Uncle Richard's Grapes revisited

I have always been fond of saying that where civilisation went so did the vine. I often mention the Greeks and Romans. I round off with European 'civilisation' colonising the New World. Sure didn't Van Riebeeck bring himself and the vine to South Africa both at the same time!

Kinky Friedman has a title called Elvis, Jesus & Coca Cola. It's a reference to the fact that these are the three most recognised brands on the globe. Nice to believe that Jesus can lay claim to being a celeb wine maker (the Cana gig) as well as to bringing the whole wine thing into mainstream religous culture. On the other hand things do seem to have changed since the Romans....

This brings me in an untidy fashion around to a modern day vine pilgrim. A possible harbinger of an ancient civilisation; a religous believer in the inherant value of the vine as a symbol of self and place within the Elvis, Jesus and CocaCola world! I refer to Uncle Richard.

Regular Readers, God bless 'em all, will remember a column I wrote in '04 about Uncle Richard's grapes. I bared my innermost uncivil thoughts in that column. I expressed envy and jealousy towards the quality of Uncle Richard's Black Muscat grown oustside in the southern suburbs of Dublin. Ireland; as John Prine would say.

Oh Boy, did they look good.

Uncle Richard had a natural heat sink at the back end of his patio. It made the back wall of my garden in Celbridge seem like a scene from a frozen gulag. I was fond of my terroir but try as I might I just could not ripen my grapes as well as Uncle Richard could.

By harvest time Uncle Richard invariably had grapes galore to make a few bottles of vintage Blackrock. I made jam.















See what I mean! That collander is my total 2005 harvest.

Last week Uncle Richard upped sticks and moved house. As with explorers of old he left his home vineyard behind. Along with his prized possessions he carefully packed a rooted new vine. When I saw it last week it was growing well. It had been lovingly tucked into a pint glass filled to a quarter with brown slimy water. This baby was cut from the mother vine a few short weeks ago. It will now be transported to a new terroir. My chance has arrived.


Sure didn't it take the Romans hundreds of years to re-establish their vines into the South of France. Some would say that without religous intervention Uncle Richard may have a few problems getting his grapes up again for quite a while. And the last I heard his new place looked nothing like a closed monastery.......

The shame is it hasn't stopped raining for the last forty days and forty nights. Yesterday was St Swithans and it poured out of the heavens all evening long. All good vineyard managers will know that in forty days time I should be looking at well formed grapes! The agony. They are just tiny marbles as we speak.

I may not have a harvest at all this year. But then Uncle Richard won't have another decent return for at least three years. May be its time to bring in a consultant. That'll show him. I'll get a few RP points down while he's not looking and before anyone guesses I'll change consultants. I'll blame the changing house style on soil development, biodynamicism, a warming planet, a wettening planet, micro oxygenation.

Mondevino, I love you to pips.

Uncle Richard, my vintage has arrived.

Wine Labels Tell All.

I came across this today. I used to write a weekly column for the Cork Evening Echo....in Cork....Ireland....

Read this and then think of the fabulous Fat Bastard and not so fabulous Dogs Bollox labels! Sometimes I get it wrong!

Cork: 2005

I was handed a bottle of the Chilean Cousiño Macul Sauvignon Gris last week. Before I go any further I really need to explain that I am a grape fanatic. Sometimes complete strangers give me wines because they've been told I'm looking for obscure grape types. Feteasca, Negra Amoro, Torrontes, and the like have all found their way onto my palate. I have followed the progress of Sagrantino’s in Italy to Tannats from Uruguay. Then the Sauvignon Gris arrived.

Chile is, as Miguel Torres has put it, ‘a viticultural paradise’. To a large extent the vineyards in Chile are capable of growing every grape type in the world. There is an enormous range of climates and soils types and there is a virtual absence of vineyard disease. When the older vineyards were established they used cuttings from some of the finest French vineyards. The vineyards of Europe were subsequently destroyed at the end of the nineteenth century by a pest called Phylloxera. The solution to the Phylloxera problem was to graft all new vines onto resistant rootstocks of North American origin. The vineyard of Chile is the only large vineyard area of the world that has not been affected by Phylloxera.

Chile is bounded by the Andes, the Atacama desert, the Pacific Ocean and the sub Antatrctic. In addition a lot of the soil in the central valleys are immature and sandy in their nature. As it happens these are all of the conditions that phylloxera does not like. The vineyards of Chile still sport direct descendent vines from the cuttings that were used to plant them in the first place. They are not grafted, tend to be long lived and good producers.

In some cases however the original vines were incorrectly classified in the vineyards. Recently it has been established that many Chilean Merlot vines are in fact Carmenere. Strange as it seems these two vines don’t look alike in the field and produce quite different wines in the glass. While I prefer Merlot the rest of the world seems to be taking a shine to Chilean Carmenere.

Carmenere can be a haunting style of wine with lots of rich and juicy bramble textures to the fruit. There are quite a few available. Santa Rita has one of the more memorable examples.

The same thing happened to Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. Some of it was in fact another grape called Sauvignon Gris all along. The style here is a lot more akin to a Semillon with lanolin and nutty elements rather than grassy herbaceous Sauvignon Blanc notes. Cousino Macul is one of the few companies exporting a Gris. They also do a fabulous Riesling under the Dona Isadora label. Together with their flagship Antiguas Reservas Cabernet Sauvignon these labels all tell a remarkable story of triumph over the years. Triumph against disease and ignorance, climate and commerce. The story behind the grape can often be as fascinating as the story behind the winery or indeed the region of origin.

It's stories like these that make the world of wine such a fascinating place. Each one of these grapes is affected by a multitude of factors all the way to how we pour the result into our glass. Then it all changes again with the next vintage….No wonder I follow the grapes. They have personality. They have the rhythm.

As a complete aside this was a fab cover..