CdP at the International Wine Challenge

And the winner is…

2009 Specialist Merchant of the Year - Regional France
2009 Specialist Merchant of the Year - Loire
2009 Regional Merchant of the Year - South East England
2009 Specialist Merchant of the Year - Italy (Commended)
2009 Wine List of the Year (Commended)
2009 On-Trade Merchant of the Year (Commended)

It’s what cummerbunds were invented for, said David sagely. I nodded sagely, pretending to know what a cummerbund was. (Is it a German digestif?)

The great, the good and the not so good had assembled at the Grosvenor Hotel to get their gongs and plaques. Well, as they say, when the going gets tough the tough get gongs. The guys were all dolled up in sub-fusc uniformity (penguin-potentiaries to a bloke) whilst the dolls had poured themselves into an assortment of colourful posh-frocks. An element of manhood, whose claim to Scottishness is that their sister owns a wee highland terrier and they had once spent a family holiday in a B & B near Oban, donned the full tartan MacMonty as if they had just come fresh off the moors having knifed a few stags with their skean dhus.

I feel like a lost soul at these jamborees. On this occasion I twiddled my thumbs furiously, pretended to text all the contacts in my phone’s address book and generally mooned around in my non-whirly bow tie, ogling the Samurai sake masters in their swish kimonos, whilst quaffing some acid fizz. I was accosted by a couple of people I couldn’t place and waited in vain for them provide me with clues such as their name.  I am not good at small talk; I can’t even manage tiny talk.

It was eventually time to go to the Drambuie suite (or whatever it was called) where a guy lobbed some certificates at me and I got snapped with Charles Metcalfe whose rictus grin had long since slipped into his shiny shoes. We scored three aces and a jack. Good old reliable regional France, the long arm of the Loire, and the joker in our pack, South East Wine Merchant of the Year. And commended for Italy. A nice haul.  I joined the Les Caves cheerleaders who had just arrived en masse and we gazed slack-jawed at the impressive set up on the grand ball room floor beneath us. The summons to dinner came and, clutching their bounty, the winners proceeded to take their curtain call. I had this vision of myself catching a heel on the edge of the staircase and pulling off a Dynasty-style Joan Collins crashing descent shedding certificates as I tumbled, but managed to retain my equilibrium.

Down on our table the Philly RR had already been broached and the cameras were clicking. Silly me forgot to put the flash on and as a result I took myriad pictures of what looked like blue bloodless corpses. Even the blue corpses warmed up when they tasted the Matassa Blanc, a biodynamic, low sulphur Cotes Catalanes white co-made by Sam Harrop, coincidentally one of the wine challenge judges, which reminded me of great Burgundy. Partly reductive, hugely smoky and with strong resinous notes (terebinth) the wine, made from Grenache Gris and Maccabeu, contrived to be rich and elegant at the same time, a Goliath with a stonking nose and twinkling toes. (Professional tasting note).

Tim A and Charles M bounded on stage, strutted their stuff and chanted their honorary roll call with aplomb. The trophies come and go – nowt in the bling department for us this year, alas, (our hood ornament from last year is still my favourite paperweight) in the merchant section, where a couple of decisions caused mild astonishment and collapse of stout parties (best wine list????), but the rest of the awards were fair dinkum as they say in France. The meal proceeded with general bonhomie, before mein hosts reappeared to zoom through a zillion wine trophies. Having tasted some of the bemedalled wines I felt that the Wine Challenge ought to be thoroughly challenged next year by the judges being subjected to real wines. I needs quote again that brilliant precise line from Tennyson’s Maud: “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null”; the trophy wines I tasted exemplified extreme correctness – and absence of soul. They were winemakers’ wines par excellence, fit for purpose, reminding me of those apples you get in supermarkets which are all the same size and shape and “flavour profile”, whereas we know that the mottled, pock-marked pippins are the ones that have the real flavour. To be fair the judges can only assess according to what is submitted and the rigorous organisation of the event ensures, more or less, that the most consistently performing wines harvest the silverware. However, the wines are the wines and when you look at the trophy winners you are aware of the vast gulf between goodness and greatness.

Wine competitions, by definition, are snapshots. The results are compromises, the distillation of opinion.  I can’t ever recall tasting anything left-field or maverick in the winner’s enclosure. It is as if all of literature had been reduced to prose.

We, however, drank awesomely out of the box. The aforementioned Matassa Blanc was sensational and a magnum of Vitatge Vielh titivated the tongue with exotic flavours – requited passionfruit in spades. The Brouilly Croix des Rameaux from Jean-Claude Lapalu was sanguine, jaunty and dangerous. The berry fruits were wild, the undergrowth suggested animals on the prowl and a prickle of the tongue spoke eloquently of its low sulphur origins. Philippe Pacalet’s Gevrey-Chambertin was as perfumed and beautifully wrought as ever. How can I describe its fugitive loveliness? With its natural muskiness, fresh rhubarb aromas and delicious array of red flower and fruit flavours underpinned by filigree acidity this Gevrey expressed the sensuous charms that Pinot promises but rarely delivers.

After the meal the band struck up and the remainder of the lubricated Caves de Pyrennies joined the swaying hips and puckered lips on the dance floor.

“Many people are shy when it comes to getting to getting out on a dance floor. Dancing is an activity that… reveals your inner self, whether you like it, or know it, or not. It is hard to fake it on a dance floor.”

Cobblestones!

Twitchin’ and lurchin’ to the disco and soul beat the Pyrennies held their manic corner. Smokin’ DC conveyed the essence of cool, while floundering DW did a fair impression of malco in the middle. The gels were lovely and loose. Bouquets were energetically sweated and moves and shakes were exhumed from mothballs.

A minor postscript to all this jazz. DC and I repaired to the bar to purchase a couple of beers to cool our thirst. 11.50 sovs for a brace of Becks (220ml)!! Chutzpah, or what? That sound you can hear is vast amounts of Velcro being ripped off all over the land.