From Ground to Glass: A Professional Insight into Wines and Spirits

By Chris Baker

Join us on a journey of discovery through the wines and spirits of the Old and New World with From Ground to Glass. This book is not a textbook, but rather a guide for those who already have a love of alcoholic beverages and want to learn more about them. With over 65 years of experience in the industry, the author shares their knowledge and insights, highlighting the best quality wines and spirits at user-friendly prices, made with environmentally sound practices and minimal intervention. Follow along as we explore the world of alcohol, from the UK to the Middle East, Far East, Australia, South America, Europe, and India, and learn from the author’s experiences, including the founding of the Hong Kong Wine School. Join us and Alfie the cat as we delve into the delicious world of wine and spirits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398455696

Chris Baker

Professor Chris Baker graduated from his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge, before beginning a Research Fellowship there at St Catharine’s College and the Department of Engineering. In the early 1980s he worked in the Aerodynamics Unit of British Rail Research in Derby, before moving to an academic position in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Nottingham. He remained there till 1998 where he was a lecturer, reader and professor with research interests in vehicle aerodynamics, wind engineering, environmental fluid mechanics and agricultural aerodynamics. In 1998 he moved to the University of Birmingham as Professor of Environmental Fluid Mechanics in the School of Civil Engineering. In the early years of the present century he was Director of Teaching in the newly formed School of Engineering and Deputy Head of School. From 2003 to 2008 he was Head of Civil Engineering and in 2008 served for a short time as Acting Head of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. He was the Director of the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education 2005-2014. He undertook a 30% secondment to the Transport Systems Catapult Centre in Milton Keynes, as Science Director from 2014 to 2016. He retired at the end of 2017 and took up an Emeritus position.

Book preview

From Ground to Glass

A Professional Insight into

Wines and Spirits

Chris Baker

Austin Macauley Publishers

From Ground to Glass

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Part One: Fundamentals

Introduction

A Brief Wine History

Understanding Wine, Growing It and Making It

Vineyard Management

The Vine

The Soil

The Water

Climate Is Everything

Climate and Fruit

Water is Also Everything

Planning the Vineyard

Cultivation

Vinification: Making Wine

In the Winery

Grape Composition

Fermentation:

Making Red Wines

Making White Wines

Making Sparkling Wines

Biodynamic Winemaking

How Wines Mature

Part Two: World Roundup

Understanding Types and Styles of Wine

The Vine Family

Grapes: Classic Varieties

The Classic Black Grapes

White Grapes

Secondary Black Grape Varieties

Secondary White Grape Varieties

Types And Styles of Wine

Very Dry White Wines:

Dry White Wines:

Sweet and Aromatic White Wines:

Medium Red Wines:

Full Bodied Red Wines:

Sparkling Wines:

Wines From the Old World

Appellation Controlee

The Wines and Chateaux of Bordeaux

The grape varieties for Bordeaux are:

The Chateaux of Bordeaux

South and South West France

The Wines of Burgundy

The Growers and the Merchants:

The Wines of the Loire Valley

The Wines of Alsace

The Wines of The Rhone

Champagne

Spain

Spain’s wine regions:

Portugal

Italy

Germany

The Wines of The New World

South Africa

Australia

Australian White Wines:

Australian Red Wines

Australia: Key Regions and Producers:

Canberra District

South Australia

Queensland

Victoria

New Zealand

The South Island

The Wines of South Africa

There are FIVE basic types of soil:

Main South African Wine Regions:

South African Wine Report

Coronavirus and the South African Wine Industry

The United States of America

The Wines of California

South America

Chile

Argentina

The Wine Scene in Chile and Argentina

New Super-Premium Wines from Chile

Part Three: Wine—Drinking It

Wine Sense

Wine Buying

Investing in Wine

Recognition of Faults.

Fakes

When Can I Drink That Wine?

Wine Tasting

Reasons for Tasting

Sight: The Appearance of the wine

How Red Wines Change Colour With Age:

Smell: The Nose; Aroma and Bouquet

Taste: The Palate

Wine Faults

Wine Tasting Notes

Drinking Wine

Drinking Better Wine

Glossary of Technical Terms

Part Four: Bordeaux

Bordeaux Introduction

In the Beginning Was the Word, And the Word Was Bordeaux

Bordeaux Vintages: The Best and the Worst Since 1798

The Red Wines

Great Vintages:

Good Vintages:

Fair Vintages:

Poor Vintages:

The Sweet White Wines

The Top Vintages For Sauternes And Barsac:

Bordeaux Vintages Since 2002

Bordeaux 2019: En-Primeur Sauternes, Barsac, Loupiac, St Croix Du Mont

Bourgeois Blues: The Perfect Vintage of 2015

The World’s Best Wine: A Personal Perspective

A Little Wine Retrospect

Buyer, Beware

Part Five:

In-Depth Look at Certain Wines German Wines

Tafelwein

Deutscher Tafelwein

There are 13 regions

The German Wine Regions

The German Wine Language

The Wines of Spain

Spanish Wine Grapes:

The Regions

The Wines of Burgundy And the Rhone Valley

The Burgundy Regions

The Burgundy Wine Industry

Burgundy Production

The Wines of The Rhone

The Wines of Italy

Understanding Champagne And Sparkling Wines

The Production of Champagne

The Makers of Champagne

Part Six: Fortified Wines

Sherry, Montilla, Port, Madeira, Mistelles, Aromatised Wines and Others

Mistelles

Port

The Port Shippers

Sherry

Sherry in Detail

Montilla–Moriles

The Fortified Wines of Madeira

Marsala

Marsala Glossary:

Vermouths And Aromatised Wines

Liqueurs

Part Seven: Distillation, Spirits, Cigars and Associated Items

Distillation and the Production of Cognac

Brandy and Cognac: The People

Oak, Wine and Spirits

The Prestige Package Market

The Production of Armagnac

Eau-De-Vie De Cidre Et De Poire Et De Calvados

The Whiskies of Scotland

Whisky

A Selection of Malt Whiskys

Vatted Malts and Deluxe Blends:

Other Whiskies

Rum

Cigars

Cigar Tobacco Producing Countries

Making a Cigar.

Classic Shapes for Cigars

Colours:

Smoking a Cigar

The Makers

Other names include:

Part Eight: Wine and Food

Introduction

The Classic Western Menu

Matching Wine and Food

Restaurant Wine Lists

The User’s Guide to Wine and Health

The Argentine Asado

Fine Dining, Hong Kong Style

Entrecote Café De Paris Steak and Fries

Grand Old Colonial Hotel’s Afternoon Tea

Sweet Wines and Food

Sweet Wines with Puddings and Dessert

About the Author

Christopher Baker is a professional wine and food educator, a writer of short stories, a contributor to journals on wine and other alcoholic beverages, on food, and, as a frustrated mariner, he writes stories on ships and shipping.

Chris is widely travelled having worked, apart from the UK, in Iraq, Australia, Hong Kong, China, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Italy and India, and was in Baghdad, Iraq for three years with the United Nations branch ILO, the International Labour Organisation, as an Expert in Food and Beverage Operations and Management, from 1980–1983.

Chris was the founder and Director of the Hong Kong Wine School which was the accredited regional course and examination centre for the Wine and Spirit Education Trust of Great Britain, carrying out courses to Certificate, Higher Certificate and Diploma levels not only in Hong Kong but in China, Macao, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, Chile, Argentina and India. The Hong Kong Wine School was in operation from 1990 to 2000. Chris retired in that year to return to the UK.

Chris has been a judge in International Wine Competitions in Hong Kong, Australia, Chile, Italy and Argentina. Chris has presented papers at the VIII and VIX Wine Technology Symposiums Renato Ratti in Verona, Italy, and conducted seminars during VINEXPO events in Hong Kong.

Chris lives in retirement in South Devon, England, with his cat Alfie.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Sue, my late, much loved and missed wife,

partner and friend.

Copyright Information ©

Chris Baker 2023

The right of Chris Baker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398455689 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398455696 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

There are many who have contributed in some way or other to this book, much of the contributions are spread over a lifetime of association, thus some of the contributors are no longer with us, or have become forgotten in the mists of time.

Professional organisations world wide have been consulted, including professional bodies of wine regions, manufacturers of distilling apparatus, wooden casks, winery and agricultural equipment, vineyard methods and all the associated paraphernalia to do with the production of alcoholic beverages.

I give due acknowledgement to gifted artist and cartoonist Ralf Steadman, and to the following: The Wine and Spirit Education Trust, City and Guilds of London Institute, Jose Zuccardi, Jorge Scheerer, Henri Dufraisse, John Iles, George Heads, Hugh Johnson, John Fuller, David Robinson.

Wine magazines Decanter, Wine Spectator, La Revue des Vin de France; Jancis Robinson and the Wine Encyclopedia; Larousse: Dictionnaire des Alcools; The Bordeaux Wine Academy; Bureau National du Cognac; Jean Richelieu, President Appellation Margaux; Vina Boutari, Santorini, Greece; Gerald Clavien, Burgundy; Humberto Canale, Mendoza, Argentina; Louis Felipe Edwards, Colchagua, Chile; Sergo Senato, Veneto, Italy; Sandro Boscaini, MASI, Verona, Italy; William Fevre, ‘La Mission’, Chile; Casa Lapostolle, Clos Apalta, Chile; Hacienda de Los Lingues, Colchagua, Chile; Restaurant Las Navarinas. Buenos Aires, Argentina; Vina Trapiche, Argentina, Comite Interprofessionel de Vin de Champagne; Williams and Humbert, Jerez, Spain; Gonzales Byass, Jerez, Spain; CAVA Aristel, Spain.

Also the winemakers at Vina Montes, Valdivieso, Echeverria, Vinas Bouchon, Lagarde, Lomas de Cauguenes, Vina Tarapaca, Torreon de Parades, Leoville Lascases, Valandraud.

There are many others, and if I have not mentioned you I apologise, but you know who you are and I thank you.

Part One

Fundamentals

Introduction

Welcome to a Professional’s Insight into Wines and Spirits. I have put this book together with the idea that you, dear reader, will regard it as a voyage of discovery of the wines of the Old World and of the New World, particularly with the Southern Hemisphere. Good reasons for this; value for money, user friendly wines made by some of the world’s top winemakers who are able to operate freely with climate and soil conditions that many of the Northern Hemisphere wine producers can only dream about. I do not ignore North America, it is in the Northern Hemisphere, well quite a lot of it is, but it is the New World in wines.

By Northern Hemisphere, we mean the Old World. This is where wine started. Wine may have been made in the Southern Hemisphere thousands of years ago with local populations making something alcoholic out of wild grapes, but we have no evidence of this. No, it’s the Northern Mob who we accept as having started it all and, over this vast period of time, carried over working practices, thoughts, traditions and rules which they generally adhere to, to this day. So I have gone into the Old World and its wines with some detail.

The Southern Hemisphere started late in the modern wine trade. Although much of the settled parts of South America were growing vines in the early 1500s, South Africa in the mid-1600s, Australia in the late 1700s, modern winemaking didn’t start until the migrant exodus from Europe in the 1800s and onwards. The new settlers took their skills and their vines with them and adapted them to their new homelands. And what they found in their new homelands was the freedom to plant where common sense told them the conditions were right.

The French concept of Terroir, that combination of site, situation, soil and slope, together with a host of other special something’s, sets out that a wines character is determined by the natural environment of the place in which it is grown. This is, of course, a world-wide feature not just confined to France. Every foot of vine growing land anywhere in the world has its own unique growing situation which is itself tempered by that most unpredictable of things; the climate.

Tradition is the greatest barrier to progress, so says the Sage, and it is not difficult to see tradition at work in the Old World and how it ham-strings the winemaker into making wines according to the system, rather than according to his own desires, particularly in France. Some of the Old World, notably Italy, are much freer in their regulations, allowing winemakers to opt out of the system if they feel they can make a better wine. The Appellation Controllee system in France strictly forbids any variance of the system; it is geographic and in this place you will plant this variety, at that density. You will not do what you want, you will do what you are told.

There is a need for control, sensible control that is, and we must admit that for every good winemaker there is at least one, probably a lot more, who exhibits criminal incompetence in the execution of his craft. And there is a lot of terrible wine available around the world today. But it is getting less as new generations of wine lovers become more wine aware, become better wine educated, and demand better quality.

We see this in restaurants where consumers are inspecting bottles prior to acceptance, to see if the vintage date agrees with the wine list, in refusing a bottle if the label is torn or capsule damaged; where educated sniffs and sips determine accurate quality before the wine is okayed. We overhear learned discussion (well, sometimes learned), between guest and that frightening being, the sommelier, the appointed wine expert in the restaurant, some of whom are at the top of their profession, but many of whom know less about wines than does the plongeur in the kitchen, the guy who washes the cooking pots and pans. (And, let us not forget, who might well be a world class expert on wine but is reduced to being a plongeur, albeit a good one, through having to escape from his country for whatever reasons, and has come to the UK or some other country as a refugee. We must never categorise a person due to his or her current and seemingly thankless occupation.)

I am writing about my experiences with wine, other alcoholic beverages, food and other connected items. This will be an anthology, a collection of written works all to do with understanding the subject. Some I have brought up to date, others left alone. Above all, it will be politically incorrect. It will regard thin, miserable alcoholic beverages with disdain; food will be such that is cooked with butter, cream, rich sauces, served in adequate and substantial portions, none of these micro portions of miniscule items that seem to need planning permission to consume and a generous bank manager to donate towards the cost.

I do not smoke cigarettes, but I do smoke cigars, little ones that come in a small tin, but occasionally, I will tackle a decent Havana or something similar from elsewhere, not a big cigar, perhaps a slim panatela. So I have written and included a piece on cigars. The UK frowns on smoking anything, but other countries are more lenient, especially with cigars, and designated cigar Divans or clubs can be found in many countries, especially the USA.

I have tried to avoid overdoing an excess of Bordeaux and the other top end production areas of France. But Bordeaux cannot be dismissed in a couple of pages, nor for that matter Burgundy, another region of some complexity that defies easy comprehension. So I have given Bordeaux, Burgundy, The Rhone additional input as well as Germany where its wine system and production is complex in the extreme; even the Germans have problems with it, and I have enhanced some other wine areas, Champagne and sparkling wines of Italy, Spain; they can be a bit complicated.

Bordeaux can rightly claim to have some of the best terroir in the world but it also has a climate that is the cause of more nervous trauma amongst its winemakers than anywhere else in the world. Year after year, vintages that have been coming on splendidly, have been ruined just before harvest by rains and storms. The result being that the Bordelaise have resorted to massive technical intervention in the winery to try to rescue the sodden vintages. Too often, what results is a manufactured wine, a wine that looks good, a beautifully crafted wine, but a poor wine for all that, because that is all that the fruit allowed the winemaker to produce

The Southern Hemisphere has its fair share of climate problems, but not to that extent. El Nino, that deep equatorial Pacific Ocean hot water sink that traditionally occurred once every five or seven years, has been playing havoc with the world’s weather. It has always done so being a natural phenomenon that’s been around since the beginning of time.

But recent years have seen almost an annual continuance of El Nino and that of its winter, cold water counterpart, La Nina, caused by global warming, a situation that is part natural, part man made.

El Nino moves this mass of warm water towards the Western Pacific shores with corresponding increases of precipitation, rain and storms. It also pulls a mass of moisture away from the East resulting in drought conditions in Eastern Australia, tricky weather in New Zealand, drought in Tasmania, drought and bush-fires in South Africa, late or non-arrival of the vital monsoon rains in India.

These climate changes are going to be permanent with some fairly serious consequences for winemakers. In 1996, Northern Chile experienced an El Nino generated environmental catastrophe of Biblical proportions, where the Atacama desert, which never—never ever—has rain, saw tens of meters of snow dumped on the high ground; saw the total severance of all forms of transport communication between northern Chile and the south where road and rail links were swept away by monumental floods.

But generally speaking, the Southern Hemisphere still enjoys good winemaking weather; in fact the harvest in South America for 2018 has been one of the best ever, with large yields of perfect fruit almost across the board. Leading producer in Chile, Santa Rita, has had such a successful harvest that its stock market wealth quadrupled overnight solely on the rumours of its quantity and quality vintage. Chile benefits also from a unique situation where grapes can grow in soils uncontaminated by most of the world’s vicious insects and pests, in particular the phylloxera beetle.

My mission has always been to source wines that represent the best possible quality for a user friendly cost. Wines that are made at the cutting edge of modern wine production, using ecologically sound vineyard practices, where the wines are produced in the winery with minimum intervention from chemists and laboratory technicians, and from vineyard agronomists, winery oenologists, and all the rest of the brigade of infusers and decanters, especially those who try to incur the influence of the ethereal world of zodiacs, wizards, witches and alchemists and their crackpot ideas.

I do not patronise, I will not talk down to you, dear reader, you being smart and bright, probably smarter and brighter than me. Some of the content is technical and I leave it that way with explanations where needed. I confess to a certain amount of concentration on products, regions and countries where I find the wines and other items to be to my liking as they represent top quality at reasonable cost.

This is the dictum that has marked my wine career; to find the best that fits in with my budget. Expense does not necessarily mean quality. Expense usually just means expense. Paying for a fine wine is fine as long as you don’t start paying just for reputation, name and the other added costs that go with mystique. Rather like paying over the top for bio-dynamics, organics, and all the rest of the modern fads for wine production. Unfortunately the days of grow, pick, crush, press, ferment, bottle, drink are past, now we have the armies of experts, chemists, laboratories, oenologists, viticulturalists, who will attempt to make a wine better than nature intended.

Although it isn’t intended to be a text book, it could be. In fact it assumes that you have a grounding, an understanding of wines and other alcoholic beverages, even if only that you like them and would like to know more about them; what makes them tick, or the wine fizz if that is your preference. The style of the book is in the form of significant pieces with colour inserts supported by related articles. I want them to stimulate the imagination, I have paid attention to detail. I have tried to be creative.

It is comprehensive in its content and much of that content is based on the sixty five years of my involvement in wine, food and other alcoholic beverages both in the UK and, for much of my working life, overseas in the Middle East, the Far East, Australia, South America, Europe, India. In Hong Kong, I founded the Hong Kong Wine School which ran for ten years until I retired and returned to the UK.

So, welcome to my alcohol world, and I and Alfie the cat hope you enjoy the reading.

A Brief Wine History

Having given you the introduction, a little history might be useful. It is thought that the birthplace of wine was the region of Georgia (formerly a province of the USSR; but right now I have no idea of its place in the scheme of things). Excavations in Turkey, Syria, the Lebanon and in Jordan have produced grape pips from as early as 8,000 BC, the pips having been identified as being from wild vines. But the earliest pips of cultivated vines were found in Georgia and belong to the period of 7,000–5,000 BC. These are the earliest traces of viticulture, that being the skill of selecting and husbanding vines to improve the quality and quantity of their fruit; the grape.

It is as well that at this point we understand that wine, officially, is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of crushed and pressed cultivated grapes. You can make alcoholic beverages from almost anything that will ferment; you can make a sort of beer out of newspaper and you can then distil that liquid into a spirit. I mention this because it is something that was done (partly by me) when I was working in a Middle Eastern country where alcohol was forbidden. The result of this alchemy was evil in the extreme but it had the desired effect. Alcoholic beverages made from other fruits, rice, grain, whatever are usually referred to as wine, but shouldn’t be.

So winemaking was being practiced in the regions south of the Caucasus mountains at least 7,000 years ago, probably longer than that. The spread of winemaking went from Georgia to Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Crete, Cyprus, Assyria, the Biblical lands and by 2,500 BC, wine was established as a thriving trade and industry, in fact one of the biggest money earners in the Mediterranean.

The Greeks were enthusiastic about their wine (still are), and the Romans also found it worth importing or stealing, a common Roman practice in those times and much later carried out with enthusiasm by such as Sir Francis Drake (gallant sailor or pirate, you take your choice), but the bulk of Greek wine was pretty grim stuff, the practice of adding pine resin to the awful wines to make them drinkable dates from these times and was also a common practice in Italy at this time. The Greeks mixed their wines and added water which meant that an expensive wine would go further and you could drink more of it for longer periods.

The Greek word Symposium actually means drinking together. This stems from the long after dinner speeches that the Greeks tended to give and led to formal symposia which had a chairman whose job was to stimulate the conversation. Having attended a number of symposiums in my time, I fully understand the need for some alcoholic stimulant to get you through the, at times, rigidly boring events.

Winemaking arrived in southern Italy, from Greece, about 800 BC. The northern Italians however, had been making wine for a long time before that, trading it beyond the Alps into Gaul. The earliest amphora found with a cork stopper is Etruscan of 600 BC. By 200 BC, winemaking was well established in Italy and people were beginning to distinguish between different makes of quality wines.

Certainly by 121 BC there is mention of a Roman first growth, a top quality wine of a particular area. 121 BC was an amazing vintage year and has been named the Optimium vintage after the consul of that year. The top vineyard was Falernum. The First Growths (the premium quality) of ancient Rome were: Falernium, Caecuban, Alba, Surrentinum, Mamertine, Praetutian, Hadrianum, Luna and Genoa, all of which, with different names and styles, exist today.

Ancient Rome was a huge centre for the importation and consumption of wine and, during the last years of the Empire, consumption had increased to tens of thousands of gallons every week. There is no evidence that the Greeks or Romans had any ideas about quality; quantity being the main prerequisite. Storage of wine was a matter of chance. Wines for instant consumption were kept in open jars; wines for transport were helped by a liberal addition of honey, or were reduced by heating the wine until the excess water evaporated leaving a concentrate that was reconstituted with water on arrival at the other end of its journey. It was, and it tasted, as if it had been cooked. Modern equivalents of this are the wines of Madeira, not that comparisons can be made, but the wines of Madeira follow the ancient practice of heating and concentrating.

Later, aromatic wines became the fashion, with the addition of myrtle, incense, aniseed, pepper, vanilla and other commodities. Because of these additions, the base wine did not have to be of any quality, and it wasn’t. The ancient Romans taught the tribes they conquered in Gaul to adulterate wine in all sorts of ways. In Narbonne, the wine capital before Lyons, the wine was infused with smoke and near poisonous herbs and toxic plants like aloes. In Vienne a wine was made called ‘vinum picatum’ which was laced with pine pitch. The Romans were very fond of using pine as an aromatic and the pine cone became the symbol of wine in the Roman Empire. The Greeks took it up with enthusiasm and it is still used to produce Retsina.

Roman writer and politician, Marcus Cato (234–149 BC) wrote the following about how to ‘improve’ a sharp wine:

…make four pounds of flour from vetch and mix it with some wine and boiled must. Make up the mix into small bricks and let them soak for 24 hours, and then dissolve them with the sharp wine in the jar for 60 days. To remove bad odour, heat a thick, clean piece of roofing tile in the fire, coat it with pitch, attach a string, lower it gently to the bottom of the jar and leave the jar sealed for two days. To impart a sweet aroma, take a tile covered with pitch, spread over it warm ashes and cover with aromatic herbs and rush; place in a jar and cover so that the odour does not escape before the wine is poured in.

Lucius Junius Columella, a later Roman from the first century AD, was a wine specialist and very much in favour of not adulterating wine, but even he had some odd (to us) ideas. When the harvest was about to be brought in, the winemaker prepared his cellar. In those days, the must was boiled as a matter of course:

…he should heat the furnace with a gentle fire and carry the trodden grapes from the vat to the boiling vessels. Clear the scum from the surface until the must was clear of the lees. Then he should add either some quinces, which he shall remove when thoroughly boiled, or any other suitable scents which he likes. The odours boiled with the must are generally iris, fenugreek and sweet rush. A pound of them each ought to be put in the boiling cauldron which has received ninety amphorae of must when it has just gone off the boil and has been cleared of scum. Add liquid or resinous preservatives—ten sextarii of Nemeturian pitch which has been carefully washed with boiled sea water, and a pound and a half of turpentine resin. Then add the remainder of the spices, as follows: the leaf of spikenard, the ‘costus’ (an aromatic plant from India), dates, angular and sweet rush; of these half a pound each will suffice. Then a quincunx of myrrh, a pound of sweet reed, half a pound of cinnamon, a quadrans of balsam, a quincunx of saffron and a pound of vine leaf ‘cripa’ (defies identification).

Instructions for vinification were precise:

…have everything that is needed ready for the vintage; let vats be cleaned, baskets mended and pitched, necessary jars be pitched on rainy days; let hampers be made ready and mended; spelt (a type of grain) be ground, salt fish be bought and windfall olives be salted. Gather the inferior grapes for the sharp wine for the workers to drink when the time comes. Divide the grapes gathered each day after cleaning and drying equally between the jars. If necessary, add to the new wine a fortieth part of must boiled down from untrod grapes, or a pound and a half of salt to the ‘culleus’ (120 gallons). If you use marble dust, add one pound to the culleus; mix with this must in a vessel and then pour into the jar. If you use resin, pulverise it thoroughly, three pounds to the culleus of must; shake the basket often so that the resin may dissolve.

At the time of the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, Rome was the key wine consuming city of the ancient world. By this time wine was cheap and was brought to the city by land and by sea. Ships by this time would carry up to 3,000 amphorae at a time and all wine would arrive at the Porta Vinaria the wine trade gate. Today there is, near the river Tiber, a hill named Monte Testaccio; it is 115 feet high and is made up of nothing but broken amphorae from the downstream wine gate.

By AD 80, there was a glut of wine and in AD 92, Emperor Domitian banned the planting of any new vineyards in Italy and ordered the pulling up of half the vines in Rome’s overseas provinces. This ban lasted until Emperor Probus repealed it in AD 280. Probus set the Roman army to establish vineyards along the river Danube and into France.

When France became established as a winemaking nation depends on who you believe. The historians, who say that the Romans established the cultivated vine, or the French who say they have been making wine for more than 12,000 years. The French will say that the stone-age Frenchman was a vigneron.

The Celts of Gaul, the aggressive predecessors of modern France, appreciated wine and there is evidence of winemaking at 600 BC. But the Romans were established winemakers in France by 125 BC especially in the region now known as Champagne.

Bordeaux’s first vineyards were planted in AD 43, just before Emperor Claudius conquered Britain. Burgundy was established in the first half of the third century AD and German wines were established by the Romans about the same time as Bordeaux. If you pay a visit to Chateau La Gaffeliere in St Emilion, you will find wonderful remains, almost intact, of Roman villas, mosaic-tile fresco’s, many depicting wine making activities.

The early Middle Ages marked the decline of the vineyards. The Mediterranean was firmly in the grip of the Moslem religion which forbade the drinking of wine and the vineyards were systematically abandoned because there were no outlets for the wine. In non-Mediterranean countries the situation was little better because food was in such short supply that people could not permit themselves the luxury of drinking wine.

The only reason that wine making survived was through the Christian church; the use of wine being an essential part of the religious ceremony. As Christianity spread, so did the science of winemaking and the further north the winemaking went, so vines had to be adapted to more vigorous climatic conditions and extra care had to be taken in choosing good quality stock. It was at this point that the first of the Noble Grapes (les Cepages Nobles) appeared. From the eleventh century onwards, viticulture really flourished in the north under the strict regime of the medieval monasteries.

The next major upheaval was in the seventeenth century, with the emergence of Holland and, later, England as major naval powers. Although the European wine trade was extremely active by this time, it had not reached international proportions. Wines wouldn’t keep and did not stand up to transportation. By this time, distillation was known, and the Dutch were buying large quantities of Brandewijn or burnt-wine, which later became known in England as Brandy. They preferred to buy the brandy from the region of Charantes in Western France, especially that made around the town of Cognac.

This heavy demand encouraged the growth of vineyards all around south-western France. This increase in wine making in the region attracted the attention (and the money) of Les aristo’s and, with the cooperation of the British, establish the first true range of fine wines (vins fins) from restricted regions (terroirs delimites). These wines were produced in barrels and stored in bottles. For the first time, sterilisation using sulphur was used and clarification using egg whites became standard, practices used today. Thus the tradition of quality was born and the active participation of British merchants enabled it to develop.

The winemakers discovered, through the ancient process of distillation, that seven casks of wine could be distilled into one cask of brandy. Being cheaper to ship one cask rather than seven, the producers thought that, on arrival at the destination, they could water down the cask of brandy and return it to its wine state. But the result was a disaster. The watered down brandy bore no resemblance to the original wine, was tasteless and colourless, so the idea was abandoned.

But in the warehouse there was stored a full cargo of brandy, brandewijn, burnt wine or wine essence or, as the Romans knew it aqua vitae, water of life—which rapidly became forgotten about until a number of years went by and the warehouse manager was looking for some spare storage space. He came across the cargo of spirit and though he would try some to see if it was at all drinkable. It was, and how! The brandy had gone through it maturation stage, had taken colour from the casks together with all the wooden cask essences, lignums and tannins from the oak and other developments that are now the key part of fine brandy production. So was born the system of fine brandy production and the development of quality distillation, as is practiced throughout the world for producing fine spirits.

The French factories that specialise in the production of distillation equipment are the best in the world and the stills, the alembics, of Mareste and Prulho in Cognac are at the top of the trade.

At this point let me mention a little about the 1855 classification of the wines of Bordeaux; I have covered this in more detail later in the book. About twice every ten years the Bordeaux vintage produces wines that are truly exceptional, when the weather combines with other factors to produce a vintage of outstanding quality. Yet the wines of Bordeaux have an overall reputation based not on their actual quality but on a perception that the wines are the best in the world.

The setting of this reputation goes back hundreds of years to the times when the key importer was England, shipping these accessible wines direct from Bordeaux and La Rochelle, wines that were at the time better than anything else that was available; other European wine producing countries of that time were making wines that were very poor, and drinking for local consumption only those that were better.

It was in the mid 1800s that the Napoleon of the time, wishing to show-off his New France at the Great Exposition in Paris in 1855, sent forth a decree that the wines of France should be classified into degrees of quality. In fact it was the wines of the Gironde that were classified, mostly the wines of the districts of the Medoc and Graves. The other regions of Bordeaux were not classified until much later.

The 1855 Classification of the Medoc divided 70 or so of the properties into five groups, like a football league. Each group was termed a Crus, translating as Growth, meaning an estate, a property where the collective fruit produced was processed by the central winery, the main house, the Chateau.

Why the 1855 classification has lasted as long as it has is the uniquely exceptional status it has conferred upon the properties it contains. There are only 87 properties in the world today that can claim the title of Cru Classe en 1855. Each of these properties has a value that can never be matched by a neighbouring estate regardless of the composition of the terroir or the price its wine manages to bring. It is the closest thing to a guarantee that exists ensuring the continued high prices fetched for the wines of these rare properties. This situation existed long before the 1855 classification and later in the book when I take a more detailed look at Bordeaux I will go into the situation in greater detail.

Understanding Wine,

Growing It and Making It

A bottle of good quality wine is the result of thousands of years of progress, hard work and a lot of luck. The luck is in producing a fine wine despite bad weather, insects and disease that try to destroy all that hard work.

The winemaker is usually considered to be the most important person in the production of a fine wine. Yet he, and increasingly she, is only one of a large number of people who are involved in producing one of the world’s most wonderful works of art; a bottle of fine wine. So in this section we shall explain the mysteries and the procedures involved, and discuss a range of subjects including climate, soil, water, region; these are what the French refer to as terroir.

Vineyard Management

It isn’t just a case of plant the vine, wait, then harvest the grapes. A successful harvest depends on proper management in the vineyard, the tending of the vin es, the soils, the drainage. The use of the right vine to match the soil, the selection of the site, many things to get the best out of the land and the grapes before you convert your grapes into wine.

In the famous French winemaking region of Bordeaux, winemakers know all this and have all the skills, conditions and soils to carry it out. Yet only one vintage (harvest) in ten will be exceptional. Why? The climate.

That Bordeaux can make amazing wines is well known. What wines Bordeaux could make with the soils and expertise they have, if the climate was reliable, if the conditions were similar to that in Chile, for example, can be seen by looking at the wines that master wine consultant Michel Rolland is making in Chile and Argentina. Rolland’s home is in the Bordeaux region of Pomerol where the most important grape grown is Merlot.

Michel Rolland is consultant winemaker to Casa Lapostolle in Chile. He is advising on the production of a range of wines, particularly two Bordeaux style red wines, both using Merlot as the main grape. The premium red wine Cuvee Alexandre Merlot and the super-premium Clos Apalta are classic examples of the type of wine that might be made in Bordeaux if the climate was more reliable.

In addition, both those wines are made under conditions that mean they can be sold on the international wine market at prices at least one fifth of similar wines made in Bordeaux. Maybe some of the wine magic is in the winery, some in the blending. But the real magic starts in the vineyard with the fruit.

It is as well we understand at this point that, as far as France is concerned, the choice of grape to match the soil is not up to the vineyard owner or the winemaker. The choice is determined by law, the infamous appellation controllee, where you must plant what the appellation tells you to do. Here you will plant Cabernet Sauvignon. Here you will plant Merlot. You would like to plant Syrah because you think it is better suited to the soil and climate and will make far superior wines? Well you can’t. And the rules are rigid. A vineyardiste could lose his vineyard. This is why Beaujolais in Burgundy has to plant a truly awful grape Gamay and with this they have to make the best wine they can, some of which is quite good, much is not. With changes in climate perhaps the Beaujolais winemakers will be able to use Syrah which their near neighbours in the Cotes du Rhone have been using for millennia.

The Vine

The Vine: a relative of ivy, is a climber and is naturally at home in woodland. It climbs to find light and vines react strongly to sunlight throu ghout the growing season and also out of it. The vine responds to its environment, its surroundings, and this response can be managed by the grower to lead, as much as is possible, to the eventual quality of the fruit.

Sunlight on the woody parts of the vine means better yields of grapes. The yield of each vine plant depends on the amount of light reaching the vine early in its growing period, the growing cycle, up to 15 months before the harvest. So this year’s crop is largely set by growing conditions; not last year, but the year before.

The grower will therefore control the amount of leaves, the foliage, to maintain a balance between the growth of leaves and fruit, to avoid a thick cover of leaves which shade the eventual fruit bearing bud. Bunches of grapes that grow shaded from light will have a lot less sugar.

The vine is a good grower and will survive even in the worst of conditions. Pruning (cutting away excess wood in the winter season and excess foliage in the growing period), has traditionally been severe, cutting the vine back to two or three buds. The idea behind this was to concentrate the vine growth into a small yield. Small yields were regarded as leading to quality.

Close planting (planting the vines close together), and hard pruning (severe pruning back to two or three buds) has always been done in the Old World vineyards, even the ancient Egyptians 5,000 years ago were planting 8,000 vines per hectare in the belief that this led to better wine. The ancient Romans recommended planting vines at a density of 50,000 vines per hectare, an almost unbelievable density. By the mid-nineteenth century, vine densities of 20,000 vines per hectare were common as were yields of 14,000 litres of juice (technically called MUST) per hectare; sometimes from even smaller areas of vineyard.

Pruning: It was New World, Southern Hemisphere technology and vineyard management that proved quality wine could be made without severe pruning, even no pruning at all, and that vine densities as low as 1,500 vines in one hectare are capable of producing good yields and good quality of grapes and wine. Pruning refers to the cutting back of excessive growth in the early spring before the sap starts to rise; to concentrate the maximum of growth into the surviving buds.

Hedge pruning: Severe pruning encourages growth; no pruning discourages growth in that the growing hormones in the vine are not stimulated and new growth is small. The theory of hedge pruning is that the vine be treated as a hedge and be mechanically cut during the growing season as needed. It works well because of the vines need for, and response to, sunlight.

The Soil

Terroir: The French have a word, terroir (tare-wah) used to describe a whole range of natural conditions, which influence the growth of the vine and the grape. It’s a combination of site, slope, soil, situation, climate, light, drainage and other factors which come together to set the character of the eventual wine.

It was felt that the New World growers, especially in the USA, regarded the idea of terroir as nonsense.

But now terroir is accepted as one of the key foundations upon which quality wine production is based. The Southern Hemisphere winemakers regard terroir as being very important.

Terra Rossa: A classic example is the red basalt soils of Coonawarra in South Australia. Coonawarra is a twenty kilometre long by three kilometre wide patch of unique land consisting of half a metre thickness of this Terra Rossa or volcanic red basalt mineral rich soil on top of three metres of limestone, all sitting on a large underground water supply. Here all the soil conditions for the making of fine wine have come together even if the climate can be difficult at times with raging bush fires always threatening to destroy the vineyards, as has happened in recent years.

Nutrition: Like any other form of plant life, vines respond to the soils they are grown in. This sets the vines performance. Soils consist of two layers—usually, topsoil and subsoil. Topsoil is usually rich and fertile and contributes necessary nutrition to the vine. But vines don’t need too much rich food and tend to be planted in places where the topsoil will give support to the vine and its root system. Secondary support for the roots will be found deep in the sub-soils where the roots concentrate on gaining minerals. This is, however, not general. Some top soils are thin and the sub soils have to do most of the work.

The Water

Balance: Water is important. The difficulty is striking the right balance. The vine needs enough water, not too much, not too little. How much is enough? European vineyards tend to have much more water than they can handle.

Excess rain in France is a fact of life, usually coming at times when it is not needed. So good drainage is an essential feature in the vineyard, either in the form of natural drainage through stony or gravel soils, or through drainage systems installed when the vineyard is planned and constructed.

Irrigation: Southern Hemisphere vineyards also need water but here rain is not so guaranteed. In some Southern Hemisphere countries, the available rain tends to fall on to nearby hills and mountains so has to be channelled to the vineyards and distributed through irrigation systems. Irrigation is banned in certain Northern Hemisphere countries, largely because they don’t need it and to prevent growers and makers from using extra water in the vineyards to increase yields.

Chile and Argentina are classic examples of making the best use of available water supplies. Both countries share the Andes mountain range where most of the annual rain falls as snow. Chile also has its coastal hills and a unique climate throughout its Central Valley system. Argentina’s wine industry would be impossible without the use of irrigation and it is the pure snow melt from the mountains that has turned the dry and arid province of Mendoza into one of the world’s best wine producing regions.

Flood irrigation: Flood irrigation is where the water is run into the vineyards and guided through channels cut in the soil to the vines. It seems to be a wasteful method but actually uses only a small percentage more than controlled irrigation.

Flood irrigation is used occasionally throughout the growing season, perhaps once a month, sometimes even as little as three times during the growing period. In Argentina and Chile water is a valuable commodity and great care is taken not to waste it.

Drip irrigation: Drip irrigation gives the vine exactly the amount of water it needs. This amount is set according to the soil, type of vine, average temperature, climate and the site—the Terroir. Some growers use computers and plant electronic sensors that decide vines water needs. These sensors trigger the pumping system and the whole business is automatic. Sensors are very sensitive and sometimes can give wrong readings. This means that some vines may receive more water than they need, others less. Overall, it works well. Proper rainfall is, of course, non-selective; you get it all, there is no control, you can’t turn it off.

Spray systems: Spray (or aspersion) systems are used in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa especially where deep wells are used. (picture below right)

These systems can be very complicated, sometimes involving mobile spray systems that move about the vineyard. Not as accurate as drip irrigation and more like rain. But at least you can turn it off. Vines need about 675 mm of rain annually or a similar amount of irrigation, ideally in the spring and winter with a little during the summer.

Bordeaux has an average annual rainfall of 900 mm but can never guarantee that it will fall when wanted. Year after year hopes of a good harvest have been spoiled by heavy rains arriving two or three weeks before picking time, when the grapes have yet to arrive at their best ripeness. The grapes soak up the rain like sponges with the result that the wine made from these grapes will be thin and watery. But in Bordeaux this is where technology comes in to play, where the laboratory and the chemist will ally with the winemaker to extract the maximum from the thin grapes. For example, at the time of harvest, the first thing will be the crush, followed by the first press. Winemakers will run off initial juices so that they finish with 70% of the juice in contact with 100% of the skins, so maximising skin contact, colour extraction. Then the laboratory technology will come into play to make the best of what they’ve got. But sometimes the thinness of the harvest is beyond further development and some producers will not declare a vintage and the thin wines may be used for distillation, wine vinegar.

Climate Is Everything

There is a need to understand the difference between climate and weather. Climate doesn’t change. There are seasonal and occasional variations to the climate; these we know as the weather.

Global warming: Initially the situation of global warming seemed to be causing weather changes but not changing the basic climate. Now we know that the basic climate is being severely changed and this will have effects on all of the wine producing world. Some regions may become non-viable for grape growing, other areas where the climate was suited to producing high acid grapes ideal for distillation into fine brandies, are finding that their fruit is no longer so high in acids and so may have to either seek cooler climate sites for their grapes, or to change the fruit and so change the style and character of their fine spirits. But we are getting too far ahead and such changes are for the future. Let us concentrate on how things are.

Survivor: Climate is the most important factor influencing the growth of quality grapes. Growers must select a vine-growing region with a friendly climate and hope that nature is reasonably kind. The vine, however, is a tough plant and can survive under conditions in which most other plants would die.

Climate bands: It is well established that there are two climate bands around the world, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern, within which vines for wine production will grow. Between the latitudes of 30 and 50 north, 30 and 40 south. But modern growing methods in the vineyards have proved that wine grapevines can be grown in places where previously it was thought impossible. Indeed good wine is being produced in the most unlikely places, on the equator in Ecuador, in Thailand, in India, in fact anywhere where the climate is moderate enough, usually at higher altitudes.

Light and heat: There has to be a balance between heat and light. Light is the most important biological process for green plants, the process is known as photosynthesis, and you don’t need actual sunlight for this. Sunlight is necessary for ripening and sugar development.

The ideal climate pattern would be:

Fine, long summers with warm rather than hot sunshine, ensuring that the grapes ripen slowly, producing a good balance of natural sugars