Taste the difference

by Chris Losh

Two tastings last week reminded me of what can be good about wine. The Croatian event at Delfina seemed almost to belong to another era. It’s a long time since I went to a generic country tasting where the majority of the wines were still looking for distribution in the UK. There were a few rough edges around some of the wines I tried, but generally speaking there were encouraging signs here.

Whether it will be enough to allow the Croatians to overcome general ignorance, public prejudice towards a baffling language (like, what’s wrong with using vowels already?) and plenty of competition from other parts of the world remains to be seen. Plus, it was hard to judge value for money since so few of the wines were actually on sale in the UK.

But still, there were wine styles here that you don’t easily find, and for the on-trade that always means they are worth following. Here’s hoping that a few more of them get representation.

The other tasting of note was the Dirty Dozen. A coming-together of twelve small merchants, who specialise in the on-trade (Flint Wines, H2Vin, Astrum Wine Cellars, The WineBarn etc), this was a genuinely terrific event.

It was exciting to see so many passionate merchants with interesting portfolios in one place – so much so that I planned only to pop in for an hour, but ended up staying for three, and could happily have been there till the bitter end, were it not for prior commitments.

By the look of things, I wasn’t the only one to be so enthused. It was great that the on-trade came out in such numbers to take a look.

Merchants are always complaining that sommeliers are all-but-impossible to get to come to tastings. But maybe you just prefer smaller events like this, where you can hit a number of key suppliers in one go and be genuinely stimulated by what you taste.

Just a thought...

And maybe more merchants should consider joining forces to share a venue? It would save them money and, if they’re a bit more selective about what they show, make life easier for most of their tasters, too...

What odds on a joint MMD, Fells, Latour, Mentzendorff tasting in the next few years, I wonder...