Question: I see so many wines using a screw cap closure these days but was wondering if you could advise me who started this all off.

Answer: Well there have been experiments with various closure alternatives for bottles for a while but screw caps for wine were investigated further in the sixties and patented in the seventies as “Stelvin”. Yalumba together with other Australian wineries should get the credit for first commercial use but the idea really caught on and blossomed after the wide acceptance of same in New Zealand so they deserve some recognition too. More recently the issues arising from corked wines showing TCA have spurred more wineries to adopt this screw cap alternative.

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Just concluded participating in Burgundy week celebrations here in London with a tremendous weekend Paulee at Cabotte a wonderful French restaurant 48 Gresham Street on the east side near Bank. Some special bottles brought with notes made by your scribe on over 30 of them including outstanding Coche Dury whites and DRC reds among so many treasures. A later blog perhaps.

We are passionate followers of the recipe writer Israeli-British Chef Yotam Ottolenghi. Really enjoy so much making the dishes from his excellent 5 cookbooks including The Cookbook, Plenty, Jerusalem, Plenty More and Nopi. He is co-owner of several successful delis in London and one sit down restaurant Nopi (www.nopi-restaurant.com) at 21 Warwick just off Regent Street at Beak. Therefore privileged and delighted to have a delicious lunch today at Nopi. Tried several dishes and rated everything tasted very highly indeed! Their mixed seed lavosh with burnt Spring onion dip is an unreal nibbles starter. We loved the char roasted eggplant with tamarind yogurt, pistachio topped by pickled lemon to die for! Even their crispy potato chips and coconut salad mackerel dishes sing clearly. A big surprise highlight was the fresh whole lemon sole on the bone with burnt butter, nori & ginger. Wow what a winner! Another smart move by Nopi is their reasonable winelist together with a just released Summer “bright” choices list by the glass that includes sparkling, appropriate roses, and chilled reds. If you are visiting London this year I highly recommend you check this place out. Also their cookbooks.

Click to enlarge

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By Joseph Temple

With the official start of summer, so begins the BBQ season.  Whether you prefer gas or charcoal, here are some yummy dishes to keep your guests coming back for more!  Let’s get your grill on!

1. Potato Salad

2. Pasta Salad

3. Ribs

4. Steak

5. Hamburgers

6. Ice Cream

7. Grilled Veggies

8. BBQ Pizza

9. Refreshing Drinks

10. Corn on the Cob

11. Fish

12. Chicken

13. Sausages & Hot Dogs

14. Tomato Skewers

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By BillBl [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Question: What is it (the difference) that allows Château Latour when kept under ideal cellar conditions to age longer and better than most other classified Bordeaux wines? I recently shared an 82 Latour that had been bought on futures and kept in a cold cellar until opened in March 2017–35 years old and in still perfect color, bouquet, and taste conditions.

Answer: Excellent observation. IMHO it has to be the specific terroir of Château Latour in Pauillac giving their wines that inherent plummy fruit with balance in almost all vintages. The unique vineyard used for their Grand Vin has remained unchanged for over 300 years and has an amazing diversity of soils on slopes that are so close to the Gironde. I have been fortunate to try several extensive verticals of Château Latour and am always amazed at how long aging it is and how consistent often even in so called off vintages. Tried in 1977 in London at 3 events over 3 weeks some 36 different vintages tasting 12/week and not a disappointing bottle among them. That experience converted me ever since into becoming a very fond supporter of this property. Also impressed that same year at the IWFS Festival in London assisting John Avery and his sommelier crew in opening several cases of the profound 1945 put away by founder Andre Simon for the special occasion. Big fan of your delicious perfect 1982 but also the legendary 1961 and the underrated 1970 among many others. Château Latour seldom disappoints. Since the mid-1990s under the capable management of Frederic Engerer the wines continue to be outstanding reaching possible new heights. Château Latour certainly deserves the high reputation it enjoys for quality and the ability to age as long as or longer than most classified Bordeaux wines. It is indeed a unique terroir!

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Your scribe is a long time admirer of the work by Professor Charles Spence of Oxford University an experimental psychologist specializing in sensory perception of food and wine. You may have heard about some of his more well known food studies including how the sound made by biting into a potato chip affects your perception as to how stale or crisp you think it is and eating strawberry mousse tastes sweeter out of a white container than a black one. The same arguments hold for beverages especially wine tasted with different music playing and other multisensory factors including colours in the room. Reference for more interesting discussion on these ideas at flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com

As a strong-minded sceptic I attended an actual demonstration of this theory last month in Germany conducted by Martin Messmer at Weingut Messmer (www.weingut-messmer.de). We tasted 6 wines all of the 2015 vintage blind in a circular tasting room at their winery in Burrweiler (Rheinland Pfalz) each with different coloured lighting in the room (from blue, blue/green, green, yellow, orange to red) and music (rock through to Mozart classic sonata). We rated the wines from 1 (best) to 6 (worst) based on these factors: schmeckt mir (how enjoyable), saure (personal choice for sour acidity), balance, nachhall (length of finish or aftertaste), and weinrebe (grape identity). In the final results two of the wines were the same with wine 1 & 5 being identical bottles of Riesling grown on schist soil (gives more minerals than granite) and wine 2 & 6 the very same Pinot Gris. Somewhat surprisingly we concluded that wine 5 showed much better structure than wine 1 and especially wine 6 was much cleaner brighter richer and enjoyable than wine 2. In fact it was hard to believe that wine 2 & 6 were in fact the same wine! Bottle variation? Martin Messmer says no but it is because of the influence of colour and music. As you move from the coolest colours to the warmest and louder assertive music to calmer your perception of the wine radically changes. Martin says “Music supports and helps us in the process. Our wines befall, as it were, an entertainment according to the resonance principle. Everything around us is vibration and this carries over. So the wine reflects itself to our thoughts and our passion also enriching and balancing vibration from the music once again. We are convinced that through this, our wines are even more salubrious, compatible, and digestible.” It worked for me and I am no longer such a sceptic. As a result of this experience I will be doing more experimenting with the influence of colour, music and other sensory influences while drinking a wine. Can this be true? Suggest you give it a try. Please let us know your opinion.

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