The joy of mediocre wine – San Silvestre Piemonte Barbera 2010

The old saying has it that life is too short to drink bad wine. But no-one says anything about the so-so stuff.

Indeed, it’s rare to even read about so-so wine. No-one bothers to write about mediocrity. Oh, CJ may write about the truly awful; and I may, occasionally, have an opportunity to write about something really good. But what about the stuff in the middle?

Because surely that’s what most of us drink, most of the time. Wine that’s…okay. Wine they had in the shop around the corner when we stopped in on the way home from work. One of those days, a basic supper ahead, and a bottle of wine seems like a good idea, to enliven the meal and soften the edges of the evening…

(Or is that all just me…?)

We actually consume a lot of mediocrity in our lives. How many of us, for example, always buy really good, artisan-made bread? It’s not that much more expensive than the stuff in the supermarket, but it’s so much nicer; you just have to spend a little more, and make a bit of an effort to get it, and store it in a proper bin, and consume it at its best… so mostly we just get the good stuff when guests are coming, or for special occasions… sorry, are we still talking bread here, or wine?

And I do buy mediocre wine as I would buy a loaf of convenient, mediocre bread. Which is where I run into trouble; thanks to my possession of a modest cellar – or, as my good wife describes it, “a load of wine in the basement”.

Perhaps understandably, it confuses Mrs K’s notion of rational housekeeping that I return to the house bearing random and potentially rubbish bottles when I have “a load of wine in the basement”.

But the stuff down there is not mediocre. (If it is, I shall be having words with Mr Berry, and his Brothers to boot.) It would be absurd to start stashing cases of mediocre wine. Why would I do that? The cellar is for hopefully good, interesting wine, which is trying my patience as it waits to reach its peak. It follows the simple rule I established for those wanting to know how to start a wine collection: 1) Buy wine 2) Don’t drink it!

No, mediocre wine is for imminent consumption, and is bought casually, hidden beneath the toilet rolls in the wire basket, emerging guiltily at the till along with the chocolate ice-cream and the Pringles.

Perhaps what’s awkward about so-so wine is that some of the more serious aficionados will ask why one bothers to drink it at all. Is it simply in order to get drunk?

Well, no. Any drinkable wine will enhance a meal for me. It may not be a transcendent experience, but then, neither are my sausages.

And mediocre wine offers its own, unique pleasure; the gratification of bringing a single, random bottle back home and finding that you called it well. It’s not so bad you can’t drink it. (But neither is it so good that you feel annoyed there is no gathering to share it.) 

Of course, if it turns out to be an unexpected bargain, that’s another matter. To find a drinkable wine for under £10 is a treat, and makes the consumption an event in itself, infused with that wonderful flavour enhancer, smugness. 

But you run the risk of frustration, because you only bought one bottle and for whatever reason, you find you can’t get any more. The whole episode is then soured with frustration, because you’ve found a bargain but you’ve opened your only bottle (see my Lanciola chianti). So bizarrely, a mediocre wine can actually be more satisfying than a bargain.

Which is how I come to be writing about this San Silvestre Piemonte Barbera 2010. It came from the wine merchants on the High Road, who shall remain nameless (because the last time I named them Sediment was subjected to a barrage of ‘anonymous’ astroturf  comments). I wanted something Italian, to go with some sausage pasta, and I had drunk my remaining solitary bottle of bargain chianti. And there was this bottle, with its reasonable price, acceptable provenance, and tolerable label. Mediocrity personified.

And it’s…okay. It has a light, yeasty bouquet, and on the palate a slightly fruity, slightly spicy flavour. It slips easily down and away, leaving just a hint of pepperiness in the throat. It’s okay on its own, and okay with food. At £7.50, it was neither an astonishing disappointment nor a cracking bargain. All round, it was…okay.

So look, don’t rush out and buy it – but if you’re stuck, don’t turn your nose up at it, either. 

I shall not, of course, rest easy. Disraeli said, “It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.” But in the meantime, hey-ho, and serve the sausages.

PK

Do we want 'unusual' wines? - Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Marzemino

Do we want our wine to be ‘unusual’? I’m only asking, because that is the adjective Sainsbury's have used to describe their Taste the Difference Marzemino. “This unusual wine…”, begins their description on both the back label and the shelf-talker. And frankly, I don’t think ‘unusual’ is a characteristic one looks for in a wine.

Offered something ‘unusual’, the common human reaction is somewhere between the wary, the cautious and the downright suspicious. Would you, for example, tell guests that the meat you are serving to them is ‘unusual’? People would be expecting fillet of stoat. 

“Yes, we’re having ocelot this evening. They say it’s ‘unusual’.” I bet it bloody is…

Surely there’s an inherent criticism if someone looks into your dining room and says, “That’s an unusual colour…”. What if someone said to a mother, ‘What an unusual baby…’?

Or imagine, somewhat in the vein of a New Yorker cartoon caption, pausing at the bedroom door to say to your partner, “Tonight, I thought we might try something…unusual”.

With drinks perhaps above all else, the notion of the usual is something positive. “Your usual?” asks the barman, and a whole relationship is established; he knows you and your tastes. He doesn’t think you’re a boring old fart for having the same thing over and over again. He thinks you’re a person of discernment, who has sampled widely and arrived at an ideal. And he compliments your initial choice by asking, “Same again?”

Yes, the same again, please. We spend years (not to mention pounds) hunting around for wines we really like. And when we find one, we immediately buy a case, so we can repeat the experience twelve more times.

We mourn the disappearance from the shelves of a wine we like; we regret the inevitable passing of a good vintage; the final bottle from the case. We grieve for a wine we know whose cost has risen to the unaffordable. We want our usual.

Part of this whole business of understanding wine is about predictability. You choose a wine for a dish, a meal or a guest based upon anticipating how that wine will taste. When you open a Chablis, you expect it to taste a certain way. An unusual Chablis is one which doesn’t taste like a Chablis. Perhaps it tastes like a Sauternes, which would be very unusual for a Chablis, not to say unwelcome.

Oh, those of us who like to explore wine, and broaden our drinking experience, do like to try something different – but we wouldn’t serve something described as ‘unusual’ unless we’d tried it ourselves and could vouch for it. “What’s the worst that can happen?” is a phrase suited to a mass-produced soft drink, but inappropriate to the serving of potentially appalling wine, where consequences can range from embarrassment and social exclusion to nausea, choking, vomiting, headache and other symptoms drawn from the back of pharmaceutical packaging.

Fortunately there are some, like Sediment, whose sheer curiosity outweighs the imagined threat of medical emergency. Of course one must try such wines alone, but avoiding any risk to one’s carefully nurtured social status (let alone marriage) is just a further benefit of drinking ‘unusual’ wines by yourself, a benefit unaccountably excluded from CJ’s post on solo drinking.

(When you consider the wine he usually consumes, solo drinking is virtually a necessity.)

Marzemino is certainly uncommon, even rare, both terms which might actually intrigue potential purchasers. A regional varietal of North-Eastern Italy, often used for blending, it’s drunk by Don Giovanni on the way to Hell in his eponymous opera (“Versa il vino, eccellente marzemino!”). And given the number of times I’ve been told to go to that particular destination…

And this Marzemino has much of the Gamay about it, with cherry, plum and delicate red fruit flavours. It’s like a very light Beaujolais, innocuously drinkable and hard to believe it’s 12% alcohol. The flavour drifts past, just a fleeting nuance of berries and floral notes. It probably works best with food, because it surely offers insufficient entertainment on its own. But to answer that classic police question to witnesses, “Did you notice anything particularly unusual?” the answer would have to be no, officer, I did not.

However, in store I found it reduced from £5.99 to £4.49, perhaps an indication that it has not found favour with a mass audience. And at the time of writing, Sainsbury are actually offering it online at £12 for three. £4 a bottle is absurdly cheap for any wine which you can actually keep down.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say it’s unusual…

PK

Familae Piccini Chianti Riserva 2007

We have two categories of wine in our household. There is The Cellar, which My Affianced believes is protected by trip wires and light beams like something out of Mission Impossible. The Cellar is wine for guests, for special occasions, and for that dim and distant day when some of it might actually come to maturity. (Like sons, that day never seems to be when the calendar predicts, but moves to its own, unfathomable timetable.)

And then there is kitchen wine, so-called because that’s where it’s kept, to be drunk everyday, cooked with, or downed by sons and friends without repercussions. It’s a key tenet of my choice of kitchen wines that (a) they are inexpensive, and so can be used in a carefree fashion, and (b) that everyone will like them. Hence one of the staples of the kitchen wine rack is Chianti.

Chianti has a bit of tradition behind it. The very word classico on a label suggests something more serious than one of those New World attempts at ironic humour, or a gruesome pun on a region of France. (Goats Do Roam, anyone? Languid Duck? Or should that be Long Dog? ) Chianti is also a lighter red, which suits My Affianced more than the heavyweight stuff. (Which, of course, is in The Cellar…)

So when I spot what appears to be a bargain in the Chianti region (as it were), the chance of a kitchen wine with cellar interest is just too good to miss.

When it comes to wine, a little knowledge can be a dangerous (and occasionally expensive) thing. Bear that in mind, CJ. Knowing that riserva means a chianti has been aged for a statutory number of years, and knowing that modern chiantis succeed by blending just a touch of another grape with the traditional sangiovese, I was immediately lured to the Familae Piccini Chianti Riserva, which ticked all those boxes. Plus, it looked like a bargain.

Piccini’s regular, bog-standard Orange Label chianti was in Sainsbury’s at £6.59; but the better Superiore, normally £7.99, was reduced to £5.32; and the top of the range Riserva, normally £10.99, was reduced a staggering 50% to just £5.49. For the top of the range! An eleven quid wine for half price! And – here was the clincher – it had a security tag!!

Now call me miserly, call me mad, but I have never bought a wine from Sainsbury’s bearing a security tag. Frankly, if I was spending enough on a bottle to merit a security tag, it wouldn’t come from Sainsbury’s. So this was confirmation that I had spotted a real bargain. Along with the luxury condoms and the Mach 3 razorblades, this was clearly a shoplifter’s favourite.

And was it my imagination, or did the woman on the check-out give the label an appraising look as she removed the tag. And give me an admiring glance, too? Clearly a man, as Damon Albarn would say, who knows his claret from his Beaujolais.

Well. Once I got home, I did some research, as we who have a little knowledge of wine are wont to do. Am I in good company amongst the reviewers?

And here, in November 2008, is Jane McQuitty in The Times recommending the Piccini Riserva 2005, a “a bright, beefy, leather, truffle and spice-laden chianti” – reduced to £4.99.

In December 09, here’s the York student website recommending the 2006 Familae Piccini Chianti Reserva: "Rich and fruity. Good with lamb. A bottle for that Sunday roast with the housemates, perhaps?" – £5.49 was £10.99, Sainsbury’s.

And in April 2010, here’s Tim Curran in the Mirror : "Sainsbury's has superior Italian red Familae Piccini Chianti Riserva DOCG 2007 with its cherry flavours that go with red meat and game (half-price at £5.49 until Tuesday)."

So, what we are actually talking about here is a five quid wine. Not a security-protected, £10.99 bottle, unless you are unfortunate or stupid enough to buy it during the rare periods when it is not reduced. A wine which every year sells for £5, or thereabouts. A little knowledge which, frankly, changed my whole perspective.

As a five quid kitchen wine, this is perfectly good; fresh, light, inoffensive, moderately fruity and with a slight spiciness on the palate to give it some grip.

But as an eleven quid cellar wine, it is shallow, lacking in depth or complexity, with no richness or depth. It disappears in the mouth, with too little aftertaste.

Take your choice as to which is an appropriate response. The wine’s the same, it’s the expectations which are different – driven by price, and a little knowledge. Oh, and a security tag.

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