Friday 25 January 2008

Back to Work - Part II

Day One. I am making the too-short journey from my home to the wine shop. Despite all attempts to keep my head clear and focus on the day ahead, my mind keeps drifting to that wonderfully quirky movie Sideways.

I am appropriately dressed and made-up. Because it would interfere with the delicate aromas wafting from the wine bottles open on the tasting counter I have reluctantly not worn any perfume and kept lipstick to a neutrally-coloured minimum. I have assuaged my 'bad mother' guilt by spending a quality morning with my somewhat bewildered children and the possibly even more bewildered Mr R.

The scene that is playing itself out in my head takes place at the first wine tasting stop of the film, the Sanford Winery. Miles is giving Jack an introductory lesson in wine tasting. At the end of the process he delivers his expert opinion of the wine (citrus, strawberry, passion fruit, asparagus and nutty edam cheese - what can it possibly be?) Clearly impressed by his friends knowledge and enthusiasm Jack declares 'you could work in a wine store'. Miles, who has a lot more on his plate than Wine Goose responds with a whispered 'yeah, that'd be a good move'. I break out in a cold sweat. Before I know it I have parked the car and doused myself in Eau Dynamisante. I take 10 deep breaths, plant my sunglasses on my head, and I march in.

The manager greets me less deferentially than in the past. As the shop has been busy earlier in the day he asks me to tidy up the shelves. I wander off and do a few laps of the floor. Then I settle down to the task of rearranging bottles and use the opportunity to familiarise myself with the wines I don't know. There are lots of them, to my personal relief and professional horror. I keep my head down and ears pricked. The average customer is a lot more knowledgeable than I had anticipated, and has a lot more buying power. I am flabbergasted by the quantities being purchased. Then it gets busy and I am assigned to the till. The last time I stood this side of the counter was as a student working a summer job in a London pub. Back then I added up the round of drinks in my head, keyed in the total, and then returned the change - also calculated in my head. All so much quicker than scanning barcodes and knowing which combination of buttons to press to allow credit card payments. Thanks to recent experiences with supermarket self-service checkouts I am not wholly disgraced - only one customer asks if this is my first day.

There is an afternoon lull and the manager suggests it would be a good time for me to take my break. Break? Yes that's correct - I have half an hour to myself. Off I go to the local coffee shop and sit down in a comfy chair. I finish a large coffee before it hits freezing point, and read the newspaper from cover to cover; two things I last achieved over five years ago. Bursting with caffeine and enthusiasm I return for the second half.

While I am clearing glasses from the tasting counter a lady approaches and asks to try the Sancerre. I look around frantically but discover that yes, she is speaking to me. Before today I had imagined that I would spend most of my time at this very counter, discussing the characteristics and qualities of each wine on offer, with customers listening respectfully before offering their own thoughts. The reality so far has been that as soon as anyone looks vaguely interested in pouring themselves a glass I scuttle off to straighten up the New World section. But right now I have no option but to smile my 'what good taste you have' smile and pour a small amount into her glass. She takes her time to check the colour, swirl the liquid, sniff it,and eventually taste it.

'What do you think?' I ask brightly. I then go on to espouse its superb qualities - 'this Sancerre offers intense green fruit flavours with predominant notes of gooseberry. On the palate it has exceptional flavour intensity... '
'It's not bad, but not as good as...' she mentions a rivals offering. 'They have a really good Sancerre'.
I mumble my protestations - surely at this price you cannot find a better balanced example from the heart of the Loire Valley - but she is not for turning. In an attempt to salvage the situation I suggest she try the exceptional Rioja we also have open, but the lady is not a red wine drinker. She leaves empty-handed. Disappointed, I return the bottle to the counter and am taken aback when I see another open bottle of Sancerre. I remove the cooler wrap from the white we were discussing and am horrified to discover that she was not in fact tasting Sancerre, but the altogether steelier Italian Gavi. As we've already learnt from Miles, wine tasting is not an exact science. And as the sceptics say, a glimpse of the label is worth fifty years experience.

The day ends and the manager sends me off with a bottle to try at home. As I'm not really sure what I'm in the mood for, he inevitably suggests a bottle of Riesling. This time it's German. Loosen Doctor L Riesling 2006. Wine experts, affectionados, call them what you will, all rave about Riesling. I'm not there yet. Yes, I enjoyed it. What I liked was the slight sweetness (I think the technical term is 'off-dry') combined with a lovely, crisp acidity. I also liked that it is low in alcohol, at just 8.5%. 'Very drinkable, and very enjoyable at the end of a hard day's work' was the verdict of the exhausted Mr R. Widely available, €11.49

Tuesday 22 January 2008

Character Assassination

As visitor numbers to the Wine Goose site continue to climb, with the global audience now into double digits, Mr Q has requested that his anonymity be preserved. In a transition similar to that experienced in Dallas in 1984, when Donna Reed briefly replaced Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie, he will henceforth be known as Mr R. Let's hope he doesn't wake up and find that his life with Wine Goose has all been a dream.

And so to dreams - to dream of drinking wine forebodes joy and consequent friendships. For a young woman to dream of drinking wine indicates that she will marry a wealthy gentleman. To dream of breaking bottles of wine foretells that your love and passion will border on excess. All this and more from the Global Oneness dream interpretation website.

With St Valentines Day approaching, Wine Goose is encouraging to Mr R to surprise her with a delicious bottle of Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine made from the grape of the same name. Do not expect the body or complexity that you will find in a chardonnay-based sparkling wine like Champagne. (How very French not to provide any translation of their official Champagne website). Instead the vat-fermented spumante is light, bubbly, fresh and gently fragrant. Brut is the driest version, while 'dry' is confusingly the sweetest, and 'extra dry' is somewhere in between. The best Prosecco comes from the hills between the towns of Valdobbiadene and Conegliano so look out for either of these names on the label, and you will be rewarded with more intense fruit flavours. Sweet dreams.

Friday 18 January 2008

House Wine

"Any objection to the house wine?" asked our host at a recent dinner to celebrate his lovely wife's birthday. All present shook our heads and mumbled incoherently to one another about our lack of wine knowledge. And so he proceeded with the order. The staff at the restaurant in question, La Taverna di Bacco, responded by plonking 2 bottles of white and 2 bottles of red onto our long narrow table overlooking the River Liffey. A good start; few things irritate Wine Goose more than watching a wine waiter circle a large party with a bottle of each hidden behind his back. Take it from me, asking for more information about the wine on offer is generally a waste of time - at most you will be rewarded with a quick flash of the label. Further probing might be rewarded with a heavily-accented and intentionally incomprehensible mention of the country of origin and/or the grape variety.

When the wine arrived my mind drifted back some 9 or 10 years to another occasion, on which Mr Q and Wine Goose celebrated a significant birthday in a restaurant with a large group of friends. A few minutes were spent wondering what had happened to the intervening years, then I remembered the house wine. It was served in a carafe, and was surely a 'blend' of the roughest, cheapest wine available in Dublin at the time, plus the previous night's leftovers, all finished off with any returned 'corked' bottles. Be thankful for small mercies, wine 'recycling' was not really an option for Dublin restaurants - we Irish customers have never subscribed to the international practise of leaving a small amount in the bottle so that the staff can keep au courant with the wine list. And in those days our understanding of corked was lumps floating on the surface. As I recall, we polished off several carafes.

So what exactly is house wine? From honourable European beginnings, when locally made wines reflected the restaurants cuisine, they rapidly became a rip-off. House wine was the safe option for those unfamiliar with many of the wines on the leather bound 'telephone directory' handed to them by a snooty sommelier. Unscrupulous restaurateurs weren't slow to pick up on their diners desire to make their choice before dawn, and it wasn't long before quality fell and prices rose. Not only bad to drink, they became one of the biggest money-makers in town, with restaurant price per glass approaching shop price per bottle.

Discerning diners (and winers) are gradually stamping out this practice. And some restaurants never pursued it in the first place. Nowadays, a good restaurant wine buyer or consultant should pay particular attention to the house wine. The next time you're in a restaurant take a tip from Alice King and order a glass of house wine to drink while you're perusing the menu. Her theory is that it sets the tone for the list, and if it's bad, the rest of the wines are also likely to be poorly-chosen. The opposite should also hold true!

Top marks to Il Taverno di Bacco. At €23.00 a bottle their house wines tick all the right boxes. Importantly, they are well-priced, suit a wide range of the dishes, and don't overwhelm the food. From Piedmont, the Deltetto Langhe Favorita 2006, with it's delicate orange blossom flavours is a medium-bodied delight. From Puglia, the Palama Salice Salentino Alba Rossa 2005 boasts fresh, clean fruit and earth flavors.

Saturday 12 January 2008

Abstinence

Abstinence definitely makes the heart grow fonder. As part of our 'New Year New Us' (fitter, slimmer, healthier) resolution Mr Q and Wine Goose decided to give up alcohol and caffeine for January. It's easy enough to begin with. Weeknights at home are usually very tame - a simple supper followed by TV then off to bed after the 9 o'clock news. Friday comes and instead of rewarding ourselves with a glass of wine for getting through another busy week Mr Q settles for a Becks non-alcoholic Beer and Wine Goose sips a glass of Amé. It's no substitute for the real thing so we set about filling the void with mountains of cheese. When that's all gone we raid the remnants of the children's selection boxes.

Watching the soaps on TV we have a more heightened awareness of the omnipresence of alcohol. These people spend all their time in the pub. Mind you their houses are so garish I'm not surprised. Don't the creators watch any design programmes? And when they do get home, usually to resolve a massive crisis in their lives, it's all done over a bottle of wine. Some time when I run out of other things to do I must calculate how many alcohol units the characters in Fair City consume during an average week.

11 days into the project and instead of losing weight and looking fabulous, we have piled on additional pounds and look miserable. Mr Q plans a nice dinner of veal with mushrooms and garlic served with creamy mashed potato and baby vegetables. He reasons that such a fine meal deserves a fine wine, and he cracks.

Not a man to do things by halves, he produces a fine Italian Amarone della Valpolicella - La Serra 2001. Amarone is one of the world's biggest, fleshiest red wines, made from semi-dried grapes in a Verona Hills tradition that dates back to the Byzantine Period. The traditional Valpolicella grape blend (Corvinone, Molinara and Rondinella), plus up to 15% of other local or international grapes authorised for the region, is used to create a truly powerful wine, with alcohol levels ranging from 14% to 16%. La Serra is rich and savoury, boasting a gamut of flavours reminiscent of Christmas - plum pudding, raisins and almonds with just a hint of cherry. €39.99.

Wednesday 2 January 2008

Christmas Drinks Party

Mr Q and I had discussed holding a drinks party in the run-up to Christmas. We carefully compiled a guest list which included a suitable mix of old friends, new friends, work colleagues and neighbours. We spent many hours debating food and wine selection. Wine Goose threw herself into the task of wine selection with gusto, reading up on the subject and regularly bringing home samples for tasting. With everything arranged and only the choice of date and issuing of invitations remaining, we ran out of time. Mr Q was required to attend several 'unmissable' work related parties, and Wine Goose found herself, on more than one occasion, sitting at a restaurant dinner table with a group of mothers. Factor in Nativity Plays, preparing for Santa, and hosting the in-laws for Christmas Dinner, and it just slid to the bottom of the pile.

Wine Goose is possibly the only mother in Ireland whose threats of 'Santa won't come if you don't stay in your bed' ran like proverbial water off her 3 year olds sons back. Hence Santa almost didn't come as the children continued to run around, and their parents dozed on the couch in exhaustion, only getting around to assembling in the early hours of the morning. A quick leap on the top of the Green Bin (think grape pressing) to hide the evidence, then into bed for a short nap, before a fantastically excited little girl came running into the bedroom trailing a stocking. 'He came, he came'.

With another Christmas Day under our (now extended) belts, we decided to go ahead with our plans and issued invitations by the thoroughly modern method of sending a text. Nobody responded so we looked forward to a large turnout and planned accordingly. The morning arrived, and our fridge was bulging with the ubiquitous smoked salmon on brown bread, fancy nibbles that just required popping in the oven, and lots of white wine to accompany the food. Red wine was opened to breathe and soft drinks were laid on for those who had the misfortune of being designated driver. Then the phone started ringing - sick children, busy parents, cars broken down. All surely genuine excuses, but the numbers were dropping. Of course at this point we regretted not including a few of those we had balloted out because of space restrictions, but we'll know for next time.

The hour arrived, and Wine Goose busied herself introducing people, pouring drinks, serving food and enjoying occasional snatches of conversations. Mr Q poured himself a large vodka and tonic and settled down to enjoy the afternoon. The children wreaked havoc. Conversation flowed. Suddenly 3 hours had passed, the house was ours once again, and we were able to take stock of the situation. There was a lot of food left over, and thanks to the generosity of our guests, we now have more wine than we started with.

As wine is generally intended to be served with food, choosing party wine is a difficult task. Up to a few years ago, Old World wines would not have been considered, but modern winemakers and wine-making techniques have resulted in more fruit-driven wines, ideally suited to serving without a meal. Putting this theory to the test we served Chanson Macon-Villages 2006, a well-balanced white Burgundy combining floral, apple and honey tones, wrapped up in a crisp finish. The New World did win out when it came to red - Torbreck Old Vines GSM (Grenache Syrah Mourvedre) 2005 from the Barossa Valley. This Australian take on the traditional Cotes du Rhone blend combines ripe fruits and spice with a juicy richness. Lacking the structure needed for food it was an ideal choice. We have plenty of both left in our cellar. €10.99 and €12.99 respectively.

And a post-script. In his Irish Times column of 22 December, wine correspondent Joe Breen suggested Felton Road Pinot Noir 2001 as an ideal accompaniment to the turkey dinner. You read it here first.