Jefford's eloquent take of the European 20 point system

Hugh Johnson quoted Andrew Jefford's description of the 20 point system commonly used in Europe. 0-7 equals "disagreeable or faulty wine", whilst 7.5-10 are wines which are "sound, but dull or boring, of no character or appeal". Those with 10.5-12 points are "enjoyable, simple and straightforward", whilst wines scoring 12.5-14 are "good, but with no outstanding features". Those wines making 14.5-16.5 points are "very good, with some outstanding features". Johnson remarked that this is as far as where most wines and most drinkers need to go. Wines with 17-18.5 points are "outstanding, of great beauty and articulacy" whilst a top-scoring wine (with 19-20 points) is "a great wine, of spellbinding beauty and resonance, leaving the drinker with a sense of wonder." Great and eloquent descriptions!

Georgian wine in clay vessels

I saw these at the Georgian Pavilion at last year's Wine Fair. I suppose they underlined the long history of wine making in Georgia. These small clay vessels, shaped like amphorae of ancient times emphasizes that wine was produces there before glass bottles became an everyday utensil. The fact that some wine was still fermented in clay vessels (see earlier blog) also bore testament to their longstanding traditions. After all, was not the water-turned-into-wine (from the account of the wedding at Cana in St John's Gospel) drawn from stoneware jars which are basically larger versions of something like these?

Glass bottles stopped with cork came into common use probably in the late 17th and early 18th century, with a description of a contraption which we would probably call a corkscrew being described in 1681. Wines were generally shipped in bulk for ageing and bottling by the importer or merchant until very recently. Michael Broadbent noted that even in his early days in the wine trade a lot of knowledge was expected in relation to handling and bottling bulk wine. "Mis en bouteille en domaine /au chateau" is a relatively recent phenomenum even for fine wines. BTW, the word butler is derived from the French "bouteille" (bottle) and was the chief male servant in a household, who would be entrusted with the task of looking after and serving the wines in aristocratic homes.

Another side to colheita madeiras

This is a colheita Madeira not made from the four "noble' varieties. This wine is based on the "chameleon" grape Tinta Negra Mole, blended with Complexa and Triunfo. Frasqueira (vintage) Madeiras can only be varietals of the four "noble" varieties and blends can only be colheitas. Tinta Negra Mole is considered the workhorse grape of Madeira, which can produce wines in the style of the noble varietals. On its own it produces pale sweet wines, so quite often it is blended with other grapes as in this case. Complexa is a crossing of a Castelao x Bouschet Petit with Muscat Hamburg, and produces wines of deeper colour and lower tannins than Tinta Negra Mole. Triunfo is a csimilar crossing to Complexa, being Castelao crossed with Muscat Hamburg.

What of the wine? A golden tea colour, the nose was sweet and smoky with hint of preserved bean curd (腐乳). The palate was sweet with ample vine fruit and nutty notes, with an acid nutty backbone running through to the finish. Nice! 

Johnson's scale for the desirability of a wine

Before Johnson wrote the piece about Scoring Points in the 2008 Pocket Wine Book, he used to offer this assessment of wines. One sniff was the minimum score, reflecting - no thanks. One sip was the next step up, with two sips expressing faint interest (or disbelief). A half glass was used to denote slight hesitation whilst a full glass meant tolerance, even general approval. Two glasses means you quite like it (or there is nothing else to drink) and three would indicate that the wine was more than acceptable. A wine warranting a four glass must have tickled your fancy, and those scored a whole bottle must have provided satisfaction. "Two bottles" is the real thumbs up and the full case (12 btls) means you're not going to miss out on it. He concluded with -the logical top score is the whole vineyard!!

Now this scale is much more about concepts. I like the idea that it is logarithmic, as nature is logarithmic too. Think of the musical scale, an octave is double the frequency of lower note and two octaves is four times. As for the idea that you like a wine so much that you go out and buy a case, well, we've done that with Chateau La Conseillante 1996!

And the score is .....

The scores awarded by various critics and organizations to different wines and vintages have become hugely important. Prices of wines can shoot up after being awarded favourable scores (especially by Robert Parker). This is especially so for the en primeur market for the so called investment wines. This mini-series deals with some observations on different scoring systems by various critics.

Hugh Johnson was not a particular fan of those Parker scores. He noted that bottle variation, position of a particular wine in the tasting line-up, ambient conditions ... etc all conspire to make the assessment less objectively than a score implies. Another concept he objected to was the implied accuracy when marks are given at the top end of a 100 point scale. One might also add that if the are different bottlings/batches with same or similar labels, then scoring could virtually be an exercise in deception (cf the Wither Hills scandal). Nevertheless score are popular and here to stay.

Koshu (grape)

Like Montepulciano, Koshu is both a place and a grape, which has caused me no end of confusion. Unlike Montepulciano, there isn't an entry in a commonly available wine book, such as Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book to tell me that this is the case. Come to think of it, information on Japanese wine is not readily forthcoming, though I suppose, Johnson has been helpfully writing that the most popular Japanese vinifera variety is the Koshu grape. If only he had written that the Koshu is a place in Yamanashi prefecture which also produces wine! (to be fair he has always mentioned Yamanashi as it is an important area for the Japanese wine industry. Well Koshu (A grape with rose coloured skin) is thought to originate in Asia Minor, traveling through the Silk Road to China and then onto Japan via Buddhist monks. Although Johnson reckoned it to have been discovered in 1186, it seemed to have been cultivated in Yamanashi prefecture since the 8th to 9th century. Usually made into off-dry and sweet styles, recently there have been efforts to make dry styles. I had the above wine at the Wines of Asia meeting of the Hong Kong chapter of the Wine Century Club, together with a few others made from the same grape. It was looking it up after the wine tasting that I managed to sort out this confusion.

International or indigenous?

For a place with such a oenologically diverse landscape as Italy, this is a question that can tax the minds of the winery owner, especially if he is at the point of replanting. The classical wines have built their reputation on wines made from what flourishes locally, yet foreign interlopers like the grapes comprising the Bordeaux cepage have also made it to the top and challenge the established order of things. I suppose it all depends on what your passion is. The passion to prove that the old establishment is stifling creativity and new ideas resulted in the Super-Tuscans as well as rewriting the DOC rules to include them That is well exemplified by Sassicaia above.

The passion to rescue an indigenous grape from extinction as well as to prove the worth of that grape resulted in the wonderful Sagrantino di Montefalco wines of Arnaldo Caprai. In his case, the Cabernet Merlot blend he produces (aptly called the Outsider) is somewhat just less convincing than his Sagrantino wines. So I suppose the real answer (at least for the drinker) is not to choose between Italian wines made from international or indigenous grapes, but to choose the wines that are made with passion!