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Wine Club
Auberon Waugh
r"N etermined as I am to keep the Spec- tator Wine Club as upmarket as possi- ble despite the murderous prices of good claret and burgundy, I have at last found a table wine of such extraordinary quality that I begin to doubt whether I shall ever drink anything else, except at great celebra- tions. Last month I mournfully recorded my conclusion that only the greedy French had ever managed to do anything very useful with the Pinot Noir grape as a reason for continuing to pay the hideous price of red burgundy. This month I have found a huge, full, richly satisfying red Pinot which might have come from anywhere in a ten- mile radius of Beaune but in fact comes from the north of Italy, at what I believe to be the sensational price of £3.19 for a 75cl bottle — the equivalent of £2.98 for a stan- dard 70c1 burgundy bottle.
My trouble with recommending table wines for the Club, as I mentioned earlier, has been that there is so much excellent stuff coming from Spain and available at highly competitive prices from every local chain-store; the generous discounts which the Club can secure for its members are reduced by the cost of delivery on cheaper wine. For this reason, I am not offering the Pinot Nero delle Venezie in half-cases; the extra 50p per bottle on the half-case, although easily justified by its quality, rather spoils the pleasure of drinking wine of £8 or £8.50 quality for what is very near- ly the price of plonk.
Good cheap wine, as I say, is plentiful nowadays from Peter Dominic, Victoria Wines, Sainsburys and countless other places. The trouble with it is that it tastes like good, cheap wine. When cheap wine gets more ambitious and tries to develop the fuller, more concentrated taste, it nearly always, in my experience, develops an unpleasant taste as well: paint-remover in California; vanilla or toffee-apple in Spain; sheep-shit in Morocco; zinc avid banana- skins in Italy. This Pinot Nero delle Venezie, from Udine, tastes quite simply like an extremely good communal or even premier cru Santenay. The vineyard is not mentioned by Hugh Johnson and does not even seem to be known to Burton Ander- son, the greatest expert on Italian wines, who is generally rather sniffy about Italian efforts to produce a red Pinot wine. Quite possibly this 1979 vintage is a one-off Phenomenon. John Avery MW, whom I believe to be the best judge of burgundy in England, avers that he has never had such a good wine from the Pinot Noir grape at the Price, and everybody else 1 gave it to has swooned and raved. I think it is a great
discovery and we are very clever to have made it.
The panel was not nearly so unanimous about the Californian Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon 1978. 1 thought it a rich, full Cabernet Sauvignon and good value Clos du Val, awarded three to four stars by Hugh Johnson in his 1983 pocket book, is highly regarded among California fanciers — but others complained of an irony finish, too much tannin and other youthful fail- ings. I stick by my earlier judgment, but ob- viously not everyone will like it. It is cer- tainly much bigger than anything of similar price (£6.32) from Bordeaux, and from its nose alone should have much to offer when the tannin has sorted itself out.
I thought I would try out Avery's In- vestiture Port on the Club to see how it went down. It is really for people who can't afford mature vintage port, find tawnies either too thin or too sweet and have in- variably been disappointed by anything called 'vintage character' or 'crusted'. It is lighter than these last but also nicer. It is produced by the process known in the trade as 'cooking' — 75 per cent of a well known and reputable old ruby has had (in this example) 50 cases of Warre's 1975 vin- tage added to it. I make no extravagant claims for this drink and don't think it is stupendously cheap at £5.95, but it tastes like proper port, which is more than one can say for most of the wood ports one is served nowadays. Avery's launched it at the time of the Prince of Wales's Investiture specially for the members (?inmates ?denizens) of Cardiff's County Club, where they know a thing or two about port. Previously they marketed it under the name of Ace Port and nobody would touch it. My own judgment is that it is a highly accep- table boys' port and might fill a definite need in our society.
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