2008 Kiwi Wine Fan Club Wines of the Year

The lovely people over at Kiwi Wine Fan Club have announced their 9th Annual wine awards. The writing is in depth and prolific (definitely puts my posting ability in the shade), although they did let me put my two cents in.

As they put it
"our rules of engagement for these awards are loose and ad hoc" and "All errors are on purpose."

There's no denying this team their quirky approach to scoring wine but neither is there any denying their huge passion, enthusiasm and obvious talent.

Read all about it here

Scoring Wine

Passing judgements on wine has been very much on my mind recently as for better or worse the wines I taste and enjoy are the ones that will make an appearance on our wine list.

Everybody is at it! Cuisine runs tastings every month and those purple and gold stickers sell wine in Nu Zild in the same fashion as scores out of 100 sell wine in the U.S. I'm in the team that feels a kind of hopeless horror at the use of the 100 point score and the gradual Parkerisation of wines globally. So when my lovely father sent me a copy of Michael Cooper's article detailing, amongst other things, Hugh Johnson's suggested alternative I was so rapt with its apt-ness I just had to reproduce it here.

English writer Hugh Johnson suggests an alternative to the 100-point system, which you can use at home. The minimum score is one sniff, with a step up to one sip. Two sips indicate faint interest. One glass means tolerance, even general approval. Four glasses mean the wine tickles your fancy, and two bottles mean it's irresistible.

This seems, by far, the most winning system of assessing the merits of one wine over another. I love its beautiful simplicity and irreverence and I have more than half a mind to put it in to practice.

The european wine experience

With a little fast talking I managed to receive a trade entry to a tasting of over 150 wines on Saturday at The Langham Hotel.

Well to be fair I am in the trade and I did do some serious tasting with half an eye to the wine list. But mostly I was interested and excited to try some lesser known European varietals and expand my knowledge and tasting memory.

I also donned my -very- grown up hat and spat. Something that would have been an anathema in times past but I seriously wanted to try as much as possible and I was cautious not to get drunk or reach palate fatigue too quickly.

And that takes some doing.

I've read about the trials of wine judging before but it can be hard to conceive that trying 100 wines in a day would be a hardship. I've been to large tastings before myself but usually they have been convivial affairs when I spat about 'half' the time and only really wanted to try a couple of wines in the whole room.

So this was something different.

I was also feeling out of my depth as Rich has had much more exposure to pricey European wines (and the mind that can remember hundreds of football facts seems pre-disposed to retaining things like tricky Burgundian vineyard names and vintage variations) so I was relying on him to steer me past the dross.

We tackled the whites first, we found ourselves in need of a break quickly, we ate cheese, we re-tackled the whites and ate more cheese and needed another break. It was hard going and it quickly became apparent that we needed to fly past certain tables and push on as palate fatigue loomed before we even approached the red wines.

We approached the red wines. We needed some air. We re-tackled the red wines and ate some cheese and needed some more air and then I gave up and had a Viognier and a glass of Ruinart. I'm not sure I did the reds justice.

There were definitely some stand outs from the day. Wines that are still lingering in my head.

A sexy, spicy Mosel Riesling counterbalanced by a lean one from Alsace. An off-the-wall Chablis and a cracking Vouvray. Some generous yet quirky wines from Languedoc-Rousillon and a Pinot Noir masquerading as a Malbec despite coming from the hallowed ground of Burgundy.

I'll gather my thoughts and notes.....