This is not a wine for drinking...

[shewhomust]

Victoria Moore strikes again. Her wine column in the Saturday Guardian includes a section entitled "What do you recommend?". This week "I'd like to try a Chilean carmenere. Can you suggest a good one?"

I do not for a moment believe that this is a genuine enquiry. The mixture of well-informed (Chilean carmenere isn't exactly on every bartender's lips) and not knowing where to start is just not plausible. This doesn't matter; if the writer (or her editor) thinks that presenting the column as the response to an enquiry makes it more appealing than a take it or leave it "Today I am going to write about...", who am I to argue? But it does make it all the odder that one of the wines she writes about is not exactly a recommendation:

The third paragraph runs as follows:

Finally, for a premium carmenere, Montes Purple Angel 2003 (£19.99, Hedley Wright Wine Merchants in Bishop's Stortford, 01279 465818) is a blend of 92% carmenere with 8% petit verdot. It is tremendously glossy and lustrous - the sort of liquid you could build a house with. Personally, I find wines like this a bit much for drinking, but it will suit some tastes.

"This wine costs twenty quid a bottle, and I wouldn't drink it myself" is not my idea of a recommendation.

In the immortal words of Monty Python...
helenraven, if you compare the purple angel on the picture of the label here with the label of the bottle of Montes Alpha from which you are never far (oh, all right, there's one here) you will see that it is, indeed, that Montes.

Comments

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

I'm still scratching my head over that line...."A bit much for drinking"?

[helenraven.livejournal.com]

What a peculiar review. I don't think I'll be rushing to try that one at £20 a bottle, but I think I might grab a bottle of the Cabernet Sauvignon from Oddbins on the way home. I took a bottle around to a friend's the other weekend, hoping to try it, but she was in the mood for Chardonnay instead.

Thanks for the Python quote. I enjoyed the solemn discussion around it, too.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Mmm. I thought the commentator on the Python quote rather missed the point: I think it is an out-and-out condemnation of the wine. The wind-up is "This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down...", and the punchline "and avoiding!" reverses the meaning of that and avoiding. It isn't too good to drink now, it's too bad. But you knew that...

Shows how our views of Australian wine have changed, doesn't it?

[helenraven.livejournal.com]

It was the solemnity and the point-missing that I enjoyed, as you guessed.

Shows how our views of Australian wine have changed, doesn't it?

Haven't they, though! Our view of Australians themselves probably haven't changed quite so much.

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

You know, I love Chilean wine, actually know a few things about it, but I would never ever ever ask a bartender for a recommendation for a carmenera. My sister is a trained sommelier (and a bit of a wine snob), and I can't see her ever doing it, either.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Do you actually find carmenere in bars where you are? You don't here, let alone a choice, which was sort of my point (I wish we did!).

A trained sommelier in the family is rather cool, though...