Drinking On Your Own: The Facts - Kumala Eternal (sic) Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay

Fact: People who announce in a great gust of lordly piety that They never drink on their own (usually giving you a look at the same time) are joyless pedants, whose pedantry derives from a psychological terror, i.e. that their own natures would compel them to drink the bottle dry and then the bottle after that, without the presence of another individual to stop them.

Fact: But by reiterating their position constantly, and po-faced, they make it seem like the only responsible way to behave. It is not.

Fact: The French drink on their own all the time.

Fact: Drinking on your own is a legitimate and intense pleasure, allowing you to brood on the mystery of life without having to explain or articulate your woozy philosophisings to anyone else.

Fact: It also allows you to drink stuff you otherwise wouldn't be able to drink in company, or would, at least, have difficulty accounting for. As I write, I am reaching an accomodation with something called Kumala Eternal Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay/Semillon, which is one of those scary cheap whites, the usual aggressive mix of a mouthful of ball bearings/escaped coal gas/rumour of incipient migraine, but still okay if you keep it almost frozen. It also has a friendly gecko image on the label and, best of all, is free on this occasion, donated by my wife as a leftover from work. This alone gives it a pathetically grateful high rating on the Great Wine Graph.

Fact: One of the single most pleasurable things you can do, at any age, even better perhaps than just drinking a glass of wine, is sit in a quiet bar, on your own, with a glass of wine and a cigarette and achieve a state of absolute detached calm as the world goes on around you. Nowadays excessively difficult to achieve anywhere in Europe (and impossible in the UK) it marries Fact no. 4 above, with the joy of a thoughtful cig in what Richard Klein calls a caesura in time. Actually, he doesn't stipulate the booze, but in his magisterial Cigarettes Are Sublime - an investigation of the cultural centrality of fag-smoking - he talks incredibly winningly about the way a tranquil smoke can arrest time, freeing the smoker from the jabbering torment of ambition, human relationships, existential angst etc. In this caesura, this intentional breakage of the flow, the contemplative stillness is bliss.

Fact: Cigarettes Are Sublime, along with Dieting Makes You Fat, by Geoffrey Cannon and Hetty Einzig, are probably the two most influential books I possess.

Fact: Now I think about it, I probably drink less when I'm on my own. There comes a point where another glassful will invariably mean intoxication, and being drunk on your own is the living end unless you really, really, want to be drunk on your own (bankruptcy, doomed relationship, terminal illness). Whereas, when I drink with, say, PK, it's all too easy (PK having the capacity and persistence of a wet & dry vacuum) to try and keep up, thereby plunging heedlessly into that second or even third bottle, with disastrous consequences. Whereas the act of putting the screw cap back on the unfinished bottle gives one a little thrill of maturity, as well as being an implicit riposte to Fact no.1.

Fact: Which means I'm starting to sound like no.1 and therefore must

Stop.

CJ

A little knowledge: Oddbins' Mâcon-Lugny Eugene Blanc

The English are among the few people who will actually mock someone’s learning. Too clever for his own good. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Know-it-all. Too clever by half.

By embracing a dismissal of all matters vinous beyond price and taste, CJ shrewdly avoids this mockery. I, despite my broad erudition, only plead guilty to a little knowledge of wine myself. How dangerous a thing can that little knowledge possibly be? Well…

You may recall (or, with the wonders of the internet, may now look back upon) my somewhat futile attempt to follow one wine writer’s advice and “befriend a local wine merchant”. My chosen local merchant was an Oddbins – shortly afterwards, the chain went into administration.

My attempts at striking up friendships have often been rebuffed – there are playgrounds, student bars and even people’s dining rooms to which I can never return – and many is the shop where assistants now disappear into the back room muttering “It’s that bloody man again…”. But closing an entire retail chain to avoid me is a little extreme.

However, my local Oddbins remained, to some shabby extent, open. A scrappy handwritten note appeared in the window, explaining that it was now being run by EFB/Whittalls. (In fact this is European Food Brokers, which operates Whittalls, which is trading as Oddbins. A search throws up locations like Halifax, Walsall and Dorking. Hmmm.)

But for weeks and weeks now, it has offered only rubbish wines. I mean real bottom shelf, corner grocer stuff, like Marques de Caceres, Yellowtail, even Blossom Hill – I ask you, Blossom Hill? What is this, a convenience store? Walsall? A Spar?

The shelves have been sparsely stocked, and the simple, bare wood interior of Oddbins, which once presented a charming, rustic simplicity, has had an air of downtown Mogadishu.

Then this week, they put a board outside proudly announcing, “The tide is turning” – and amongst the rubbish, I saw this Mâcon-Lugny in the window, and I thought yes, at last. There, my little learning told me, is a white Burgundy, a wine that could grace my dining table.

And £9 is a good price for a white Burgundy. Perhaps, I thought, this might be a signal to people like myself. Oddbins could be offering good wine again. Or, it’s a bin-end from the old Oddbins, a quality wine being shifted at a bargain price to ease their cashflow, and which passers-by may not notice.

But, given my little knowledge, was I being “too clever by half”?

The wines of the Mâconnais, says my old Sotheby’s guide to classic wines, are “broad, solid structured… with a harmonious balance between lemony fruit and sinewy virtuosity”, an astonishing turn of phrase from David Molyneux-Berry which is as hard to comprehend as it is to pronounce.

What does Oddbins say? I can do no better than show you the back label:

Now, why reduce something to its lowest common denominator? Yes, it is chardonnay; but if you’re selling a Rolls-Royce, you don’t describe it as a car.

As someone may have said, as 183 fighter planes appeared over the horizon of Pearl Harbor, this does not bode well.

If there’s one adjective everyone uses about good white Burgundy (and indeed Chardonnay) it’s “buttery”. Sadly, this wine is more like those low fat alternatives, which nobody tells you are also low flavour.

An initially fresh, grapefruity bouquet simply evaporates from the glass within minutes, disappearing like cars from a traffic warden. And similarly with the flavour; any richness you might detect in an initial sip (beware the in-store tasting!) is long gone before the second glass. No “sinewy virtuosity” here, and as far as fruit is concerned, there’s just a thin flavour of lemon fruitgums, with a clenching aftertaste. In fact, served with food, people might not even notice it; or, if you put a slice of lemon in the jug, they could confuse it with their water.

(Incidentally, whoever wrote that back label – it has neither a good depth of flavour, nor a concentration of fruit. It is, however, arguably, dry. Frankly, I’m beginning to wish I was.)

Now look. I’m really rather copped off about this. I’m sitting here with a £9 bottle of wine, which is about twice what CJ pays, and God knows he moans enough about the rubbish he has to put up with.

If somewhere is selling classic wines, it is going to start attracting people like me, rather than corner-shop customers who are simply trying to obliterate the preceding day for a fiver. I’ve been lured in, by a classic French appellation, and a little knowledge.

I don’t want a load of comments about how it’s hard to turn the business around, get new stock, etc etc. Because this place is open, and it’s selling stuff to customers, and if the owners don’t feel the stuff on their shelves is representative of their operation and their brand, then they should close until it is.

Or perhaps this is what they drink in Walsall…

PK

Drinking wine with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street

Following my recent invitation for a glass of wine at 10 Downing Street…

No, let me start again.

When I was invited to drinks with the Prime Minister,…

The thing is, CJ is away – which is why you have two postings on the trot from me. And there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth when he returns; for he will discover that I have taken yet another upward step in my social status during his absence. Because this post is not about drinking wine at my dining table or in the study; no, this is about drinking wine behind (as the No 10 website puts it) “the most famous front door in the world”.

An invitation to Downing Street is understandably surrounded by security arrangements, and there are restrictions on telling people much about a visit. However, no-one has told me that I cannot talk about the wine, which is what you lot are really interested in, and of which I had high hopes.

Recent articles like this have revealed something of the quality of the government’s cellars. I thought it unlikely that they would bring out the Chateau Petrus 1978, worth more than £2,500 a bottle, for our little soirée. But perhaps the Chateau Latour 1955, with its little note, "Drink on v. special occasions”? This occasion was certainly v.special to me.

And look, the Chateau Palmer 1975 is described as a "really old-fashioned style claret, rich and excellent with some austerity"! Precisely what we have now – some austerity!! The Palmer '75 would indeed be excellent with it.

Well, needless to say, I was sorely disappointed.

There is something thrilling about arriving at Downing Street, showing your invitation to the policeman, and being guided through the gates while a gaggle of tourists look on, clearly thinking ‘Who the hell is that?” There are various security procedures whereof I cannot speak, before you are ushered through the shiny front door and into No 10 itself.

I must first draw particular attention to the glassware. We have had several tussles on the Sediment blog over appropriate drinking containers, but I can say with some confidence that No 10 surpasses even CJ in clumsy glassware. Our wine was served in clunky, green-glass goblets, more appropriate to a campfire celebration with Robin Hood’s Merrie Men.

The only possible explanation is that, along with so many other elements of such an evening, proper glassware is considered to be a security risk. These Downing Street wallahs have clearly been to a few dodgy pubs in their time; presumably, these goblets are either unbreakable, or would crumble like a car windscreen in the unlikely event of a guest attempting to “glass” the Prime Minister.

Obviously I am not privy to the catering arrangements at No 10. It is admittedly unlikely, even faced with yet another invasion of their Pillared Room by a group of strangers, that the Camerons simply popped down to the offie. But whether the wine was actually provided by No 10, or chosen by our reception organisers, I do not know.

However, in standard, drinks-party manner, your goblet is proffered with a choice of red or white wine. And here’s the thing.The white was Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc, an innocuous, fruity and citrussy New Zealand wine which you can buy in virtually any supermarket or off-licence. Indeed, at the time of writing, you can get 26% off at Tesco, something which might appeal more to No 11.

Obviously we were not attending for the wine, but a visit to No 10 is rather special, and this Sauvignon Blanc is so widely available, and so blandly drinkable, that it doesn’t register as anything special whatsoever.

The same is true of the red – Campo Viejo Rioja Crianza Reserva; again, relatively innocuous, blandly drinkable and widely available. The only thing I can really say in favour of the selection of this pair is that judiciously, one is from the Commonwealth and the other from the EU; coincidence, or politics?

So basically, a lot of things are special about a drinks evening at No 10 – but not the drinks. Perhaps they are trying to emulate the population at large by providing the kind of modestly priced, bland and unchallenging wine many people would buy for themselves. Make them feel at home. Except…we’re not at home. We’re at 10 Downing Street.

Anyway, we sipped from our health and safety approved goblets, their rims thick as china mugs. There was in fact no violence, even though security had clearly overlooked the lethal potential of a weapons-grade vol-au-vent. The PM toured the room, meeting and greeting in an accomplished manner. A few words to the gathering; a little, probably well-used joke confusing Nick Clegg with his wife as his absent “other half” (ho ho); and a crafted reference to the value of “our industry” which would clearly fit any bunch of visitors.

Presumably No 10 learnt long ago that world leaders were not averse to pocketing a reminder of their visit, and so there is absolutely nothing to, er, take home. No crested notepads, badged pencils or matchbooks. Even the gents loo air freshener and soap are, as it were, bog standard. So with no phalanx of flashbulbs to illuminate my exit, I left alone and with only my memories into the dark of Downing Street like a reshuffled Minister.

For a very modest outlay, you can experience the whole thing for yourself. First, down to your local retailer for a bottle of Villa Maria or Campo Viejo. Find your clunkiest heavyweight goblet, and log into the No 10 Virtual Tour. Pick up your glass – “Red or white, sir?” – as you view the Terracotta Room where drinks are provided; then sip your wine while viewing the Pillared Room where guests congregate. Should you wish to avail yourself of the lavatory (surprisingly omitted from the Virtual Tour), rest assured that your own is probably not very different to the one at No 10. This will give you the whole experience; except, of course, for the opportunity to share a few words with one of the most significant, insightful and interesting people in the country. But if you send me an invite…

PK

Hazy View Chenin Blanc

CJ is currently heading somewhere in the West Country; his consumption may not falter, but his contribution will, so I am stepping in with this further tale of my own.

My local Mace (slogan: Whenever, whatever) is a typical convenience store, run by personnel whose mobile telephone calls occupy them far more than any notions of customer service. On the railings outside is a badly handwritten sign, advertising a “specious airey basemet” to let (sic, sic and, I’m afraid, sic again). This “basemet” would be “suitable for many uses”, although Younger Son, peering over the railings, seems to think that its suitability would mostly involve either Josef Fritzl or the producers of Saw.

They say life is too short to drink cheap wine; not on the Sediment blog. Tonight it is convenience, rather than curiosity, poverty or perversity, which has driven me to the Mace for wine. I am cooking Nigel Slater’s excellent recipe for chicken with basil and lemon. And it requires white wine – which on a Sunday evening means a visit to Mace. And whatever else the “basemet” is being used for, it is clearly not a wine cellar.

CJ and I refuse to succumb to the likes of Echo Falls, Turning Leaf, Jacob’s Creek et al, the cheap brands which clutter the shelves of wine at Mace and elsewhere with their dependable blandness, like episodes of some New World soap opera where no-one is ever either rich or poor.

But if not excitement, Mace does at least provide a degree of comedy on its shelves. Which self-respecting French chateau makes a wine which actually says “claret” on the label? In case of confusion, that’s “Claret from Bordeaux”, no less?

Another day, perhaps; for amongst the more predictable offerings I spot my purchase – Hazy View, a Chenin Blanc from South Africa. At £6.49 a bottle, there will be some (CJ) who think that a little steep for a bottle of South African white from a convenience store. But needs must, there’s a chicken dish waiting, and Messrs Gallo are not getting my hard-earned, thank you very much.

I think it’s always important to taste wine before you cook with it. This has nothing to do with the taste of the wine – it just numbs the fear of cooking.

So I open up the Hazy View, and pour myself a cook’s glass. And I realise that this is actually a very, very enjoyable chenin blanc – peachy, crisp, utterly drinkable. It’s fragrant, light but flavoursome. What is going on here?

I quickly check it out online, just to reassure myself that my tastebuds have not been cauterised by too much Sediment fodder. And I find that I am not alone in my regard for Hazy View Chenin Blanc. It is on the wine list of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, no less – at £21 a bottle.

Now, I know you cannot compare restaurant prices with other prices. But still, a wine for which the connoisseurs of the ROH will pay £21 – and I’ve just picked it up for £6.49 round at the Mace. Well spotted or what? Self-congratulation all round, eh? Except…

Except that I am now faced with an awful dilemma. The recipe, for four people, requires two glasses of wine. If I had brought up from my extensive cellar (hem, hem) a bottle of white wine worth £21, there is no way I would put two glasses of it into Nigel Slater’s recipe. Let alone “watch it bubble for a minute”.

But I have no choice. I remind myself that this is a bottle from Mace, and that two glasses have cost me about £2.50. (The fact they would have been £11 at the ROH is neither here nor there. Stop it.) I pour it in. And, while I “watch it bubble for a minute” (sob), I wonder – have I found a £21 bottle of wine for a third of the price, and cooked one of the most expensive chicken dishes ever? Or cooked with wine that cost £6.49 from the convenience store, and enjoyed drinking a bargain?

In the end, only one thing really matters; I get to drink the rest of this completely delicious wine myself. Because I am “just finishing off that cheap bottle I got to cook with from the Mace…”

PK

La Vieille Fontaine White, Vin de Pays de Gers 2009

Cheap wine is an inverse gamble. In most forms of gambling, the greater your outlay, the greater your gamble. With wine, the opposite is true. Spend a tenner on a bottle of wine, and you approach it with eager curiosity and cautious optimism. Spend £2.99, and that is replaced with fear and trepidation.

A couple of things can alleviate that. First, the merchant. Most connoisseurs will tell you that the name of a good wine merchant can be an imprimatur of quality. The very term “wine merchant” alone would suggest you’re buying from a specialist. Unfortunately, the terms which occur more frequently in Sediment purchasing are “off-licence”, “supermarket”, and “that place on the corner and can you pick up some Pringles while you’re there”.

And then there are reviews. Perhaps not surprisingly, you don’t get many positive reviews of wines under three quid. So, when the Observer recommends a bottle for £2.99, an absurd optimism takes over.

Last Sunday (August 1), I spotted this in my Observer supplement: “This ridiculously cheap French number from Tesco is not only drinkable but has a fair bit of charm too. It’s light and fresh, with a nice mix of floral and citrus flavours.” Of course, amongst that expressive description, it was the words “ridiculously cheap” which caught my eye, especially in an unusual juxtaposition with the word “drinkable”.

The writer was David Williams, deputy editor of The World of Fine Wine, a wonderful looking magazine in whose rarefied world I would love to sup. Each issue costs £20. So when he recommends a wine from Tesco which costs £2.99, it’s barely hours before I’m excitedly clutching a bottle.

The whole package has a reassuring air of authenticity – the name, the label design…and even a cork. Not a real cork, of course, just one of those plastic versions, but at least you get to use a corkscrew and persuade yourself that this is a proper bottle of wine.

And upon first opening, the wine did indeed live up to all of Mr Williams’ adjectives.

But I do wonder if Mr Williams encountered this wine in the swill n’spit of a tasting. For, as I made my steady way through the bottle, the flavours gradually collapsed. “Light” became syrupy; “floral” became undergrowth; and “citrus” deteriorated into a vague clenching at the back of the palate. In the time it took me to down the lot, things went from the sylvan to the frankly vegetable.

Of course it is “ridiculously cheap”, and most people would say there is hardly room for complaint here. Ditto “drinkable”, no mean achievement in itself at £2.99. The trick, presumably, is to either share it out amongst half a dozen people, so they all knock it back before it deteriorates, or just swill the lot yourself as quickly as possible. But good white wine does, actually, hold its flavour throughout the bottle. Only, in the World of Fine Wine, I can’t even read about Montrachet for £2.99…

PK

Del Gaudio Veneto Sauvignon / Sicilia Syrah

Part of the supposed appeal

of Shoreditch, where my office

is located, is the way in which

trendiness and down-to-earth

character (ie poverty) now sit

cheek by jowl. Sir Terence

Conran's boutique hotel/restaurant Boundary is but yards from “gentlemen’s venue” The White Horse. The fashionable bar and restaurant Boho Mexica is flanked by a “market sundriesman” (ie wholesaler of tat for Petticoat Lane). And cheek by jowl with Hawksmoor, one of the best (and certainly not one of the cheapest) steak restaurants in London, we find Wine Bargains of Spitalfields (which, needless to say, does not have a website).

It’s a scruffy little place, painted a disheartening red, with the usual depressing combo of selling wine along with confectionery. I’m sure Mary Portas is a stranger to the retailing principle of picking up a Lion bar along with your claret. But from this unpromising welcome, I was heartened to see that social mobility is alive and rising on Commercial Street.

For on the shelves of Wine Bargains, I was shocked to find some top flight Burgundy at £96 a bottle. £96! I didn’t even know those little yellow stickers could be printed with prices like that. Why, why is a rundown offie selling wine like that? Perhaps Hawksmoor are doing Bring A Bottle nights? Perhaps Tracey, Gilbert and George need somewhere local to pop into for a serious red?

Sadly, I am not in the market for £96 wine. I am forced to the jowl, as it were, rather than the cheek. But while the Echezeaux is up there on the top shelf, down on the floor was a little basket of bargains, like street urchins beside the bankers.

On a Friday lunchtime, the basket was irresistible. Surely, if Wine Bargains knows about its wine – and sadly it knows enough not to flog first rate Burgundy at Echo Falls prices – then surely even their cheapest should be worth trying. A selection of Del Gaudio Italian wines at just £2.99 a bottle, or two for £5, and while the producer’s name did not resonate like the great negociants, this was something for the weekend sir, one red, one white and Bob’s your uncle. Or Roberto.

So on Friday evening, it was the Veneto Sauvignon. I was intrigued by the back label description, which said, somewhat surprisingly, that this was a wine “with an intense Aromas (sic) of bell pepper and tomato leaf”. In fact, it possessed very little flavour – of bell peppers, tomato leaves or indeed anything at all. The removal of the screw cap, like the opening of a jar of instant coffee, released completely misleading fragrances; once poured, this was a bland, flavourless and hardly noticeable wine. Son No 1 claimed he could have drunk the whole bottle in 15 minutes, but frankly, against a second-year undergraduate, that is hardly a sensible wager. I couldn’t wait until Sunday for the red.

No, I mean, I really couldn’t wait until Sunday for the red. A Sicilian Syrah, rich and spicy, seemed the ideal accompaniment for Cumberland sausages on Saturday night. And had this been a rich and spicy Syrah, all would have been well. But again, this wine too tasted of virtually nothing. Bland, flavourless and insubstantial, none of which I would have said applied to syrah, a cheap bottle of which will normally cut through your sinuses like Oil of Olbas.

But let’s not quibble, given the warmth of Sicily and the splendour of the Veneto, about whether either of these wines are “indicazione geografica tipica”, as the label says. After all, what would be typical of the geographical region of Shoreditch – the classy Echezeaux at £96, or the shallow Del Gaudio at two for a fiver? Lacking a further £93.50 per bottle to spend, I am loath to pass judgement.

PK

Eva's Vineyard Chenin Blanc/Pinot Grigio 2009

Our Waitrose has just had a facelift - as part of which, its already extensive wine selection has been re-housed in shades of cappuccino and fired earth, with about fifty per cent more drink on display, shimmering and glistening under the halogens, and it looks beautiful, profuse and superabundant and daunting. When I look at it I feel obscurely doomed, as if I have lost life's race already but am being shown the trophies that the luckier and more talented competitors are about to get their hands on.

But I am brave and resolute and have little or no shame. My life is simple because I have no money. Price is my god, and the cheapest Waitrose wine I could find last week cost £3.99 a bottle, so the decision more or less made itself. All right, not the absolute cheapest, because that was a sinister-looking medium-sweet Lambrusco, but the cheapest which satisfied the necessary criteria, including a) screw top b) dryness c) from a country I associate, however tangentially, with wine production d) cheapness, i.e. demonstrably under £5 a bottle.

As it turned out, there were one or two gate-crashers at the party coming in at £3.99, including some plainly fight-inducing reds, but Eva's Vineyard, a white, got the gig mainly on account of its swanky label, handsome gold screw top, and classy vintage (2009).

And back-label copy, always a guarantee of quality. This 'Delicious example of an indigenous Hungarian blend,' contained 'soft floral aromas and delicate fruit flavours of fresh peaches and summer fruits,' which made it sound like a fascinating synthetic pudding, and in some ways it was. Once I'd chilled it down to just above freezing and had got over the chemical fog rising out of the wine glass, I was able to drink it without undue pain and nod to myself, 'Yes, this really does have floral aromas, topped off with delicate quality bath soap overtones and air freshner peaches.' And from a vineyard 'Perched high on the hills overlooking the River Danube', a phrase full of dreaming melancholy which worked on my imagination for minutes on end, until the first notes of a headache sounded and I started to drink a bit slower.

Drawbacks? None that I can remember, but then, I can't remember much other than that it was a wholly transparent straw-coloured wine beverage whose colour did not change as a result of being exposed to the air, which induced a quite pleasing floral throb in my temples, and neither (unlike some whites) stripped the enamel from my teeth nor caused me to pucker up so violently I had to eat my dinner through a tube. A winner, in other words.

(Note: the accompanying illustration shows the bottle minus contents, as I forgot to take a picture before drinking. It is not a completely transparent, or even invisible, wine)

CJ