S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

Call me pretentious but I think I’m finally getting a handle on why French wine is superior to New World wines… its like true beauty and the mystery of attraction versus plain pumped-up glamour.

I opened a bottle of Bouchard-Finlayson “Hannibal” 2004 last night - a South African recommended to me when I took a recent trip to Handford Wines up in Holland Park. Not a cheap bottle by any means, but I deemed my last night at home before this tour burst reason enough to open it. And there it was… what now seems to me to be a New World phenomenon - the bouquet of a “designed wine”. Every last detail thought out, from the precise ratios of varietals to the perfect plummy colour in the glass. It seemed to me like a glamour model who had been under the surgeon’s knife… and sure enough, as the night wore on, there wasn’t much going on upstairs. The wine was one-dimensional, and did nothing in the glass throughout the evening.

Now French wine is different. They definitely let the “terroir” do the talking - that ancient and mysterious combination of earth, land aspect, weather, climate - and sheer luck has its part to play too. And sometimes the wine may end up a buck-toothed straggly character, a bit skinny, but with a wicked and wonderful smile that takes your breath away. Or like Haruki Murakami’s character in “A Wild Sheep Chase” - a model, utterly unremarkable in every respect except that when she showed her ears, to the beholder, time stood still.

I spent two hours in “Le Savour Club” in Paris with the fabulous Klaus - a man who knew his stuff, make no mistake. I was in to buy some Burgundy, and it took in conversations about history, geology, geography, personalities and a certain element of magic before I was able to make a choice of which six bottles to take home. I will have to go back in November to buy the 2005 bottle for Luka’s collection - I have a plan to buy him one bottle of something exceptional every year of his life, starting of course in 2005. This year I have opted for the Château Palmer 2005, which has just been bottled… I do regret not having bought a case en primeur but there you go.