Gaston Hochar

Bekaah Reds instead of Beirute Blues...

A must have for wine lovers that defend biodiversity...

What Lebanese stories outside pure politics would help in making three-dimensional the conflict around the possession of the margins of the Litani River? Perhaps the epic tale of the wines of Gaston Hochar, from Chateau Musar, the Lebanese “Grand Cru”? With vineyards in the Bekaah Valley almost contiguous to the front lines, the continuity of that wine is an elegy to the Lebanese determination to move on. The ardour of the battles in 1983 right in harvest time made the oenologist son, Serge, to infiltrate clandestinely into their own properties to lead the vintage campaign. The family’s wine stronghold, the Ghazir Castle, was several times hit by artillery fire. There were even times when the caves of the winery had “dual-use”, employed to stock the barrels alright but also to serve as an improvised bunker for the near-panicking local population against bombardments. Can one “understand” the Bordeaux area never having tasted a Grand Cru? Isn’t it the case that each time I’m quietly enjoying a bottle of Château Musar I’m advancing an extra bit in the understanding of Lebanon? To make wine in the Arab world is always a sensible issue, and to have the arrogance to produce it according to classical canon, the French way, is quintessential Lebanese. It has something of transgression of the Coranic consuetudinary but also of a tongue-in-cheek challenging of European patronizing ways. It’s a wine one drinks with political enjoyment, so to speak. (I cherish the memory of the bottle of a 1967 I’ve opened this Summer to honour the cessation of hostilities on the way to a cease-fire).

Nicolau de Almeida

The cork-screw didn't work properly...

Carlos Falcó

To blog about: the self-indulgences at Iberwine...

Mariano Garcia

Fashionable Wine-Designers..

waiting for trendy wines to be tasted...

Tasting wines on a cold Saturday morning at 10 AM is a radical X-treme sport. "Lavinia" is a very professional wine-trade business which reminds me of some St James's-based universally known joints like "Berry Bros." The wine tasting theme was "Viños de Moda" meaning that we were going to try some non-traditional new wines that have been spotted by the gourmet journalistic crowd and talked about.

"Aalto" ( 2002), made by Mariano Garcia, the famed oenologist of top class Vega Sicilia was the first one to be tasted, and was recognized as a good example of new trends in the Ribera del Duero region; "Trasnocho" (also 2002) was a portentous wine of Fernando Ramirez de Ganuza (at 65 € a bottle the experience of new Riojas do not come cheap) ; "Pintia" (2002) the venture of Vega Sicilia in the Toro region was an interesting 100% Tinta de Toro ( a Tempranillo cousin); "Calchetas" (2002) was a curious blend of Grenache, Tempranillo and Malbec (!); "Paixar" (2002) from 60 years old vines of the autochthonous Mencí­a grape variety was one of the stars of the tasting; and "Mas Doix" (2002), another Alvaro Palacios-related venture in the Priorat region, is a sure winner. ( My personal favourites were "Mas Doix" (new style), "Paixar" (new traditional style) and "Trasnocho" (best nose) ).

The social dynamics of a wine-tasting are quite unique. A dozen people around a table with rows of elegantly-looking glasses who had never met before became a cohesive end-of-term classroom just after the fourth glass.. Is it the rising alcoholemia or the shared passion that act as social lubricant?.. It doesn't matter.. A cold Saturday morning can become a very warm experience indeed...

Carlos Falco, Marques de Grinon

A Midsummer Night's DreamDinner...

How it felt entering the Rincon...


Ms. Seachestnut took another rabbit out of her hat and hops! there we were on the N-V, direction Extremadura, to reach the finca before the sunset. This time the invitation was neither for a Snowhite and the Three pigglets garden-party, nor for a black-tie Sultan and His Eighteen Friends birthdayparty. This time a small committee, with as many people as main roles on the cast of a Shakespeare comedy.. As we entered the gates, the sunset light was at its golden glorious best, and the tree-lined lane was taking us to enchanted valdepusian territory..

The Honourable Host was very generous with his warmth in people relations, with his produce (all foodstuff at dinner was homegrown, so to speak, with the exception of the red peppers granted from a neighbour) and with the wines which made him, among other reasons, a very famous person (VFP). During the aperitif, taken under strict gender-segregation, a white oak-vanilla pleasantly tasting white was enjoyed, accompanying the traditional quick check of portfolio and M&A news. As we sat at table, adorned with elves and fairies that looked like little friends of Titania, the red wines keep coming. First a Syrah/Grenache which was a bright young thing, then the well versed, emeritus even, PetitVerdot/Syrah/CabSauv, the flagship itself that has made our Honorable Host the darling of the wine press (incidentally, in the land of the press "de corazon", the wine magazines are the only media you want yourself to be mentioned in ..)

The Honourable Hostess, who presided with consummated sense of timing to the garden festivities, including making the full moon appear between a huge cypress and the corner of the stone house at the exact moment as we were engaging in the pudding, had one additional talent to add to her already filled bag. She speaks an almost accent-free Portuguese which, as the Honourable Reader might understand, made her win several brownie-points from this blogger of yours.

All the guests were equally charming, but maybe the FatwaSister was more equally charming than the others. Her husband, working in risk capital ventures, spotted her once and went on to marry her just ten months later. As another guest commented: "A typical risk capital banker's decision.. Tremendous risks incurred but awesome rewards if everything goes well". (I hope promises of ravioli al parmigiano will not be forgotten...)

Fuelled by the excellency of the wines, the conversation was lively, and rather Sex&the City-related at some point. At soup time, the well-known impotency-inducing side-effects of lettuce soup were mentioned and the Hostess rushed to stress she had excluded that recipe from her kitchen to avoid sensitivities in these matters. Many stories were of course wine-related, even the dog is wine-related, for Goodness sake! "Alo", strolling around in the lawn, is a "bodeguero andaluz" , an autochthonous race that descends from the terriers that Sherry-oriented Englishmen brought with them two centuries ago, at the start of their migration to Jerez. The Sex&C.-addicts immediately swore that Charlotte had a bodeguero during several episodes of Season 3 but I have my doubts. Every wine-grower should have as his pet dog a member of this race whose name means an habitué of a wine-cellar...

The stories told around the table allowed me to pursue my linguistic studies in Spanish slang. I was introduced to the term used to describe a very daring outfit that leaves almost nothing to a male's already vivid imagination. It's called a "posseme", the imperative of the verb "to possess", and therefore un-literally translatable as a "fuck-me dress". Another semantic discussion involved the difference between a "quarentona" and a "quarentañera". The English language is not subtle enough to deal with those differences between the quality of life of those born between 1957 and 1964, fortysomething all but some more forty-ish than others. All ladies want to be remembered, in the legend of their fourth decade, as "quarentaneras", of course...

The perfect wine-related concluding remark, arrived, with theatrical timing accuracy, as the dinner was coming to its end, via Short Message Service to the FatwaSister's mobile phone. I cannot evn attempt to translate it. A wordplay between the names of two very famous wine regions (Penedes and Rioja) and the words "Pene" (which means "penis") and "Rijo" ("stiff") , it went like this: "Tu que tanto entiendes de vinos, sabes que relaciòn hay entre un Penedes y un Rioja? .. En que cuanto màs pene des màs rioja se te pone."

Robert Parker

Wine tasting can give you ideas...

The Hounorable Reader will have to bear this blogger of yours' self-indulgence now and then. I had recently an extremely enjoyable almost-full moon dinner - to be blogged about later - at the heart of the Dominio de Valdepusa, DOC and somehow the tasting and rating of wines and women got intermingled in my mischievous mind. The Host, a formidable enological figure has a lower-your-voice-when-you-speak-of-him evident respect for Mr Robert Parker Junior, the Pope/Guru/Imam/Rabbi of Wine Tasting worldwide. One can only understand too well those respectful winemakers, if Uncle Bob says "94" rather than "96" it's a large percentage chunk of their market value that suffers. What turned Parker's views so awesomely powerful was his comprehensive attempt to turn qualitative appraisal of wines into quantitative factoring. Not that he was a pioneer on that effort but his USA-born system surely became the standard against which all the English and French wine critics barked against in vain. I wonder if we could make the same quality to quantity quantum leap in what regards women? Not MissWorld stuff, I rush to add, not measurements or boob size, but something closer to Parker's system.

In his famous rating system, "general colour and appearance" gets up to 5 points, "aroma and bouquet" up to 15, "flavour and finish" up to 20 and "overall quality level of potential for further evolution and improvement-aging" up to 10 points. Parker starts by giving 50 points to each wine (so that the final scale looks like a 100 points scale). Let's assume we are "tasting" a woman: general appearance, allure, flavour and finish, overall potential in a process analogue to what Uncle Bob masterly performs.

In the end, we could get close to his own rating (to see more go to www.eroberparker.com ) by judiciously replacing the word "wine" with the word "woman".

It would then be something like this:

• 
  
  
  96-100 An extraordinary woman of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic woman of its variety. Women of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase, and consume.
  
  90-95 An outstanding woman of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific women.
  
  80-89 A barely above average to very good woman displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
  
  70-79 An average woman with little distinction except that it is a soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous woman.
  
  60-69 A below average woman containing noticeable deficiencies (...) (Parker goes on saying: such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor, or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.)

Wouldn't that change the way we look at "general appearance" , in the case of Miss Rachel Hurd-Wood incredible lips or Ms Nicole Kidman's near-perfect-white skin? At the "allure" displayed by Ms Katherine Hepburn? At the so-to-speak "flavour and finnish" of Ms. Liv Tyler? At the "overall potential for further evolution" of Ms. Juliette Binoche?

In the same way Parker allowed New World Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa to be properly compared to Old Worlds from the Bordeaux region, a system like that applied to women would liberate us all from the dictatorship of the modeling and film worlds. A Colombian "96" would smash all the eightysomething plus that invade Cannes every year around Festival times. A Andalusian "92" would embarrass Swedish "91s"..

The only point that remains to be answered is, of course, who would be the new Robert Parker?