Wax Seals/Bordeaux Amarone

You don't see them that often, thank goodness, and when you do it's usually those pesky traditionalists in Burgundy (especially with Crème de Cassis). They're a nightmare to open, particularly if no one's told you how to do it properly. When I've had the misfortune to encounter them, I've patiently hacked away before recoursing to violence. I'm talking about bottles of wine sealed with wax, a traditional way of ensuring that the bottle has not been tampered with. Completely pointless now, but, because they're traditional and they do look good, still used.

@bleuettextiles and I inadvertently ordered such a bottle the other night in a restaurant that shall remain nameless. The server showed us the wine and proceeded to start opening it. Two minutes later, I looked to see why she hadn't opened it yet and there she was, patiently hacking at the wax. As politely as I could, I told her the best way to open it was to pour some hot water over the wax to soften it. She shook her head, "I got it open this way last time," and continued hacking away. A few minutes later, another server came over to manfully show her how it was done. And proceeded to hack away, just as she had been doing. This time it was the turn of my sister to suggest pouring hot water over the seal. He shook his head, "I got it open this way last time." It took fifteen minutes for the wine to get opened and resulted in a tray full of bloody scraps of wax.

after the wax had fallen

I don't know how sommeliers are trained to open these bottles, but pouring hot water over the wine is quick and effective, and it can be done away from the table before presenting it. Another more aesthetically pleasing method is to heat the wax under a candle. Either way, once the wax has softened you can plunge the corkscrew through the wax into the cork and suddenly you have an open bottle without any mess.

I have two messages: to winemakers, please don't seal your wines with wax, and to waiters, listening to your customers can sometimes make your life easier.

the wine

Le Joker de Couronneau 2009 (15.5%)
After all that, and despite the bits of wax floating in my glass, the wine was sensational. We chose it for its uniqueness: a Bordeaux made in the style of an Amarone with, it turned out, just 800 bottles made. Inspired by "a chance tasting of some Italian Amarone," it's a smooth, supple wine packed with rich flavours. 100% Merlot, the wine had all the dried fruits (prunes and raisins) one would expect from an Amarone, but with the fresh ripe fruits (blackcurrants) from the grape, plus Bordeaux's characteristic oak, tobacco, and smoke. The only criticism I have of the wine is that damned wax seal.

worth the wait

Vega Sicilia

I've not drunk that much expensive wine - and by expensive I mean superexpensive. One of my dad's favourite wines is Tignanello - he got into wine in the early 1990s when Supertuscans were beginning to gain fashion - and so I've had the odd opportunity to share a bottle with him. We've also shared Bordeaux and Burgundy reds but never anywhere near the top of the end of the scale. More recently, I've also tasted some expensive wines, but having a taste is nothing like sitting down to drink and fully appreciate it.

That's why I was particularly excited to receive a voucher from hangingditch as a Christmas present, which allowed me to buy a bottle of Vega Sicilia's Valbuena 2007. Vega Sicilia is perhaps Spain's greatest estate, and its prices are out of the reach of most mere mortals. Its truly iconic wine is Unico, which hangingditch sells for £250; the Valbuena is its younger sibling, a snip at £120. Having always wanted to know just what the wines of Vega Sicilia taste like, I had to take the opportunity to buy the Valbuena. 

Vega Sicilia

After working in Bordeaux, Eloy Lecanda y Chaves returned to Ribera del Duero in the 1860s to found Vega Sicilia, planting black grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, grapes still grown on their estate. Until the 1980s, Ribera del Duero was not known as a wine region at all, although today its reputation rivals Rioja's. Having established itself as one of Spain's great wines, albeit in an area not known for its wine, Vega Sicilia faltered in the 1960s and 70s, until it was bought in 1982; like the area as a whole, its reputation rose once again. It expanded its interests in the 1990s to found Bodegas Alion, also in Ribera del Duero; still expensive, their wines have gained a serious reputation. Later in the same decade, it established Pintia in neighbouring Toro, an area known for upfront, rustic reds; Pintia has been leading a rise in quality in the area. Vega Sicilia also owns one of the greatest vineyards in Tokaji, Oremus, producing exceptional wines in a more old-fashioned traditional style.

Valbuena 2007

This wine is also known as Valbuena 5°, indiciating its five years of ageing before release. Under two of those years were in both new French and American oak, the rest being in bottle. It's 90% Tinto Fino (more commonly known as Tempranillo, the most important Rioja grape), with the other 10% a combination of Merlot and Malbec.

when drinking expensive wine, a board game should always be to hand

what it tasted like

One fear I had on opening the bottle was that it would be too young, with huge tannins and restrained fruit. This wasn't the case at all. The tannins were ripe and soft (Ribera del Duero is a warm, continental climate) and the red and black fruits rich and ripe. The wine's over six years old, and yet felt so fresh and young. We decanted the wine over an hour before drinking it, yet it kept on developing as we drank: pepper, liquorice, and vanilla; eucalyptus and mint; dried fruits; leather and game; while always maintaining its soft, fruity tannins.

was it worth it?

It's very difficult to assess impartially a wine this expensive. Expectations are raised, superlatives prepared, taste buds whetted. However, this wine truly was exceptional. The red and black fruits were so fresh and ripe, despite the wine being six years old; the oak integrated; the tannins soft; the dried fruits and hints of leather and game indicating the development of tertiary aromas. What made it stand out from other wines, though, was its constantly developing complexity; it was like drinking several different bottles one after the other, different tastes emerging, layers developing, always giving something new to the palate. The only criticism that could be made was that it was so disappointing to finish the bottle, more so than any other wine I've previously had. The wine was gone when it still had so much to offer; it was still opening up, still revealing its layers of complexity, but there was none left. According to the label, 153 double magnums of the wine were released. I want one.

Bring Your Own Bottle

Since working in the wine industry, there are so many times I've stared at a wine list and gasped, "How much?!" Knowing the prices of wine really brings home the huge mark up in restaurants. Any restaurant that's chosen its list carefully and makes its prices reasonable stands out, but it does take a lot of work to be able to do that.

Complaining about the price of wine in a restaurant misses the point, though - it's not the price you should be objecting to, but the lack of imagination in putting the wine list together. Wine in a restaurant is, regardless of quality, expensive for a reason: as a customer, you are being treated to a range of services that you would not get at home - sourcing the wine, storing (and chilling) the wine, creating a wine list that matches the menu, advice on which wine to match with which food, friendly service, and ambience. When a restaurant gets all (or any) of these things right, the price of the wine is justifiable, especially as it's wine, not food, that they're making a profit on. However, too many restaurants fall short of these services.

This makes the appeal of restaurants that offer a Bring Your Own Bottle corkage service enticing. I've been meaning to explore this avenue for a long time, and finally got around to it last weekend. Unsurprisingly, most restaurants that offer this service in Manchester are, as far as I know, Asian.

the restaurant

Arian, Chorlton
Opposite Chorlton Bus Station, all the diners in this Persian restaurant had brought their own bottle(s). This made for a nice atmosphere, taking away the stuffy formality and fear factor of ordering a bottle of wine in a restaurant. The service was prompt and friendly and the food excellent. Corkage was supposed to be £6.50, or so we thought as we weren't actually charged it. 

it was the end of the week and focusing properly wasn't easy

the food

The menu was, more or less, lamb or chicken, with vegetarian alternatives. I chose a lamb stew with fried aubergines and split peas and @bleuettextiles chose a chicken stew with a cranberry-based sauce. The meat in both dishes was deliciously tender, falling away slowly and succulently, with subtle spice sauces.

the drink

@bleuettextiles brought a Georgian wine, which I'd bought her for Christmas (from Carringtons, Didsbury). Georgia is the historic home of wine (though neighbouring Armenia disputes that claim). A lot of red wines from Georgia are, traditionally, sweet, but this was dry, with high tannins and oaky black fruits. It took a little time to open up but by the time our meals came, its expressive flavours went perfectly with my lamb dish, the dry tannins mixing with the rich sauce, but less so with the less full-flavoured chicken dish.

there are lots of other little stick figures around the label

Being able to bring your own bottle has so many advantages, putting you in control of one of the least uncontrollable aspects of dining out. The challenge is finding a restaurant whose food is both good and suitable enough to match your favourite wines, though it's also a great option if you just want to save money on drinking a bottle of wine at a restaurant and aren't too bothered about matching food and wine.

(@bleuettextiles continued the experiment the following evening at Nectar, a Lebanese restaurant in Chorlton, bringing a New Zealand Pinot Noir from Spirited, which she said had the acidity to match the tomato red sauce and the fruity body to go with the dish's lamb and veg. Corkage was £2 and they also have their own list if you don't want to bring your own bottle.)

Diploma: First Week

day one

I walked into the room nervous and fearing I was very late, but I was actually three minutes ahead of the 9am start; the strict warnings about being there at 8.30 to register were shallow. That's something I find about the WSET: lots of particular instructions about doing everything in a particular way, but frustratingly vague when asked for a particular example or answer. I was hoping for some clarification about what exactly the WSET want from us, as students, and how they think we should take what we learn into the business, but I still feel it could be a long time till I find a clear answer - every tutor's different and although they try to conform to the WSET way of doing things, each one still interprets it differently.

Our first two tutors reflected these different approaches: Karen, a trained teacher with a belligerent attitude towards conveying information, and Russell, mild-mannered with a suggestively persuasive teaching technique.

The day was intensive, mainly focused on tasting. This is where WSET can be at its most infuriating and inconsistent. The guidelines, and interpretations of those guidelines, change all the time, wrestling with their self-imposed limitations. The SAT (Systematic Approach to Tasting), a two-sided document which tries to make the subjective exercise of wine tasting as objective as possible, is going to change for our Still Wines tasting exam next year, but not for the Sparkling Wines exam in March. I finally learnt that medium(-) and medium(+) are alternatives to medium, not grades between low and high; that lemon-green colour has to have some green in it (seems obvious, but I've never been told that before); that gold has to have some orange in it; that purple has to have some blue in it. Why couldn't have these facts been made clear in previous courses? or is it that WSET are always having to correct/nuance their definitions?

Karen gave us a useful blind-tasting tip to help organise and identify the wines: in a flight, look at each wine separately and write your observations; then smell each wine separately and write your observations; and then decide in which order to taste them.

Our first flight of blind tasting had three white wines, three questions: which grape variety are the wines? which one is a big volume brand? which one is cool climate? The grape variety was easy, because the first wine was massively oaky: Chardonnay (from Meerlust, South Africa). Distinguishing the other two was harder, but the faint whiff of oak chips on the second wine indicated a brand (Jacob's Creek; any wine described as having "subtle oak flavours" was aged with oak chips, not in oak barrels) and the higher acidity on the third pointed towards cool climate (Chablis).

The second flight of blind tasting I got completely wrong. Four reds, all the same grape. I figured out the grape was Cabernet Sauvignon, because each wine had blackcurrant aromas and flavours, but I didn't identify any of them correctly. I even managed to describe a 2004 Pauillac as being an unoaked Languedoc; in my defence, even after identification, it was still a disappointing wine. But I went home a little stressed about tasting - even if the exam's over a year away.

day two

Another tutor, Gareth, striding around the room like a sergeant-major and as English as they come - he confessed, without any embarrassment, to having worn a tweed suit to a whisky tasting on Islay.

The first tasting was four wines: two reds, same grape, one from a cooler climate, the other from a warmer climate and two other reds, same conditions. The first wine gave the game away for that pairing: garnet colour, strawberries and raspberries, Burgundy Pinot Noir. The second pairing was more difficult as the wine from the cooler climate was actually from Hawke's Bay, which has a fairly moderate climate, but its tannins were less ripe than the other from Barossa Valley (the grape was Syrah/Shiraz). When trying to identify the origin of a wine the ripeness of the tannins is an important indication.

Then followed a prolonged morning of viticulture lecture, which can only be described as hardcore. The Diploma starts with winemaking with good reason for it provides a thorough base for understanding everything else about wine. I was terrible at biology and chemistry at school, though, and I have no horticultural skills whatsoever, so I'll be glad when the exam's done with at the beginning of February.

The afternoon was much more fun, as well as equally educational, with an amazing line-up of eight high-quality, but very different sweet wines. It was an intensive, informative tasting, learning about the different methods of sweet-wine production, and then tasting examples.

In the line-up was a lusciously sweet Canadian icewine from Peller, which was outstanding but needed a lushly sweet dessert; even though this was the sweetest wine we tasted, it was shown third out of eight. We were also treated to a 1992 Beerenauslese, a wine whose aroma was so crazy it stank of old socks and could sit in a line-up of funky beers. My favourite wine of the tasting was a Tokaji, made by the great Spanish estate Vega Sicilia; complex funky aromas from the Botrytis, yet with a real freshness on the palate. We finished with a 2003 Sauternes; its oaky spiciness was so upfront it reminded me of an American rye whiskey, and on further tasting it felt a little unsubtle.

Recioto; Jurançon; Icewine; Coteaux du Layon; Tokaji; Beerenauslese; Australian Sémillon; Sauternes

day three

Another hardcore morning of Gareth lecturing on viticulture. Hard for it to stick in the mind, so much information being delivered so quickly. I did an online mock paper in the evening; to my surprise I managed to get 70%, enough for a merit. Encouraging, but it involved quite a bit of guesswork and I'm going to have to do a lot of work before the exam in February to properly organise all the information I've struggled to process. 

The afternoon saw our final tasting session of the week. First, we split into groups of four, each group tasting a wine. We wrote collective tasting notes, without drawing any conclusions about quality or identity. We then saw another group's notes and wrote conclusions based on their tasting, after which we tasted their wine to see if our actual conclusions matched our projected ones. An interesting exercise in communication and the importance of clarity: do people hear what we think we are conveying? how do we interpret what we're being told?

The day finished with a mock tasting exam, which we were all suitably nervy about. Three red wines: write a tasting note, decide the grape variety and give reasons, and assess the quality of the wine, all in thirty minutes. That may seem a long time, but ten minutes to describe, define, and assess a wine is intense. We don't get our marks till February (it would have been much more useful for us for the tutor to mark the papers straightaway), but we were told the identity of each wine afterwards. Cabernet Sauvignon (got it; full of blackcurrants and mint); Nebbiolo (got it; garnet colour, red fruits, and loads of tannin and acidity); and Pinot Noir (didn't get it, amusingly declaring it was a Merlot; my description of leather, game, and mushroom should have pointed me in the right direction, but it crossed the mind of no one in the room that this difficult, dark-coloured wine could be Pinot Noir, even though it turned out to be from the heart of Burgundy, Nuits-St-George). Don't know what mark I'll get, but I already feel I've learnt a lot about pinpointing the identity of a wine. I'm looking forward to practising my tasting skills in more comfortable conditions.

day four

All tasting over, meaning a day's worth of Gareth lecturing, the focus on the business of wine. Lots of interesting information, but conveyed at breakneck speed over the course of eight hours. The WSET really need to improve their teaching techniques and encourage more student interaction. Most of the students in the class work in the industry - and the two that don't have a lifetime of drinking experience - and we would all benefit from hearing about everyone's else experiences of, and opinions on, the business from different perspectives. A tasting would have helped, as well; for example, a supermarket wine, a wine from Majestic, and a wine from an independent retailer. Would we have spotted which was which? how would quality have varied? which would have seemed better value for money?

day five

Another morning on the business of wine, this time focusing on brands. Again, tasting some of the brands we learnt about would have been helpful. This did finish with some groupwork, though, with our task marketing a quality fino sherry in the UK - just the kind of thing I'd like to do in real life!

In the afternoon, we were given daunting example questions on sparkling wines and spirits, exams we're taking in March. In each exam, you get given three drinks to taste - and I don't drink sparkling or spirits that often. And then there are three written questions, each worth twenty-five marks. For example, write about Pinot Meunier, Asti, and Bollinger; Bourbon, Cognac labelling, and Diageo - all subjects I know so much about.

All in all, I've got plenty of studying - and drinking - to do over the next two months on three very different topics!

Call in the Smoked Lancashire: Zinfandel, Primitivo, Malbec

A final blind tasting before starting the Diploma, featuring three varieties I don't drink that often. This lack of familiarity made distinguishing the wines hard - an equally unfamiliar @bleuettextiles was much more successful than I was. After tasting the wines, we tried them with three different cheeses; being Lancashire siblings, there was only going to be one winner there...

that's me in the corner

Pérez Cruz Cot 2011, Maipo Valley (hangingditch, £17.50)

Malbec is a French grape which was almost forgotten about until its fortunes were revived in Argentina. It's a grape suspectible to frost, which wiped out plantings in Bordeaux in 1956. Winemakers there gave up on the grape, but around the Dordogne town of Cahors winemakers continued to stand by it, making it the only Malbec-focused appellation in France. Since the 1500s, Cahors has been known as "the black wine" due to the dark colour and intense black fruit flavours (particularly damson) that come from the grape. 

In Cahors, and the Loire where it's also grown, it's not traditionally called Malbec, but Cot, which is what this Chilean Malbec has called itself, perhaps to distinguish it from its neighbours across the Andes, perhaps to make it seem more French, but certainly not for any discernible commercial reasons.

I mistook the wine for Zinfandel, because its upfront, jammy fruit flavours seemed more characteristic of that grape than Malbec. @bleuettextiles called it right, though, as she did all the wines; looking at my notes - "damson and mulberry" - I should have been able to work it out for myself. 

behind the tears sits a taster

Peachy Canyon Zinfandel 2011, Paso Robles (hangingditch, £18.50)

The signature grape of California, it came as a shock to their proud wine industry when in the 1990s it was discovered it was actually the same grape as an obscure variety called Primitivo, from unfashionable, arid, low-quality Puglia, in the heel of Italy. Despite that connection, Zinfandel remains archetypal California: big, fruity, with lots of alcohol. 

This one was more complex than that stereotype, though. Lots of ripe black fruits, but well integrated with the toasty oak to create a wine of real depth and structure - but still weighing in at a huge 15% ABV.

It's let down, though, by one of the worst wine labels I've ever seen (see photo below): "Peachy Canyon Incredible Red" on a pinky-crimson label with a poorly drawn winery. It really shouldn't be that difficult to create a more appropriate label for a quality wine. 

Pazzia Primitivo di Manduria 2010 (hangingditch, £30)

This was a serious wine from a region with a less than serious reputation: seriously austere label, seriously heavy bottle, and serious, restrained flavours. Such severity took a while to open up and reveal the best wine of the evening: dry, grainy, oaky tannins, black fruits, and dried and baked fruits, with mint and cloves. It's a wine that proves that Puglia is now capable of producing complex, high-quality wines.

It also felt very "Old World", while the Peachy Canyon was identifiably "New World". I really don't like those terms - any tradition of high-quality wines in Puglia is far younger than in California - but here these distinctions do make sense. The Californian Zinfandel was complex and involved, but its fruits were still up-front, whereas the fruits of the Puglia Primitivo were far more restrained, hidden behind the wine's oakiness. That certainly doesn't make one wine better than the other, but it does highlight the different approaches to making wine in different regions - and wineries - around the world.

congratulating herself on correctly identifying the wines

cheeses

I grabbed a packet of Grana Padano when in Sainsbury's just because it was Italian - would it work better with the Primitivo than the Zinfandel? Only when I got home did I discover that it's from the north of Italy, far from Puglia, making that question redundant. Hard and salty - not dissimilar to ungrated Parmesan - it didn't work with any of the wines, competing against the flavours (and it wasn't that great a cheese anyway). The Spanish Manchego, always a favourite wine cheese of mine, was creamier and sweeter than I'd had before and it didn't quite balance with the black fruits of the wines. Predictably, I started eulogising about testing it against a flight of sherries. I got that cheese at the Cheese Hamlet in Didsbury, as I did the Smoked Lancashire. Here, the smokiness and creamy crumbliness worked beautifully. The Malbec was a little smothered by the cheese, but the tannins and fruits of the Zinfandel and Primitivo were a great match. The Primitivo pairing worked especially well: the smoke and tannins wrapping themselves around each other, the fruits crumbling into the cheese. A taste of Lancashire and a flavour of Southern Italy: regional pairings aren't always the way to go. 

look at the Lancashire gently crumble under the Puglia...

Flight of Fancy: A Merlot Tasting

All of the classic grape varieties are haunted by cheap versions that can put a drinker off for years, but none has been dragged down quite like Merlot. It's seen as the wine drunk by those who don't really like wine that much - lots of juicy, jammy fruits and not much else - yet Merlot is a vital component in some of the world's greatest wines and without it the world of wine would be a much poorer place.

fa-fa-fa-fashion

More than any other black grape, the popularity of Merlot has been subject to the whims of fashion, particularly in the States. In 1991, a television documentary called French Paradox was aired in response to neo-Prohibitionist health lobby groups which equated all forms of alcohol with all forms of drugs. The documentary discussed the claim that wine, particularly red, was a staple part of a meal and good for the heart. This helped transform Americans' drinking habits, turning them from white wine and sweet rosés, and Merlot suddenly became the wine to drink. 

Unfortunately, this resulted in a lot of cheap, commercial Merlot flooding the market. By the time of Sideways (2004), it was all too easy to joke about, and dismiss, Merlot. Despite the supposed Sideways effect, though, Merlot is still the third most popular varietal wine in the US after Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The real joke of Sideways is that any wine connossieur knows that Merlot is one of the great grapes and only an unthinking wine snob would automatically place Pinot Noir above Merlot. It's just that there's a lot more cheap Merlot around than there is Pinot.

where it's grown

The heartland of Merlot is Bordeaux, where it is the most planted grape. On the Left Bank, where Cabernet Sauvignon is the most important grape, Merlot is needed to soften the heavy tannins of Cabernet and to give the wines some fruity structure. On the Right Bank, it often stands on its own, or with small doses of Cabernet Franc, in famous appellations such as St-Emilion and Pomerol, producing wines that don't need as long to mature as their Left Bank counterparts and are full of ripe red fruits. The wines of Pomerol are particularly fashionable - and expensive - these days because the expressive, complex wines drink young yet age well.

In Italy, cheap and cheerful single-varietal Merlots are produced in Veneto and it can form part of expensive Bordeaux-style Super Tuscans. The unheralded Lazio region around Rome is also capable of producing high-quality Merlot. At their best, Italian Merlots are powerful oaky Bordeaux-style wines with Merlot on its own, with other Bordeaux grapes, or with Sangiovese.

Washington State is the best area in the US for Merlot. In 1991, having decided there was no point in competing with Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, the Washington Wine Commission decided that Merlot would be "the Washington grape" - coincidentally just a few months before the French Paradox documentary was aired. The Washington wine industry boomed as a result, though with too many cheap, easy Merlots. Some great single-varietal Merlots were and are still produced, though as elsewhere I still think it's at its best as part of a blend with the Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc - and Washington produces some exceptional Bordeaux-style wines.

Chile produces wine from just about every major grape, but Merlot has been the most important in leading its boom in the last twenty years. However, a lot of the wine sold as Merlot has actually been another historic Bordeaux grape, Carmènere, or a mixture of the two. New Zealand has made its reputation on Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, but there are now many exciting wines coming out of the country from other grapes. Merlot is at its best to the north, particularly in and around Hawke's Bay.

what it tastes like

Merlot is a difficult grape to pin down. Its popularity, particularly in the US, is down to its"smoothness": that is, fruity and juicy and not really tasting of anything interesting, but at least it's good for your heart. More expensive and complex wines will have all sorts of flavours: strawberries, raspberries, plums, blackcurrants, and figs; cinnamon, cloves, and liquorice; game and chocolate. It all depends on where it's produced - a moderate climate like Bordeaux or a warm climate like Washington - and the aims of the producer - how much oak? single-varietal or blend? straightforward and juicy or complex and ageworthy?

 

what we tasted

My diploma starts officially on Monday, so I thought I would get in the mood with a flight of Merlot based wines. Although I knew what the wines were, they were presented to me blind, meaning I had to make an educated guess as to which wine was which.

Château Certan Marzelle Pomerol 2004 (Wine Society, £30)
There were three tell-tale signs that this was old school and not New World: the paler colour (medium ruby), the slightly lower alcohol (13.5%), and the high acidity. The garnet rim also suggested there was some age to it. Despite being nine years old, though, the fruits - plums, cherries, strawberries, and blackcurrants - were still fresh, ripe, and full of flavour. The grainy tannins, high acidity, and toasty oak all balanced perfectly. The spicy finish was long and lasting.
Verdict: outstanding. This wine is 100% Merlot - definitive proof that great wine can be made from Merlot on its own.

De Toren Z Stellenbosch 2010 (hangingditch, £30)
A really powerful wine and very different from the previous one. This time the proportion of Merlot was 55%, made up with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and a little bit of Petit Verdot. The oak was smoky rather than toasty, with lots of black fruits. There was also a minty herbaceousness to it, which I guessed came from the Cabernet Sauvignon but may actually have been the Merlot. Both this wine and the Pomerol could have done with decanting, as they both really improved as the night and following days wore on.
Verdict: very good. The alcohol was perhaps too high at 15% and the acidity not quite high enough, but this is an impressively expressive wine that will age for another five years at least.

J Lohr Merlot Paso Robles 2011 (hangingditch, £18.50)
The Pomerol was 100% Merlot, but given its subtle complexity you perhaps wouldn't have guessed it; with this wine, though, it was clear from the start. Lots of flavours, but all of them quite shallow: oak, cherries and plums, and cloves. There was also a greenness to it that at first reminded me of peas, but I eventually realised was underripe fruits.
Verdict: good. Simple flavours but lots of them; tannins lacking; not especially complex.

overall verdict

An outstanding wine, a very good wine, and a good wine: not a bad score for poor old Merlot. The tasting demonstrated how, rather than being a uniformly fruity, jammy wine, Merlot is capable of very different expressions in different areas, according to the winemaker, the climate, and the blend. I still think you need to choose a wine made from Merlot carefully, but if you do so, you will be surprisingly pleased by the complexity which you find in the bottle.

The funk's in the stink

The man behind the beermoth counter looked at the bottle, looked back at me, and asked, "You do know what this is, don't you?"

"Yes," I nodded. And I'm still buying it. 

The beer was Cantillon, made by a legendarily maverick Belgian producer whose beers are made in the lambic and geuze styles. 

Lambic and geuze (pronounced kurrs), probably the two most difficult and challenging styles of beer out there.

And I still bought it.

why?

Last September, I was in Seattle visiting @drinkaddition. My mission was to get him drinking lots of great Washington and Oregon wine with me (which you can read about here); his was to get me drinking lots of great Washington and Oregon beer with him. No problem with that I thought, until he introduced me to sours...

what?

I've been to Belgium a few times and drunk great beer there. Beers at 9% I could cope with until I fell asleep; lambic and geuze beers I just couldn't. These are beers that are fermented for several months so that the beer becomes a weird wine; this prolonged fermentation encourages the monster yeast Brettanomyces (familarly known as Brett), a strain of yeast completely anathema to wine. There's no control over how the yeasts develop and the beer often ends up smelling of a diseased sewery. So, obviously, there are lots of hipster Americans making beer in this style. 

why? 

Good question. No idea. Imagine sitting down and saying, "I'm going to make a beer that smells like a diseased sewer. Because that's what the Belgians do."

Cascade Brewery in Portland, Oregon pretty much did exactly that. They make almost exclusively sour beers and it was there that, 5,000 miles from Belgium, I understood the appeal of these stinky beers. (The official term is "funky".)

Beers aged for 18 months in old Chardonnay casks; beers made to look and taste like ruby port; beers made to look like goats grazing in a field - wait, that was across the road.

This is a not a sour beer, but I was drinking one when I took the photo

These beers were, at the very least, intriguing; difficult, yes; involved, yes; memorable, yes; unique, yes; and, yes, good enough, to make me buy beers of a similar style over here in the UK, drink them, and write a blog about them. 

what?

A lambic beer is, the way I follow the story, one that has had yeast thrown from the heavens down upon it by the angels. Given how a lambic tastes, and my belief in angels' bodily humour, it's the story I'm going to keep on telling.

The point is that the development of a lambic is a random process over which the brewer has little control, apart from ingredients, acidity, and fermentation temperature.

Lambics then form the base for several drinks: Faro (brown sugar is added; this is a style even Belgian beer aficionados are sceptical about), Oude Geuze, and fruit lambics, in particular cherry and raspberry. It's these latter lambics that I've found too sweet in the past.

Geuze or Oude Geuze is a blend of lambics, where, like Champagne or blended whisky, the skill of the blender is integral to the quality of the drink, and is beer at its most extraordinary, its most aged, and its stinkiest (sorry, funkiest).

Sours - this is how Americans refer to their versions of these beers. What's the difference? Not really sure; as far as I can tell, it allows hipster Americans to claim a style of drink for their own without using confusing European terms like lambic or geuze. It also allows, however, for a huge degree of experimentation - the flight of sours I tasted at Cascade in Portland all had the stink in common, but had remarkably different, individual characteristics that came from the many different ingredients in each beer and different casks used for ageing. This New York Times article gives an overview of the increasing popularity, both with drinkers and brewers, of sours in the US.

what I tasted 

Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze (6%; 375ml)

My tasting notes were succinct: "smelt of apples rotting in a toilet, tasted like a fresh, appley cider."

That aroma, strong to the point of violent, causes you to jerk your head back in a mixture of shock, disgust, and disbelief. And then you can't help but smell it again. Did that really smell of apples rotting in a toilet? And you smell it again, approaching the glass more delicately this time. Yes, that's really what it smelt like and those aromas are going nowhere.

So what on earth does it taste like? Dare I even taste it? And it turns out to be full of beautiful, delicate, crisp, fresh, citrus and apple flavours. How can a beer stink so much and drink so subtly?

looks harmless, is harmless, but smells of rotting apples

Stillwater Artisanal Table Beer (4.7%; 650ml; beermoth £11.55)

Much of the beer I tasted in Washington and Oregon is unavailable in the UK as far as I can tell. Besides Cascade and its sours, the brewery I would recommend checking out if you're ever in the Pacific Northwest is Deschutes, from Bend, Oregon, who also have a separate brewery in Portland. They produce an impressive range of individual and consistently high quality styles of beer. To my surprise, beermoth do stock one brewpub I visited in Portland - Rogue - though I found their well-presented beers good without being particularly exceptional. So, when in beermoth choosing some funky beers, I opted for this interesting looking bottle from South Carolina which the label says has "the light funk of Brettanomyces."

The authentic CAMRA glass aided the tasting experience

In a stinky sense, this was quite disappointing: on the nose, there was a faint citrussy lambic whiff, followed up on the palate by crisp citrus flavours, with a lightly hoppy structure. In a purely beer sense, though, this was an extremely interesting and well-executed beer: unexpectedly lager-like bubbles and colour, with a really unusually combination of light stink/funk and hops, all balanced enough to allow the citrus fruit flavours to be at the front of the taste.

£11.55 is quite a price for a bottle that's less than a litre, but for a hard-to-find artisanal beer I just about understand the price - and this beer is subtly unique. The balanced combination of hops, fruit, and funk is both refreshing and complex, and, although full of familiar flavours, not like something I've encountered before. And I have to say I'm impressed how the brewer has used the Brett to create flavour but not an overpowering stink.

Cantillon 100% Lambic Geuze (5%; 375ml; beermoth £5.65)

The grandaddy of Geuze...  

you know a beer's serious when it needs a corkscrew

The aromas of this beer are subtle and complex: like tangerines that have been left out in the warmth but haven't started to rot - no way near as aggressive as the Drie Fonteinen, but still earthy, developing into aromas of muddy potatoes lying on the ground. The smell of it alone is like the veg from a roast dinner: pumpkins, butternut squash, and potatoes, with a marmalade sauce. A sweet smell, but underpinned with a rich earthiness.

The taste is sweet, a sweetness I've previously found off-putting when trying these styles of beer, but it's balanced by earthy apple flavours. Like the Drie Fonteinen, this is reminiscent of a proper cider, even though it's not made from apples. 

In terms of complexity and depth of flavour, this is a beer that comes as close to wine as I have had - and it claims to be drinking till 2030. The label is terrible, though: the Belgians really need to get over the Manneken Pis. A little boy pissing in the air: it's just weird.

well, this Manneken Pis isn't peeing in the air...

do I want more?

@drinkaddition clearly trained me well during my trip to the Pacific Northwest, for I no longer find these styles of beers that extreme. They're an acquired taste that take some getting used to, and I still wouldn't drink them that often, but the complexity, the unpredictability, and range of styles mean that from now on I will always be keeping an eye out for them.

My old copy of The Good Beer Guide to Belgium & Holland, which is one of CAMRA's more open-minded publications, sums the crazy, unforgettable style of Geuze well and I think it applies in general to these styles of beer:

"Many of the people who have come to regard oude geuze as one of the great taste experiences of international drinking will tell you that all that kept them going through that first bottle was a sense of duty to history. At the end, they congratulated themselves on finishing their task and determined to move on. But decided on another bottle, just in case they missed something." 

Will I learn to appreciate Oude Geuze - and its New World alternatives - as one of the great taste experiences of international drinking? Well, I'm thinking about buying some more bottles...