The Real Alternative Wine Glossary - ABC Wines To Spitting
If you really want to know your Alsace from your Elbling here is a sideways squint at the real meaning beneath the language of wine…
ABC ? Fed up with Chardonnay? Can’t be bothered to come to the Cabernet, old chum? Then you need Anodyne, the alternative grape variety remedy guaranteed to keep your nose on its toes. For every reaction and trend there is a countervailing one. There is a restaurant in the U.S. which devotes a page to the major grape varieties, but, when you come to Chardonnay the page is blank. The conceit is briefly amusing. Recently, there was a blind tasting of top Burgundy mingled with the latest hot Gruner Veltliner estates from Austria. Predictably, the Gruner Veltliner trounced the big Burgs. What does this tell us? Precisely very little, other than our palates change, or that some wines are not suited to blind tasting, or requiring decanting or ageing or food. Instead of disingenuously grinding the axe against Chardonnay, one might assert that what we once loved we are now bored with. And will presumably love again.
Abbreviations ? used not only to save time but to disguise one’s reactions from the grower/winemaker who’s trying to read your notes upside down.
O.C. ? Oak Coffin (or Chips)
T.D. ? Termites delight
N.O.Y.N. ? Not On Your Nelly
Gooley ? Gouleyant (delicious)
P.O.G. ? Pee On Gooseberries
F.A. ? Falling Apart
W.A.P. ?? Worth A Punt?
W.O.W ? Why Oh Why?
A.P. ? ? point
F.J. ? Fruit Juice
S.S.S. ? Silky, sexy, sumptuous (of Burgundy)
P.M.S. ? Purple Mouth Stainer
ORG ? Organic or Orgasmic (or both)
A.A. ? Acid Attack
E.F. ? Embalming Fluid
Acetic ? vinegary or thereabouts. Use sparingly in salad dressings, or if Cabernet Sauvignon, for red meat dishes.
Acidic/Acidity ? a necessary function in wine to keep the flavour fresh: usually qualified by adjectives such as bright, balanced, crisp. Acidity added in the winery can taste very peculiar. Ordering the cheapest wine on the list can induce acidity in the sommelier.
Adverts ? Remember smooth Ian Ogilvy, a member of the Roger Moore academy of petrified acting, tasting an unknown bottle of wine with his stuffy relatives and saying ‘A-ha! Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine which fooled you all!’ And Great Uncle Something-Or-Other’s monocle shooting from his eye in astonishment! Wars have been started for less reason.
Ageing ? As Rodney Dangerfield once quipped: ‘I told my wife that men, like wine, improve with age. So she locked me in the cellar.’
“I made wine out of raisins so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to age.”
Steven Wright
“The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“I shall drink no wine before it is time! OK, it is time.”
Groucho Marx
Alcohol(ic) - measured in degrees which are worn as a badge of honour amongst certain Aussies. You can imagine the guys in Mudgee mopping their brows and saying: ‘This little beaut’s got a “monster’s” degree from the University of Fruit’. Great for swabbing open wounds and lighting barbecues, but about as fun to drink as being force-fed a flambéd fruit salad.
Alien Interlopers -
Foreign grapes are being quarantined in cages in Australia’s Northern Territory. “We didn’t ask for them to be sent here”, said a spokesman for the Australian wine industry, “They might infiltrate the local varietals”. Conditions in the cage were described by Amnesty International as “hideously cramped” with “a severe danger of spontaneous fermentation”.
Alsace ? The ability to tell your Alsace from your Elbling is the raisin (sic) d’etre of a wine connoisseur.
Animal ? an aviary-full of flights of fancy may be engendered when one puts one’s conk in a glass of wine. One might be reminded of flowers and fruit, vegetables and minerals, herbs and spices. But how about cats’ pee, sweaty saddle, hung game, rabbit’s guts, and, of course, the smell of old blanket on a donkey’s back?
Anthocyanin ? substance in dark grapes that produces vivid purple colour in young red wines. As in ‘Cor! Look at the anthocyanins on that baby!’ (We’ve all said it)
Appellation ? according to some a system (regulated in France by the INAO) which is sclerotic and unimaginative and to the keepers of the sacred flame of tradition, the measure of quality. The notion in principle is to uphold quality, unfortunately when the rules are interpreted too rigidly, quality wines may be downgraded because they haven’t accorded with some piffling regulation. In a perverse way, the appellation system works in that a creative tension is established between regional identity and individualism. Sure, growers can and will continue to experiment, but why should expensive and boutique wines be rewarded further by being subsumed into the appellation system? These wines are often geared to the international market and fetch high prices regardless of their ‘status’. The example of the Super Tuscan movement is instructive. In the 1980s and 1990s winemakers were prevented from using Cabernet Sauvignon in their wines, so many of the producers opted out of the DOC and sold their wines as vini da tavola at higher prices. A by-product of this is that all wines in Tuscany have taken a hefty price hike.
Appreciation ? the process whereby the value of wines of a certain reputation multiplies exponentially over a short period of time. As in ‘I appreciate that this bottle of Grange will be worth three times as much if I sell it five years hence’.
Aroma ? As Woody Allen might have said, ‘My nose is my second favourite organ’. For the appreciation of wine it’s the nose what knows. We experience a great portion of our pleasure through sniffing and anticipating. When we speak of primary and secondary aromas, the former are the initial smells that come wafting out of the glass, usually an indication of grape variety. Secondary aromas are subtler and their presence can be due to various factors (e.g. the wine opening out in the glass as it warms up, the maturity of the wine itself).
Artifice ? Much has been written about winemaking. Is it an art or a science, or a mixture of both? In fact these are not contrary terms. Science is knowledge arrived at by observation of natural phenomena and art is the skill and experience in harnessing the ingredients that nature provides us. Artifice in wine is a different matter for it involves the sensory perception of unnatural flavours, and your view on how a wine should taste, depends whether you see grapes as nature’s sponges or as something merely to be transformed by technological enhancement into a dependable, stable fermented juice for the commercial market.
Asti Spumante ? To be distinguished from your Elbling. (see also Alsace)
Awards ? There is nothing intrinsically wrong with giving baubles, bangles and beads to wines. It is aspirational, rewards effort and is, after all, a celebration of achievement. However, the system is flawed in many ways. The most interesting and original wines are rarely, if ever, entered into competition, the judging is skewed to giving medals and the wines which win are almost invariably the most aromatically obvious (whites), richest and sweetest (reds).
Bandwagon ? ‘If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late’ said Sir James Goldsmith. Unfortunately, too many bandwagons rumble on flattening everything in their path. The frenzied planting of Chardonnay and Cabernet revealed the blinkered sensibility, an hysterical mercenary attitude, wherein vines were perceived as a pure commodity, a means to producing something that would always be commercially popular and potentially capable of fetching high prices. Once in a while someone will glimpse the glimmering of a trend: a few years ago Viognier was identified as the grape most likely to succeed. It had the appropriate profile: an aromatic grape, but with a fair degree of weight ? it tasted sufficiently different yet agreeably fruity and, most tellingly, it could be marketed as a basic varietal. Suddenly Viognier was being planted everywhere in the Languedoc and numerous examples swamped the market, wines which smelled like perfume thrown over a violet and tasted like cheap parodies of themselves. This creeping colonisation of alien grape varieties tends to create dreary homogeneity. A different sort of bandwagon rolls on hype: Robert Parker, whose delphic pronouncements are slavishly followed by wine cultists across the world, can transform an unknown estate to a besieged one.
Bandwagon 2 ? L’opinion courante. Barthes said that current opinion (which he called Doxa) was like Medusa. If you acknowledged it you become petrified.
Barnyard(y) ? unhygienic aromas if you are an Australian chemist perhaps, otherwise the healthy decomposing shitty aromas of the countryside. Grape varieties prone to this lush gallimaufry of olfactory ordure are Pinot Noir, Grenache, Cinsault, Mourvedre, old vines Carignan and Merlot. Chenin Blanc and old examples of white Burgundy may also display whiffy nasal credentials. See also truffles, vegetal and brettonamyces.
Beast ? The number of the beasts are not legion. Amarone, Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Priorato have honorary status in the menagerie of carnivorous reds. Many other wines when they reach a critical mass of alcohol degenerate into rogue elephants lumberingly unloved.
Benign neglect ? the properly laissez-faire attitude of a grower who believes that wine is made in the vineyard. Also, the expertise of a sommelier who appreciates that you are having a romantic t&eacut;te-át&eacut;te. And finally the critic who ignores all the work put into creating a good restaurant wine list. No ? that’s just wilful neglect.
Biodynamics ? a holistic organic philosophy propounded by Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century and instituted by Xavier Florin in France. Espoused recently, most notably, by Nicolas Joly, Michel Chapoutier, Gaston Huet, Ann-Marie Leflaive, Dominique Lafon and Leroi amongst many others. One of the few examples of a philosophy that does not clip an angel’s wings.
Bladderbags ? Remember the 1970s? If you can’t remember then you weren’t there. Yeah, you know the clich&eacut;s, long coats, spacehoppers, gaunt features and bladderbags, students weaned on the teat thereof. Having consumed the contents of the wine in the box, the cardboard was rent open, the bag pulled out and the few remaining sacred drops were squeezed and sucked out. And they say we humans are civilised.
Blind Tasting ? If that’s a Soave I’ll eat my cat’s hat. Well we’ve all had to nibble on the feline’s fedora and been flummoxed by the glaringly obvious. Blind tasting is an important component of wine examinations in that it tests a combination of sensory appreciation and experience. Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring. Here are some basic tips. Don’t confuse a seriously bad wine for a great one. Aim low. Ask rhetorical questions that don’t give away your cluelessness: you’re not telling me this is a New World wine? Or it’s not Chardonnay surely? If it is you can cover yourself; if it isn’t you were saying anyway that it wasn’t and if it is you were only seeking confirmation. Finally, if you boob like a prize rube, take solace in the following words from James Joyce: ‘A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery’. Or blind portals as the case may be.
Blood of the country (sang des pays) ? A truly sanguine wine that connects you to the place where the vines grow.
Bonny Doon - Critique of Pure Madness
New Releases
Viva Las Vega � An hommage to a certain Ribera del Duero
Beka�a�s Douzaine � Thirteen grape varieties in a Levantine mish-mash
Le Caber-net � a departure into the virtual world of Californian wine making
Mass of Dumbass Gastank � A concoction of umpteen library grape varieties fermented together in an old jalopy in Rand�s garage and awarded his special �Van to Pay� mark.
D.O.C of the Bay. Part of Grahm�s �What�s Up d�Oc� range.
Gest�lt-traminer- Finally, a Gewurz which is more than the sum of its pants
Slow Furmint � In his most ambitious effort to date Randall uses a helicopter to lower Hungary�s finest grapes into a dormant volcano to be dried in suspended raffia baskets. Aszu were Mr Grahm!
A naughty blend of Catarratto, Falanghina, Greco di Tufo called Il Mastrobaturo
Que Syrah-Syrah � damn someone�s already doing that one!
Cinsault So Good � sounds better than it tastes!
Rime Without Riesling � an eiswein made from the quixotic Muller Thurgau.
The Vulture Has Landed � Finally, he�s made his version of Aglianico
Saint Frog�s Ass Est I�i � A purer than pure wine made with the humble grapes rejected by John Williams at Frog�s Leap Winery in a Frogciscan monastery.
L�Ironie� Randy whips up some Fer Servadou from his Gaillac-influenced vineyard Toulouse Le Plot
Cabernose-Syranez � Featuring the crossed noses of Saint Eloi de Durrbach. His travails with a Trevallon blend come to fruition. The Cabernet grapes, you can tell, come from Bergerac. Great with Serrano ham. For once Randy admits he�s lost for swords.
That�s enough incestuous wine references � Ed.
Bordeaux, Basic � This is what I feel about honest-to-badness Bordeaux. �We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-Rate School, Good School and School. Frankly�, said Mr Levy, �School is pretty bad.� (Decline and Fall � Evelyn Waugh).
Bores � In an episode of The Simpsons Homer is standing listening to Ned Flanders explain to him in exhaustive detail about the difference between apple juice and cider. Half way through the discourse, Homer�s brain says to his body �I�m leaving!� and floats away into the ether. Finally, when Flanders starts reciting a jingle about apple juice, Homer passes out, presumably having lost the will to live, leaving the geek to inherit the earth. So it is with wine bores who fix you with their glittering eyes. You retain the final option to pass out, but a more much effective method of crushing a crushing bore is to parade a lusty philistinism. Reminisce fondly and at great length about your first wine experience which was, of course, Laski Riesling (pronounce it �Rice Link� for that full fingernail-scraping-the-blackboard effect) and how, of course, it made you as sick as a pig. Then ask is it true that Mouton-Cadet sells for three hundred quid a bottle and say that you had a really good bottle of white Chianti recently - and would the other person happen to know the name of the grower. Then watch his soul depart his body.
Botrytis � Do you remember the Bird�s Eye advert that posited a eugenic approach to vegetable selection? Apply this philosophy to grapes. Then add a voice-over in a deep, portentous American accent, �Surely, this grape was the noblest, most shrivelled of them all�. But I digress. For the mellowest of fruitfulness get me some mist, some warm autumn sunshine and a jolly benevolent bacterium. In Germany this process is known as �Edelfaule� which sounds like something a large bird of prey does in its nest.
Bouquet � suggests an aroma that provides both complexity and development. Piat d�Or or Jacobs Creek have a bucket not a bouquet (the difference between �not to sniff and not to be sniffed at�)
Boutique Wines � An intellectual exercise to invent something small but beautifully formed and beastly expensive.
Boy, The � According to Brewer�s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable a jocular expression for champagne originating from shooting parties where Edward VII would request some chilled wine carried by the page boy in attendance.
He will say that port and sherry his nice palate
Always cloy;
He�ll nothing drink but �B. and S.� and big
Magnums of �the boy�.
Punch (1882)
Brand(ing) � The constant attempt to market wine as if it were soap powder.
Brandford/Blandford � a utopian supermarket town where only stepford wines can be purchased.
Brettanomyces � Do not fret, it�s not a crisis/But this wine has brettanomyces. (Ogden Smashed)
Burgundy � a minefield for the savant and the novice alike. The source of some greatest wines in the world; where, also expectation is confounded.
California � see also Nappy Valley Syndrome � The Gallo-lean philosophy of Cornucopernicus that posits that the world of wine revolves around money.
Californication � Obscenely high prices from the abovementioned country
Califormula � A recent Napa tasting left me so unmoved I had to take a anti-Cabernet tablet to come down off the ceiling afterwards, whilst the memory of Chardonnays tasting like lemon soup with deep toasted vanilla croutons doing the backstroke still lingers painfully.
Canopy Management � Standing on one leg like a stork and spearing a smoked salmon toast triangle with funny coloured whipped cream on it, whilst balancing a glass of champagne on your nose and pretending that a perfect stranger is your long lost brother. No?
Cellar � For the purposes of an amateur even one bottle of reasonable quality stored in a cupboard constitutes a cellar.
Cellaring Wines � Hamlet�s father�s ghost was the �fellow in the cellarage�. Let�s ask him. �But I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house�. Be like that then.
Chaptalisation � A sacred rites of passage where wine is compelled to swallow sugar to graduate from a sweet-natured and retiring bag of bones to become virile and confident enough to carouse at top table with BIG FOOD.
Champagne � a sparkling liquid that has established a right old bubble reputation. Ah, you know that song �I get no kick(back) from Champagne�, champagne has been the drink of plutocrats, both bloated and rakish, the currency of celebration for centuries. Ever since Dom Perignon allegedly said �Come quickly I am tasting stars!� the stars have been tasting champagne. How so? Because, as Dick Swiveller might have said, it is not a wine to be tasted in a sip, but guzzled greedily. The nadir for champagne was surely the lead-up to the millennium with absurd hype about shortages (what were we going to do � bathe in it?), leading to price rises, but more significantly the release of unworthy product. One of the major grande marque houses is currently wooing restaurants by reducing its prices by 25%, giving out vast amounts of free stock and offering expense-paid trips the USA. Another is selling its champagne to a major London restaurant group for less than the cost of production! Nice to know they have confidence in the quality of their product. (Laughs like a wounded moose strapped to a cement mixer)
Champagne 2 � a boost to wit and hilarity as in �champagne is a great leveller. It makes you my equal�. (McCaulay Connor � The Philadelphia Story)
Chateau-bottled � From a palace to a privy a chateau could be anything, and so might the wine, from flim-flam dressed as Mouton or Mouton dressed as mouton (although this is unlikely!). Further reason to believe that people in Bordeaux have an edifice complex. Also used in a pejorative sense as in �chateau-bottled shit�.
Cheap Champagne � �The taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife�. (Aldous Huxley)
Cheap Wine 1 � The cheap wine movement has opened up the pleasures of wine to many of those who might not have otherwise have tasted them, and that is a great thing; taken to extremes it is a kind of philistinism, narrowing our horizons and stunting our palates. (Andrew Jefford � Evening Standard Wine Guide 1997).
Cheap Wines 2 � Why and wherefore
1. They are made from obscenely high yields � a bad thing
2. They are from countries where the farm workers are paid below a living wage - a very bad thing
3. They are not what they say on the label. i.e. Chateauneuf-du-Pape, which, is, in fact, Cotes du Rhone - a surprisingly common thing
4. The retail outlet from which you are buying is trying to dump excess stock which is well past its best - a not surprising thing
5. All of the above.
Chinese Wine � See unscrewtoppable wine.
Chirpy Chappiness/Punditry/Ros�-tinted speculation � The Panglossian view of the Wine Trade espoused by Oddbins catalogues and those incessantly promulgating the virtues of supermarket wines. Whilst one applauds enthusiasm and a proselytising zeal, everything in the garden of wine is not always blooming. For every Oddbins quip �No Spain No Gain�, one might counter with �Much Spain, Very Plain�.
Chocolate(y) � used to describe red wines that have a fruit-thickened or extracted texture.
Chocolate 2 � difficult to match with wine, therefore loved by sommeliers anxious to prove a point and their worth. Depends on the cocoa content of the chocolate and other ingredients in the dessert.
Claret � a catch-all term, but generally understood by me to mean a withered wine bleached of all flavour but the driest and dustiest of tannins. Or, rumour has it, maybe the greatest red wine in the world. Still apparently consumed by the lesser-spotted pinstripe in their natural habitat of City wine bars. Cheap claret: often used an example to illustrate the rhetorical devices of oxymoron and pleonasm. See also necrophilia and infanticide.
Clockwork Orange - “Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!”
Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Closed � The perennial state of a bottle of Coulee de Serrant (Nicolas Joly�s wine)! Denotes a wine that has yet to reveal its potential. Closed wines can sometimes �open up� if poured into a decanter and left for a while. Refers also to the parochial state of mind of certain wine growers.
Cloudy Baywatch � see cult wines. Fine Bordeaux has its index that rises and falls according to the vagaries of the stock market, but there are certain wines, by virtue of their fashionableness and image, that arouse the most primitive and rapacious instincts in restaurateurs. Whereas certain fluctuations and discrepancies in prices are understandable, I would strongly advocate not buying a wine where you suspect that you will be subsidising wholly unrealistic profit margins. A bottle of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon, for example, will cost a restaurateur �8 inclusive of vat if he or she is buying from the agent and between �11 and �12 if through a third party. I have seen C.B. listed in certain restaurants from �20 (lower end) up to �70 in the pomp of hotel fine-dining rooms (before a 15% service charge is whacked on). To make your protest heard effectively I suggest you attach strips of Velcro to your clothing which you tear off meaningfully when you spot such an egregious �Rip-off�.
Consultants � (a) perform a valuable service when you are the consultant; (b) an unnecessary encumbrance and expense when it is another person with equally fixed views.
Corked � a flawed wine which has taken on the smell of a cork (actually, more like the smell of damp cardboard) due to a tainted or faulty cork. Statistically, about one in twelve bottles is corked. See faulty wine and TCA. The law of sod dictates that if you expatiate lovingly about the qualities of a particular to another person in the hope of impressing them, the wine will hear you and cork itself to serve you right.
Corkscrews 1 � One of the more amazing things you learn about corkscrews if you happen to be a sommelier if that they have this spooky capacity to vanish into thin air. �It is not possible (to talk) with parents any more than with corkscrews�, wrote Patrick White. Especially, if they�re not there. But I digress. Although you can buy innumerable namby-pamby Heath-Robinson contraptions for levering the cork out of the bottle whilst whistling the theme from Iphegenie en Taurie, for macho self-respect the waiter�s friend has to be your weapon of choice. Until you have felt a cork splintering or sliding inexorably into a bottle of the most expensive claret you can conceive of, you will never have the moral fibre forged in the fire of true adversity and disappointment.
Corkscrews 2 -The desires of the heart are as crooked as�
Comic Book Heroes �
The Clone Ranger
Leroi of the Reauverres
Judge Red � �I am the Loire!!�
Desperate D.N.A
Cooking with wine � One well-known London chef used to stick a bottle of Cornas in his daube (sounds faintly rude). A few months later he was bankrupt. You will still see the occasional boast of origin on a menu. �� with a Barolo sauce� is one of my favourite conceits, when you know that some industrial cochineal, which is so light that the alcohol evaporates into thin air whilst it is being poured from the bottle, is being used instead of the great Italian nebbiolo.
Covering and binding � Is this list your pride and joy? Does it repel food and grubby fingerprints? Or is a scrap of paper renewed daily? Choke on this: �The butler returned with a huge album bound in crocodile leather. �You are looking at the binding, I notice, said the host. It is the skin of a crocodile I shot myself in the Nile� �. (Jazz and Jasper by William Gerhardie � 1927)
Cristal � Ain�t sippin if it ain�t Cristal (Mis-teeq)
Cult wines � Should be known as Boutique and the Beastly Prices. Revered by wine collectors because of their alleged rarity. Rationing the wine creates a Pavlovian reaction amongst wealthy buyers whose willingness to be resoundingly ripped off drives the prices into the empyrean. Prime candidates for those with obese bank accounts include Chateau Le Pin Number, Moated Grange, Cloudy Bay anything and that rarest of avises, the wine Tim Atkin felicitously calls Screaming Ego (n�e Eagle).
Culture -
Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local caf� to the speech at a formal dinner.”
-- Roland Barthes
Decadent � a hedonistic, opulent, unctuous, plump, ice cream sundae of a wine, �The luscious clusters of the vine/Upon my mouth do crush their wine/ The nectarine and curious peach/Into my hands themselves do reach�, plush, lush and not to be rushed. A BLT with a bottle of DRC. Exchanging a kiss of 1982 Pichon-Lalande. Baby wild strawberries and Krug ros� on a cliff top.
Decanting � Somewhere in wine accessory heaven are a set of decanters with necks as black as cormorants due to the palaver with candles, cradles and loss of motor function. The main reason for decanting is to separate the wine from the sediment. Having said that I strongly believe that decanting is not only a useful but necessary tool in serving certain wines. Emile Peynaud asserts that subjecting a wine to oxygen by pouring into a decanter actually deprives the wine of its aromatic properties. This must have been made by observation, but I can only say that I think it�s nonsense. I have done innumerable experiments with reds and white that decanting invariably helps to activate dormant aroma, softens the texture and makes the wine more delicious. Timing is important. Some wines only want pouring over and a little aeration, others need to breathe. Many of the changes described may be because the decanter is warmer than the bottle, stimulating aroma. A cold wine is generally leaner, its tannins more astringent. I liken the process to ageing and you should pose the question: how many years do you want to add to the wine? Pouring over aids wines bottled on the lees and those with reductive aromas. As for fully mature wines, their fragility requires that decanting should only be carried out just before serving since exposure to oxygen will push them over the edge. One should not underplay the pleasure of simply seeing a wine�s lustrous colour, sensually suggestive of purple-mouthed pleasure.
DeVINitions.
Super-Tuscan � A wine which tastes Californian
Cal-Italian � A wine which tastes Californian
A good mousse � bubbles the size of tennis balls
A fine mousse � bubbles the size of ping pong balls
Gentle mousse � one bubble the size of a football
A Nice Moose � a bubbling caribou who�ll stand you a good glass of champagne
An intriguingly elegant young claret � possibly there�s some fruit here but I can�t detect it
A wine of infinite subtlety � I can�t understand why everyone thinks this wine is so wonderful
This wine would go well with�. � This is what I had to eat last night
Superb with new season�s milk-fed lamb � I have an organic butcher around the corner
Of course Australia is not a country, it�s a continent � despite attempts at regional differentiation it is still all bloody chardonnay, cabernet and shiraz.
Vin du patron � the patron who originally drank this is long dead but we�ve been using this as a substitute for embalming fluid.
This wine is an animal/a massive beast � This wine is so alcoholic you could cauterise open wounds with it
I do not work for a supermarket - I work for a supermarket
Viognier is the new Sauvignon - I meant to do this article five years ago and I missed the deadline
It’s summer again - Time to rehash my “Roses aren’t absolutely disgusting” piece
Watch out France - Supermarkets are doing their year-round six for the price of two Vatted plonks from Chile, Bulgaria etc.
Jacob’s Creek is actually not a bad drink - The date is April 1st
A fresh lively champagne at �8.50… - remarkable value even for battery acid
Delicate � light and refined. Riesling from the Mosel is the quintessential delicate grape. Used occasionally as a synonym for �sophisticated� as in �This Australian Chardonnay is surprisingly delicate�.
Deliciousness � Gratia placendi. Delicious wine is instantly appealing, encourages us to unfurl our tongues and encourage the flavours silkily slide across our palates without analysis.
Designer Vines � The naming of vineyards, particularly the minute parcels you find in Burgundy, have always a topographical or historical rationale. Now anyone with a peck of decent soil can declare proudly: �This wine is made from high quality fruit grown in the very special green cheese terroir of the moon.� I can foresee a day when flying terroirists are packed into coffins laden with a precious cargo of Kimmeridgean clay so they can create their fantasy vineyards in their own back yard.
Dolly Parton � A wine underwired with buxom fruit and loud oak.
Dropping its drawers � prior to lying down and waving its legs in the air. The last stage of decay before vinegar.
Earthy � refers to a wine displaying characteristics which are less obviously fruit-driven and more to do with flavours of the soil. Wines from the South West of France such as, for example, Cahors, Madiran and Pecharmant and even Bordeaux remind one of grass and earth: ferns, undergrowth, gravel, warm clay, dried apples, also intriguingly, German Rieslings from the Rheinpfalz There is usually a strong mineral component to these wines.
English (Wine) � �Remember things are different in England. An elevator is a lift, a vest is a waistcoat and steak and kidney pie is botulism.� (Marge Simpson). England has recently established a reputation for very decent sparkling wine and who knows whether there might not be some benefits to global warming. At the moment English wines are relatively expensive, but the restaurant market is becoming responsive to listing at least one example of home-grown product.
Etiquette � Gentlemen do not throw wine at ladies. They pour it over them (Auberon Waugh � The Spectator)
Eucalips � The result of imbibing too much Australian cabernet sauvignon.
Faulty wine � �The food was a farce, the wine a tragedy�. A wine that does not live up to its much-trumpeted reputation because of various faults. The most common is being corked, then being maderised or oxidised or acetic or sulphurous (certain cheap Italian wines seem intent on bottling the internal gases of Mount Vesuvius). Wines should also be regarded as living things; it is said that wild yeast has encoded within it a memory or engram of the cycle of its particular vineyard. Weather conditions can influence the condition of a wine. In cold weather, during low pressure, tannins will often manifest themselves as hard and unyielding. Ultimately, our own mood will dictate how responsive our palate is to a given wine. On the night of Thatcher�s third general election victory I popped open a bottle of champagne to console myself, and, do you know, it had turned into pure vinegar.
Faulty Wine 2 � �Brettanomyces waives the rules.� To some brett is a mousy mouse in the scrupulously hygienic house of wine; to others it lends wild faecal flavours of the barnyard. Personally I�m with the delinquent meeces rather than the men in the surgical masks, but you can have too much of a bad thing.
Far-Fetched Similes and Metaphors � Our imagination, our sense of culture (what we�ve read, music we�ve listened to and so forth) are just as valid expressions of how we respond to wine as any. Each individual�s experience is precious and unique; in terms of communicating one has also to find a common vocabulary which both defines and brings alive that wine. �It�s like looking in the eye of a duck and sucking all the fluid from its beak�. -Dylan Moran � Black Books (of drinking a �7000 bottle of claret)
Films, Wine In �
“My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ‘53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!”
Bond in Goldfinger (1964)
“Sparkling Muscatel. One of the finest wines of Idaho.”
Waiter in The Muppet Movie (1979)
“The last time that I trusted a dame was in Paris in 1940. She was going out to get a bottle of wine. Two hours later, the Germans marched into France.”
Sam Diamond in Murder by Death (1976)
“Oh, we could give it a try. I’ll bring the wine, you bring your scarred psyche.”
Chase in Batman Forever (1995)
“Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!”
Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Finesse � a term like breeding, elegance and femininity referring to a bygone age when wines belonged to gentlemen�s clubs and used to wear old school ties.
Fizzy � Cava Caveat Emptor
Flabby � a wine lacking the structural corset of acidity.
Fleshy/Fleshiness � Rich in flavour, palpable in texture, smooth and soft. Merlot is responsible for particularly fleshy wines. Also, the inevitable result of the consumption of too much Merlot.
Flirt � a blush wine from Zimbabwe � and well might it.
Food (and wine) � see love and marriage! Also great sex.
Flying Wine Makers � Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.
Fruit � �There is a wine for every fruit to bring out its flavour; there is Riesling for nectarines; Sauternes for prunes, and red wine for red berries, pears and fresh black figs. (Paula Wolfert � The Cooking of South-West France)
Garage Wine � Wine drunk in the discos of Ibitha.
Glasses 1 � Geezers can�t resist making passes at girls with a full set of Riedel glasses.
Glasses 2 � Played as percussion on the track �Because� by I Am Kloot on their Natural History album.
Glassmanship � Since the fashion is that most of us no longer have moustachios to twirl flamboyantly, we use the simple (and not so simple) wine glass as a further utensil in our body language. The Swirl Magnanimous � hail fellow well met, open stance, bugger the wine let�s talk; The Wrist-flick Confident � pen at half mast, eyes middle distance, expecting a call from my stockbroker; I�ve shagged more bottles of Latour than you�ve had hot dinners; The Rotation Rampant � come on baby give me nose, furrowed brow, the constipated effort of literary composition; The Examination Profound � glass tilted I am the merciless magnifier incarnate, Rodin�s �The Drinker� and the recording angel rolled into one, no aroma however can escape my all-encompassing nose; The Agitation Speculative � tentative quiver, the peripheral nervousness of a rabbit caught in the glare of a pussycat�s headlamps; The Clipboard � I am important, I have a clipboard angled like a ski-slope towards my stomach and if you wish to speak to me call my seconds and if my seconds aren�t available call my thirds etc.; The Jerk � the careless flinging of red wine in all directions ensuring that other tasters keep a respectful distance.
Gouleyant � easy to drink, quaffable. �I am not fond, for everyday at least, of racy, heady wines that diffuse a potent charm and have their own particular flavour. What I like best is a clean, light, modest country vintage of no special name. One can carry plenty of it and it has a good and homely flavour of the land, and of the earth and sky and woods�. (Steppenwolf)
Great Wine � inspires the verse-monger in all of us. Like poetry it is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits (Carl Sandburg) and can induce transcendent, generous and extraordinary feelings. Prosaically, the same region that links our palate to our brain is that which governs our ability to talk and learn a language. Poetically speaking, appreciating wine, is �the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions�, where drinking unlocks the doors of perception and becomes a learning experience in itself.
Green � unripe fruit, in which the pips are squeaking too shrilly.
Green harvesting � Chuck berries
Heliogabalus � a sybaritic Roman emperor, who, legend has it, suffocated to death under a cascade of rose petals. Drowning yourself in barrel of Le Pin might be the modern equivalent, although there might not be sufficient wine to achieve this aim.
History � wine is more than the result of a single year�s labour in the vineyard, it bears the imprint of the particular weather conditions, the geography, the soil, the people and the culture for hundreds of years. Wine has the capacity to take us to other places and other times, if we will only let our imaginations run free. Vintages have a special personal relevance; how much more attention do we pay when we drink from our birth year?
Hospitality � �Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine� as Dick Swiveller said. With all the screeds of guff written about wine one tends to forget that good wine and good company. Wine loosens the tongue, fires the blood, relaxes the mind; without food, however, it becomes merely fuel. In this country we do not take enough time over meals. We do not spend enough time shopping for, preparing and cooking food. Meals themselves are a crucial part of social interaction � spending hours eating, drinking and talking with friends is so much healthier than nuking some food in the microwave and then bolting it.
Hot � a wine unbalanced by excessive alcohol.
INAO � Interfering Nosy Aggravating Officiousness. Bless.
Infanticide � see necrophilia � to settle the precedent between froggy and fogey� The French generally prefer drinking their wines young with that primary bloom of fruit, the Brits respect maturity and genteel decay, although to age a wine to its optimum drinking point requires luck as well as judgement. No two bottles ever taste the same even of the same wine. Wine is living, developing thing; the best solution is to buy a case of quality wine, store it in a cool, stable environment and to open a bottle at regular interval of say, six months (depending on the wine, of course), and to witness its evolution. All this refers to quality wine, by the way, in terms of cheap and nasty, substitute insecticide for infanticide.
Integrated � a wine in which all the various components are singing in harmony.
Internationalism � We live in age of superlatives, wherein wine makers strive to achieve the highest recognition of their art by refining of their technique. Oenologists are breeding faultily faultless wines that have little or no relevance to the region from which they come. These wines from makers such as Guigal, Jaboulet, Mondavi are as polished and saturated with flavour as you are likely to find, but curiously hollow. One is reminded by Pauline Kael�s observation about Cecil B de Mille�s pictures: �� small minded on a big scale � they�re about as Promethean as a cash register�.
Jacob�s Creek �
Father Ted (hunched over picnic basket to conceal what he is doing): Okay, Father, I�m just getting ready for the picnic.
Accidentally clinks two bottles of wine together as he puts them in the basket.
Father Jack: Drink!
Father Ted: Oh no, Father, it�s just sparkling water.
Father Jack (with a triumphant leer): Jacob�s Creek Chardonnay 1991!
Father Ted: You can tell that just from the sound of the bottles?!
Father Jack: Drink! Drink!!
Jammy � wines from a hot vintage or a hot climate are sweet, super-ripe, low in acidity, usually alcoholic.
Journalism � Journalists form such a cosy confederacy so when one of their race ruffles the stagnant pond and says the things, pace Gulliver, which are not, we should enjoy the consequent bespoke hysteria while it lasts. Despite the fine tradition of writing about wine in this country we lag behind France in setting agendas and articulating philosophies. Journalism seems part of the packaging and branding of wine, supporting the supermarket culture, regurgitating press releases and creating personalities.
Karaoke wines � Wines that sing for your supper.
Kinaesthetics/Synaethesia � The School of Jilly Goolden and Oz Clarke wherein far-fetched similes, mad metaphors and juicy juxtapositions are adduced to bring the fruit quality of a wine to galvanic life. A form of vocabulary which puts the trope into tropical. We all do it, but beware when the language is fruitier than the wine.
Kubrickballs � I was watching A Clockwork Orange and my eyes pricked up and ears went out on stalks when I saw our �ero, Malcolm McDowell, tucking into a claret. He picks up the bottle and peers at the label: Saint-Estephe, Chateau bottled, 1960. Pouring himself a glass of liquid the colour of purest cochineal he gulps it in one and proceeds to fall into a deep coma. Well, we know why. What a rank vintage. However, maybe Kubrick has the last laugh. Robert Parker recalls a good Montrose from that year.
Land � The constant intimate link with the land which makes him love and desire it with a passion such as you might feel for someone else�s wife whom you care for and take in your arms but can never possess; that land which, after you have coveted it in such suffering for centuries, you finally obtain by conquest and make your own, the sole joy and light of your life. And this desire which had been built up over the centuries, this possession seemingly never to be achieved, explained his love for his own plot, his passion for land, the largest possible amount of land, the rich, heavy lump of soil you can touch and weigh in your hand. (Emile Zola � The Earth)
Laying Down � What customers feel in need of after seeing the mark-ups in certain West End restaurants.
Lees � Dregs? That�s what he sediment (famous piece of graffiti). Otherwise the draff that settles at the bottom of a fermentation vessel comprising dead yeast cells, skins and pips and insoluble tartrates � the stuff of wine itself. Wine can be left on the so-called fine lees to gain greater complexity of flavour. Lees stirring or batonnage (breaking up the thick sediment of lees) enables oxygen to reach the bottom layer of the wine and helps prevent the reduction of sulphur into the more noxious smelling hydrogen sulphide.
Lebanon � Beshrew me, the tills are still alive with the sound of Musar. I�ll have a Beka�a�s dozen toot sweet.
Label � Never judge a label by its wine.
Legerdemain � What separates sommeliers from the rest of mere mortals is their ability to tie a napkin around the neck of the bottle with panache and to project the wine into the glass. As a former sommelier myself I can testify to the awkwardness of pouring without placing the neck of the bottle on the rim of the glass for support. Cackhandedness can take on epic proportions. My favourite story was of a young sommelier who was working her first shift in a trendy London restaurant. She popped the champagne cork too violently; it flew up, hit the mirrored glass ceiling which shattered and one giant shard plummeted towards a table where it sliced open the back of a nubile young woman�s dress. Which was a, as Robert Stephens used to intone in his plummiest voice: CATASTROPHE!
Legs (Tears, Arches) � having swirled your glass observe how the liquid clinging to the sides after the wine has settled. This viscosity may be due to the extract, the level of alcohol or the sugar content of the wine, or a combination of these factors. May be described as vast and trunkless if you are in poetic mood, or like Betty Grable�s for those with black-and-white memories. Legs have replaced tears and arches appear to have fallen out of favour. All arches, by the way, must be gothic.
Local Wine � �The Spanish wine, my God, it is foul, catspiss is champagne compared, this is the sulphurous urination of some aged horse.�
D.H. Lawrence
Letter From Parma to Rhys Davies
Long/Length � the longer the better. What distinguishes a great wine from a good wine is the difference between the lengths of time that a wine persists on the palate after being swallowed.
Library (also country houses, old furniture) � Old Rioja with its wonderful aromas of beeswax, floor polish and mahogany blush reminds one of a library of first editions in a country house where all the wooden furniture has been lovingly polished. See also far-fetched similes, kinaesthetics, TV Pundits, style.
Literature, References To Wine In � I am indebted to Bill Baker�s excellent essay in The Oxford Companion To Wine (edited by Jancis Robinson). He charts references from Chaucer and Shakespeare through Pepys, Smollett, Byron and Keats, Peacock and Thackeray and into the 20th century with Belloc, Goldsworthy, Waugh and Amis. Of course, getting drunk on wine has always been occupation in an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one. I particularly like the Dr Johnson quotation that �few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive to fill the interval between lunch and dinner�. Bill also identifies the infuriating habit of Ian Fleming�s James Bond who keeps on referring to vintages of Dom Perignon and Taittinger that were never made, especially ironic when you consider the following piece of very roughly paraphrased dialogue from Diamonds Are Forever:
Thuggish baddy (not so cunningly disguised as waiter): Would you like your Chateau Mouton-Rothschild decanted now, sir?�
Bond: No, I would prefer a claret.
T. B.: Very well, I will fetch you a claret.
Bond: Aha. If you were a real waiter you would know that Mouton-Rothschild is a claret.
Waiter explodes with a stick of dynamite between his legs
Maderised � the interaction of oxygen and white wine wherein the wine become discoloured and stale as three year old rusk.
Marcillac � A jolly rural thirst-quenching red from the Aveyron evoking �russet yeas and honest kersey noes and adjacent to the aristocratic Margaux in the Hachette Dictionary of French wine.
Mark-ups � the (often ludicrous) percentage by which the cost of wines are increased in restaurants. Interestingly, the bigger the restaurant chain, the higher the mark-up despite the economies of scale. The raison d�etre of food and beverage managers (the Ferengi of the Wine Universe) who dream in multiples of 3.75 (plus vat) and the source of great bewilderment to customers. See Profit.
Melon-omaniacs � The chief archbishops of cantaloupe, that breed of wine scribes who like their Chardonnays fat-assed and full of �melonosity�.
Merciless Magnifiers - Les Impitoyables � Big-bowled glasses designed by Jacques Pascot fiendishly efficient at capturing the bouquet of a wine. Also the name of a western set in Screaming Gullet, Montana, where men are men and wine bars are two a penny. You must remember the oft-quoted line�
�Do you feel lucky, drunk? Make mine a Chardonnay!�
Merchants, Wine 1 � �I wonder what the Vintners buy/One half so precious as the goods they sell�. Yeah, maybe. It was probably Jancis Robinson who said that the way to make a million in the wine trade was to start with ten million.
Merchants Wine 2 � �You mean the same wine as before � from the German? Really, my dear fellow, you ought to buy some in the English shop�. (Tarantyev to Oblomov). Even in 19th century Russia they knew who the best wine merchants were. Think I�ll go and open a shop in St Petersburgh.
Merchant list parody � the questions you need answered
Q: Which wine would you take to a desert island?
A: I would take an Australian Chardonnay; because they are so full of oak, I could build a life raft from them.
Q: What is your favourite smell?
A: The smell of Napalm-in-the-morning Semillon-Sauvignon
Q: What fashions do you foresee in the wine trade?
A: Well I think white will be hot in the summer and red will be cool in the winter.
Mineral(ity) � smells and flavours associated with certain types of soil. Classic examples would be Chablis (wet pebbles); Pouilly-Fume (flint/chalk); Mosel Riesling (slate), Blue Nun (the sound of one penny being rubbed against itself) - the list is endless. James Wilson�s book Terroir provides an authoritative explanation on how wine derives much its authentic flavour from vegetable and mineral matter.
Moelleux � a deliciously evocative French adjective meaning �marrow� describing a white wine that is soft and mellow and slightly on the sweet side.
Names � �I remember your name perfectly, but I just can�t think of your face�, said the Reverend William Spooner. Many a true word is spoken by mistake. He must have been thinking of the ubiquitous whining flymakers. Certain wines trade on the ease by which one is able to remember their names: from the sublimely poor Wild Pig to the ridiculously good Stag�s Leap. However, if wines were to reflect their origins more accurately, then we�d see �If this is Tuesday it must be Spanish Chardonnay�; Big Tank Sauvignon; Vin de Sous La Table Aramon; Chemically-Refined Cabernet. See also Bonny Doon � Critique of Pure Madness.
Nappy Valley Syndrome � The rich shall inherit the earth and charge the earth for it.
Necrophilia � see infanticide � One of my more memorable experiences was going to an old-fashioned French restaurant and being told that it was very difficult to sell Rhone and French regional wines because the elderly, rather conservative clientele, loved their claret and Burgundy. I surveyed the list which was populated by numerous cru class� Margaux from supposedly reputable vintages in the 80s (82, 83, 85, 89). I ordered one, then another, then another. Each different wine was a brown corpse. Which proves, I suppose, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. Conversely, age can transfigure the most unlikely ugly ducklings into swans.
Nose � a term embracing the aroma and bouquet of wine. A strange thought occurs: do wine tasters noses evolve to match their speciality? Would a sherry sniffer eventually end up with a beak like a sandpiper, ideal for poking into a copita, and would a burgundy lover�s hooter swell to resemble a big reddish-purple truffle?
Numbers/Numerology � love of wine can occasionally descend into geeky infantilism. Robert Parker has tapped into some primordial human need to codify and rank. Obsession with vintages, grams of sugar, ph levels and most of all points. And points mean � prize mark-ups.
Oaked (pejorative) � eye of oak newt; essence of vanillin toad. Can be used to enrich or to cover up. Worst examples see the incarcerated and desiccated fruit flavours as mute witnesses reduced to blinking through the interstices of their oaken prison cells. See integrated.
Old Vines � or vieilles vignes as you see on many a French bottle. As far as I can tell there is no specific age requirement to merit this description, although one would expect a minimum of thirty years. Wine made from these gnarled oldsters will have more colour, depth and concentration of fruit because the vines yield less and their roots tend to probe deeper dredging up extra good gunky flavours (technical wine expression).
Organics � see also biodynamics - an approach to grape growing which eschews the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and fungicides and accentuates the importance of sustainable agriculture. An organic winemaker is one, who does not, as it were, bite the hand that lays the golden egg.
Oxidised � Generally pejorative term describing the result of interaction between oxygen and red wine. Worst-case scenario: dull colour, stale, sweaty socks and cara-smelly aromas. A degree of contact with air, however, can be beneficial especially in those old-fashioned funky wines being matured in massive oak barrels called foudres, adding wonderful secondary aromas.
Oyster � (i) A person who liberally sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions (from The Washington Post); (ii) A bivalve to be washed down with a good glass of Chablis.
Pathetic Fallacy � Brooding, severe, austere, proud, secretive may seem the wines to the lovers of pathetic fallacies. (Oxford Companion To Wine)
Petrolly � a description of the secondary aromas of a Riesling wine with a few years maturity. Also known as the transformation from Riesling to Dieseling.
Petrus - What is the wine about? Imagine a cathedral lit with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, a stave of oak, a punnet of blackcurrants and the gospel according to Robert Parker. (with apologies to HG Wells)
Philosophy � �I hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alike unless it be in this, that the philosophers exchange their ware for money, like the wine-merchants; some of them with a mixture of water or worse, or giving short measure.� (Walter Pater � Marius The Epicurean)
Pichets/Fillettes � known for their uses in hand-to-hand combat in rugby bars around Toulouse. Jugs or carafes of various measurements that very properly allow you to drink the quantity of wine that you want.
Pinotphilia � The strange uncontrollable compulsion to find the good in wines made from the Pinot Noir regardless of whether they are too young, too knackered, too thin or too tannic.
Plonk � One who only likes plonk may be called a plonker.
Pleasure �
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse � and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
And Wilderness is Paradise now.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Poetry � According to legend, the hooves of Pegasus, the winged horse, released a spring, the Hippocrene, on the northern slopes of Mount Helicon, which watered the vines and those who drank from this spring were inspired to write poetry or a style of wine journalism which is one sniff short of a full bouquet. For example,
Let me drink brandy,
Let me drink wine,
Oh, what the heck,
I�ll drink turpentine.
Poetry 2
Poetry is devil�s wine
St Augustine
Devil don�t know what he�s missing!
Pouilly-Fuisse � One of the easiest wines to type on a conventional keyboard.
Precocious � a fine Bordeaux from a great vintage that you can drink within your lifetime.
Predictions � Here�s a rumour, I�ll tell you how I started it. If you taste a wine that you like, tell ten people. Three months later you�ll read about some crazy trend. Traditional things will come back into fashion if they embody sound virtues, just as a stopped clock will always tells the correct time twice a day. I predict wine consumption will continue to rise in the U.K.
Pricing Structure � something which, in Bordeaux, like the peace of God, passeth all understanding.
Profit � Next time you go into a restaurant think upon profit and the concatenation of corkscrewed equations that determines the price you pay for the wine in your glass. Leaving aside the Chancellor�s full half �grinch� by means of levying swingeing duty increases, the wine companies have to establish their reasonable margin to break even. Setting a price for a year involves taking a long view on the exchange rate between the UK and various countries. Then they have to build into their margins the number of restaurants, hotels, off licenses who exceed their credit terms. Those who go bust rarely, if ever, pay a penny to the wine companies. Restaurants, in particular, need cash flow, so wine companies are an easy option to run a big line of credit. As a wine merchant should you try to contact an accounts department you will set into train a series of lies and evasions. Accounts is only present when mistakes appear on an invoice, and even if the invoices are correct they will pretend to lose them to create a paper chain. It should be realised that these people that these people have to justify their position by controlling the outflow of cash. Arguably, the easiest way of saving money would be to sack themselves. Negotiating discounts is the next stage. Restaurants will demand discounts off a list price even before they have proved either volume or credit worthiness. The point of discounts is to pass them on to customers and make the wine more attractively priced, but many restaurants add the saving to their already grossly inflated profit margins. Restaurants will also play wine merchants off against each other, creating a Dutch auction on prices.
Quotas � the method of creating demand by limiting availability of a wine.
Raunchy � Beulah, peel me a grape.
Research Incontrovertible � Statistics disgorged and obvious conclusions drawn in order to prove that we are drinking more than we ever did.
Revenons a nos Moutons � Return to our Moutons
Restaurant Wine Lists � ranging from the blackboard in a bar to the ancient leather-bound tome in a stuffy hotel, which, whereupon you open it, a colony of moths flies out. The best lists exhibit a sense of discrimination in the wine buying; they will be sympathetic to the style of cooking in the restaurant; they will tend to contain relevant information about the grape variety and the style of the wine. See also Great Fiction and Recreational Bath-time Dreaming.
Rhone Rangers � A term that has thankfully vanished from our wine vocabulary and led to all sorts of excruciating puns and whimsical labels: Goats Do Roam, being my favourite bete noir.
Riedel � Schmiedel. These guys can certainly blow glass. There�s a tulip for Burgundy and one for Bordeaux, another for Barolo and for the Syrah grape. That splintering sound you hear is a collapsing bank balance.
Rustic � a bucolic wine with nowt taken out probably made with minimal interference in the vineyard and vinified in a rusty shed inhabited by families of pigeons, rats, bats and other denizens of the wild.
SALES REP OF THE YEAR
New Wine For Old! New Wine For Old! There’s a lot of dust on that bottle. So bad for asthma. And look at the label - so faded. You can hardly read H�A�U�T� could be anything. Wouldn’t you like a clean bottle with a glossy label and a funny, happy name? I have one with hopping kangaroos. Of course, you would. Let’s see the date. 1961? Oh my God, it’s over forty years past it’s sell-by date. Listen, I give you a bottle with a new sell-by date - see, NV, that means you drink it any time forever you know what I mean? On my mother’s life! First growth? Schmirst growth. That’s one out of five, madame. No, cork is cheap - look it floats like a witch, trust me - get yourself screwcap, I give you no-charge rust-free guarantee�
Savoury � sapid, tasty and moreish often with a hint of spices.
Scandal � That which refreshes the jaded schadenfreude buds. Often associated with Bordeaux and Burgundy, particularly the activity of passing off a wine as 100% pure, fine and upstanding product of a specific village or region, when in fact the wine has been adulterated or �improved� by the addition of extraneous agents.
Scores � Mr Parker, the pundit. You must have heard the classic Parker story or variants upon the theme.
A man goes into a wine shop.
�That case of claret you sold me last week. The wine was disgusting, absolutely undrinkable. I would like to return the remainder of the bottles�.
�But Parker gave it a 95, sir�.
�I�ll take two cases then.�
Seduction - Notre r�gion a tout pour s�duire: un paysage doux et vert, fait de coteaux et d’ondulations de terres, avec ici et l�, de petits bois, des champs de colza, de bl� ou de tournesol, d�limit�s par des haies de gen�ts, de ch�nes ou de gen�vriers… Quand au climat, il convient lui