‘What is it with cask wines? Are they any good?’ The question arose, yet again, at a recent wine course.

I replied that casks (foil or plastic bags of wine in a cardboard box) have their place – in the home – if not in the restaurant. I argued that cask wine is a useful standby in the kitchen, in the same sense as instant coffee, tea bags, and dried milk, and not only is cask wine handy as a cooking ingredient but also for a quick snort when you don’t have an open bottle handy.

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by Walter Gilpin, Domaine de la Vivonne, 2000

- Plant a cork oak tree.

- Wait 30 years.

- Remove the bark and discard it. This is the first-growth bark.

- Wait 15 years.

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Notes from a tasting of Duckhorn wines presented by Margaret Duckhorn. They have obviously put a real whack of money into their operation and are sincere about quality. The use of various ‘duck’ names and logos is of an extent that even had me, an unrepentant punster, ‘quailing at some of the material she presented.

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Cape blends – Pinotage or not to Pinotage?

The wine industry in South Africa is absolutely free to make wine from whatever and wherever they want – that may be unique in the world, with all of the AOC, DOC and such regulation.

There is an ongoing discussion about something they call ‘Cape blends’, but rather typically, the South Africans can’t agree on just what a Cape blend is. Half of them insist that it must include Pinotage as a principal component and the other half say they will put in anything they please. These notes are from a seminar aimed at surveying this issue, tasting both sorts of wines.

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Notes from the Vancouver Wine Festival

Lunch with some of the winery principals – Ray Signorello, Christiano van Zeller of Quinta do Valle Dona Maria, Miguel Roquette of Quinta do Crasto, and Bill Spence, manager at Matua Valley in New Zealand. These lunches offer a wonderful opportunity to chat informally with knowledgeable wine people while tasting some of their wines with lunch.

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The finale to (my) Vancouver Wine Festival Experience was an excellent lunch at Le Gavroche. I sat with Pascal Apercé, the export director for Lurton.

With albacore tuna tartare, smoked salmon on a mini-blini, and honey mussel in a saffron sauce:

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The Vancouver International Wine Festival is a wonderful opportunity to meet the principals of many wineries and discuss the wine, how they are made, how they mature, and new directions for the wineries. I gritted my teeth, took 2 days off from the office, giving my secretary instructions to advise clients trying to find me that I was on a study session, and headed out to study for all I was worth. There are more than 500 wineries in South Africa today, and I was keen to add some new and interesting finds to my list of old stand-bys.

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Very pleasant briary nose, big sweet fruit on palate, backed more by acidity than tannin, long sweet finish. Great with rare rack of lamb.

Can wine lovers really trust wine writers? Are wine critics and reviewers truly independent representatives of wine consumers or are they just wine insiders with their snouts in the trough (lake?) of wine provided by a generous wine industry that is always on the lookout for a free editorial plug?

This perennial question arose again recently and in response I dug out a relevant piece I wrote on the topic in 2002. Here it is.

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On Tuesday evening the 8th of march, my friend Tomaz Srsen came to fetch me at Ljubljana airport, this was the beginning of a very tasty evening. Back in the ‘80s Tomaz used to be the bassist of Slovenia’s top rock group, today he is a wine and food critic but still looks like a bassist… he also write a guide of Slovenia’s top 110 restaurants; 110 in a country of 2 million people? It strikes me that this is the equivalent of citing the 3000 best restaurants in France. This evening we are going to one of the best, the Gostilna pri Danilu at Škofja Loka, a few kilometres outside Ljubljana.

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