Choking on Oak: A Tasting Where More is Less…

After a croissant and a coffee maybe a Cahors or ten is not a good idea, especially when it tastes like ten day old stewed tea…

Like all tastings this was a snapshot of growers who were prepared to confront the court of public opinion (or a few hardy tasters) at 9.30 on a Friday morning.

Quel horreur! The whites were almost invariably bubble-gummed to death, to adapt a Victor Mature quip, whilst the reds dwindled to etiolated senility in barrels seemingly toasted with flame-throwers. The bitterness of their extracted fruit and resultant stewed pruniness did not communicate a region with a so-called Atlantic climate.

Many growers refer to the taste (the sensation) of the rocks and soil in the wine. They intend their wines to reflect the diversity, subtlety and particularity of the soils and the micro-climate. Balanced minerality is sought, vivacity considered a virtue. The flip side of the coin is when the vigneron develops a selection or top cuvée made normally from the ripest fruit, wherein the juice must be coddled and cajoled to reach a pluperfect peak of opulence. (I exaggerate) The intention does not always beget the desired result. Whilst it is a perfectly legitimate aspiration to have, say, a single vineyard expression of a wine, or to highlight the character of a grape variety in relation to the terroir in which it flourishes, delivering excellence is not the automatic by-product of creating something intensely powerful and bombastic. Wine should aim for typicity and perhaps, like an intelligent person, be capable of subtle discourse rather than screaming extroversion.

Back to the tasting. The commerciality of the white wines made them virtually indistinguishable from each other. Sharing that slightly sugar-soapy-texture-in-the-mouth-with-a-tart-aftertaste they drifted across the fine line between crisp and aromatic, and sloppy and confected. A couple of the Gaillac wines were in a completely different register – the smell of barrel-fermented, lees-stirred Sauvignon almost shocking after the previous ingestions of liquid opal fruits – and not necessarily the better for it. Finally, a wine from Irouléguy that promised - and delivered - in spades. The nose suggested white flowers, lime-blossom and creamy citrus, the palate was more vinous than anything tasted previously, yet glanced and glided effortlessly around the tongue, refreshing the whole mouth. The sherbet crunch of Gros Manseng, the mango and pink grapefruit notes of Petit Manseng and some balsam from the not-intrusive-at-all oak imbued the wine with a lingering quality like the memory of a sound of a cool mountain stream. The following wine, from the same estate, ramped up the oak quotient by several parasangs, a veritable “plank ton” white. What a let-down.

Onto the reds. When you taste too many similar things you start getting a gag reflex so it is agreeable to shift gear. Bored with wibbly fruit confections I wanted to crunch my molars on some solid wine. Be careful what you wish for, mon ami. The first red, a vin de pays, certainly wafted promising hints of sweet berries and dark chocolate. One could imagine drinking it.  Thereafter, downhill with a relentless succession of termite’s toothaches, reds hoist on their own very wooden petards, as if the oak had exploded the very soul of the wine itself. Eventually, the entire tasting became a diminishing return as my palate was gradually embalmed in a thick fug of disassociated sensations.

Let me assert that I adore Cahors; I love the gravelly expression of Malbec, that rustic combination of slightly unripe cherries, plums and figs tinged with earl grey tea, menthol, garrigue herbs and réglisse and stalky, but infinitely digestible, tannins. The wines in this line up were lavishly black and treacled across the rim of the glass. Alcohol (not usually an aromatic feature of Cahors) was apparent, and the aromatic – generally speaking – suggestive of black rather than red fruits. But there was more, or rather less, going on. These were four-square wines, blank, undifferentiated reds, intensely thick in texture but remarkably thin in flavour. I have previously referred to the clumsy use of oak and extraction as if it was the intention of the winemaker to slip the surly bonds of terroir and vault into an arena where such manipulations were critically applauded. This is not heavy metal where it is fair enough to dial up ten on a scale of nine; great wine does not need to be amplified, and if the noise surrounding the real nature of the wine is so discordant, you have to wonder what the point of the wine is at all.

Harsh criticism? Not at all. I don’t actively seek faults and wish to derogate wines. I love the region, but I wonder whether too many growers are taking themselves too seriously, making wines to impress people rather than to give them pleasure. The danger, of course, is that in trying to make the wines more serious, you unmake them and allow their very spirit to unravel.