SPECTATOR WINE CLUB
Interesting and unusual
Auberon Waugh
Ater the immense success of the Club Red at Christmas, I thought I would give Avery's own Club White"' a bit of a whirl for summer drinking. It is very hard to find a decent or even drinkable white wine for £3.45 the bottle except on special offers, and then they tend to have disappeared when you try to re-order. I make no claims for this wine except that it tastes nice and drinks easy. Although from Gascony, it has none of the pear-drop taste or paint-strip- per effect which can result from the Colombard grape being mixed with Ugni Blanc. In fact this is a dignified, fruity bev- erage with just a hint of grapefruit skin to make it more interesting. Not a wine to talk about, not a serious wine-drinkers' wine, but something to serve well chilled in large quantities throughout the summer.
The Nobilo Sauvignon Bland') from Marlborough, New Zealand, is not at all a typical New Zealand sauvignon, but an amazing salad of a wine which, at £5 the bottle, strikes me as a serious bargain. In its way, it achieves a sort of greatness, although nobody on the Loire or in Bor- deaux or Bergerac or anywhere else in France where the sauvignon grape is grown would agree. Although the anchor taste is recognisably sauvignon, it is not cut grass, nor tom-cat, nor gooseberry leaves, nor even gooseberries which predominate. There is a whiff of lychees on the nose, mixed with ripe melon (not a proper smell, really, for sauvignon) and an unmistakable touch of mango in the mouth. Although these are all improper tastes, members will have to take my word for it that the final effect is not only delicious but also high- class, and given away at £5.
People may decide that £6.95 is not par- ticularly cheap for a chablis which definite- ly belongs to the lighter tradition of chablis, even if it comes from a single vineyard. But Lupe Cholet's Château de Vivierso) has come down by £2 the bottle, and is totally proper in every respect, with great vitality and bounce. It is exactly how chablis should taste, and a wonderful antidote to the colo- nial chardonnays of which many people are beginning to tire. It doesn't shout at you, this wine, but it is faultless and thoroughly elegant as well as being a decent and pleas- ant wine. I wish it could be a little cheaper. To be drunk immediately.
Now for the reds. The 1990 Undurraga Cabernet Sauvignono) from Chile's Maipo Valley struck me as a little bit closed still, but it has a good clarety taste with plenty of blackcurrant in reserve. At £3.99 the bottle I would hope it will turn into something seriously elegant before long — probably within months rather than years. Drink it with food, and open (or decant) it some time before serving and you should get a glimpse of what I am talking about, but it is no good pretending it is the star of the offer in its present state. If you can leave it until Christmas, you may bless me for it.
I called in the 1992 Tyrrell's Old Winery Pinot Noir'", having discovered it first at a Tyrrell's tasting in the Savoy, then at the great Australia Day tasting at Lord's. They try hard, but it is very seldom that these colonials turn out a decent pinot noir to taste as burgundy used to taste, despite being allowed to blend their pinot with a certain amount of shiraz or whatever. This wine jumped out from the genuine bur- gundies on offer for its intensity of flavour and length of palate. In a couple of years' time it will probably peak, but it already tastes well enough of old burgundy to bring tears to the eyes. People are giving up on burgundy all over England because it costs too much and the taste has changed. Here is a chance to stop the clock and step back- wards 20 years at the amazing price of £6 the bottle. An excellent wine with plenty of acid, plenty of tannin and enough fruit to keep a whole regiment healthy and regular for a week.
Finally, a real wine-man's wine. No snob- bish joys attach to this village St Estephe(6), mysteriously bottled by Raoul Johnston, and if I reveal that it is the over-production of a very famous château, hailed by Hugh Johnson as St Estephe's answer to Château Latour, this can only be of private interest. It is a very powerful, highly concentrated, complex wine selling at a fraction of its value. If you must drink it now, pour it out half an hour before drinking. No serious wine-drinker will grudge the £7.88 a bottle. If you time the drinking of it right, you" will have a four-star wine for the price of two stars.
The mixed case"' works out at £5.55 the bottle, which I don't think at all bad for an interesting and unusual collection.
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