But the red soil in these grottos is rich in minerals. The rocks are made from calcium-rich limestone (or Karst), which provides good drainage but also retains moisture – great for growing healthy vines. And the maritime climate benefits from three different winds during the day, meaning grapes dry quickly if there is any rain – which both reduces incidences of disease and stops the grapes from ripening too quickly in the hot sun.

“We do all this work because the potential for quality is so great,” explained Goran Kante, nephew of producer Edi Kante, the man credited with turning the Carso into an area producing high-calibre wine.

Goran Kante

Goran told us how, before planting any vines in the 1980s, they had to remove old vegetation and cut into the rocks to remove old roots. They then levelled the ground with several metres of terra gialla (yellow soil) from nearby Trieste, which is cheap, easy to find and retains moisture. Finally, they had to buy and then excavate a collapsed grotto for the top layer of nutritious terra rossa. Not so cheap, I imagine. For each 100 hectares of vineyard, they needed 1000 trucks of soil.

However, that wasn’t the hardest bit. Before they could drill a centimetre of rock, they had to wrangle with Italian bureaucracy – a “five to six year-long headache” – to get the correct paperwork.

High Density, Low Yields

As a result of all this effort, Kante (like other Carso producers) has a comparatively small vineyard but the density of vines planted is high – 8,500 plants per hectare. According to Goran, this is double the amount you’ll find in the flat parts of Friuli. “We have to squeeze out every single metre to get the quantity out of what we do,” he added.

To maintain the quality, and get lots of flavour into the grapes, they keep the numbers of bunches grown on the vines low, around half a kilo. As a general rule of thumb,  one kilo makes a 750ml bottle, though this depends on vineyard techniques. Unlike a number of neighbouring producers, they will intervene with synthetic sprays where absolutely necessary.

But their aim is sustainability, not to be certified organic, and they’ve made the most of what the land gives them by excavating the rock below into a three-storey wine cellar where they ferment and age the wines.

The subterranean cellar at Kante

So, what of the wines? While they make a decent sparking wine (KK Spumante NV), I think it is the still whites where they shine. The 2009 Vitovska (an indigenous grape) was vibrant, pithy and herby and cried out for local seafood. The 2009 Malvasia (made from the local Istriana variety) was blossomy and slightly nutty, with gently rounded edges and brisk acidity.

But the star was an elegant, slightly spicy, fresh but weighty 2001 La Bora di Kante Chardonnay, named after one of the three winds that daily blow through the Carso. Later, at lunch, we tried the 1991 Terranum, made from the Terrano grape – related to Refosco, a popular Friulian red grape. It had a fresh berry taste, but the acid was dominant, suggesting that the intervening 20 years hadn’t done this wine many favours. On the plus side, it was only 10.5% alcohol by volume, rare for a red wine. It would’ve been interesting to try a much younger version.

A Shared Belief

The Carso is an area that has changed nationality several times over the last two centuries, and while people living here are Italian, many of them have Slovenian names, speak Slovenian as well as Italian, give the grapes Slovenian names and see their winemaking brethren over the border in Kras (Slovenian for Carso) as part of the same region. (There are, apparently, plans to create a cross-border appellation.)

Despite the chequered history, the winemakers here share a united belief. That the wines they produce are made in the vineyard, not in the winery itself.  However, there are some philosophical differences to how much man should intervene in the vineyard – and whether the final wine is fined and filtered or bottled straight from the tank or barrel.

Sandi Skerk

Sandi Skerk is a proponent of the latter, making wines as naturally as possible. Head of the consortium of Carso winemakers, his vineyard is a few streets away from Kante, in the village of Prepotto.  He spins a similarly enticing story as Goran Kante about the soil, the rocks, the winds and the density of vine planting, though we spend quite a lot of time in his vineyard discussing his use of copper and sulphur to control diseases and looking at his albarello (little tree) vine training system, which produces smaller grapes in fewer bunches.

Albarello-trained vines with a little support from the strong Bora wind

Sandi believes the best bit of the wine is in the skin, and this training method results in grapes with a higher percentage of skin to pulp.

While he also believes most of the work is done in the vineyard, it’s the cellar that captures my interest. It too has been carved out of rocks, and you can see crevices running along the wall made by left by vine roots from the past.

Crevices made by old vine roots in Skerk's cellar walls

We taste the Skerk Vitovska and Malvasia straight from the barrel, while they are still fermenting on their skins (usually, only red wine is fermented on skins for tannins and colour). We also try some bronze coloured Pinot Grigio – the colour coming from the skins of this red-skinned grape. This is destined for his blended white called Ograde, which also includes Vitovska, Malvasia, Sauvignon Blanc.

Finally, we try some Malvasia, which has been moved from barrel to tank. Fruity, floral with a broad nutty note, this actually tasted of – well – wine. I am not the biggest fan of natural wine, you see – especially whites. It’s not the cloudy urine look I mind, it’s the instability of it. What tastes good in a tank may taste like cider out of a bottle some months later.

A boar carved into a limestone pillar at Zidarich

We put that to the test later at lunch, held at the winery of Benjamin Zidarich, another producer of natural wines – and just a stroll from Skerk. Sitting in a room above his winery and underground cellar, with a crackling open fire and sea views in the distance, we tasted several wines from the cantine we’d visited that morning including the yellow peach, orange zest and mineral-tasting Skerk 2009 Ograde.

I also liked Zidarich’s 2009 Prulke, a blend of Malvasia Istriana, Vitovska and Sauvignon with its intriguing flavours of oranges, quince, spice and little shards of grapefruit poking through. It was Zindarich’s 2009 Malvasia though that really won me over – like fresh blossom being rippled by a cooling sea breeze. Just drinking it made me feel alive.

Perhaps it was the sunny, crisp autumn day in the tranquillity of Prepotto. Perhaps it was the winemakers’ stories, and their uncompromising drive to make wine with a unique sense of place. Perhaps it was the wines themselves. Whatever the cause, one thing’s for sure. By the end of my visit, like a love-struck teenager, I totally fell for the Carso.

The terra rossa (red earth) of the Carso

End note: I visited the Carso with a number of other wine bloggers who attended this year’s European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC). Here’s another account of the visit, from Simon Woolf.

This point was proved in the so-called Judgement of Paris in 1976, when – in a blind wine tasting – a Californian red and white beat two top French wines: a Château Mouton-Rothschild Pauillac and a Domaine Roulot Meursault Charmes.

“Last week in Paris… the unthinkable happened: California defeated all Gaul,” wrote Time journalist George Taber. Just those few words, in a four-paragraph scoop, shook the wine world to its core.

“A Wonderful Experience”

Today, wine lovers are still eager to hear from George Taber about this momentous event – which he turned into a book. At this year’s European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC), he told attendees about how he approached writing the book, telling the story through four characters. The night before, he’d also enjoyed tasting one of the Californian wines that also entered the Paris tasting – a Freemark Abbey Cabernet Bosché, though from a much later vintage – 1993.

“The most surprising thing about Freemark Abbey at the Paris tasting was that it was the only winery that had two wines in the tasting, a white wine and a red wine. So that really made it very special,” said George, at a pre-conference dinner where bloggers brought along wines they wanted other bloggers to try.  ”Tasting it tonight with all these other wines was just a wonderful experience, ” he added.

These days, of course, there’d be little mistaking your typical buttery Californian Chardonnay or over-ripe Cabernet-driven blends with a Meursault or a wine from the Medoc (even though the latter do seem to be getting ever more powerful). But there are, thankfully, quite a few exceptions. One of these is the Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello, which was another of the handful of Californian wines entered into the Paris tasting.

In 1976, a Monte Bello 1971 came fifth. But, when the Paris judgement was re-enacted in 2006, that very same vintage came first, beating the original winner, a Stag’s Leap 1973 and the original second ranking wine, a Mouton-Rothschild 1970.

“It was a great day for Ridge, for Monte Bello, and for wines made at a more moderate level of ripeness,” says Ridge, on its website. Monte Bello is not made in the Napa Valley, you see, nor in neighbouring Sonoma, where Ridge also has vineyards and a winery. The grapes for this Bordeaux-style blend are grown about 100 miles south, high in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA (appellation), a much cooler region for producing the blend’s predominant Cabernet grape. The result is a fresher-feeling wine with more reasonable alcohol levels than some of its counterparts up the road.

A Vineyard Visit

The 2008 I tasted recently clocked in at just under 13.5% alcohol by volume (ABV), and was plummy and perfumed with underlying flavours of polished cedar and leather, and a heady blackcurrant nose. Nice to drink now, Ridge recommends another three years before this wine starts to really hit its stride. But then at $145 per bottle direct from the vineyard, it is a wine you’ll want to treasure. For many people this is simply out of their price range. But for $20 you can get a flight of this wine (along with some others) if you visit either of their two estates in Sonoma or Cupertino.

I spent $30 on a tour and tasting at their Lytton Springs vineyard in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley. Personally, I have no issue paying if a tour is this informative and the wine this good. We began in the home vineyard (with a glass of the Estate Chardonnay ’09 in hand) looking at 115-year-old vines and squeezing Alicante Bouschet grapes, one of the few varieties that have both a red skin and red flesh – and therefore red juice.

Explanations about terroir, viticulture and climate were pitched well to appeal to both wine geeks and novices alike – quite an art. We also learnt how their sustainable approach extends beyond their organic practices in the vineyard (including the ones which make Monte Bello) to the winery building. This is built from straw bales and has solar panels that give Ridge enough power to sell some back to the grid each year.

After a tour of the winery, we got to taste five more wines, one being the Monte Bello. The other four were Zinfandels – the classic Dry Creek Valley variety. Now, I’m not a huge fan of the big, jammy, dried fruitcake Zinfandels that a number of winemakers produce round here – and are HUGELY popular with the domestic market.

A Zin For All Tastes

However, Lytton make a range of different styles from different vineyards, some with other grapes included, such as the gravelly, mocha Mazzoni 2006 with 48% Carignan.

My favourite was the Lytton Estate 2006, which is made in years when some of the grapes destined for the Lytton Springs Zinfandel (which you can buy through the Wine Society and Slurp) are held back, because they would make the wine too ripe or too tannic. This one was clearly a “too ripe” year, as the ABV is almost 15%, but Ridge had added a generous slug of Petit Verdot to give the wine body and tannins. As a result, it was rich and fragrant with flavours of brambles and coffee grains. Sometimes big can be good.

Despite making a wine that can pass as a top-notch Bordeaux, Ridge – with its Zinfandels – is showing how California has truly made this a grape of its own. And, how decades after the Judgement of Paris, making a regionally distinctive wine is now what really matters.

We passed twisted old vines laden with fruit, and newly grafted vines – that were still establishing themselves (below).  The tall, wind turbine-like structure in the back is to prevent  frost by moving air through the vines. Temperatures in parts of the Russian River Valley can dip dramatically at night.

Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are the main grapes grown in the Russian River Valley, which is generally cooler than its neighbouring AVA (American Viticultural Area), the Dry Creek Valley. You will find other varietals (a wine that is made primarily out of one variety) for tasting at cellar doors here, but they are usually grown elsewhere. For example, at Gary Farrell Wine there’s a Sauvignon Blanc from the Sonoma County AVA. Although Pinot Noir is winemaker Gary Farrell’s varietal (sic) of choice, I was quite taken with his 2008 Russian River Selection Chardonnay. It had a divine smell of white toast dripping in butter, and it managed to feel sprightly and fresh despite its creamy peachy roundness. My kind of buttery Californian Chardonnay.

The tasting room is perched on a hill and worth a trip if only for the view.

Wineries here don’t have restaurants due to planning regulations. So, a good few landscape their grounds to encourage people to bring picnics. Why not enjoy some wine with food? (Though you don’t have to buy a bottle to do so.) And just because there’s no restaurant attached doesn’t mean you can’t hold a wedding there either. Arista looks perfect for a small celebration, with its Japanese garden. It was a pretty good spot for our take out lunch.

We got off to a shaky start at the tasting room at Arista when the first wine served was a 2010 Sauvignon Blanc made by Mark David, a winemaker who is a part owner of Arista. The grapes used are a clone called Sauvignon Musque, which makes a comparatively softer and more exotic tasting version of Sauvignon Blanc. To give it even more body and depth, the winemaker ages it in oak and then bottles it directly from the barrel, unfined and unfiltered. So far, so good. It always makes for a more savoury wine. But serving clumps of the dead lees in a small sample glass – when you don’t actually get much wine, and when I was going to be spitting it out – was not my thing. A Philistine, maybe. However, despite being told “the winemaker wants it served that way”, I did get a fresh glass.

Things got better with the three Pinots we tasted. Different vineyards, different styles, all good. My favourite was the 2009 Toboni Vineyard Pinot Noir, a striking purple colour and a satisfying medium-heavy weight, with tastes of fresh raspberries and red roses.

Like most of the neighbouring wineries, limited amounts are made of each wine and the home vineyards around the estate provide grapes for wines you can only get if you are on Arista’s mailing list. (Oh, and they don’t ship their wine to anywhere outside the US – and not even to some states within.)

After our picnic, shaded from the piercing sun, we called it a day. Lightweights, I know. But after a lousy British summer, every ray felt sacred. We headed back to Healdsburg, knowing we had a full itinerary in the Dry Creek Valley the next day.

This is not the first time we’ve been here and  - given its distance from grey old London – we always splash out on the tasting menu with wines. It’s one of Mr. SipSwoosh’s favourite things to do in one of his favourite places in the world.

However, I don’t remember the white wines being quite this reined in when we were last here, three years ago.

The Dry Creek Kitchen – one of Charlie Palmer‘s stable of restaurants – prides itself on a cellar of more than 600 Sonoma wines. It adds a $20 supplement on all bottles of non-Sonoma wine ordered. Which is all well and noble, though a little disingenuous perhaps when the starter we had featured a fish from New Zealand.

But as many of the local wines never make it into a shop, let alone out of the state (boutique wine production can be very limited), then this is one of the best places to try the good and the great from the surrounding wine appellations(or American Viticultural Areas – AVAs) such as the Dry Creek Valley, Russian River Valley and Green Valley.

We began with a delicate pink rosehip-infused glass of Russian River Valley J Brut Rose NV made from Pinot Noir in the traditional method (like Champagne). According to J Vineyard’s website, the diaphanous look and taste of the wine is down to the only operating Coquard Press in the US, which keeps the bunches of grapes stationary, reducing contact between skin and juice. Whatever. It was good.

While we liked this, we didn’t fancy another glass of fizz with the first course – seared Kampachi fish with avocado mousseline, pickled rhubarb, purslane (a type of salad) and kaffir lime oil. All in tiny proportions of course. We asked for a wine swap and were served a glass of Lime Stone Sauvignon Blanc 2010 from Dry Creek Valley – which I believe is made for Charlie Palmer. The logo is the same as his wife’s shop next door.

“Made in the New Zealand style,” we were told. Which part? Certainly not Marlborough. Far too verdant: nettles, grass, green leaves. Lots of minerals. Austere to drink but matched the tartness of the rhubarb and the oiliness of the fish.

The Balletto Gewurtztraminer 2008, also from Russian River Valley, was the big surprise. Fresh lychee on the nose, it carried a mere tickle of the spicy punch you often get with this grape. Fresh and zincy, it was a stood up, but didn’t overpower, cauliflower soup with curried creme fraiche.

The Capture Les Pionniers Sauvignon Blanc 2010 from Sonoma County was a kinder wine to drink than the Lime Stone. Quite a tropical wine, but with enough acidity to balance with a tomato consommé, pickled watermelon (they’re obviously into pickling), cherry tomato and burrata stuffed ravioli. Burrata? Take a ball of creamy mozzarella and add MORE CREAM.

Highlight of the meal was the crunchy brioche-crusted Alaskan halibut with an English pea mousseline, lettuce and bacon. It came with a glass of Leo Steen Dry Creek Valley Chenin Blanc 2009 which had a surprising but appealing smell of custard powder though reassuringly citrusy and mineral to drink, with a herby finish. I liked it so much I tracked down the wine maker, Leo Hansen – a Dane who now makes wine for Stuhlmuller, as well as a couple under his own label. Oh, and he used to be sommelier at the Dry Creek Kitchen.

After all these relatively understated wines, it was a bit of a shock to end on a big minty, smoky, squealing-tyre red, a Demuth Kemos Clajeux Cabernet 06. Too tannic to drink on its own, it was like Friends Reunited with the seared meat and smoke of the accompanying dish: American Kobe flat iron steak with smoked fingerling potatoes.

Actually, this wasn’t the last wine. But at this point, I’d drunk more than I had for a number of weeks and the dessert choice and wine pairing was off the main menu (of which I don’t have a copy). I’ve also lost the receipt. So I only have my wine tasting notes to rely on: “reisling – sticky nose fresh palate hpneysuckle citrus peel ( w/ drssert) nuts.” Oh.

I took a dark picture of the dessert and I can see it involved panna cotta. Beyond that, I have no idea.

Promise to do better next time – which I hope won’t be in the too far distant future.

It seems there are now two schools of thought.

On the one hand is the prescriptive school: listing aromas and flavours plus tannins, acid, length etc.  Anyone who’s studied with the Wine & Spirit Educational Trust (WSET)  is taught a “systematic approach” along these lines.

On the other hand, there are those who like to describe the experience of the wine. For example, likening the drinking of a flinty Sancerre to dipping your toes in a clear, cool stream on a hot, sunny day.

Makes it sound very enticing. And a list of descriptors can be utterly, utterly dull.

I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong – though I tend to veer on the side of descriptors because I want to know what something tastes like.

However, the other day I tasted some Ampelomeryx 2009 from Domaine de Pellehaut in Gascony – a blend of Gros and Petit Manseng, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

An image immediately popped into my head: of kicking a pile of russet and golden leaves in the bright sunshine of early autumn day – and the glorious fug of spice that results.

A brilliant end of summer – or perhaps Indian Summer – wine with a lovely round mouthfeel.

For those who like flavour descriptors: orchard and citrus fruits, nutmeg and ginger.

I bought my bottle from Swig for £12.50

Opus One is big stuff, as you’d expect for one of Napa’s most sought-after wines – but without the overwhelming sensation of hot, thumping alcohol and weight that you often get with Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated wines made here. Retailing for around £200 for the 2007 (the latest release) this Bordeaux blend has found a place in many an investment banker’s heart. And those who live and die by Robert Parker’s 100-point scoring system.

Opus One is the result of a partnership between Napa wine pioneer Robert Mondavi, and Baron Philippe de Rothschild, of Bordeaux first growth Château Mouton Rothschild, who wanted to make the very best wine they could, representing the styles of both Napa and Bordeaux.

It is, if you like, a testament to what money can buy.

For a start, the winery (now 50% owned by wine-brand behemoth Constellation) only makes one type of wine, with a second label – Overture – produced most years.

Grapes are sorted by hand, twice (after being handpicked at night). Then they are put through a machine that reads the weight and density of each grape, discarding those that don’t make the grade. According to Marie, our perky, informative tour guide, there are only 30 of these in use in the world.

Using gravity to crush the grapes, they are funnelled down into mini tanks-on-wheels, which connect with the tops of the fermentation tanks in the room below that poke up through the floor.

The new French barrels used for ageing are used for one vintage only. The wine will see the inside of 14 barrels, each made by a different cooper and done to medium toast. When finished, the barrels will be sold for around a third of the original price to other winemakers who will probably get at least another two years’ use from them.

The Opus One winemaker and his team also make around thirty test blends each year before deciding on the version to be bottled.

They test 100 corks for every 10,000 they order for TCA - the substance that can make a wine smell and taste corked. If just one cork shows a trace of TCA, they return the whole batch.

Then there’s the building itself. Part spaceship, part Bond-villain lair and part French château, classical music guides you up to the heavy wooden doors where a concierge greets you and guides you to a “salon” with some antique furniture plus modern masterpieces hanging on the walls.

After the tour, you can sit on a verandah and finish your wine, surveying the vineyards. Or visit the partners’ room (i.e. the cellar door) where you can spend another $35 trying the ’06 for comparison. I might have done that had we been able to sample a vintage that could give a better idea of how it ages ” effortlessly for decades” rather than one from the year before. I don’t imagine there’s much of it around that isn’t locked away in private cellars or high-end restaurants.

So what of the wine? After two-hours of sitting in a glass, the 2007 is supple, velvety and lightly perfumed with layers of dark berries, prunes, cedar, lead, sweet spices and tannins that were ripe enough to sip without any food. It is powerful but very precise. Then again, given the labour that goes into making each vintage, I’d expect nothing less.

You could argue, though, that this quest for perfection may have come at a price: character.

I am reminded of this a few days later on a visit to the Bonny Doon cellar door in Santa Cruz. There, a sign spells out the differences between wines made by the efforts of man versus those that reflect where the wines were made – and the grapes grown.

I’m not saying you cannot have both. If someone bought me a bottle of Opus One, I certainly wouldn’t hand it back.

But a world where people judged great wine purely on the efforts of man would be a very dull place indeed.

As the saying goes, you can make a bad wine out of good grapes. You cannot do the reverse.

Note: If you do fancy buying a bottle, Majestic Fine Wines seems to have some for £185 each. But you have to buy at least five other bottles of fine wine…

Unless it has been fermented in oak.

Now, you might have thought that New Zealand’s most well-known export (just a hunch – no facts) was big and ballsy enough not to need any structure-building oak.

And I’d argue that of course it doesn’t need it.

But I’d also argue it works rather well, handled the right way.

I loved the Sauvignon Blanc ‘sur lie’, which I tried at Hans Herzog’s vineyard in Marlborough last November. This wine was fermented in barrels. It underwent malolactic fermentation which creates a softer wine. And it was aged along with the dead deposits of yeasts from fermentation – called lees – for almost a year. The lees were stirred up regularly to give a nutty richness to the wine.

I’m also a fan of the more restrained Te Muna Sauvignon Blanc Craggy Range produced for Marks & Spencer.

So I was thrilled to find a Greywacke Wild Sauvignon 2009 made by Kevin Judd, the man best known (so far) for his tenure at Cloudy Bay. (Who also do an oaked Sauvignon called Te Koko.)

Rich, generous and chalky are keywords used by Slurp to describe the Greywacke Wild Earth ’09. I would add:  passion fruit, pineapple, grapefruit pith, sour cream, sun-dried herbs, a bit nutty. Succulent. It may not as hardcore as Herzog in oak-ageing and lees stirring, but there are loads of layered flavours there.

It was a great match with chorizo and squid and I will definitely try it with more spicy and some oriental food.

Save the unoaked stuff for the shellfish.

“Just to remind you I have a case (magnums) of the 2004 Ch. Leoville Barton.

When are you coming?”

Twelve days later as it happened.

Mr. SipSwoosh and I get together with David and Catherine several times a year. On each occasion, whether it’s at our house in London or theirs in Cambridge, wine takes centre stage.  Sure, we eat brilliantly. We’re all good cooks. But in reality, the wine is the thing. And, with only a fledgling cellar, I reckon I’m getting the better end of the deal at the moment.

David has a collection of wines dating back to the 80s. Mostly French, much of it left-bank Bordeaux, Sauternes and Barsac. Some is inherited. Some given. Some bought. Luckily, he wants to share these wines with friends.

Just Peachy

On this occasion, I brought the aperitif and plumped for Prosecco. The good stuff, mind. You have to do a bit of research (see this post on Italian Wine Blog Vinissima for a quick guide) and be prepared to pay upwards of £15.

I tracked down a boutique single-vineyard Garbara Cartizze at Philglas & Swiggot.

Despite saying “extra dry” on the bottle, this tasted of fragrant white peaches – almost Bellini-like. It was floral too but with a refreshing steeliness lingering in the background and a hint of citrus peel on the finish. Fuller in body than your usual Prosecco, it had persistent, fine bubbles too. Classy.

“Ideal aperitif wine, ” declared David.

He then opened the Leoville Barton and a 2005 Mas de Daumas Gassac Rouge, a Cabernet-based wine that the Berry Bros. & Rudd website describes as ”the Lafite of Languedoc.” despite being a Vin de Pays.

The Leoville Barton tasted more advanced than the one I’d drunk a few weeks before, probably because the storage conditions were different. The intense blackcurrant flavours had softened and fragrant black plums dominated along with cedar and graphite (David thought it had a 4B lead pencil taste, Mr. SipSwoosh a 6B).

Silky and structured with integrated tannins and good acidity, I thought this was bang-on ready to drink. Super.

(Wine) Cellar Beware!

The Mas de Daumas Gassac Rouge was dull in comparison. On the nose, some brambles, earth and a whiff of cow dung (probably Brett). It tasted of dark fruits, gravel, green stalks. But this particular bottle lacked the intensity we were anticipating, and seemed flat even though it was only six years old.

(Two days later I had a 2006 at the Oxford Mal. A completely different experience. Vibrant flavours of blackcurrants supported by thyme, rosemary, cedar and, as the evening wore on, I could taste earth and mushrooms. Good acidity and firm but not overly drying tannins, the ’06 brought out the sweetness in a sirloin steak.)

We didn’t finish it the ’05 . We had a 1988 Château de Malle Sauternes to move on to…

Ch. de Malle is one of the top Sauternes producers in Bordeaux (classed a second growth). David’s concern was that this bottle hadn’t been stored properly for part of its life. But it danced out of the bottle, singing with flavours of oranges, blossom, acacia honey, straw and hazelnuts. Quite light in body compared with other Sauternes I’ve drunk, it was a fab match with fresh passion fruit. We were all sad we only had a half-bottle.

It was a great night with a chance to drink some iconic wines, and further improve my wine knowledge.

I look forward to the rematch.

Much more has been said in defence of Guy Woodward’s comments – my favourite being from Anthony Rose in The Independent. Touché.

However, I think Old Parn’s blog raised good issues about the whole image of wine. Let’s not lay the entire blame at the supermarkets’ doors. Let’s look instead at the British attitude to wine instead.

Braying Boys and Convenience Buyers

In my experience, there are the braying boys who think good wine only comes from Bordeaux or Burgundy. They can reel off a gazillion producer names but have never ventured beyond the French borders (and, sorry, it is always men).

On the other end of the scale are those who see wine as a convenience item like toilet paper and pasta, and cannot see why crushing a few grapes should cost so much money.

I know I am considered a snob by some people because I would rather stay sober at a party than drink a poor quality wine that’s on offer, chosen for price not taste. Most people will drink it for the alcohol content, not the flavour. That’s their choice. And it’s my choice not to.

It just doesn’t have to be this way…

I do believe you can find cheap and decent-tasting wines that can be drunk on their own – and get you plastered if that’s your goal.

Two that spring to mind are Sainsbury’s Vin de Pays des Côtes de Gascogne at £4.39 and La Pradera Monastrell at £4.99 from the Co-operative. They’re not the best wines in the world – they’re just pretty damn drinkable for the price.

It does require a bit of research and effort to find wines like these. Like going to the supermarket, making notes of the wines you think will do and checking out reviews online. (Hey – maybe even as you shop!)

Or going somewhere where there’s staff to give advice. Like Majestic. Which has a lot of offers. And provides glasses.

Or just buy online in the first place using sites with customer reviews. Majestic and M&S are good for larger stores.

With independent retailers, there are catches. You may need to pay for delivery. Or pay a one-off joining fee. But, over the long term, I think this is a far less risky strategy than buying into a three-for-£10 offer on a wine you have heard nothing about.

On a quick search at time of writing of online retailers I know and trust, I found four whites, three reds and a rosé for under £5 on Find Wine. There are 10 wines under £5 at the Wine Society.

Naked Wines has an Umbrian Pinot Grigio (it can be quite nice you know) and a Cab Sauv/Sangiovese blend under its Back Door range for £4.99 . These look like cleanskins to me – when a producer has made too much wine so sells the surplus off unlabelled to protect the price of his or her range. Both get the thumbs up from customers.

Drink Global, Buy Local

I would like to champion independent shops, but their margins are higher. They don’t have the purchasing power of the supermarkets and so it’s a stretch to offer a reasonable wine for less than £5. Though they’ll have plenty in the £7-10 range and, if you have a great local independent wine shop, supporting it is a great investment in your community, high street or town.

One of the biggest complaints about spending a few pounds more on a bottle of wine is that it doesn’t always guarantee quality. I wasted £9 on a very mediocre rosé recently. You don’t get that with toilet paper.

But there is so much good advice out there online (a lot of it NOT in “poncy” wine language) you can still save money and take less of a leap-of-faith.

Just like researching a hotel before you book, drinking better wine takes a wee bit of planning. Is that so difficult?

Scrap that. Let’s try again.

It wasn’t perhaps the most auspicious of starts to an evening of fine wines, as violence erupted nearby.

How do you start a post about an indulgent night at a wine dinner in the heart of the City when all around were rioters and looters?

Answer? You write it as if nothing happened. Not because you don’t feel or think anything, especially for people caught up in the thick of it. But because at times like this, many of us crave normality. I certainly do.

Though drinking these wines isn’t exactly normal for me.

However, I’d been invited to try the new 1 Lombard Street Wine Society, a series of monthly tastings and dinners at a restaurant that’s been around since 1998.

Tonight’s dinner was called ” The 1 Lombard Street Cellar Greats”. Sommelier Matthew Mawtus was picking and presenting some of his favourite wines with Chateau Leoville Barton 2004 as the highlight.

An Overlooked Vintage

Now, 2004 isn’t one of the supposed stellar Bordeaux vintages. It was a tricky year weather wise. But, if you want to try wine from one of the top Chateau at a reasonably affordable price (c.£60 retail in this case), then this is the year to try. As Jancis Robinson succinctly put it, 2004 “offers refreshment, rather than opulence” adding that St-Juliens (of which Leoville Barton is one) “were simply classic, well-balanced claret.” A benchmark then.

Matthew offered his own take on the vintage: “2004 is a bit of an underrated vintage, and is overlooked by a lot of people,” he told us, explaining that this vintage had more Merlot in the blend than usual for a left bank wine, which tend to be mostly Cabernet.

“I personally believe this is a real claret vintage and I think it is absolutely delicious.”

I did too. Still young, the smells and flavours of cooked blackcurrants was intense, though I could also taste some pencil lead, plums and dried herbs. The tannins felt very integrated too. With some sweet, new season lamb noisettes in a ragu of wild mushrooms and herbs, it was enchantingly soft yet fresh and a brilliant match with the food.

Precise, Lean And Honest

Despite all this, it was the preceding white Burgundy, a Chassagne-Montrachet 2007 from Domaine Louis Carillon, that stole my heart.

Matthew explained how 2007 was a cooler year, producing more “precise, lean and honest” whites – adding that though many of these are striking, most aren’t for keeping.

Clean-tasting and superbly balanced (fruit, acid, oak all in harmony), it had appealing grassy and vegetal notes behind the lemon aromas and a gentle roundness which hugged the bottom of my mouth. A gorgeous wine to drink. Good match too with the calf’s sweetbreads, langoustine and tarragon velouté.

Matthew chose a 1993 Disznókő Tokaji 5 Puttonyos to go with tarte Tatin, vanilla ice cream and balsamic caramel. While the caramel picked up the toffee flavours in the Tokaji, and the perky acidity complemented the apples, I thought the sweetness of the dessert pulled rank over the rich, nutty flavours of the Tokaji. Both were good on their own.

The masterstroke of the evening was matching a sweet, walnut-tasting 10-year-old Marco di Bartoli Marsala with cheeses.

As it was being poured, Matthew gave us a clear instruction: ”Every time you go out to eat, order a fortified wine and make a sommelier very happy.” And with an alcohol by volume of around 18%, quite a few of us were feeling pretty happy by that stage.

A Lonely Canapé

If I had any quibble about the evening, it was that we only got one canapé with our rich, toasty Mumm Cuvee Lalou 1998 – and that was just before we headed downstairs to the cosy red private room for the dinner.

But with everything else going on in London that evening, and the unpleasant journeys some people must have had home from the dinner, consider this is an observation. Not a complaint.

Note: Had I paid, this dinner would have cost £85. For the quality of the wine and the food, I think that is impressive.

Unlike a number of other wine dinners I’ve attended, 1 Lombard Street is – for the moment – doing themed dinners rather than one around a specific producer. Next month, there’s a Burgundy dinner and in October, there’s one based on Italian wines. You could argue that this makes matching the menu with the wines easier, as you have a greater variety of wines to choose from – and (I assume) greater familiarity with them. It will be interesting to see if this changes when they organise a dinner with a range of wines from a single producer.

Here’s another view of the same evening from The Wine Sleuth.