Tuesday 25 June 2013

Wedding wines


One of the Great Wines Online ‘family’ got married this weekend! We ensured that the bride, her Mum and the bridesmaids, could enjoy a bottle or three of the Prosecco while having their nails done the day before.... and we made sure they left us some for toasts on the day!

We designed a label and personalised it with the bride and groom’s names, the date and a little message – they were thrilled.

A few weeks ago, we ran a tasting – around the kitchen table of course – to choose which wines we thought would be best to serve at the reception. One of our favourite whites is the Mooiplaas Peach Chenin Blanc – but we decided that this would be just a little heavy for a hot summer’s day (ever the optimists). So, we opted for the Picpoul from the Languedoc,Terrasses de la Mar. This will suit most tastes, we felt, and complement the food too.

For a red wine, we wanted something a little spicy but light – so another of our favourites – the Bean Pinotage from South Africa, was the wine of choice.

Fortunately, the weather was kind and it was a wonderful day - and the wines went down a treat!

A toast to the happy couple!

Tuesday 18 June 2013

White Chocolate delight

Yes, it’s true, all you chocolate lovers – brace yourselves! Our friends at Rocland Estates have come up with two White Chocolate Box products!

The Moscato – a sparkling wine – features a rather quirky beer bottle–type closure, called a ‘crown closure’ in the trade. Although rather sweet for some of us, chilled and served with pudding it becomes an absolute delight.


The Chocolate Box Sauvignon/Semillon – aka ‘Zesty Chocolate’ – lives up to its name. I’m not usually a fan of Semillon, but this was a pleasant surprise to me – a very pleasant surprise in fact. It makes a real change to taste a so-called ‘new world’ sauvignon that is not overly gooseberry and cats’ pee-like, sorry!  I have friends who will only drink Sauvignon from New Zealand – but just wait ‘til they taste this, I will convert them, I am sure. This is a much more subtle, gentle flavour – and we love it!

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Italian memories…

Now the sunny weather is finally here in the UK, we have started chilling some of the new whites… and then drinking them of course! We don’t chill them too much – we need to be able to taste them!

It is always a pleasure to taste again some of the wines that we selected a while ago, so when they arrive in the warehouse we re-acquaint ourselves.

This week, we were reminded, when we opened a bottle of the Villa Molina Soave, DOC Verona of a wonderful trip to Verona last year to visit our great friend Andrea Sartori.

Sartori, is a leading name in fine wines from northeast Italy's Veneto region.
It began back in 1898 when Pietro Sartori bought Villa Maria, a vineyard with a small cellar attached, in the heart of the Veneto region's Valpolicella district.

Today the winery is still at Villa Maria – a wonderful rambling chateau-style building, with gardens and even a chapel in the garden where generations of Sartori (very romantically) get married!

Today, Andrea Sartori, Pietro's great-grandson, is at the helm and has built the most fabulous cellar and bottling operation and a ‘library’ where they store every year’s vintage. Of course, our favourite bit was the tasting room! We were  
privileged to taste a range of wines there including a limited edition sparkling made just for the Verona Opera house, as well as this delicious Soave. It is a bargain at £47.94 per case of six bottles, that’s equivalent to £7.99 per bottle.


Wednesday 5 June 2013

Successfully cellaring your wine collection

There is nothing worse – as happened to a dear friend of ours recently – than when opening a treasured bottle of wine (in his case a Meursault) you discover all you can do is pour it down the sink! While talking to friend and colleague Lucy Hargreaves of Spiral Cellars recently, we suggested she share some of her thoughts on storing wine successfully so that you can enjoy it at its best even if it’s been kept for a while. 


Wine is a living product and as such needs to be treated appropriately to ensure it is enjoyed at its best.

Creating the right conditions is the key to prolonging the life of your wine collection, including the correct temperature and humidity ranges and a dark environment, which is vibration free.

Temperature is the most critical aspect in storing wine; if it becomes too warm it speeds up the ageing process and the wine will lose its vibrancy, becoming old and flabby. Wine is happy in environments where any temperature changes are very gradual, such as slow fluctuations between summer and winter temperatures in below-ground cellars. The ideal temperature range is around 8-18°C and, as long as there are no sudden fluctuations, the wine will be happy at either end of the scale. The impact of high temperatures on wine can be catastrophic - individual wine collectors in France felt the full effects of extreme temperatures on their wines when the heat wave of 1976 struck. There was no commercial way of storing wine at that time and, unless a house had an existing cellar the wine was often stacked up in the garage, an unprotected space where temperatures can fluctuate easily and frequently. Many bottles were tipped down the sink that year, in some cases no doubt followed by the owner’s tears.

Humidity is also key to wine storage. By storing wine bottles horizontally and in a slightly damp atmosphere the corks aren’t able to dry out and so air can’t enter the bottle and oxidise the wine. This is of course a balancing act in itself as an environment that is too humid can damage the bottle labels, and so identification and display are affected. One may assume that the success of selling on the wine may also be hindered, but a collection for investment should be stored in a bonded warehouse rather than at home, to avoid paying duty and VAT but also to help prove the provenance of the wine.

Direct sunlight on wine creates adverse chemical reactions that can spoil it. Aside from the packaging of wine, often in dark green bottles, which helps to prevent the impact of light, collectors can also protect the wine by ensuring it is kept in a dark environment. Ideally, this should be within professional storage, whether that be a wine cabinet or a cellar, as both have been designed to eliminate this risk.


Vibration of wine is likely to accelerate the ageing process, as any movement disturbs the sediments in the bottle and disrupts how it would age naturally. A stable environment is therefore critical so that, once laid down, the wine is then not disturbed until it is ready to be drunk. Above-ground storage, such as cabinets, is subject to everyday floor movements as residents walk around, whereas below-ground cellars are more stable as they are cushioned by the surrounding earth. I have heard many horror stories over the years of collectors storing their wine under the stairs, in the garage or even in the conservatory, and each time they have opened bottles to find the wine is spoilt. These areas of the home all receive regular, and sometimes sudden, fluctuations in temperature and are usually dry environments with heating and damp proofing contributing. They may be dark spaces but are rarely vibration-free.

One area where many homeowners consider storing their collections is in fact a main contributor to spoilt wine – the kitchen. Wine racking built into cabinetry may offer an ideal place to stack bottles so they are close to hand but this is usually the warmest room in the house, with temperatures changing on a daily basis as the oven is used and then switched off. If you have bottles stored in this way, please move them to a cold corner of a north-facing room now! And then think about professional wine storage.

There are various factors to consider when deciding on which professional wine solution is most suitable for your needs, from the size of your existing wine collection and how much you intend to collect annually, to whether the wine storage should be a behind-the-scenes operation or a feature of the room. With all of this in mind, a reliable, proven and aesthetic solution is required.

There are a range of options available, from wine cabinets and temperature controlled rooms to full basement conversions. Basement cellars are the traditional solution and offer the perfect conditions, but can be an extremely costly undertaking. Wine cabinets provide easy access to a small collection of wine but are subject to failure, just like temperature controlled rooms, if there is a power cut. Not only does this cause the temperature to increase suddenly, but if the owner is away the wine will sit in warm temperatures for a dangerously long time.

The other end of the scale can be just as disastrous – I was once told by a client how, whilst on holiday, their wine cabinet failed and got stuck in freeze mode. The owners came home to bottles of wine resembling giant lollypops!

Just like a traditional cellar, a Spiral Cellar makes the most of the earth’s attributes but is a cost-effective and maintenamce free.

The Original Spiral Cellar, which works well in more traditional or country-style properties, is based on the original design introduced in the UK in 1981 and incorporates natural grey concrete, with a range of depths up to 3m. The White Spiral Cellar features smooth luminous white concrete and incorporates larger bins in each of its depths to allow for up to 1,870 bottles. Not only does it provide more storage but it also looks great, particularly as part of contemporary interior schemes. Spiral Cellars has recently expanded its range to include the external Garden Cellar, the cost-effective Essential Cellar and a range of build-your-own cellars for the experienced DIY enthusiast.


www.spiralcellars.co.uk  T: 0845 241 2768

Friday 19 April 2013

Uncorking our blog with news from Cloof


We’re uncorking our new blog with an interesting piece from Cloof, the outstanding South African winemaker. If you’re not familiar with Cloof, here’s a little background to what makes their wines so good:


How Cloof began…
Vineyards were first planted at Cloof in 1966, with additional plantings in 1976 and 1987. In that time Darling, adjacent to the Swartland, was better known as a wheat farming region. A cellar was completed in time for the 1998 harvest, which allowed the first release of Cloof wines during the course of 1999. The vineyard area has been significantly increased, with plantings every year from 1998 to 2000, bringing the total to 145 hectares. The 220 hectares of vineyards at neighbouring Burghers Post are under the same ownership, giving us unparalleled access to (and control over) top quality fruit.

In 2003 Darling was declared a wine region in its own right in recognition of the unique style and quality of wines grown here.

The prevailing south-easterly wind protects the fruit from rot, and at night cloaks the vineyards in chilly, flavour-preserving air blown in from the Atlantic Ocean. The bush vines provide a canopy which shades the grapes from direct sunlight. The smaller crop results in smaller berries with thicker skins, and much more concentrated flavours.

Cloof 's First Ever 100% Merlot 
The Cloof Merlot 2011 is a full bodied wine with a deep dark red colour and an intense nose of forest berries and violets. This Merlot grape was grown under extreme weather conditions from shy bearing bush vines, yielding only two tons per hectare.

Barrel maturation took place for 15 months in French oak of which 65% was new, giving the wine a classic, well-balanced tannin structure.

A True "Darling by origin, Darling by nature" creation.
 
The history of Merlot…
The earliest recorded mention of Merlot was in the notes of a local Bordeaux official who in 1784
labelled wine made from the grape in the lbournais region as one of the area’s best. The name comes from the Occitan word ‘merlot’ which means young blackbird. ‘Merle’ is the French for several kind of thrushes including blackbirds. The names was thought to have been given either because of the grape’s beautiful dark blue colour of the blackbirds’ fondness for grapes!