Mixed-race grapes by Chris Losh

Mixed-race grapes

There is a school of thought that, with so much international travel and migration leading to an ever-greater mixing and inter-marrying of the world’s populations that in the future the human population will no longer be black and white, but the colour of a Starbucks latte. As the father of two mixed-race kids myself, I obviously don’t have a problem with this – though I realise that the idea of countries losing their racial identity is enough to make yer average Daily Mail reader foam at the mouth as though a gay immigrant had nicked their wheelie bin.

And why do I start this blog with a treatise on eugenics? Because when it comes to grapes, this kind of ‘racial purity’ is something that the industry guards with a zeal verging on the Himmlerian. Nothing, in my experience, will make a sommelier sniff derisively so much as a wine that is deemed to be ‘lacking in typicity’. A Sangiovese that’s been adulterated with Cabernet; a modern-style Rioja that’s hiding its real self behind extraction and French oak – even Chilean Cabs that have liposuctioned out their inherent Rubenesque plumpness to look more lean and European. I’ve seen all met with an exasperated shrug and a shake of the head.

When it comes to wine, the on-trade, it seems, knows what it likes, and likes what it knows.

There’s a danger here, though, isn’t there? That by hanging on to the familiar and the ‘typical’ that the restaurant trade is closing itself off to the new and exciting. I’ve lost count of the number of sommeliers who still don’t think that the New World can make decent Pinot Noir. But Roger Jones, at the Harrow Inn, for instance, has embraced Aussie and Kiwi versions and made a feature of them. And he’s got a Michelin star, so this is no mere posturing for the sake of difference.

Essentially, I think it’s a lot easier to dismiss change as a bad thing, and claim that the status quo should be maintained than to stick ones neck out in favour of something. It’s why I’ve always admired the late Robert Mondavi. For all his faults, he was a man of intense personal conviction, and he absolutely backed his judgements.

It’s one of the reasons I like blind tasting – you have to make a judgment free of prejudice or the crutch of knowing what you should be saying. Nowhere sums this up better than Stephen Spurrier’s famous Paris tasting in 1976, where the French experts, to their intense chagrin, ended up eulogising Californian Cabernets and Chardonnays and dismissing top Bordeaux and Burgundies.

Of course, that’s the thing about blind tasting - you can end up looking pretty stupid. I remember once going through the tasting notes for two extremely well respected tasters at a champagne tasting we ran on Wine Magazine years ago. The same wine was praised for having ‘a typical Pinot Noir nose’ and ‘great Chardonnay character’. Who was right? It doesn’t matter. Blind tasting is the most humbling experience, so it’s best to park your ego before you start.

An MW pal of mine once said ‘If someone asks you when was the last time you got a Pinot Noir and a Merlot mixed up, tell them “yesterday”. You can’t, in other words, get wines right all the time.

Is this, I wonder, the reason sommeliers like wines to conform to their expectations? That they get disorientated when something doesn’t tick all the flavour and structure cues that they would expect? That they’re worried about looking stupid?

If you’re coming to Imbibe 2010 (and you should be) make sure you pop along to our Viniversity Challenge event. We’ve got top teams of tasters trying wines blind and trying to work out what they are. You, the audience, get to have a go, too, and then you can see who got it right.

And if you don’t spot the Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Viognier blend, don’t come crying to me. You know where I stand on it...

2 comments

Robert G. 10-07-2010

Great article Chris.

Looking forward to seeing you at Imbibe 2010. I will be on NZ Wine stand B44 pouring 12 delicious Kiwi Sauv Blancs. Some of them, I'm sure will show that ‘typicity’ of which we are so fond and yet others will display wonderful nuances and different characters. It will be a great opportunity to discover what different styles are starting to emerge now from New Zealand.

I would like to encourage more people to discover the diversity of New Zealand wines and to enable them to put more different styles onto their wine lists. They certainly do not taste all the same!

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The epicurean odyssey continues…

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