While there’s much back-slapping over the quality of the 2009 harvest across Europe, here similar success has only heaped further pressure on the cellars of the Langhe, many fit to bursting after a dazzling run of ‘five-star’ vintages, from 1995 to the present day (bar 2002).

La Stampa, one of the leading newspapers (hereabouts at least), recently highlighted the issues now facing the producers: ‘Shrinking sales, rising production, confusing prices’ is how they led the piece. The global crisis and appreciating euro have certainly dealt the region a blow, as evidenced by a 40% fall in the bulk price of Nebbiolo (2005 vs 2004 vintage). I’m told that where once a top mark in Wine Spectator would have emptied the cantina, the sea of ‘stunning’ scores now spilling from every quill have left the consumer anesthetized…should that be ‘dazed and confused’? Or have they wised up, now seeing a ’95 pointer’ as simply five out of 10. Who knows?

Growers might be forgiven for not forecasting the effects of global warming in delivering abundant fruit year after year. Nor could they foresee that those with their hand at the helm – the politicians – would opt for a vote-winning passage, encouraging the regrafting of unfashionable Dolcetto and Barbera to Nebbiolo, sending annual production soaring to 11 million bottles from only six million a few years back. ‘Ma dai’ you cry! At (wine) school we were taught that Nebbiolo for Barolo or Barbaresco was only planted in most favourable sites; certainly not on those north-facing, snowy slopes beloved by Dolcetto. Now it’s fine to plant wherever you like, even if it is in a valley bottom frost trap where once stood a healthy hazelnut grove. Perhaps all Nebbiolo below a certain altitude should be labelled as ‘Langhe Nebbiolo’ to dissuade such carry-on?

Climate change looks to be changing indeed the way wines are made too as producers shift from fashionably ultra-low yields, surmaturity, rotos, barriques etc giving port-like wines (thought to seduce journals, non?) that defy their ‘table wine’ status – undrinkable as well as increasingly dear to import – to maximum permitted harvests and back to traditional slavonian botte in an effort to keep the alcohols down and the wines trim (slavonian botte are more reductive ageing vessels, you may recall). But then the markets are saturated and there are only so many days in the year in which to market one’s wine, divorcing growers from their vines, hence needing consultants etc… That’s my take anyhow.

In former times of trouble, top estates ‘enjoyed’ the option of clearing their cellars of fruit by passing it on to the local cooperative, who’d blend it away anonymously. Now it seems that particular door has been closed as these same cooperatives boomerang the fruit back, so-to-speak, repackaging it into something enticing for hard-up restaurants and shops who once bought the real McCoy from the cantina…. Even second labels have not solved the problem, perceived as being neither fish nor fowl to the market; ‘ne carne ne pesce’ as they say here.

I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear that my boys are lapping up their school lunches; just as well given the continuing, global warming defying freeze not seen for a decade. Not so long ago Nicholas would take one look at his English platter and cry ‘fowl’, forcing his mother to cobble a sandwich together, only for it to be still there at school’s end. So is this phenomenon – Nicholas’s unprecedented craving for school dinners bit – is down to Italians’ live to eat mantra (not eat to live), the effect minus double-digit degree days are having on his appetite, or more simply that (his) parents pay £4 per meal (the menu today being gnocchi in tomato sauce, roast turkey, and fresh fruit now you ask)? And just to make sure the grub’s up to scratch, the local restaurant’s drafted in periodically to sample the fare. Jamie Oliver would be dead proud.

So there I was waiting at Star Ferry Pier at 7am for the ferry over, the earliest I have been up on a Saturday morning for many-a-year. Geordie and James advised me that we were off to scale the twin peaks of Lantau Island; Sunset Peak and Lantau Peak… this all sounded rather nice and a great way to start the weekend. Given that I am pretty confident in my fitness I was guessing I would find this little jaunt no problem at all.

Well, as we wandered onto dry land and got a cab to our start point, the alarm bells started to ring!!! We cut through the saddle between the hills at the centre of the island, on our way to the Giant Buddha, an 85-foot-high bronze Buddha statue which was to be our starting point. Lantau Peak loomed ahead of us like Muhammed Ali standing over George Foreman, and the closer we got the more my knees began to knock. It was only then that I began to piece together just what I had got myself into. For James and Geordie are veterans of the Maclehose Trail, one of the most extreme land races in the world and something you must SUPER fit for.

Upon arriving at the Buddha our hike began and the chaps mentioned to me what lay in-store…. A steep climb up Lantau peak (934m), a swift decent and then straight up Sunset Peak (869m), before a gentle walk down to Mui Wo for lunch. To put this into perspective Snowdon is 1,085m… I hope you can understand now why there was a tear in my eye as I was told this news!

Well I survived… (not the quickest time I have been reminded several times since). The only reason for this was not my fitness but the fact that my mind was elsewhere… marveling at the absolutely stunning scenery that surrounded me. You really cannot put this into words. One moment you are looking at a mile-long beach, then the next you find yourself mesmerized by the ‘Lord of the Rings’ like beauty at the top Sunset Peak. You are light years away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Island, yet only 25 minutes ferry ride away. It really is quite amazing.

Well as I write this my calves are still wrapped in ice and I’m walking like I’m in 10” stilettos! Incredibly the guys have convinced me to go to “Boot Camp” tomorrow morning at 6.30 am as well! One thing is for sure, I’ll be doing plenty more hiking, though next time a little flatter perhaps.

Back to more serious matters… wine. So, to numb my pain after the hike, I attended a Burgundy dinner with Jasper Morris on the Saturday night. The highlight was 01 Clos Vougeot from Grivot, just starting to show its potential, and the 06 Rossignol-Trapet Chambertin, very young, I know, but crikey what a good young wine it is. All there and you know it will have all the makings of a star… think Wayne Rooney in his Everton days. Cos d’Estournel dinner on Thursday with the genial Jean-Guillaume Prats… life in Hong Kong is treating me pretty well so far…

“We have just dispatched Jasper Morris MW, our Burgundy Buyer, back to his home in the Côtes of Burgundy, having completed our second Burgundy Week in Hong Kong. The week, which consists of master classes, interviews, dinners and tastings included the first tasting in Hong Kong of the 2008 Burgundies en primeur (and perhaps the first Burgundy primeurs tastings in Asia – left) as well as a thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable look at the 1996 vintage of Domaine de la Romanee Conti, at a dinner organised in conjunction with American Express for 15 people last Friday night.

The Burgundy 1996 vintage has been quite closed for some time at this highest level, we were hoping for the wines to give us a glimpse of what’s going on with them, and we were not disappointed. We tasted Echezeaux (very seductive but not a heavy-weight), Grands Echezeaux (fuller than the Echezeaux but less scented), Romanee-St-Vivant (extraordinary nose and evolving beautifully), Richebourg (the bruiser of the bunch and still not ready, but will be fabulous) and La Tache (my choice of the night, and most peoples’ star wine in years to come). Yet, just as we were looking at the wines and assessing them carefully, they reminded us of how wonderfully long-lived the 1996’s are; and closed down again in the glass.

So, we must wait for a time to look at them again and in the meantime, the other memorable note of the week, aside from how pleased with are with the 2008’s progress, is how delicious to drink the Burgundy 2007s are now.

We have all been heartened to see how the interest for Burgundy is growing in Hong Kong, and if Jasper’s ticket sales are anything to go by, this trend will continue and we’ll need to book the 800-seater Convention Centre for 2011.”

As my wedding was nearing, the obligatory Stag Do needed to be arranged. What was decided upon involved all the typically testosterone fuelled traits – such as “shooting each other” with paintballs, DRINKING and eating red meat.  The latter activity came in the form of booking the private dining room at the Hawksmoor. 

After nursing our war wounds, caused by repeated point blank shooting of one another, we got tidied up and made our way to the restaurant in Shoreditch.  When closed the restaurant resides behind some very industrial looking shutters – shutters that belie the quality of restaurant hidden within.  The restaurant itself is smartly presented but simple and non pretentious – the effort is purely focused on the quality of food and service.

We arrived with a few minutes in hand and were treated to some gin and tonics before being seated (they are quite well known by all accounts for their cocktails).  We had managed to reserve the private dining room – less of a separate room more of an annexe off the main seating area – which was great as it gave us a certain privacy but still felt involved us in the hassle and bustle of service.

Among other reasons for booking the restaurant, such as serving some of the supposedly best rare breed meat in London, was the fact that we were able to take our own wine and pay a minimal charge for corkage.  Among the nine of us we took three magnums – Loosen Oberhauser Brucke Riesling Spatlese 2006, Ridge Lytton Springs 2006 and Yarra Yering Dry No. 1 Cabernet 2003.

We were looked after right from the start, were never rushed and the courses came as and when we were rested between courses.  Decent sized goblets and decanters were supplied, although we had already double decanted the wines three hours earlier.

Starters were basic yet very tasty and consisted of smoked salmon, potted Yorkshire beef on toast etc. and these we drank with the Donnhoff – a beautiful, Riesling Spatlese showing fantastic delicacy and elegant freshness but still holding all the honeyed richness one would expect.  The wine was rich, yet finished, with a wonderful freshness and dynamism – a long life ahead of it, but irresistible now!

We then moved in to the main event – the steak!  There are fish options and vegetarian options (I think!) but this is not the place to come to unless you are having the meat as it’s all from rare breed longhorn cattle, aged for at least 35 days.  Dictionary thick, these steaks melt in the mouth and are from all cuts of the beast, cooked to perfection.  They were served au naturale, unsullied by any extraneous sauce, though sauces and sides (triple cooked chips – fantastic!!) could be ordered.  I had the rib eye whose fat melted like butter but, by all accounts, the Sirloin etc. had by others was just as wonderful.

We had the meat with the two reds, both showing wonderfully well.  Firstly, the Ridge Lytton Springs with its intense cassis note and rich palate yet with an old world savouriness / earthiness – very well balanced / defined and poised perfectly to counterpoint the richness of the meat.  The the Yarra Yerring, again very well balanced, yet with a more precocious new world element, riper blackcurrant fruit – a touch more glycerine I felt on the pallet.  We had a bottle of the Argentinean (Michel Rolland) Clos de la Siete in the wings  just in case we ran dry and frankly even though it was an excellent wine, one could see the quality jump and focus prevalent in the other two.

You realise that you have had a good time, when the next thing you know, it is about three hours later and you have not felt rushed in any way whatsoever – the service was excellent, food fantastic and wine great.

Next stop for the night – Sin City (or so I’ve been told by the best man!!)

That this alien Englishman should be sharing his cantina, the very place in which he was born, was just fine with Giovanni. Aided by his wife Ester, Giovanni built the success of the winery, focusing his energy on the vineyards, and raising the fruit quality to a level that deserved to be bottled under the ‘Giovanni Rosso’ label for the first time in the mid ’90s. And right up until the last moment he was busy preparing orders for export, handing out stockings at the Feast of Epiphany 6th January and even arranging a suitable date for digging a vegetable bed at our new house. Giovanni leaves behind his wife Ester, only son Davide and faithful hound ‘Gaia’.

As I sat in Starbucks Coffee on Sunday morning, having eaten nothing but Western food for 24hrs, I wondered exactly what I had got myself into…. I was starting to get anxious… my nerves were jangling, my sanity teetering on the edge! Wondering why I had moved half way across the globe. Well I had no need to despair, my spirits were lifted that afternoon as my brand new colleague in Hong Kong, Mark Arrowsmith had invited me to a BBQ at his house.

 
Before I knew it I was off on the MTR railway into the New Territories to Tai Wai (next to Sha Tin, the famous race track …for those horse racing buffs!) That’s right, no swanky pad in mid-levels, Mark has been resident of Hong Kong since I was in nappies, and has had enough of the cosmopolitan life on the island. He prefers to relax in the country with is lovely wife Helen and far too intelligent daughter Keeler! I think I saw more of the real HK in that 45 min journey than I did in the previous two days! I cannot begin to tell you how great my afternoon was, relaxing with familiar faces on the balcony, in the stunning New Territory Countryside and asking more stupid questions about life in Hong Kong than you can shake a stick at, whilst all the time having a glass of UKC, to remind myself of what I am here to do! A key moment in my life that will not be forgotten, like trying your first First Growth or having your first Burgundy “moment”!

 
Ok, right you ask, what on earth has this got to do with wine? Well let us get back to my point on immersing yourself in a culture and passion. You would have to have been locked in a cupboard for the last three years to not know that Asia (Hong Kong and Chinese residents in particular) is gaining a passion for fine wine and the First Growths of Bordeaux in particular.  There is hunger and thirst for knowledge about fine wine here and I feel it is merchants such as BB&R’s duty to help, educate and develop this interest. I don’t mean to sound patronising or get on a high horse. What I mean is, that at present wine lovers here (on the whole) tend to appreciate the top wines from Bordeaux much more than any others; well what about the subtle nuances of Burgundy or the brash flamboyance of 2007 Southern Rhônes, the ethereal beauty of Nebbiolo  in Piedmont? We are at the tip of the iceberg in Asia, the wine-loving culture is at its infant stage, with so much hunger and potential for consumers to develop the market and enjoy the wondrous variety there is in wine.

 
A healthy, interested wine market in Asia is good for every wine lover. Encouraging the consumer here to experiment and sample wines from all over the world is key to a healthy wine market. The top wines from Bordeaux are legendary, however we cannot continue to harvest non-stop from the same field! How can you appreciate the majestical structure of Latour if you cannot enjoy a bottle of Good Ordinary Claret or a top value Cab. from Stellenbosch?  As someone once said to me, I only appreciate my Ferrari at the weekend because I drive a Ford Mondeo during the week!

 
So as Mark and Helen advised me on Sunday… relax enjoy the ride and get taken in by this incredible city that is Hong Kong. I feel I will be saying the same our customers here. Trust us, experiment and come along for the ride. In the long run it makes you appreciate the Ferrari in the Eurocave and hey you might just find a few Ford Mondeos you like… and they are a lot cheaper!

The team here are obviously committed to enhancing the wine drinking experience in any way possible, so it was with plenty of gusto that six musical volunteers agreed to create their perfect playlists to accompany some of our favourite Wine Club wines.

Following on from research suggesting that music can enhance the taste of a wine, we rounded up Masters of Wine, Marketing Execs and The Chairman himself and asked them to sample a selection of wines and decide the perfect tune to listen to for each.

The results are interesting – who’d have thought that Alun Griffiths MW would choose a bit of Fleetwood Mac to accompany his New World Cabernet?  Or that manly Jonathan White would have a guilty penchant for Girls Aloud with his fruity Italian reds?  The fact that Simon Staples digs a bit of Stevie Wonder didn’t surprise anyone…

We’ve also got our Wine Club members involved, giving them each five download tracks on 7Digital.com to see if they can do any better than our in-house music lovers. But what about you?  Do you have a penchant for Pink Floyd and Pinot?  Maybe a little Vivaldi with your Viognier?  Let us know what you’d drink with your favourite wines – there might even be a prize in it too…

We also managed to catch eRobert Parker’s  Neal Martin on his way out to see what his thoughts were after having tasted the best part of 109 perky barrel samples:
 

See the full list of Berrys’ Burgundy en primeur wines

It’s amazing what you can find out from an electrician called out to fix an oven. It transpires that due to a lack of infrastructure Italian electricity is bought in from across the Alps. This imposes an automatic check on the country’s productivity and potential; hence the Italians’ ability (and necessity) to work the system. Each house has a limited amount of electricity before it trips (up). For example ours, at la Casa Rossa, is 3 kilowatts, so just enough to run a dishwasher or washing machine, but not both simultaneously! And guess what? The electrician also turned out to be the cousin of an accomplished Barolo producer…so, the oven now purring, he switched to viticultural quotas, and how Sicily was currently selling theirs to enable further plantings in Piemonte.

Now I promised myself that I wouldn’t write about it and that you wouldn’t wish to hear more about it …la neve, the snow of course. So I won’t go on about how Piemonte’s snowfall this year doesn’t quite measure up to last year’s, when there were metres of the stuff icing the vineyard slopes from November through to March ’09, paving the way for a very promising 2009 harvest. Let me just say that it augurs well for the coming season; the chill ensuring a crucial period of dormancy while the coming thaw will saturate the seams of calcareous blue marne, a source of sustenance over the months ahead for the three metre deep root systems.

The white stuff cruelly exposed one temperate Englishman, who floundered about with his snow-chains only to emerge some time later onto a now perfectly clear road. My Serralungese neighbours looked on with evident mirth as this right-hand drive, ‘targa gialla’ FIAT crunched its way slowly along the road.  Hadn’t I noticed that no-one does ‘snow-chains’ (quite like the Brits do); here they simply slip on a pair of (quilted) snow tyres and off they go!

Once I’d got mine I was finally able to deliver, not wine, but my children to school in

 Barolo, plunging them in the deep end without a word of Italian. Nicholas, the eldest at 9, seemed to coast through his first morning (although he’s had kittens over what they’ll serve for lunch), while Patrick (6) faltered before giving a masterclass in the card game ‘Uno!’  They had both been introduced to my grocer friend Giuliana in the market, and to her rabbits; Patrick’s done the maths and at €4.50/kg, he’s keen to buy them all and so save the lot from the pot. Here they are (left), Patrick left and Nicholas centre, as they defend their corner. Try saying ‘Non’ to that bunch.

Before I go, two events not to be missed: Berrys’ inaugural Italian tasting at Vintners’ Hall on the 17th February, in the company of 20 producers; giving us a preview (an Anteprima) of the promising 2006 vintage; the second event, a four night tour, led by me, of ‘Barbaresco and Barolo’, of Palaces, Alba market, and culminating in a night at the Opera…again see Berrys’ Website for details and tickets.

Finally, I hear that some ‘viticultori’/winegrowers are grubbing up Dolcetto in favour of Riesling! They should be planting Timorasso instead, as Ferdinando Principiano is doing in Serravalle Langhe.