SPECTATOR WINE CLUB
Some seriously good offers for serious drinkers
Auberon Waugh
Ihave never much cared for the standard taste of muscadet, which might be de- scribed as salt water and acid if one is feeling mealy-mouthed. So far as I remem- ber, this is only the second I have offered in the seven years of the Spectator Wine Club (which is not a club at all, as I have to point out once a year. Like Captain Jack Moron's celebrated Quids-In Club of Frith Street, you buy your wine and you are a member).
But it really is a seriously good wine, this Muscadet Cios de Beauregard(1). I would recommend it served unchilled. It has masses of fruit, even a touch of honey, a beautiful smell which I now identify as the true muscadet smell, and a really high-class taste which I now recognise as the true one after 30 years of the salt-water and acid treatment when lunching with hosts who were too mean to buy anything else in an oyster bar. Chief of all the wines in this offer, this one came as a revelation. At £3.66 it is a snip, and I earnestly recom- mend it to all those who have never yet been prepared to take muscadet seriously. Unfortunately Armit, like Price-Beech, is too butter-fingered to make up a sample case (which will lose him a lot of money, as they are extremely popular) and I quite understand that it requires an act of faith to order a whole case of a wine you have always quite rightly despised up to now. But I promise it really is a good wine, as well as an education in itself, and no serious wine drinker should miss it.
A price of £6.50 for a southern white burgundy may seem a little steep, but I was most impressed by this 1987 Rully premier cru called Margote from Jacques Dury(2), and preferred it on this occasion to our old favourite, Leflaive's Les Setilles '87, de- spite the fact that Leflaive was more than a pound cheaper. It was the difference be- tween apples and melons. The Rully has a good melony smell, not civerpowering, as With some colonials, but very much there. The taste is not very assertive, but surpri- singly complex and unmistakably high- class burgundy. It really is a mini- montrachet, and at a price which most People should be prepared to pay even if they are a little suspicious of the Me Challonaise.
Armit, whose real passion is for pomerol and the heavier St Emilions, has a very good line in beefy fronsacs, as those will agree who remember his stupendous '82 Château du Gaby (beaten this time round, SO far as the '85s were concerned, by Château Vrai Canon Bolick '85(6) at the same price). The '85 Chateau La Croix(3) approaches one with leafy young merlot smells but they turn into something quite deep and solid in the mouth. At £4.42 the
bottle it is a strong, contained claret for drinking now, with many years' life ahead of it when it might easily open up into something rather special.
I throw in Rene Berrod's Beaujolais Villages 1988, apparently from somewhere called the Domaine des Roches du Vivier, because it seemed a very good example of the light, fresh 'n' fruity style and the price at £4.67 was sufficiently below the £5 level to make it, unusual. Not a wine to get excited about, but thoroughly delicious in the right. mood.
Guigal's C6te du Rhone(5) is sufficiently well known, I imagine, to need no intro- duction. The 1985 holds no great surprises. As always, it is full, fruity, very easy to
drink, more soigné than most of these negociants' rhone generics and must be good value at £4.83.
There are violent disagreements on the panel about the last wine, a Canon Fronsac at the hefty price of £7.66. The final choice was between this wine, a Gaby '83 and '85, and the '86 Tinto Pesquera. Nobody could agree, so I am afraid I rather over-ruled everyone else and appointed the Château Vrai Canon Bouchet6). My first note on it was: 'essence of rats' tails; rather good'. I think it needs a bit of time, but it has the concentrated merlot taste without so much tannin as would make it undrinkable now. Everybody keeps telling me the '85 bor- deaux are so tremendously forward, but I think all they mean is that they have less tannin than usual. I would certainly not touch this wine for five years (and the Château du Gaby '83 which we tasted against it for ten.) ' I am sorry there is no sample case this time. For serious wine drinkers, I would award three stars to the Muscadet(I), at least one to the Rully(2) and possibly two to the La Croix(3), always taking price into account. I daren't give any to the Canon Fronsac because those who don't like young merlot will dislike it intensely.
Previous page
