SPECTATOR WINE CLUB
If it's good, we buy it
Auberon Waugh
It may seem odd to open this good, cheap offer with two sauvignon blancs with only 25p between them, but they are both excellent, and the club's motto must be that if it finds a good wine, it buys it. The prob- lem is to help Spectator readers decide which they want to buy. Here, if it helps, is a summary of the panel's tasting note: Berticot(') 1993: Good grassy sauvignon. Very slightly sweet grass but clean and fresh. Good length. £3.95 Leasingham Hutt Creek(2) 1992: Strong hon- eyed sauvignon. Straw. Slight apricot. Quite delicious. Drinkable as an aperitif. £4.20.
The French entry, I should say, is also eminently suitable as an aperitif. The Leas- ingham, from Clare Valley in southern Australia, is definitely the stronger-tasting wine, but not everyone likes their wine to taste so very strong. I should guess that smokers might be happier with Leasing- ham, while many non-smokers would be perfectly happy with the Berticot (which was Alastair Stevens's best-selling wine last year).
After an Australian sauvignon blanc, a Chilean chardonnay(3). Like nearly every- one else, I find myself in violent reaction against the overweight, over-oaked chardonnays being developed by Australian boutique wine-makers as an entirely new beverage, bearing no relation to its parent white burgundy at all. This Carmen Chardonnay 1993 from Chile's Maipo Val- ley is well structured, with good acid and fruit, richer than all but the most expensive white burgundy but with a crisp finish. Dry but full of (only faintly tropical) fruit with good staying power, it is above all a clean and proper wine. Warmly recom- mended.
Finally in the whites, from Moingeon in Nuits St Georges, a 1992 Bourgogne Alig- ote(4) which impressed us all by its ele- gance. A single sniff would tell anyone that it comes from France, although admittedly I don't know of anywhere else which grows the aligote grape. Many people will associ- ate it with thin, sharp wine good for mixing with cassis in Burgundian cafés, but there are some seriously good wines made from aligote. This one has nothing sharp or nasty about it, a nice, elegant, lingering, if slight taste, dry and incredibly well-bred. It looks handsome and dignified, too. The price is £5.95.
Now for the reds. Our cheapie this time is a relatively unknown yin de pays from the beautiful Provencal principality which pro- duced Stinking Billy, the Dutch sodomite whose Bill 'n' Hillary Clinton act with Mary Stewart causes such havoc in Ireland to this day. Having said which, I can think of little more to say about the wine(5), which is pale-coloured and light, with a slightly sweet, Rhenish taste which teenagers and ignorant young people, in particular, will adore; but there is nothing dirty or sharp, nothing difficult or objectionable here, and the price of £3.69 makes it ideal for teenage raves. I still think that the ultimate picnic wine was J.P. Chenet's Cabernet Sauvignon, yin de pays d'Oc from Avery in the last offer at 6p more, if only because the strange, 18th-century bottle can be stood up on the grass. But this Orange drink is a good gulping wine for young people.
Now a seriously good red wine. The price of the Vina Carmen 1987 Cabernet Sauvi- gnon Gran Reserva(6) was already low because it was bought before Black Wednesday, and is now further reduced by £1 because some of the bottles have a tar- trate deposit around their necks which is totally harmless but inelegant. Like all the best Chilean cabernets, there is a faint hint of cedar (call it cigar smoke if you must) in this heavily concentrated wine — perhaps it is the equivalent of the eucalyptus begin- ning to creep further and further into Australian cabernet. It has a beautiful nose, and although I could detect no tannin, it is holding up very well. For drinking now and throughout the winter, a bargain at £4.95.
The mixed case works out at £4.53 the bottle — a very good, inexpensive offer.
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