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September 12, 2011 0

Indian Wine at Waitrose

By in Tasting, The Butler Wine-Show

The New World is expanding. A wine from China picked up a sizeable gong at the International Wine Awards last week, and Indian wines have hit the UK high street.

We had an Indian wine in the shop last year and it was pretty undrinkable so we were intrigued when Waitrose became the first of the UK supermarkets to stock two: Ritu Voignier and a Shiraz/Syrah with the awful name of Zampa.

The latter was on offer (£8.49) so we got a bottle and drove to India to try it.

On the label it claims the wine is “crafted to reveal your inner being,” so cameraman wisely kept the toilet paper in the fridge.

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September 12, 2011 0

Competitive Henry shows his Riojas

By in Tasting, The Butler Wine-Show

I have unearthed a fantastic modern Rioja, and its under £10.

La Vendimia comes from master winemaker Alvaro Palacios who sells bottles for up to £400 so this is a great way to get your hands on some classy wine at a realistic price.

So pleased am I with this Rioja that I made it my entry in the Make Your Case evening at the Brighton and Hove Food Festival. Six wine folks presented a wine each (under £15) to a tent full of punters who got a bottle on each table to taste and score.

I was confident of success…

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September 8, 2011 0

Summer Wine Trip – Part 3

By in The Butler Wine-Show, Wine travel

Over in Espanol, we got time to sit down with Raul Bobet, the man with the plan behind Castel D’Encus.

Raul is a bit of legend in Spanish winemaking as he is a powerful force behind Torres wines. They are a recognisable brand the world over, but one I admire. Yes they produce consistent wines, but are very ethical and not afraid to take a risk.

Raul likes a risk himself so set up D’Encus to make really unique wines – crushed in stone fermenters in the hillsides. He’s a lovely chap, who seems to get what life’s all about. In his eyes he’ll see 30 more years of wine making before he’s pushing up daisies, so that’s 30 more goes as what he calls “cooking” – tryng to create the perfect vintage.

Look for Part 2 of this interview when you’ve set the scene with this one: there he talks about hail, wild boars and the need for method over ego.

The second part of my in depth interview with nice guy winemaker Raul Bobet of Torres and Castel D’Encus.

This will be of particular interest to anyone who is thinking or trying to grow vines themselves. 1000m above sea level, Raul faces battles with hail, wild boar and deer.

Good job the man likes a challenge as hail can claim up to 80% of his whole harvest, plus 50% of the next year’s fruit due to damage to the plants themselves.

If that’s not an example of why every vintage matters, I don’t know what is. As he says, all your work all year can be undone in just 30mins.

Meanwhile he’s working his magic, fermenting grapes in rocks on the mountain and living in paradise.

We raise our glass to him. If you have the opportunity to do the same, please do.

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August 24, 2011 0

Summer Wine Trip – Part 2

By in The Butler Wine-Show, Wine travel

We often speak about growing wine tourism in the UK (Sussex especially) and Lord knows the Californians can teach us a thing or two.

Portugal is a great place to vineyard visit and Spain is beautiful too. Cameraman and I found ourselves up in North East Spain at Castell D’Encus – a vineyard designed and built by Raul Bobet.

Raul has close links to mass producer Torres, but this is his pet project. Organic in everything but name he really is battling the elements 850m above sea level in an isolated climate which he hopes will guard him against climate change. He’s learning new tricks for making wine after 20 years playing with Torres’ toys.

Here he found 12 stone fermenters left monks living in the mountains as far back a the 13th Century. These vats are hewn into the rocks, creating stone containers where the wine can be crushed and fermented, left to elements and the “flavour” of the rock.

Its barking mad, but it works. The wines are unique and a real testament to one man’s pursuit of perfection.

I would have enjoyed them more had Cameraman not got me legless on cheap Terry brandy at the hotel the night before.

I do get invited places. This often annoys cameraman who assumes that when on a wine tasting abroad I am face down in a knicker full of grape, eating rare ham and running up a tab at the bordello.

He’s right of course, but luckily the trip Carte Blanche wines invited him on was 850m above sea level, and so carrying camera, tripod, sound kit etc. up and down the hills took its toll.

He also hadn’t catered on people being there trying to do their job – journalists and wine importers asking questions and behaving professionally.

He therefore drank 20 euros worth (a bottle) of Terry brandy and spent much of day 2 crying in a locked toilet cubicle.

But I’ll let him tell you…

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August 18, 2011 0

Summer Wine Trip – Part 1

By in Tasting, The Butler Wine-Show, Wine travel

Its summer time. The kids have broken up. Its pissing with rain.

Time to book a cheap flight somewhere and chances are Stelios will be part of your search.

The flight is £30 but Cameraman once famously worked up a £78 bill on a delayed flight back from Mykonos on Pringles, London Pride and Bacon baguettes.

Easyjet don’t commit their wine brands in the brochure in case of supplier changes. But chances are they will be one of the two we tried the other morning: white Gascogne and a Spanish Rose. It was too early for Red and at £4 a bottle the budget didn’t stretch to it.

Watch. Learn. Take to the skies.

The lonely road was calling, so with the help of our friends at Carte Blanche Wines, Cameraman and I were whisked off to Barcelona (via Easyjet – see seperate video) and into a three hour drive up the Pyrannes.

At the top is Castel D’Encus – a unique vineyard where the owner Raul Bobet (top brass at Torres) is making wines in frankly madcap ways.

Before we see them, there’s the journey, broken with a stop in lay by for some Cava, chilled red and a pee. The Spaniards urinated near the car, while Cameraman and I risked snakebite and worse for a little privacy.

The Cava was very good, and its worth noting that if you see a Brut Nature Cava it means there is no residual sugar in it. Great news for diabetics.

Arriba!

With the summer breeze whistling through the Pyrenees we caught up with nice guy Franck Massard; something of a fixer within Spanish wine.

Franck is an exporter, hence his connection to Castel D’Encus, but also a producer of wine in the Priorat in NE Spain.

We recommended his Herbis white wine when we visited master of the universe Gerard Basset at Hotel TerraVina (turns out Franck also worked at Chewton Glen and Hotel Du Vin).

Franck slugged his latest bottle (bottle just two-weeks ago) down our throats: El Mago.

We loved this red (Garnacha) served chilled and it also gave us a connection to the programmes we made about funky wine labels: El Mago (Spanish for Wizard) is an amalgamation of the names Franck’s two children and the cute label is drawn by son Hugo.

Look out for Massard wines – especially his popular Mas Amor rose which is a contender for our Pride and Valentine wines.

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August 4, 2011 0

Summer wine video catch-up (Henry flies, gets his pride on, and tastes)

By in The Butler Wine-Show

Shopkeeper: Can I help you sir, are you buying or just curious?
Man: I suppose I’m buy-curious.

And so begins our recommendations for wines to drink over the course of the Gay Pride festival.

The innuendo comes thick and heavy, not least from your own suggestions for drinks for famous gay celebrities.

The wines include two excellent but very different pinks, a chardonnay from the West Coast of the USA, and an Alsatian white that sounds like a lewd act.

It will be a miracle if we ever work again.

Its summer time. The kids have broken up. Its pissing with rain.

Time to book a cheap flight somewhere and chances are Stelios will be part of your search.

The flight is £30 but Cameraman once famously worked up a £78 bill on a delayed flight back from Mykonos on Pringles, London Pride and Bacon baguettes.

Easyjet don’t commit their wine brands in the brochure in case of supplier changes. But chances are they will be one of the two we tried the other morning: white Gascogne and a Spanish Rose. It was too early for Red and at £4 a bottle the budget didn’t stretch to it.

Watch. Learn. Take to the skies.

We held a tasting where people could ask for the wines beforehand and the ones with the most votes were tried on the night. Lots of interesting wines came forward but none more so than Cameraman’s contribution: A Chateau Carpenter’s Arms from John Halls in Sussex.

John was born and bred in Shoreham with links to the Royal Sovereign Pub there. He’s been making his own wine for well over 50 years and with his birthday this month we passed round the two bottles Cameraman had purloined.

No one can remember much after that. I think John’s wine would challenge any EU regulation and Cameraman confessed he had used it once to flambe a steak, so high is the alcohol content.

Its great to see people still home brewing, and blending to their tastes, getting to understand the very basics – the importance of fruit and sugar.

Our best wishes to Birthday boy John, and we look forward to many more vintages.

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June 29, 2011 0

What’s in a wine label? Part 2

By in Questions, The Butler Wine-Show

So yes, the second part of two about wine labels. Hopefully instructive. Better than that, maybe entertaining…  With www.apecreative.com

Send us your suggestions for a label for an English wine!

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June 15, 2011 0

What’s in a wine label? Part 1

By in Questions, The Butler Wine-Show

How often do you pick up a wine based on it having a nice label? How often do you put a good wine back because you don’t like its label?

Don’t lie.

We’re all a bit shallow and marketeers know it. The fact is some decent English wine has come under fire because the labels are too boring or twee.

We’re finding our feet but we can learn from the successes and mistakes of others.

We went to sit with Creative Director Russell Hayes from Ape – the agency behind many of Tesco’s packaging – to look at some hits and misses from wine design.

No surprise to see the Australian’s being the most innovative…

But there’s England’s Archer & Vine, Cartons from Argentina, class in a glass from Madrid, madness from Killibinbin and Molly Dooker.

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May 31, 2011 0

Gettin Funky with the Fortifieds

By in Tasting, The Butler Wine-Show

OK, a short and sweet video and post about a recent event we attended. Fortified wine is the subject. Henry is the man getting stuck in, and sticky. It’s just good infotainment we think.

Get a glass of something fortified and relax.

- The Sub-editor

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May 26, 2011 0

Vegetarian wines

By in The Butler Wine-Show

Its National Vegetarian Week.

No, I didn’t know that either.

It might seem incongruous that a drink made from grapes might have vegetarian alternatives, but some animal bi-products do make their way into wine production through the filtration process (used to stop the wine becoming hazy).

Egg white, fish guts and even bulls blood can be used, in minuscule amounts, but if you’re going to be a vegi, you may as well do it properly.

I have example of wines that use no filtration process and ones that filter through clay, and lovely wines they are too. Though ironically both go well with steak. (joke)

If you want to be sure, some labels now carry this information, and producers websites. But any retailer worth their salt should be able to direct you to vegetarian or vegan wines in their shop.

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