Superquinn impresses with its Autumn French Wine Sale

Superquinn is the only Irish supermarket that seems to allow its wine buyer to be expressive in public. In fact he's probably the only one allowed to venture out from behind the High Table of Margin Design. He actually meets his public and critics on a regular basis!! Richard Moriarty is also an expressive character - he likes to wear loud braces and winkle pickers!

Is any of this relevant? Is it possible to detect a buyers personality these days in a supermarkets' range of wines or is it a case, as mentioned here this week, of margin and sales dictating everything?

Recently Superquinn had a press tasting for its forthcoming Autumn Wine Sale. Richard had been on extended traveling and buying trips over the summer; had a number of buying 'blind tasting' sessions where he asks for wines to be tendered and then he managed to fit in time to get engaged. Perhaps it was the latter that added an extra 'sparkle' to the new range or was it just a more 'engaging' selection all around.....groan and sorry about that....

 Richard Moriarty of Superquinn

I was impressed for a number of reasons. 

• The range does not shy away from French white wine.

• There are genuine surprises that don't fit the modern 'supermarket mould' of being, same old, same old..

• The value here belies a general belief that if its French and good it must also be expensive.

• These wines come from all over and Bordeaux is not allowed to boss France around. (Nothing against Bordeaux, by the way, but too often buyers seem to believe that without Bordeaux their range may not be as effective)

There were 64 wines on show and no fewer than 29 of these are new to Superquinn. That's a lot of new wines. Their new Domaine Sainte Croix le Fournas 2006 gives you a glimpse into the workings behind the scenes. Superquinn put out a request for wines to be tendered for the Sale. This wine from the Hautes Corbieres in the South of France was sent in more in hope than expectation. After all, its a Grenache, young vine Syrah and Carignan blend. The grapes are hand harvested and there's only 25,000 bottles made each year. This is not typical supermarket fare and it would need a brutally honest, fair and experienced tasting panel to even appreciate it - dense purple, serious wine. Then I find its going to sell for only €8.00 a bottle or 3 for €20.00! Buy a case and lay it down for a couple of years!

Not all of the wines in the sale are to my liking. For instance the SQ Collection Petit Chablis may be well made (and liked by many) - but I can't stand it's aggressive and very lean nature! In general though there is a good standard of wine making on show. Let's not forget though, Superquinn is a supermarket! and some of these wines are on the shelf purely for commercial reasons and not out of consideration to our discerning and delicate palates. That's reality. 

5 Word Verdict : Excellent Value Exciting Autumn Sale.

Top Tips

Rare Vineyards Labels are top class and each of the white Ugni Blanc and reds Malbec and Carignan will sell for only €6.00 (Launched in the UK earlier this year and reserved there for restaurants only...)

White

Classic Collection Sauvignon Blanc  €7.00 Vibrant: racy.

Domaine Begude Chardonnay  €8.00 or 3 for €20.00 Light nose: very interesting palate.

Charles Vienot Macon Lugny  €9.00 Burgundian charmer

La Grille Barrel Fermented Chenin Blanc  €9.00 Rich and intense: full of interest

Pouilly Fume Le Pierres Blanches  €12.00 Excellent style: old fashioned

Chateau de Sours Rose  €13.00 Always drinks well.  

Poully Fuisse Domaine du Roure de Pauli  €14.00

Sparkling

Champagne Louis d'Or  €20.00 Outstanding bouquet

Gamay Rouge  €10.00 Outrageous and irresistible. Red sparkling fruit bomb.

Red

Domaine Saint Croix Corbiere le Fournos  €8.00 or 3 for €20.00

Collioure Cuvee des Peintres Roussillon  €10.00 Love it all the way to a tough finish

SQ Saint Joseph  €12.00 Steak wine. Hangs in well.   

Rully Chateau de Rully Rodet  €12.00 Rediscover good red Burgundy!

Chateau de Sours Bordeaux Rouge  €13.00 Very accurate and very good.

Chateau Cotes du Gros St Emilion  €13.00 Far too young. Good present.

Chateauneuf du Pape Alain Grangeon  €20.00 Liquorice and wild fruits

I will avoid...
Cuvee de Amandiers Blanc:  Very 'ordinary'
la Baume Sauvignon Blanc:  dumbs the grape down too much and I DO NOT like the huge bottle!

Charles Vienot Chablis:  no quality on nose and palate is stripped of quality

Remeage Viognier Chardonnay: I need to see this in a very new light if I am to change my tasting note of, 'dreadful'.
Cremant de Loire Brut 1er Cru: Just seems to do nothing at all except bubble away.
Domaine Colonge Beaujolais Villages: inexpressive for far too long in the glass.
Classic Collection red Bordeaux: Don't see the point; it's so unexciting

Too Much Unoaked Chardonnay?

A Wow Girls blog post yesterday threw out this question as they recommended a Ben Riggs wine  -  Shoofly Chook Raffle Chardonnay 2008. I haven't tried the wine but I've liked most of what Ben has been up to for many years now. If he allowed some oak to linger in the wine as a taste then I am sure he did it to make it a better wine.

I recommended a chardonnay wine in my latest Notes from Australia series last week. It was the Summers Chardonnay 2007 by Grant Burge. I liked it's huge blowsy oaked character. It is a well made wine.

The Wow Girls are questioning whether there is too much unoaked chardonnay around. Well, there is a lot of it! Nothing wrong with that. Chardonnay is a brilliant grape that makes brilliant wine. I suppose the question really is whether there is a lot of ordinary and/or poorly made chardonnay based wines around. If so, why did we throw out all of the fabulously interesting oaked Chardonnay wines over the past few years? The answer is that there were far too many ordinary and or poorly made oaked chardonnays in the market! We threw out the good with the bad, imported tons of unoaked wines and ended up with the same problem!!  Too many poorly made wines.

 

Who drives this? Who are the decision makers? Is this a form of idiocy or the result of a carefully managed policy?

I read a very interesting book recently - Wine Quality Tasting and Selection, by Keith Grainger. (My review will appear on www.greatfood.ie soon). In it he recounts an adage whereby the supermarket wine buyer concludes, after a serious nosing, slurping and spitting, that the wine in question is fine but lacks margin! Good oak and good oaking cost money! Bad oaking allows the supermarket to maintain margin.

There is no doubt at all but the supermarkets drove poor, oaked, chardonnays into the market powered by margin and not by wine making considerations. For a few years we had a plethora of butterscotched stinking chardonnays pretending to be fine wines all over the gaff. 

The consumers appreciation of Chardonnay suffered and has not yet recovered.

If this is true then a grave question remains: if there is no oaking charge associated with the new arrivals then how come the quality is still so patchy? Margin I suppose. Retail price points continue to fall. Margin on the other hand for the multiples has remained the same or has risen. This means that the supermarkets are taking a bigger percentage of the retail price then ever before. The only way this is possible is to sacrifice quality.

There is nothing wrong with inexpensive wine - chardonnay included. There is something wrong with a pile of soft brands trying to make differences between wines when none exist! There is something very, very wrong when  a lot of these wines are poorly made.

Let's be fair to the producers. Our brand leader in Ireland is Jacob's Creek. They make a very good unoaked chardonnay. Many others do also. There are some fabulous Macon chardonnays around. So, its not just a (jaded) Old World/New World divide here. No, it's a (jaded!) supply and demand situation.

Too many chardonnay vines. Too many declining markets. Too many greedy supermarkets driven by margin. Too many wine writers giving out about oak! It's all leading to a growing commodity based market where quality and expertise count for very little. Within this, Chardonnay's virtue of versatility shines brightly.  It is a versatile grape and this is being exploited. Pity. Pity.

Wine writers, reviewers and bloggers: be vigilant. Recommend every good chardonnay you taste. Denounce the imposters and charlatans. Let's keep the bottom end of the market small,  manageable and chardonnay free. It's far too good a grape to allow it to be rubbished all over again.

Notes from Australia 14: Barossa contd. Peter Lehmann and Grant Burge. Going Gangbusters!

These were very contrasting visits. Grant Burge treated us to a comprehensive tasting. Peter Lehmann took us on a wide ranging tour of vineyards. Variety is the spice ...., as they say, and these were two outstanding visits in the Barossa Valley. Welcome to Note 14 from my recent wanderings in the vineyards of Australia.

The Grant Burge visitors center has an old world feel to the furnishings. Lots of polished wood,  pictures on the walls and a high wine counter. Formal. Outside is a wonderful rose garden, a fantastic grapevine pergola and a full size cricket pitch! We were met by Olivia Barry. I knew Olivia from her days working with Brown Brothers of Victoria. Excellent, happy, Welsh character!

 

Olivia Barry

After a while we had a really fine and comprehensive tasting. These wines seem to always impress.

Three interesting points.

1. The sparkling wine that we tasted is labeled as 'Traditional Method'. It is in fact a Bottle Transfer Method. No-one in Australia seems to have a difficulty equating the two.

2. The 'Summer' Chardonnay is an amazing example of the full buttery and butter scotched style of wine that has been discontinued by most wineries at this stage. This wine is brilliant - and seriously old fashioned.

3. In the very very hot 08 vintage Grant Burge spent a lot of money turning their 25 degree Beaume fruit into something that could be used to make wine with by using a technique referred to as LSJ - Low Sugar Juice ie adding in water derived from grape juice!

Wines Tasted. * Tasted particularly well on the day

Pinot Chardonnay  Traditional Method Sparkling WineNV (see above)

Eden Valley Thorn Vineyard Riesling 2009

East Argyle Pinot Gris 2009 *

Adelaide Hills Kraft Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2009*

Zerk Semillon Viognier 2009

Summers Chardonnay 2007

Lily Farm Frontignac 2009

Moscato 2009

Hillcot Vineyard Merlot 2008 (see LSJ above)

Miamba Shiraz 2008

Cameron Vale Cabernet Sauvignon 2007**

The Holy Trinity GSM 2005

Filsell Old Vie Shiraz 2008**

Meshack Shiraz 2005*

Top class wine making at Grant Burge

When we were tasting back in Jacobs Creek (see Note11) with Rebekkah Richardson she came out with the expression, 'gangbusters' in relation to a wine really going all out to impress. Well, when we came to the Grant Burge Moscato didn't Olivia say the same thing .... we shouldn't have laughed and it's absolutely schoolboy funny humour to keep laughing but just say "Gangbusters" to Gary some time and watch his little face light up!

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The crew at Peter Lehmann were very impressive. Nigel Blieschke, viticulturist, took us out into the vineyards and hills of the Barossa. Every so often we'd stop at a particularly important vineyard - Peter Lehmann only owns a very small percentage of the vineyards that he processes grapes from - and we'd open a bottle of wine made from the grapes of that vineyard! We ended up 'seeing' what the taste is all about.

Then we were introduced to one of their growers who has recently managed his vineyard up to a quality level that allows his fruit to be used in making Stonewell Shiraz (big bonus for the grower!) He in turn came down off his tractor and fondly showed us his 140 year old Grenache vines! He really is a Custodian.

140 year old Custodians! Well the fella on the left is anyhow.....

Peter then kindly showed us through a botrytis ridden Semillon vineyard. Boy did it look good. 

Back to winery then where we were introduced to, and had lunch with, wine making legend Andrew Wigans. Lunch was a stunning affair and rounded off with generous dollops of the Peter Lehmann Classic Muscat dessert wine. But it was more than lunch. It was a generous affair where Andrew allowed us into his world, his head and indeed his wines. This epitomises the Peter Lehmann approach to everything - quality and generosity.

This month, August 2010, Peter Lehmann celebrates 80 years living and working in the Barossa and nine years at the helm of Peter Lehmann. Will we ever see icons of this stature again?

Andrew Wigans at Peter Lehmann

Notes from Australia: Note 13. Thorn Clarke Barossa and Eden Valley Specialist

As I said in my last Note from Australia I was thrilled to have visited the cutting edge Yalumba vine Nursery. Imagine my surprise then when we visited Thorn Clarke and saw something at one of their Eden Valley vineyards that I had never seen before! Welcome to Note 13 of my recent wanderings through the vineyards of Australia.

Thorn Clarke has a small modern looking office/winery tucked away at the north east end of the Barossa in the foothills known of the Eden Valley. The Eden is a whole series of Valleys beside the Barossa. It's a  mixed farming region with the occasional vineyard.

 

 Thorne Clarke Vineyards in the Eden Valley

The rolling nature and relative height of the area allow vines to thrive on sites that have over the years been carefully chosen. The obvious and major distinction between the Barossa and the Eden is one of warmth. Thorn Clarke shows this well across their range as they hold land at two ends of the Barossa and two ends of the Eden. Their wines can be used to teach the differences between Eden and Barossa fruit. Simply take a Shiraz from their warm Barossa Valley floor Kabinge Vineyard and compare it to the aromatics they achieve from their 475m high Mount Crawford vineyards in the Eden. Mind you you'd have to compare a Riesling with a Shiraz but we won't let that worry us! Their Riesling is well worth checking out.

Wines Tasted:

Milton Park Riesling 2009
Terra Barossa Chardonnay 2009
Terra Barossa Eden Valley Chardonnay 2008
Milton Park Merlot 2009
Terra Barossa Eden Valley Merlot 2007
Terra Barossa Cuvee 2007
Terra Barossa Cabernet Sauvignon 2008
Milton Park Shiraz 2008
Terra Barossa Shiraz 2008
Thorn Clarke Nebbiolo 2006
Barossa Quartage 2007
Barossa Shiraz 2008
William Randall Shiraz 2006

And this is what caught my attention in the vineyards!!

The idea here is to spread resources across two vines. Competition for resources makes both vines work harder and thus produce better and more interesting fruit. I have seen vineyards where inputs such as irrigation can be shut off to one side of a vines' roots making it believe it's under stress but this system at Thorne Clarke lets the vines get on with their own competition.

Lughnasa Beer Festival THIS Friday at the Pod

This is an absolute must for anyone interested in beer where flavour and attitude count for something. It's organised by Deveney's of Dundrum and here's the detail ...... Love the poster.....

Venue -The Pod at Harcourt Street
THIS Friday - 20th August 5pm to 10pm

How much? - €20.00 gets you in, 5 complimentary Beer Punts and the Festival Booklet 

 

There will be 200 different bottled beers to try!! Additional Beer Punts can be bought for €1.40 each. Each of these gets you a 140ml beer of your choice. It promises to be a hard choice. In addition there will be food guys around the place, live music and a load of beer guys to answer everything you ever wanted to know about beer.

Buy tickets at Deveneys, on their website, at www.eventelephant.com and at a wide scattering of quality beer stores across the city.

Riedel: Amazing Wine Glasses Show comes to town

How do you make a show out of a range of wine glasses? Buy a ticket for the up coming Riedel Glassware show at the spanky brand new Dublin Convention Center at Spencer Dock and find out. You won't be disappointed.

Our choice of glassware affects how we perceive and ultimately, enjoy wine. I don't use Riedel at home. (Not entirely true.....I do have a pair of Riedel Bollinger flutes, a pair of Riedel Inniskillen Ice wine glasses and a single other glass that found its way home from a tasting....all free you may note!)  They are expensive! At my School of Wine I use Wine Star Catering glassware. So, why would I promote something I don't seem to use myself?

                                                  Maximilian Riedel

Simple answer. I don't have any Lafite or Mouton at home either. If I had a chance to promote a tasting with the owners of these estates wouldn't I be the fool not to! Not only that but Dublin would be honoured to receive such an event. Just so with Riedel. These are the best wine glasses in the world and in association with his Irish agent, Mitchell and Son Wine Merchants, Maximilian Riedel is coming to town to show us why!

Maximilian will guide his audience through a series of wine tastings designed to show how glassware enhances wine. Indeed he will show how Riedel glassware has been described by the greatest wine critic in the world, Robert Parker, as being  "The finest glasses for both technical and hedonistic purposes are those made by Riedel. The effect of these glasses on fine wine is profound. I cannot emphasise enough what a difference they make."  

I have to agree. Every time I am lucky enough to taste with Riedel I feel the wine talks just a bit more and tells me more of it's story. They bring me closer to the winemaker, and his vineyard. They bring me deeper into the wine and on back to the grapes that made it and the journey they have taken along the way..  

Venue:  The Convention Centre Spencer Dock Dublin
Date:    Friday 17th September
Time:    Doors open at 6.00pm Tasting at 7.00pm     LATECOMERS WILL NOT BE ADMITTED

Individual Ticket: €95.00                                  Gets you....one set of Riedel Vinum XL glasses (€120.00 value!). Use these at this Master Class tasting and then bring them on home!

Pair of Tickets  €180.00                                    Gets you...two sets of the glassware to use to take home.

Grand Cru VIP Ticket (admits two): €350.00    Gets you Champagne on arrival, priority seating, two sets of glassware PLUS a signed Riedel Amadeo Decanter (€250.00 value)

Bookings to:
Jean Smullen:  Tel 01 274 5955  and  086 816 8468 
email at jean@jeansmullen.com or at any of the Mitchell and Son Wine Stores