For this second blog on the region of the Alto Piemonte (Lessona, Bramaterra, Gattinara, Boca) I assessed 25 wines covering mostly vintages 2009 – 2004 from 12 producers: Cantine del Castello Conti (Boca), Antonio Vallana (Boca), Antoniolo (Gattinara), Antoniotti (Bramaterra), Sperino (Lessona),  Le Piane (Boca), Patriarca Franco (Gattinara), Travaglini (Gattinara), Tenuta Sella (Lessona), Nervi (Gattinara), Iaretti Paride (Gattinara), Franchino Mauro (Gattinara). And who better to help me do this than a dozen Langhe producers, a couple of whose wines were planted surreptitiously in the midst to give context (edge)!

I had been much looking forward to this tasting, having been to the region some months before (see my blog: ‘Bramaterra, Gattinara and Boca – the Côte Rotie of Piedmont?!’) There I had met a new generation coming through, mostly speaking a different language to that of their parents (Conti, Barbaglio, Antoniotti, Vallana); there were stirrings of new (foreign) investment (Le Piane, Nervi, Montalbano); I had heard how the regulations were changing rapidly to reflect a rising demand for Nebbiolo (Boca, Bramaterra); and how the (US) market was now taking a keen interest, though this time perhaps less in bulk, more in bottle. I fancied that in the face of global warming this formerly cool spot for Nebbiolo might just come into its own, and their slightly lower alcohols and extra freshness perhaps giving them an advantage over their Langhe cousins.

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I spent a fascinating week in Hong Kong leading up to Chinese New Year. The Year of the Dragon is now in full swing and so, it would appear, is a new found appreciation for Burgundy.

Among the high spots were the ‘Long Lunch’, a sort of mini Paulée held at the Hong Kong Cricket Club, who supplied a match to watch to boot. However we spent more time concentrating on the wines than on the cricket, generous guests bringing bottles from Lafon, Blain-Gagnard, Vougeraie, Roumier, Grivot, de Montille, Rossignol-Trapet, Perrot-Minot, Cathiard, Rémy, Fourrier, Dugat-Py and more.

The key will be to encourage appreciation right across the range and this should be possible. Wines such as Sylvain Loichet’s Ladoix Bois de Gréchon have found favour already, and good quality Bourgogne Rouge is being snapped up. As we expected, the learning curve develops frighteningly quickly.

We did many more wine events this year with Cantonese food which is a stimulating development. I like the idea of having lots of bottles open on the table so you can grab a sip of whichever one might please you with whichever nibble of dim sum or peking duck catches your fancy. Dishes which I really enjoyed this week included braised pomelo skins and some baby roast pigeon. Apparently I was just too late for seasonal snake soup.

Just back from my annual visit to the Loire where I assessed the vintage, caught up with Berrys’ suppliers, visited some new names to get a clearer perspective & dwelt on some of the issues influencing Loire wines, particularly those of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé.

The 2011 Loire vintage was shaped, as elsewhere in Europe, by the unusually warm and dry spring that signalled an early harvest. This was compounded in the Loire by the lack of a preceding winter; Sancerrois David Sautereau remarked that there were no frost days during this period, compared with twenty-five the previous year. Consequently Sancerre’s ‘ban de vendange’ (official start date) came on 1^st Sept, after a cool and damp July/August that threatened to upset the party with outbreaks of rot. The Caslots in Bourgueil commenced on the 15^th Sept, versus 1^st Oct in 2010. For Nöel Pinguet at Gaston Huet, harvesting on the 27^th Sept. was an unprecedented early start but proved fortuitous in his (US owners) quest for drier Vouvray – something that’s he’s finding harder to come by these days. A fine, warm September facilitated fermentations to dryness, especially for those departing from the norm in using wild yeast (i.e. already present in the winery) as opposed to cultured. Acidities are generally on the low side making the pretty wines delicious in the early to medium term, without the grip or zip of the 2010s, but still fresh thanks to the cool summer. Yields are normal, certainly above the small, sun-tanned crop of the 2009 vintage.

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In an ideal world, every wine lover would have the chance to travel the globe visiting each and every wine region. Yet the sad truth is that with work and home commitments (and no lottery win!) this isn’t usually possible. I’ve been spending most of my holidays in wine regions for years and still have a huge list to tick off. So that’s why we’re immensely privileged here at Berrys to welcome a stellar line-up of wine producers every year to our programme of tastings and dinners. This allows us and our customers to learn from these wonderfully passionate winemakers first-hand without making the trip – and let me tell you, there is nothing like meeting the person who has nurtured the grapes and crafted the wine to help you appreciate it more fully.

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A week in November spent tasting the first samples of the 2010 vintage proved to be not only highly enjoyable but also, in the context of all the doom and gloom pervading every facet of life at present, an uplifting experience. Listening to weather reports in the days before the start of the harvest there was no evident reason to believe that a great vintage was in prospect, as the conditions throughout the crucial month of August had not been particularly hot. In September, however, the temperatures had shot back up, and a welcome burst of rain between the 20th-25th freshened up the vines pre-harvest and put paid to fears that they would shut down because of drought.

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In the run up to Christmas, our cellars beneath our No. 3 St James’s Street shop are always buzzing with tutored tastings, fine wine dinners and wine schools. What I love about teaching at Berrys is that our customers are always so keen to learn, and I suppose it’s easy to be enthusiastic when you’re learning about wine!

No matter how much theory you read about a certain wine region or grape variety, the best way to learn about wine is to taste it. This might seem like an obvious thing to say, but knowing that Chablis lies on Kimmeridgian clay won’t necessarily help you choose a wine to accompany your grilled salmon, whereas remembering the crisp minerality on the last Chablis you tasted will.

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Personally, I think Beaujolais is brilliant. Yet it presents us with a paradox. Having achieved phenomenal worldwide brand recognition in the 70s and 80s with their light, fruity ‘Nouveau’ style, many Beaujolais producers are now trying to disassociate themselves from this style and hence from the very source of their success. Why? Well, human nature being what it is, as soon as the popularity of Nouveau became evident, certain producers jumped on the bandwagon with such gusto that they began to produce huge quantities to meet demand, and as is often the case, quality suffered severely. This is not to say that all Nouveau produced is of poor quality, or even that those producers whose quality did drop weren’t also producing other excellent styles of Beaujolais – but in the branding of any product, including wine, perception can be more important than reality. And most people’s perception of Nouveau (and by association, of Beaujolais in general) is still that of a thin, acidic, banana-and-bubblegum-scented wine which is barely more than alcoholic Ribena. The region’s image suffered so badly that by May 2003 Jancis Robinson MW had described Beaujolais as in ‘self-avowed crisis’ due to slowing demand, with ten million litres of surplus wine sent for distillation in that year alone.

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Last week I led a group of Berrys’ suppliers from across Italy to Tuscany to exchange views and experiences with five Chianti Classico counterparts, including Bibbiano, Badia a Coltibuono, and Castello di Ama. A fascinating experience viewed through the eyes of Italians, and at the same time reminding me of just why ‘Chianti-shire’ remains such a pull for the Inglese!

The phrase about Englishmen and their castles hung in the air as we wound up lengthy drives towards imposing castelli, owned often by Marquises and Counts, their hunting dogs and helps scurrying between vast, draughty halls. Such a setting, I could see, would strike a chord with homesick Brits, gazing up at these fortresses, rich in heraldry, noble pride and cobwebs; their largely not-for-profit viticultural activities propped up by EU subsidies, preserving an ancient feudal landscape… for now.

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I have just emerged from under the cosh of preparing January’s Grand Burgundy Offer unveiling the 2010 vintage. This time of year is always very high pressure – firstly we need to taste the whole range of wines – around 500 of them – and prepare tasting notes; then there is the frantic whipping in of prices and allocations form producers who promise to let us know the news by the end of November but rarely do. I should look up the French word for Deadlines.

Too late now, the offer has gone to the printers and will land on doorsteps throughout the land in time for the new campaign to kick off on Wednesday 4th January. Then the fur will fly because the wines are exceptional in 2010 but there is very little volume compared to last year. Delicious reds in a classic style, with excellent balance between fruit, acidity and tannins. The whites are also mostly very impressive, generous wines with good acidity, while Chablis is superb.

Jasper Morris MW

Wine dinners are more common than Dim Sum Restaurants in Hong Kong at present. To be honest one can get a little blasé about the frequency you get to drink great wine. However once in a while you experience a night that just stops you in your tracks and takes you that little bit closer to your maker! Well last week, unexpectedly, I managed to find myself sat at dinner – awaiting some of the finest food in Hong Kong (we were at 2 Michelin Starred Amber)… oh and also a vertical of the iconic First Growth going back to 66!

This grand Event did have a rocky evolution. Poor Big Si The Wine Guy was down to host but had to pass the baton onto me (tough life), and then 24 hours before Frederic Engerer (the genius behind Latour’s incredible run in the modern era) had to urgently fly back to Bordeaux as well. I had a feeling the event was cursed and all the bottles would end up corked! Fortunately we had the perfect replacements in Jean Garandeau (Ch. Latour’s Sales and Marketing Director) and Jeremy Quievre (Latour’s Asia Representative) – who were both at Amber hours before decanting and fine tuning the evening with more detail and tactical acumen than Sir Alex.

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Our annual tasting trip to Burgundy is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the year for me, and it is also one of the most challenging trips – we generally average just under 100 wines a day and these are cask samples, not the finished product.  As such they demand a great deal of attention, and can occasionally be a little tough on the teeth, mouth and gut.

Thankfully the 2010s were for the most part a joy to taste, the reds particularly so, and our award-winning selection of growers have all done very well in what was a very difficult season.  To quote our host at Domaine Sauzet: “2010 was a difficult but beautiful vintage”.

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A week spent tasting the 2010 vintage proved to be a joy, despite an inauspicious beginning on Monday morning under leaden skies with the lunar calendar telling us it was a Root Day, not deemed propitious for tasting.

After the opulence of the easy-to-read 2009s the growing season in 2010 was more challenging, with less heat in the crucial months of high summer but with the benign influence of dry, warm September days balanced by cool nights. The harvest was later than usual and the combination of factors referred to above led to the grapes achieving perfect ripeness, good concentration and, crucially, maintaining an excellent level of acidity and thus freshness.  The wines are, in consequence, beautifully balanced.

The reds have abundant tannins but as they are ripe they do not intrude aggressively onto the palate, and the flavours are layered and the textures supple. The whites are blessed with excellent ripeness, precise, floral aromas and a beguiling freshness.  Both colours display wonderful length.

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The BBR HK Team was fortunate enough to attend the Robert Parker tasting at Wine Futures last Tuesday (amazingly most of our rivals did not bother!). As well as being able to taste alongside the great man, this reaffirmed just how spectacular the 2009 vintage is. All of his “Magic 20” showed superbly in one way or another – and cemented the greatness of this vintage. We were fortunate enough to have our Fine Wine Director, Simon Staples, present and he has written an intro and his brief notes on the “Magic 20”. Please note that due to the special nature of this Event, demand picked up dramatically for these wines, so please be sharp, in order to secure the stock you want.

You may very well receive numerous emails like this over the next few days, for that I apologize, but I was very fortunate to have been invited and it was amazing and I need to tell someone about it!
It was the first time I had ever seen Robert Parker in action and I have to say I was bowled over. He was professional, passionate, authoritative but above all humble. I was somewhat star-struck, truth be told, as was the rest of the captivated audience.

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There is something beguiling about Spain, about the way in which this oldest of cultures is able to embrace the new and give it a pleasing twist of tradition. The beauty in that most modern of constructions, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, resides in its affinity to its surroundings; the way in which the shapes and colours are effortlessly outstanding, in every sense of the word, and yet at the same time, in certain lights and at certain times of day, become assimilated with the natural, albeit urban environment. History repays the compliment; it is hard to imagine anything more horrifically modern than some of the late charcoals of Goya, or anything which predates surrealistic elasticity of form as much as the portraits of El Greco… And on a rather more prosaic but equally telling note, the same applies to wine.

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It was high time that Alain Cailbourdin made his debut at Berrys, having supplied wines to us since I first bought his 2002 vintage of Les Cornets. Here was an inaugural tasting that treated those present to a vertical of five vintages back to 2003.

But you have to go back the early 1980s for Alain’s first vintage, having bought the now 18ha domaine (120k bottles/annum) based in Malteverne. Unlike most of his neighbours Alain is a first generation vigneron; something I’ve always felt brought a fresh perspective to this most traditional of appellations; one that still forbids the grape’s name to be written on the label (Sauvignon Blanc…sshh!).

On the eve of the rugby World Cup final between France and New Zealand, Alain would need some deft moves to persuade the assembled throng that one of France’s most revered yet least known appellations still had the tutty-fruity Kiwi version pinned back in their own twenty-two…. And given the final result, maybe the tables are beginning to turn back in France’s (and Pouilly-Fumé’s) favour?!

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Did I really have to ask Filippo Pulisci, Antinori’s Export Director, to cut short his monologue on Sassicaia and return the focus of the evening in Berrys’ Pickering Cellar back to that of Guado al Tasso and Tignanello? I know he was only making the causal link between Giacomo Tachis, the once winemaker of both Antinori and Sassicaia; pointing out that Antinori once distributed Sassicaia, and recounting how the Gerardesca family’s Bolgheri estate was split between the Incisa della Rocchetta (Sassicaia) and Antinori families (Guado al Tasso and Ornellaia)…but still there was no need to go on Filippo!

Filippo spoke in faultless English, sunned with a well-worn Tuscan accent. I admired his honesty in saying that Guado al Tasso is a wine still very much in evolution having been born only in 1990 (once they stopped distributing Sassicaia?). The early years he said owed too much to the (American) market in making overly fat, gloopy wines that owed more to generous doses of American oak and syrah. In fact the 2001 he kindly brought along reflected those early days, being soft, mature and drinkable if hardly in the same league as their neighbouring cousin.

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A small gathering of some of the UK’s most renowned wine writers assembled in our Pickering Cellar to taste a vertical of 11 vintages of Ch. Haut-Bailly recently (4th October), where the general manager of the chateaux in Pessac-Léognan, Veronique Sanders, gently guided us through 11 vintages from 2000 to 2010.
You could hear a pin drop whilst we all tasted the first row of four vintages – 2000 to 2003 – but lively debate soon ensued between Steven Spurrier, Neal Martin, Anthony Rose, Jancis Robinson, Oz Clarke, Jamie Goode and Victoria Moore. I managed to get in on the tasting and the press were also joined by Berrys’ Sales and Marketing Director, Simon Staples (aka BigSitheWineGuy), and our Bordeaux Buyer, Max Lalondrelle.
Of the mythical 2000 vintage, initial comments were a little disappointing as it was felt the wine was fairly closed at the moment. Neal Martin, UK wine writer for Robert Parker and contributor to Wine-Journal on erobertparker.com, said: “This wine is showing very well but it’s not as intense as it was four or five years ago. As a vintage it has closed down a bit.”
Steven Spurrier, author and of Decanter fame, added: “I was expecting a little more robustness in this wine and then the 2001 came along and to me this is a superior wine.”
The 2001 vintage has been described as ‘Elegance’ by the chateaux and I personally felt it seem quite brooding with lots of promise, although I wasn’t confident to air my views in a room full of so many renowned experts. Simon Staples described it as “fresh” but with the “Haut-Bailly finesse”.

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Barbaresco has often struggled with its own identity. Half the size of the neighbouring Barolo zone just ten minutes down the road, references about it being Barolo’s ‘sister’, the ‘queen’ to Barolo’s ‘king’, has only served to heighten its complex of inferiority. As a result many of its producers over the past twenty years have sought extra concentration to give their wines a touch of the ‘tar’; to convince the journalists principally that they’re as BIG as the Barolo boys, sporting BIG alcohols, worthy of BIG points, and so BIG prices!

Yet so many, hunkered down in their bunkers, are totally missing the point about what is so precious about Barbaresco: its pure accessibility. Stylistically the wines of Barbaresco should offer a deliciously fine-boned counterpoint to the heavier Baroli; just as those of the Côtes de Beaune complement the Côtes de Nuits in Burgundy. The refreshing  influence of the river Tanaro running along its boundary; the way its slopes are open to the cooling Alpine air currents from the west; the way in which its lighter sandy tufo soils bring on a sweet ripeness all combine to produce an immensely elegant, good value wine with immediate charm but also longevity. Just look at the way Barbaresco outclassed Barolo in the hot 2007 vintage!

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….and 312 years later we continue the tradition of selling fine Italian delicacies with our annual tasting at One Great George Street introducing 32 producers and their fabulous wines to 250 appreciative customers.

And afterwards most of them made it to No.3…

Front row: Elisa Semino (La Colombera), Giovanna Rizzolio (Cascina delle Rose), Giuseppe Mascarello, Gianmario Cerutti, Vittore Alessandria, Teobaldo Rivella (in front), Sara Carbone. Middle row: Aldo Cifola (La Monacesca), Cristo Pollington (BB&R), Maria Teresa Mascarello (Mascarello Bartolo), Chiara Boschis (E Pira), Albert Graci, Anita (amica di Gianmario Cerutti), Pier Bovone (Cornarea). Back row: Davide Rosso, Manuel Marinacci, Manuel Marchetti (in front, Marcarini), Italo Sobrino (Cascina delle Rose), Mario Fontana, Carlo Lisini, Roberto Stucchi Prinetti (Badia a Coltibuono)

Next week I’ll be reporting on how six of Berrys’ team got on in Tuscany and a look at the first 2011 Nebbiolo fruit to come in.

Having worked in the wine trade for over 10 years now, what amazes me is the forever growing choice of wines on offer. Not only are the goal posts forever changing with a new wine produced each year, but it’s also easy to forget about the wine’s ability to change from one month to the next (let alone from year to year) in the bottle. 

Only a few times in my wine life have I come across what I can only describe as an epiphany – A fleeting moment when the wine I opened was at its apogee; the wine indeed becoming far greater than the sum of its parts. 

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