April Wines
The Wine and Food Diary of Giles MacDonogh
Easter was late again this year, with my birthday falling on Maundy Thursday, a day enlivened by the wilfully peculiar Rossetti Exhibition at the Tate and a sensational Turandot at the Opera House. We returned late for a picnic, a strawberry cake and a bottle of Gardet. Gardet is a reliable and good value champagne from the Montagne just south of Reims. There are still a few bottles in the house, bought for a little over £20 each before the price of champagne went through the roof. The now much lauded English sparkling wine is no cheaper mind you and in only a few cases does it challenge champagne. I had another bottle of Tesco’s English sparkling wine this month.
It It is certainly reliable and pleasantly understated in its elegant russet-apple sort of way. Compared to champagne it is now quite cheap at £21 (and if you are quick, it is only £16).
I had a chat with my friend Bob in Paris recently who insisted that my older bottles of châteauneuf-du-pape would be over the hill by now, as Southern Rhone wines do not keep well. I don’t have so many châteauneufs, but on Easter Sunday I pulled out the oldest to see if he was right. I am pleased to say he wasn’t: the 1990 Grand Tinel was marvellous: liquorice, red fruits, citrus… but it faded half an hour or so after I decanted it. Given we were four at table, however, that was hardly a problem. The problem was that I didn’t have a second bottle.
Grand Tinel is not a well-known châteauneuf. I think I discovered it in the early nineties and I have almost always been happy with the wines. That being said, I have not tasted any recent vintages.
Here in Britain we are in a recessionary world where things that we liked or loved and were used to eating or drinking tend to disappear at a moment’s notice. Restaurants are dying like flies. Wines we took for granted are no longer imported; the only people sitting pretty are those who put wine away for a rainy day. One thing that has gone from my part of London has been the many cheap Portuguese tascas and grocers’ shops where I bought everyday wines. The one survivor is Ferreira in Camden Town, but its food range is small and wine margins tend to be on the expensive side. To celebrate Walpurgisnacht at the end of the month, I bought a bottle of the 2019 Bacalhôa (the former ‘JP’) Monte das Anfora from them. It was a truly delicious Alentejo wine combining Aragonez, Trincadeira and Alfrocheiro. The alcohol was hefty, but that might have come as a relief after over an hour of an austere missa cantata at the local Dominican Priory.
Portugal was the big treat last month. I went to a Moscatel de Setúbal tasting, and rediscovered one of the great sweet wines of Europe. Things appear to have got a lot better since I visited the region for my Portuguese wine book twenty and more years ago. In the past there wasn’t much more than J M da Fonseca (who are said to have invented the wine in the 1830s) and JP in Azeitão. The London tasting listed ten estates now making exquisite wines from the white Moscatel (Muscat á gros grains) or the purple Moscatel Roxo (petits grains) and in general, both. As luck would have it, first up was Bacalhôa (JP). It was a good place to start, as I was given a revision tutorial. The wines were ‘mistelles’, the fermentation stopped by adding the fermenting juice to either neutral spirit or brandy. The grapes are picked early to make sure there is still some acidity. Most contain between 140 and 150 grams of residual sugar. Wines are kept on their skins for six to eight months to give them a little bitter, slightly stalky taste.
Young whites are floral and have a pronounced taste of apricots. The Roxo is more balsamic, tarry and reminiscent of liquorice. Bacalhôa ages its five year-old wine in whisky casks. Wood-ageing is important. You may still find highly prized wines labelled ‘Torna Viagem’ (‘return journey’) barrels of which have crossed the equator to Brazil and back before bottling. At ten years in cask they are near perfection: the Roxo like some heavenly orange marmalade, the white retaining a cooler nose of fresh apricots.
The Adega de Pegões is a co-operative founded back in Salazar’s time. It makes very good value, quality wines. The white non-vintage has a lovely apricot aroma, but the best is the 2015 Roxo (five years in oak): liquorice and manuka honey. It costs all of about £13.
Venâncio da Costa Lima has a gorgeous 10 year-old white with aromas of tar, orange and nougat, but even better are the Roxos: the 2018 with its peaches and honey nose, and the stunning 2015, which was much darker and smells of leather, liquorice and oranges.
Adega Camolas was also good: the 2019 white reserve has a stalkiness followed through with fresh apricots, caramel, toffee and butter; and the wilder, more muscular 2018 Roxo has aromas of oranges and marmalade. The five year-old wine was quite spirity. Herdade de Gâmbia’s non-vintage white was fruity, light and lyrical. Its tablemate, Casa Ermelinda Freitas had older wines: a ten year-old white (cream, leather, liquorice and marmalade) and a considerably more spicy Roxo. The 20 year-old white was very zesty, very orange marmalade.
The Sociedade Vinícola de Palmela is another co-operative representing some 15% of the region. Their best was a 10 year-old Roxo, with a good redolence of herbs. Being where it all began means José Maria da Fonseca have the oldest wines. Those labelled DSF are named after the winemaker Domingos Soares Franco. They use different spirits to stop the fermenting Muscat. I found the best of these was a citrusy 2007 Roxo made with native aguardente. It was followed by 20, 30 and 40 year-old Alambres. All three were magnificent, and the 40 the best – butter, herbs and cream.
Nothing disappointed me, but if I were to take a punt on just one house, I might choose the Quinta do Piloto. The 2016 white is made in old brandy or whisky casks – butter, orange, and apricot blossom sprang to mind; while the 2016 Roxo was more appley. A 10 year-old white had been brought up in a chestnut-wood cask using a ‘mother’ starter, a bit of leather joined the smell of a pastry kitchen and a lot of orange zest. Just 1,000 bottles were made. And then a sublime Roxo: butter, cake and oranges. Really, who needs dessert when you have a wine like this?
