My first trip to England was in the early 1970ies, I think I was 6. Day trip with my parents to visit my big sister who was spending part of the summer holidays at her pen pal’s in Herne Bay. Hovercraft from Calais to Ramsgate over a choppy channel. A bit of sightseeing in Canterbury. My first proper sandwiches. A grand day out!
Anyway, one of Mr. G.'s hobbies was to turn everything that grew in his garden into wine. Be it fruit, vegetable, or anything vaguely plant-ish. Every room in the house had a couple of flasks or canisters or buckets with his creations in various stages of development (or deterioration, I wouldn’t know) in them.
And this is what I think of when I hear English wine.
Wouldn’t the current environment in Britain dictate they drink only the purest Anglo Saxon mead while furiously maturating to a picture of a Spitfire and muttering “the war”?
Oh, it goes way beyond that. Wine tasting is about 80% bullshit. When properly blinded tests with good controls are done, the best experts can’t even tell red from white, never mind berry finishes or terroirs. Enjoy wine, but don’t pretend there’s any objectivity to the appreciation of it. That’s all rubbish.
A couple decades ago I went to a conference in the Bordeaux region of France, and I’d lived in Northern California for a decade or so by then. Some things looked odd - the rows of vinyards went up and down the hills, to let the rainwater drain off, unlike California where they go along the hills to keep all the water they can. The red grape varieties were similar to a lot of Napa wineries - cabernets, merlots (though also some white wine), but the winemaking styles were really different. Not as big and fruity, and no oak in it.
Farther east, we had a lot of Cote du Rhone, mostly young table wines, even in the wine stores.
Thank you (sort of…) for the reminder. Beaujolais nouveau demonstrates that my earlier comparison to feline discharge is not restricted to white wines. (@jerwin)
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