it’s fantastic - but they are hard to hunt down over here.