Judging by appearances – Lafite Rothschild & Los Vascos Grande Reserve

“Only a fool,” said Oscar Wilde, “would not judge by appearances.” Am I right to apply this edict to my wine?

And why not? Who are these fools who say “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Probably those who then go and buy Harry Potter books with an adult jacket, so that no-one will judge them.

Why do you think that all the books by, say, Dan Brown have essentially the same cover design? The correct answer is not, appropriate as it might be, to illustrate a paucity of creative talent; but to suggest that a customer will be getting more of the same. Have one bestseller, and an author’s entire back catalogue will often be redesigned to echo the cover which everyone knows – just look at David Nicholls’ books now. 

I have always judged by appearances. I remember being introduced to an office newcomer once; my expression must have given me away, because my then boss immediately added, “I’m sure he’ll be wearing a tie when he starts with us.”

“I’m more concerned,” I replied, “About whether he’ll be wearing socks.”

So when people tell me that wine labels don’t matter, it’s what’s inside that the bottle that counts… well.

Can we name any other commercial product where people are advised to ignore its appearance? There are entire agencies out there toiling to create product packaging, wielding terms like “personality”, “brand promise”, “visual platform”and “hierarchy of product communication”, in order to achieve “shelf impact” – and someone’s telling me to ignore it?

No, I am more than happy to admit that the reason I was first drawn to the wine of Los Vascos was its appearance. You only need to look at its label to get a suggestion of its family connection:

And there on the capsule is the Rothschild logo, the five arrows symbolising the five sons of original patriarch Mayer Rothschild, and the magical word, Lafite.

Los Vascos is a Chilean winery, which is indeed run by Lafite Rothschild. Back in the early Nineties, their cabernet sauvignon was something of a rarity in the UK; it cost about £12 a bottle, and the only place you could be sure of buying it was the shop at the Rothschild-owned Waddesdon Manor. I used to buy it as a competent wine which was also a rarity and a talking point. Now they’re producing 300,000 cases a year of their basic cabernet sauvignon, and you can get it in Majestic for £7.99

But this week I picked up a bottle of their Grande Reserve – notice the French title on a Chilean wine – which is a blend of cabernet sauvignon with malbec, syrah and carmenere. I see online that you can get cases for a little over a tenner a bottle, but I was foolish enough to pick it up in my local wine merchant with an ampersand, so it cost me £12.95.

A cynic might suggest that the Rothschilds are simply cashing in on the appeal of Lafite by aping its iconography. But, look at it the other way – would they damage the value of their leading wines by visual association with something that was rubbish?

Their website recommends decanting the wine, which I do. I am not shallow enough to leave the capsule beside the decanter (hem, hem).

And do you know what? It’s gorgeous. It has a musky, tobacco bouquet, and it glides across the palate in that way good cabernet sauvignon does – but then there’s a resonance from the other grapes in the blend, a richness, and a long, dry aftertaste. This is a complex, graceful wine, a beautifully balanced cruiserweight, steelier than a Bordeaux blend but just as clever.

No, of course it’s not Lafite, but it’s good and it’s good value. Not even CJ would expect to get one of the finest wines available to humanity for £12.95.

(Well, actually, he probably would, but we’ll let that pass…)

Whether a label design shrieks of energy or murmurs of elegance really should be an indication of its style – and the appearance of Los Vascos Grande Reserve, with all its suggestion of finesse and class, is entirely appropriate. And you can bring two key elements to your dining table in a single bottle; you not only get a good bottle of wine, but the Lafite Rothschild background provides you with a good conversation as well.

For man looketh on the outward appearance (I Samuel 16.7), and in this case he is right to do so.

PK

Oddbins Obikwa Rosé/Pinotage

The pinkness of pink: sunset over Hounslow; rhubarb; lips and gums; a beetroot sandwich; tail lights in the rain; dentist's mouthwash; cooked prawns; acid in universal indicator; bubblegum; Lady Penelope's car; scar tissue; candyfloss; a sticking plaster; rare roast beef; a flamingo; porphyry.

There's something inauthentic about pink, something sinister and unnatural. Why the hell did I decide I preferred it to white? Oh, because every time I went near a white wine (see the post for 19 July) my teeth started to hurt and I suffered a mild occipital neuralgia. It seemed, anyway. And having put up with that for a while, I thought, the rosé, that's the one, it's like a white, but without that anarchic, disinfectant threat lingering in every glass: because as we all know, the nearer a wine gets to being a red, the easier it is to keep down.

And it works, in a very real sense, for a while, until some law of diminishing returns sets in, or the patient's physiology starts to change and what was once tolerable turns out to be almost as much of a minefield as the thing it was supposed to replace, and yes, I'm looking at you, Oddbins' very own Obikwa Rosé (£4.99 on special offer at the time) with a cartoon ostrich on the front of the bottle and a label the colour of a bloodshot eyeball, creating an area of hotly vibrant visual interference right at the point where you grip the bottle with so much expectation, that's not what we want at the end of a long day -

And even the Wife noticed, once I'd cranked off the screw cap (accompanied by the faintest of hisses), that the air had changed and there was a shimmering quality to it, like a gas leak. I took a few tearful sips and thought that maybe my Obikwa needed to be colder. It had a physical presence at the table, like a large sweaty, pink, and yet quite cold, man. I wondered if leaving it in the fridge to get it even more frigid would be a smart move, whether that would lessen the mood of intimidation. Or freeze it until it was like the outer coating of a Mivvi - it was colourful enough, to pass muster as a lolly, really freakishly pink. What do I know about rosés anyway? Candyfloss and flamingos?

So I drank a bit, wiped my eyes and blew my nose, and stuck the bottle back in the fridge, where it remained until...

Day Two: out it came again. Slight phosphorescence, no audible hiss when the cap came off, cartoon ostrich still in place, clearly the wine couldn't dissolve glass, not at low temperatures anyway. And in a long moment of distraction, I necked the rest of it without even noticing. And that was it. The threat disposed of. Didn't even get a headache/blurred vision/sense of overwhelming cosmic doom, such as one normally experiences as a result of over-swift imbibition.

What do we learn from this? Was Day One just an abreaction to the colour? Is it the deviant appearance of rosé that presents its own challenge, particularly one as luminescent as this, which sits on the table wearing its own high-visibility workman's jacket? Or does it just need 24 hours to breathe? Or if I wore dark glasses? Or drank with the lights off? Or do I need 24 hours to breathe?

CJ

Errazuriz Carmenère 2009

My starter for ten is a Chilean red, from Majestic. There are some great Chilean wines – go on, get me started on Los Vascos, the wine managed by the Rothschilds – and Errazuriz themselves have produced some decent stuff. This one had a little medal on the label to say it had won something or another – but sadly, it was probably an award in marketing rather than winemaking.

Of course it was the price which drew me in. It started at £7.99, but bear with me. There’s an “improved offer” of £6.24. What does that mean, exactly? How does a reduction in price become an “improved offer”, like they’re bidding for your custom? In fact what they’re doing is justifying the next bit; they want to do that Majestic thing of “buy two and get money off”, in this case a 20% reduction. That, of course, is 20% off the “improved offer” price (are you still with me?), which makes it just £4.99. The price at which they always intended to sell it. So after all the jigs and reels, it’s a £4.99 wine.

Cracking, you think, an eight quid wine for under a fiver. So of course, you buy two, don’t you. Which makes you double the mug.

Because if that was an £8 wine, my arse is a concertina. And while you might think, what with the folds and the occasional windy noise, that’s not such a bad analogy, the relationship between this and an £8 wine is far more remote.

This is a thick, fruity wine, as if someone has pushed blackcurrants through a sieve. It has a single, fruit-based note; I likened it in the courteous review I left on the Majestic website to a band being led by its bass guitar; that bass drowns out everything else and just leaves you resonating. It’s strongly alcoholic, which with that powerful frutiness makes it extremely hard to drink. You could stand a spoon up in this one.

I warned My Affianced beforehand that this was a “chewy” wine, which made her want to try it, because she’d never understood that term. But this is a lady who finds Bordeaux in general a bit too heavy, and would feel a rioja was like lifting a sofa. For her, “chewy” now means a wine she couldn’t drink even with ice cubes in it to dilute it down.

I haven’t opened the second bottle yet. Remember those Pinochet days at Uni, when people would take a Chilean bottle to a party and leave it guiltily on the table where it would sit, untouched? This could, nostalgically, suffer that fate…

PK