SPECTATOR WINE CLUB
In the run-up to the Christmas season (when we will be offering rather more expensive wines), it occurs to me that people who do not propose to confine their drinking to Christmas luncheon might wel- come some less expensive but nourishing, full and warming wines for the rest of the season. Those who are poor may even choose a Portuguese wine for the great day itself. This is my third and most thoroughly worked attempt to introduce Portuguese wines to Spectator readers. I honestly believe that they represent exceptional value for money, and probably the best available at the moment. With the collapse of the Australian dollar, I hope to make next year the Year of South Australian Wines. Quite suddenly, South Australia seems to be making really wonderful cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays. Next month I am being flown to Adelaide, and in February on another Australian wine trip. But we must wait for Mr Hawke's incompetence to reflect itself in f.o.b. prices (mysteriously enough, it is already cheaper to ship a container of wine from Sydney than from Bordeaux). For the present, at any rate until Christmas, I am convinced that Portugal offers the best value for rich, full, warm, red wines which are nice to drink.
They divide into those which are unmis- takably Portuguese — i.e. with earthy, burned, incense-hearing or otherwise `southern' undertones — and those which are conventionally French and usually Bor- delais in character. The Arruda 1980(0 belongs unmistakably to the first category, but nobody found anything offensively southern in it and I feel it is a gift at slightly under £2.50 the bottle delivered It is a big, even serious wine for the price, with a Burgundian fruitness which would make it suitable for celebratory occasions among the poor, but the most important thing on which all the panel agreed so far as a wine at this price is concerned, is that there is NOTHING UNPLEASANT to be found in it. Highly recommended by all.
We tasted 19 Portuguese wines to choose these six, but once again the entire panel agreed that the Douro Mesao Frio Clarete Special Reserva(2) should be included as a highly respectable, smooth, fruity, full wine with no sharp or outre tastes. It belong to the second category of conven- tional, French-style wines, and at £3.38 the bottle would certainly cost £5.00 as the best class of Bordeaux Superieur. It is clean, unpretentious and to be generally recog- nised anywhere as a thoroughly good wine. With the Casal de Azenha 1974(3) we enter the realm of expensive-style wines. It has a creamy, merlot-and-vanilla taste with an expensive nose and a smoothness which
Planning a Portuguese Christmas
Auberon Waugh
good St Emilion will show after 15 years in bottle. Four of our panel of six raved about it, and I liked it very much despite an instinctive antipathy to the vanilla idea. At £3.65 it costs much the same as all the others, and for many will represent the height of Portuguese bargain-hunting. But those who expect a Cheval Blanc 1970 at this price (a wine to which it has some slight resemblance) must be warned that it also has the unmistakably southern touch of vanilla.
Bernardino's Garrafeira Particular 1974(4) offered the most conventionally French taste of the lot. Nobody, on a blind tasting, could possibly guess it came from Portugal and practically nobody would guess it came from anywhere but Bor- deaux. I thought it an amazingly high class wine which, at £3.73, could easily cost £7.50-£9.50 if it came in a different label much more, of course, if it came from a classified château. A mature wine already, it has enough acid and tannin to keep something I would not say with the same confidence about the Casal de Azenha.
The Douro Mesao Frio Reserva 1980(5) was oddly enough unanimously preferred to a 1976 from the same vineyard. This was unmistakably Portuguese, but a good clean, dry Portuguese taste — nothing sweet, no vanilla, no incense. Or so I thought. This is the sort of wine which Dr Johnson drank at the rate of three bottles a sitting. It will certainly keep and might even develop unexpected subtleties, but it is a good high class wine, for drinking now, and probably the best of the Portuguese- style at £3.81.
Finally, a dry white wine which I approached with caution after some rather terrible experiences with Portuguese whites, but this one(6) has a good, alcoholic winy taste — fresh and crisp but not sharp — with an unidentifiable fruity smell which should prove an agreeable and novel ex- perience for the wine drinker who is looking for something new at £3.57.
I feel these Portuguese wines are the best I have yet found and hope that Spectator readers come round to my point of view. If one can avoid the slightly hairy taste which these swarthy people seem to relish, one finds wine of greater depth and complexity than anything the Spanish have to offer at such prices. Or so I believe. If punters have any comments to make, I would be very pleased to hear them.
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