Association of Wine Educators - at last I'm in AWE!

This has been along time a coming. I met with an old pal, Richard Bampfield MW, at last years London Wine and Spirits Trade Fair. Richard is the current Chairman of the Association of Wine Educators (AWE) and of course he'll grab new members whenever he can! Anyone who knows me will know that I can be a sceptical bugger.

I looked at Richard as if he had just suggested he was a newly qualified faith healer and would I mind allowing him to feel my palm! I mean come on, what do we need another bunch of associated wine gurus for?? Aren't there enough poor souls out there shelling out good money for badly managed and poorly delivered wine courses already. No. Thank. You. I am independent and I have my own high standards. I will not be dragged down by an Association. Rule by committee is a form of treachery predisposed to encourage mediocrity. Well, you can see what I mean. Truly sceptical.

Then Richard told me that it wouldn't be up to him in any case whether I was allowed to join. I would need to be assessed as a lecturer and as an educator. Prickle on the back of my neck. They examine ME?

I was hooked. I wanted to know. Was I good enough? Would I pass the test? I loved the whole idea of wine educators being assessed as to whether they could educate! This was a first and long overdue.

Well wouldn't you believe it. The Rword hit hard last year and I couldn't fill two of my Kevin Ecock's Wine Courses! Anyhow this year I was examined. I passed and now I have joined. Thanks to everyone involved.

As I am currently writing a piece for Checkout Magazine on the current state of wine education in Ireland I won't continue writing about it here. I like to give my editors first dibs on my info. Suffice to say I have been a long time fan of continual wine education for everyone associated with the wine trade. Sadly I have not always been supported by those higher up the wine/food chain than me. I remember once being asked to cost the sales peoples time away from their job to taste a few new wines to a portfolio. The result was that the sales guys were allowed to come in after work on a voluntary basis. Many never tasted the wines they were selling. It really didn't matter. After all their boss didn't care for or indeed see the value in their education. The result was that many very good wines idled or rotted away in the warehouse. Sure, wasn't a Refosco difficult to understand!

I'll rock on for a while now with AWE. Mary Gaynor is a fellow new member in Ireland. Look her up at her Wine Academy Ireland. It operates out of the delicately attractive Thomastown in Co. Kilkenny.

Buy Three get the Fourth Free - Why we need a Code of Practice for Retailers Selling Alcohol

There is a voluntary Code of Practice currently in place in Ireland for mixed grocer retailers who sell alcohol. The idea behind the Code is to slow the relentless growth in the consumption of alcohol in Ireland. Its a voluntary code because the Irish Government favours self regulation within industry. They will however sign into law a legislated code if the current voluntary situation does not work.

So, why has the government not asked every retailer of alcohol to sign up to a code of practice? The answer it seems is based on the belief that the multiple and forecourt retailers use their buying power to sell alcohol at prices that encourage the excessive use of alcohol; that alcohol can then be sold below cost thus distorting the true nature of the 'responsible retailing' of alcohol; that alcohol prices are used as an incentive to encourage consumers to buy items other than alcohol and as a loss leader to develop footfall within retail units.

So, lots of reasons. As far as I can see all of these are valid. But why don't all off licence holders have to abide by a code? If we accept that all of the reasons above are true and valid it doesn't tell me why a cohort of licence holders should not be held to account?

I drove past an independent off licence last week that had two VERY large windows completely blanked out with ENORMOUS signs advertising beer, spirits and wine at outrageous prices. This was leading into the St Patrick's weekend which has in the past been ruined by drunken yobbos rampaging through the streets of Dublin. This offie is a member of NOFFLA, the National Off Licence Association. NOFFLA claims its members are well trained and are socially responsible.

Neither the grocers, forecourts or indeed NOFFLA members are perfect. They all operate with the same licence to sell. They should all be treated the same with regards to a Code. It is unfair that one group should be treated as a pariah and forced to accept a code of practice when it has not been proven that they alone are responsible for the abuse of what is after all a very fine product. This is supposed to be about reducing the level of alcohol consumed and also about the responsible selling of alcohol. How we can exclude all of the independent retailers in this debate does not seem to make sense.

I took the title for this blog from an independent college offering grinds for the Leaving Cert. Buy three subjects and they'll give you grinds in a fourth subject for free!! Is this irresponsible? Is this encouraging students to feel they need extra grinds and are therefore thicker than they thought they were in the first place? Looks like we need a code of practice! But don't include all the Colleges in the code. That might just make sense.

Took this photo from the Curious Wines Blog www.curiouswines.ie from Dec 15th last. Great focus.

Wine Twins or just good look alikes?

I bumped into a guy on Merrion Street yesterday. Well, truth be told, he bumped into me!

"Christ," he says, "You're the spit of me cousin out on Achill."

I really must have been, lucky fella, 'cos we had a 'wine and books' conversation for the next five minutes. I'm going to look that fella up in Achill. Lucky guy.

They say we all have an identical twin someplace. Usually they mean someplace close. Or at least someplace related to where my face might have come from in the first place! After all, how likely is it that my face is living in Paraguay or Tibet? But that guy yesterday was looking at more than just the face. He was convinced, before he had time to see my face properly, that he had, by chance, encountered his cousin. We are, after all, the sum of more than face alone. (Maybe I should think about checking my wallet!!)

I am always surprised when I hear a wine maker saying that his wine is just as good as X; tastes pretty much the same as X; would be confused as being X by most tasters but at the final analysis is different to X for a variety of reasons the principle one of which is laid at the 'holy altar' of terroir. It would appear that even if a wine is very good we do not want it to be an identical twin. Why? Surely if you model yourself on perfection there is nothing wrong with having a twin? No, you will be accused of plagiarism and of being unoriginal. Indeed you will most likely be accused of attempting to demean and to cheapen the very standard that you aspired to attain. In short all fine wine should be unique. The rest can be commoditised and who cares if they look alike. After all they're not FINE WINE!

Strange, but true. Reckon I'll go out to Achill soon. I gather I have a twin out there. I'll just hang out and see if I'm welcomed as himself or cast out as a misfit and a chancer.

I'm not so precious that I can recognise genius twice over; if they look alike, taste alike and make the same quality statement then they are both brilliant. It doesn't take a genius to work that one out. It might take a genius to make us think that way when we come across the wine that tastes identical to the best wine we have ever tasted before!

Antonutti Refosco 2005 at Thomas Woodberrys

When I was in Galway last week I dropped in to a few wine stores. Just to check out the local scene. I'll have to drop back because my camera was acting up and the pics I took are fairly awful AND because I want to try more wines from this guy Antonutti. I bought his Refosco del peduncolo rosso, Friuli, Italy, in Thomas Woodberry's. Brilliant wine.

For many years my bros and I brought in the wines of Giovanni Collavini. He's headquartered in Udine and makes really good stuff from a whole range of local grapes one of which is the Refosco. (the peduncolo rosso refers to the red pedicle holding the grapes onto the cane) I have always championed this grape as an uber brilliant alternative to expensive cru Beaujolais wines. (I say expensive because there are very good wines out of Beaujolais but you tend to have to pay for them or you'll end up with a hotch potch of home made jams in a bottle!)

Refosco is the Teran from Slovenia and for a long time now has produced quaffable 'peasant' style wines that are prone to high acidity and a fickelness due to the grape being a late ripener. These two attributes are malleable in the hands of technically proficient wine producer and so a bit of investment can go a long way with the likes of Refosco. In the case of this wine they have reached levels I wasn't yet familiar with. I say that because this wine comes from the relatively boring Grave rather than the soaring and most times much better Collio.

Antonutti's Refosco has gentle but persistent richness cloaked into a soft and generous palate. Fruit flavours are plums and mild dark berry fruits. The overriding effect is gentle persistence and a memorable experience due to the quality of the underlying fruit being so high. I really am looking forward to finding out more about Antonutti and his wine.

Obscure Grapes - What's Your Fancy?

Name for a rock band - The Obscure Grapes. Well, maybe not now that I see it in print. A healthy hobby perhaps? You must be joking - 'nerd' comes to mind. Pretending to learn....you know, enlightenment and all that in an ever increasing world of uniformity, where Cabernet threatens the very existence of obscurity in the future! Wha, is this an ad. for a science fiction novel??

I follow Obscure Grapes. There. I've said it. I'm out. Is there anyone else out there?

(Follow this image and others through delongwine.com)

I go to wine fairs and sneak off to look at Tannat from Uruguay; Sagrantino from Montefalco and if I'm very lucky Ribolla and Schioppettini from the Friuli. And Many Others.

I'm not a 'grape collector' in the sense of. 'Well, How Many Grapes Have You Tasted Your Way Through Then, Son?' No, I follow odd grapes because it's easier to follow wine making changes, vineyard practices etc with something in short supply than it is with the main line stuff. Maybe then I'm just lazy and this is the easy way out? Maybe. I prefer to view this as a 'focus exercise'. It is simply not possible to do an honest days work and follow what's going on with Cab Sauv or Chard all around the world. There just isn't enough time. But if we take Albarinho we can follow how the Aussies are getting on, the multitude of styles ex Galicia and a few other brave souls in a few other countries. See what I mean?

Albarinho and Gruner Veltliner are sooo main stream now that I have dropped them from my 'obscure' list. (Gruner of course was only ever obscure to the patently blind members of the trade..)

So when they get the tannins under control in Montefalco and we 'find' aromatics yet 'undreamed ' of in Peruvian wines you can say you heard it first here. Or is that nerd it first?