New Zealand gets Burgundered

If you go down the St John Wood’s today for the New Zealand ATT you’re sure of a big non-surprise. The virtual absence of the on-trade. Because, hey, it is always the time for the heaving ranks of sommeliers and wine buyers to taste a billion and one Burgundies. The Burgundy week (fortnight) is the ultimate crack cocaine holiday for the wine trade – once you imbibe that Pinot sauce you’re hooked, you can’t get enough and soon you’re scoring negoce swill cut with Gamay rather than high grade Mazis Grand cru . And once you’ve indulged in one Burgundy junket you have to do all of them. You call ‘em Pinot philes – I call them the freemasonry of junkies with a collector’s nerdling impulse, that necessary desire for completism, which necessitates having to taste all wines from all growers, regardless of their merits, in order to be able to pronounce upon the vintage with massive authority and, if necessary, inscribe marks on tablets of stone, which will further give the opportunity to pore over the scores retrospectively for mild recreation and unalloyed pleasure.

More seriously what is the point? (or, anagrammatically, what is the Pinot). Let’s say you taste a hundred, or even two hundred, barrel samples a day. Maybe spend twenty seconds on a wine that may last half a lifetime. Maybe spend twenty seconds with a knackered palate on a wine that will last half a lifetime. And make a summary judgement on a particular day about a wine which is not bottled and whose evolution is uncertain.

As for the tasting the wines showed well on our table including the sublimely elegant Framingham Select Riesling and the wilder, more vinous Old Vines Riesling. It was salutary to taste Stonyridge, the tasting equivalent of meeting a unicorn in your living room. A classy wine, meat n potatoes, but artfully arranged, fruit and oak laid on strong bones.