August is usually a quiet month at Uncorked. With many of our customers on holiday, it's a time for what we call summer jobs, those essential administrative tasks that underpin the business but which we don't have time for when we're busier filling orders (things like internet browsing, checking social media and bickering). This year, though, with several colleagues determined to bankrupt their allocation of annual leave, those of us left here have been kept quite busy, and my summer internet browsing is very behind schedule.
What we've been drinking
The bottle of Casa Castillo Las Gravas I drank brought me a mental image of a rocky Spanish plain shimmering in a heat haze. For a wine from a hot part of Spain in a hot year, there's an immense sense of minerality to it. It's made from slow-to-ripen, old Monastrell vines planted in gravel soils, and they soak up the heat like a Spanish pensioner watching the world go by from her stoop.
Andrew says that with autumn fruits and salami, 2020 Bruna Grimaldi Camilla is all about the turning season. For a young-ish Barolo, the tannins aren’t too fierce, and this is perfect drinking now.
Jabu loved his bottle of Roland Champion Eclat de Craie, a smart Champagne with plenty of bready, autolytic character from three years on the lees. He notes approvingly the low dosage of 4g/l, which puts it into extra brut territory. For some reason Jabu seems to look down on Champagnes with a high dosage, which is odd since he favours a high dosage of sugar in his tea.
Niall had a bottle of 2022 Lismore Cuvée Blanc, which is mainly Roussanne, with a little Marsanne and some incongruous Chardonnay. But it works; the rich undertow is beautifully balanced against a cooler freshness, the orange zestiness against a creamy texture. Niall also highly rated a bottle of 2021 Arinto dos Açores, ('Island Life', below).
So good we sent it 4 times (...and counting)
I am modestly proud of the 2016 Billecart-Salmon email offer I wrote. My wife even complimented me on it, which she rarely does. All our stock of bottles and magnums of 2016 Billecart has sold, so the offer can be counted a success. We set the email client to send the offer at 10am on Sunday 9 August. It did so, and some orders came in.
Unfortunately, at 11am the email client sent the offer again. And at 12 noon, it sent the offer a third time. Before it could do so a fourth time, Ed had to interrupt the sanctity of his Sunday, throwing down his hymnbook and running home from church to shut it down. God forgive him.
And that should have been that. But at 10am the next Monday morning, our email inboxes began to fill with out-of-office messages. The email client had turned itself back on and was sending our 2016 Billecart email, yet again. It managed to get to about a third of our mailing list before Ed, in a cold sweat and using language his vicar would not approve of, uninstalled it.
So, many apologies that you received the same email from us either three or four times. While it was a good email, we hope you never see it again.
Island life: the Azores
What’s halfway between Portugal and New Jersey? Answer: the Azores Islands. This exposed, north Atlantic archipelago is an autonomous territory of Portugal. In winemaking terms, by far the most important island is Pico. Pico is dominated by a huge volcano, also called Pico, which is Portugal's highest peak. With thin, volcanic soils laid over a basalt bedrock, precious little of agricultural value except vines can be cultivated here. The vines shelter from battering sea spray and Atlantic winds in a unique landscape of small, walled corrals which has been given UNESCO World Heritage Status. In most parts of the winemaking world, the last thing a grower wants before harvest is rain, but in the Azores they welcome it, as it washes salt off the grape skins. (While the word 'saline' is often used approvingly in wine tasting notes, most of us don't actually want salt in our wine).
There are three noble indigenous grape varieties on the island: Arinto dos Açores, Verdelho, and Terrantez do Pico. The large majority of quality wine production goes through the Ilha do Pico co-operative and its 280 members. Their 2021 Arinto dos Açores is a very fine expression of this island variety, unmistakeably coastal, with a finish that builds like a good Burgundy. 2020 Rola Pipa is a blend of all three indigenous varieties, aged on the lees with no oak influence, for a rich but mineral texture. It was brought to the UK by sailing ship in the authentically old way: rolled in half-full barrels into the sea, floated out to the waiting boats, and hoisted on board, where the barrels were topped up. With their brooding, slightly smoky minerality, both these wines are also showcase examples of volcanic terroir wines.
Le Bordeaux-bashing, ce n'est pas cool
Planque is a lovely restaurant built into old railway arches in Haggerston. The décor is inspired, with airy hangings bringing a sense of space and light to the rough brick arches. The food is excellent, with an identity I would pigeonhole as contemporary French bistro. Lobster rice, a scallop tart and a subtly cheese-flavoured ice cream all live in my memory. The vibe on the evening we dined there was affluent hipster (so yes, I diluted that by walking in). The wine list leans into natural and low-intervention, and the most obvious among the few overlaps with our list at Uncorked is the Château de Bonnezeaux wines. The wine list starts French and goes through Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, Loire, Jura, Savoie, the Rhône, Languedoc, Roussillon, Corsica, and Provence, with some bottles carefully asterisked to denote white wines with perceptible skin maceration. But have you noticed the omission? I asked the staff why they didn't have any Bordeaux at all on their otherwise diverse French list. Their flummoxed reactions suggested to me that this had never occurred to them before. They had to check the list to make sure. Then they disappeared behind one of the drapes for a private confab. Eventually our server emerged and blamed the boss, which is an admittedly excellent excuse I have often used.
Bordeaux is sometimes perceived as bourgeois and elitist, or else fuddy-duddy and old-fashioned. Bordeaux-bashing is a thing in some quarters, and (especially in France) Bordeaux gets excluded from some trendy, natural wine-focused restaurants. But Bordeaux has got where it is because it is one of the great wine terroirs of the world, and with some 6,000 producers (most small, family-run, and struggling to make ends meet) it is also much more diverse than many people realise. There are more bargains than you might think (especially since hipster Chenin Blanc isn’t always that cheap). At only £36.95/bottle on our shelf, 2020 Berliquet is a phenomenal St-Emilion. 2016 Lynch-Moussas is a 10-year-old fifth growth from the great 2016 vintage, and appears on our shelves at only £41.95/bottle. I defy anyone who likes red wine not to adore silky, sensuous 2020 La Pointe, drop-dead delicious Pomerol at £49.95/bottle.
Champagne draw: and the winner is
Every month we run a prize draw, and the winner gets a magnum of Champagne. To enter, you need to be on our mailing list, and you need to make a purchase in store. Every purchase counts as one entry in the draw, so you improve your chances by making more purchases. Congratulations to this month's winner Lucy, who takes home a magnum of Roederer Collection.
Hope to see you soon on Copthall Avenue. /NT
