Yapp Brothers Blog

Back in April we set a fiendish quiz based on the Tour de France bike race mixed with a bit of local wine knowledge – we had a first prize of a rather nice cycling jersey, thanks to our friends over at Rapha, and we offered two runners up prizes of a bottle of Yapp Champagne each.

The response was excellent – but we have had numerous requests since for the answers too:

• Q1. In March, Britain’s Bradley Wiggins won the Paris-Nice stage race, aka ‘ The race to the sun’, becoming the first Britain to do so since Tommy Simpson in 1967. What is the name of the rare wine appellation in the hills above Nice?
  A. Bellet.
• Q2. Can you name the riders from the following nicknames: The Badger, The Professor, The Eagle of Toledo, Spartacus, The Pirate, The Cannibal and The God of Thunder.
  A. Bernard Hinault – The Badger; Chris Boardman – The Professor; Federico Bahamontes – The Eagle; Fabian Cancellara – Spartacus; Marco Pantani – The Pirate; Eddy Merckx – The Cannibal; Thor Hushovd – The God of Thunder.
• Q3. The town of Pau in the foothills of Pyrenees has hosted 64 stages. What is the name of the wine producer from just outside the town who supplies Yapp Brothers with delicious sweet wine?
  A. Pascal Labasse – Domaine Bellegarde.
• Q4. In 2013, Le Grand Depart sees the Tour de France visit which island for the first time in the race’s 110 year history?
  A. Corsica.
• Q5. Mont Ventoux, ‘The Giant of Provence,’ is a legendary Tour climb that has dispensed pain and suffering to cyclists of all abilities. What is the nearby wine appellation below the Dentelles de Montmirail whose Latin name means ‘pleasure and enjoyment’?
  A. Gigondas.

Three winners were selected from the correct entries – they were:
(1st Prize) Mr. P. Kinahan, Cornwall PL14.
(Runner Up) Mr. J. Edley, Bucks HP22.
(Runner Up) Mr. J. Hopkinson-Woolley, Cambridge CB2.

A special mention has to go to one entrant who tried to claim extra points for losing a 4,000 metre pursuit to Tommy Simpson in the Commonwealth Games, Cardiff 1958, which didn’t make it past our impartiality test (maybe if he’d won the pursuit…).
We also noticed a huge spike in competition entries in the last weekend – all with suspiciously similar answers. A bit of detective work led us the the MoneySavingExpert website, where they have a ‘Competitions and Freebies’ forum – someone had posted a link to our competition there, together with the answers. (Un)fortunately, one of the answers they posted was wrong – which, aptly I guess for a quiz about the Tour de France, just goes to show winners never cheat, and cheaters never win!

We hope you enjoyed this quiz – and many thanks again to our friends at www.rapha.cc for supplying the first prize.

In December 2011 a Swiss journalist called Rolf Bichsel published a creditable (if slightly sexistly titled) book called ‘Tavel – des Hommes et des Vins’ that ran to 151 pages and weighed in at 840 grams. While it is unlikely to top the best-sellers charts (with the possible exception of a small hot spot 10 kilometres north-west of Avignon) the very fact that it made it into print does indicate a certain level of interest in France’s only exclusively rosé appellation.

Uncoincidentally, Richard Maby furnished me with a copy of this tome – I presume because it says some nice things about his wines. I have yet to substantiate that though as I was close to my baggage weight limit on a flight out of Avignon and I was loath to jettison 840 grams worth of socks and boxers for the sake of the book so left it at my Dad’s flat in Uzès.

Richard Maby

Fortunately, I don’t need Rolf to tell me that Richard is a gifted wine-maker presiding over some prime Southern Rhône terroir. We have been shipping wines from Domaine Maby for over 40 years so have now got a pretty good insight into what they are about. Their Tavel ‘La Forcadière’ is a classic of the appellation, hailing from a cépagment of nine different grape varieties: Grenache Noir, Cinsault, Bourboulenc, Carignan, Clairette, Grenache Blanc, Mourvèdre, Piquepoul and Syrah. It has a lovely, deep terracotta colour, crushed-berry scents and a surprisingly full-bodied palate. It is an incredibly versatile food wine and makes a great partner to spicy Asian dishes as well as classic Mediterranean cuisine featuring lots of olive oil, garlic and seafood.

The excellent 2011 vintage has just arrived here in Mere and rain or no rain I will be broaching a bottle tonight!

Some people are enraged by florid taste descriptions, but the wine business would be a pretty soulless place without gooseberries, saddle leather and wet dogs.

There has been quite a bit of comment in the press recently resulting from research undertaken by a Professor John Hayes at Pennsylvania State University’s Sensory Evaluation Centre that concluded that professional wine tasters were likely to have heightened powers of smell and taste (not unlike Spiderman or Daredevil) compared with Joe Public and that their fruity references to gooseberries and mangoes were largely irrelevant to consumers.

Apparently your typical wine buyer just wants basic pointers as to whether a wine is light, dry, medium or full-bodied and doesn’t want to be befuddled by a load of verbose clap-trap from pretentious oenophiles.

The most famous exponent of the florid wine description was probably Jilly Goolden who achieved infamy alongside Oz Clarke on the BBC’s ‘Food and Drink’ programme in the 1990s with her baffling references to the likes of wet dogs, toasted teacakes and barge bilges.

Although Jilly’s over-the-top descriptions induced much hilarity one cannot fault her enthusiasm for her subject or her keenness to convey it to a wider public.

The reason all of this is resonant for me at the moment is that I have just been berated by a Guardian-reading, octogenarian, wine-lover from Winchester (which is a niche demographic – I thought you had to read the Telegraph in Winchester) for referring to an Alsace Riesling’s “classic kerosene scents” and (I admit this is worse) describing a Pommard as having “a bouquet of violets, turned earth, liquorice and saddle leather”. Ouch!

I think most people who write about wine for a living do try and curb their inner Jilly but wine is an emotive subject and occasionally one gets carried away. I think there has to be some poetic licence here. I don’t want to live in a world without Keat’s “blushful Hippocrene, with beaded bubbles winking at the brim” or Rabelais’ Vouvray like “taffeta” or Pliny’s pitchy “pictatum” from the sun-kissed slopes of Côte Rôtie. How can you evoke the magic and mystery of the fruit of the vine without trying to paint a picture in words?

Parker points and cold eyed analytics are all very well for hedge fund managers and soul-less super-market buyers but where is the pleasure and where is the passion? People writing about wine are bound to get caught offside occasionally in flights of fancy but at least they are giving us some insight into what they think about a wine and whether it merits our attention.

I say charge the glasses and bring on the purple prose. I want chest-thumping reds from the South, rip-roaring Rhônes and bodice-ripping Bordeaux. The Inuit apocryphally have many words for snow but we only have a limited stock of adjectives to describe tastes so slightly abstract references to struck matches and wet pebbles (both deployed by the great Jancis Robinson MW OBE) can be helpful. If you can’t bear flamboyant wine descriptions (and some people like my correspondent from Winchester just can’t) don’t read them unless, of course, you enjoy getting wound-up by them.

Perhaps we need to introduce an annual prize for the most torturous wine description in print – I’m sure I could be a contender!

(This post first appeared in The Wine Merchant Magazine, May 2012)

Twice yearly Yapp Brothers enjoys the great privilege of taking over the entire restaurant at Le Gavroche for our annual Spring and Autumn lunches. A fringe benefit of this is that approximately 2 weeks beforehand I convene with my old friend Silvano Giraldin under careful supervision from maître’ d Emmanuel Landre and chef-sommelier David Galetti and road test numerous different food and wine combinations in order to devise an exciting seasonal menu and pair it with appropriate wines.

Three wise men – David, Silvano and Emmanuel

Yesterday was the appointed day for this gastronomic girth-stretcher so I enjoyed the lightest of breakfasts before embarking for Upper Brook Street’s hallowed temple of haute cuisine. By coincidence a wine-loving Aberdonian chum and Gavroche regular, Steven Keenon, called me that morning and asked me if I would like to join him for lunch there.
I explained that I was already heading there for lunch myself and reciprocating his goodwill managed to get Steve promoted to the tasting panel.

The welcoming committee soon had us seated with glasses of Champagne from J Dumangin Fils and Saint Péray Mousseux Brut: Domaine Biguet to compare and contrast over some cracking canapés. We then sampled a heady selection of amuse-bouches and starters including a terrific duck gizzard and potato terrine, some superb mi-cuit salmon and delicious English asparagus – all of which we cross-referenced with an equally diverse selection of wines. The line-up of main courses included fillet of beef, guineau-fowl in a cream and mushroom sauce, curried stone bass and a leg of rabbit with broad beans and carrots. Desserts were equally numerous and appetising and I was beginning to wonder whether I had the stamina to complete our Leviathan lunch. Fortunately a few words of encouragement from Michel Roux himself saw me over the finish line and, after much debate over coffee, we managed to finalise our food and wine selections.

Attendees on May 17th who don’t want to know the menu in advance should look away now!

At our Spring lunch we will serve a Saint Péray Moussex comme aperitif with or without an optional shot of Crème de Cassis from Gabriel Boudier. Our pre-starter will be the mi-cuit salmon served with a Cassis blanc from Clos Sainte Magdeleine followed by a divine gratin of shrimps and mushrooms accompanied by André Vatan’s palate-cleansing Sancerre rosé. The rabbit was the firm favourite for the main course which we will partner with a 2003 vintage Vacqueyras and a budget-busting Domaine de Trévallon 2001. By way of light relief our dessert will be a coconut and mango panna cotta served with a Coteaux du Layon from Château la Tomaze.

I, for one, can’t wait to relive the experience!

Jason, Steve and Silvano

Winston Churchill’s predilection for ‘Pol Roger’ Champagne is well-documented not least by Pol Roger themselves who escort visitors to their H.Q. in Epernay to a room bedecked with Churchillian memorabilia lest anyone might forget about it. Less well-known is the great man’s appreciation of the wines of Château Simone which he encountered when painting landscapes in and around Aix-en-Provence. He visited the estate in person and befriended the Rougier family who presumably offered him favourable terms to help preserve the entente cordiale.

Today an elite cognoscenti of well-informed wine buffs and savvy sommeliers share Sir Winston’s enthusiasm for Château Simone but it is worthy of far wider recognition. Part of the problem is that way back in 1946 the estate tried and failed to secure a monopole appellation (as Château Grillet had done previously) but its arcane cépagement of 17 different grape varieties probably hasn’t helped matters either. Tant mieux – if the Bordelais were to get their hands on it they would charge twice the price so relative obscurity is perhaps no bad thing.

The Château Simone blanc hails from an esoteric blend of 80% Clairette, 10% Grenache Blanc and 5% each of Ugni Blanc and Muscat. It has a lovely dry, savoury palate, subtle scrub and herb scents and delicate resinous undertones. It is one of France’s great gastronomic wines and cries out for classic Provençal dishes such as salade Niçoise, bouillabaisse or tomates farcies.

The brick-pink Château Simone rosé is made from a base of Syrah, Grenache and Carignan and a smattering of anachronistic local grapes like Manoscan. A relatively long (circa 9 month) cuvaison makes for a fairly full-bodied wine with a wealth of ripe garrigue berry aromas and flavours. It too is a terrific foil for Mediterranean cuisine that is rich in fish, vegetables, garlic and olive oil.

Not to be overlooked is the Rougiers’ redoubtable Château Simone rouge made from Grenache, Mourvèdre and Cinsault and a diverse field blend of more obscure grapes. Happily there have been no attempts to modernise the traditional vinification in Hungarian oak vats and used oak barrels. The finished wine exudes Old World terroir and finesse with a bouquet of hedgerow berries and a complex palate of dark fruit and earthy tannins. It is deliberately un-showy and takes 3-5 years to come into its stride but will cellar well for 20. Victoria Moore recently observed in the Telegraph: “Château Simone (2007) is the sort of wine I love to drink and always fear I shall miss in the hurly-burly of the tasting room: a wine with restraint but a hint of wildness.” Sir Winston would doubtless approve.

Le Grand Café de la Poste in the new town (Gueliz) of Marrakech is a short ‘petit taxi’ ride from the delightful Riad Njemma (www.riad-njemma.com) where we were staying in the old walled city (Medina). In fact, you’ll probably pass more time negotiating a fare with the taxi driver than the actual amount of time spent inside his cab, but that’s part of the fun in Morocco. I was pleased, but unsurprised to see Alain Graillot’s Moroccan Syrah called Tandem (or Syrocco for some international markets) on the wine list at 790 dirhams (£60). You could also toy with Alain’s St Joseph (£80), a bottle of Laurent Perrier Brut NV for a similar amount or impress the smart, ex-pat crowd with a bottle of Petrus 2001 at just over £2,000. Clearly, hefty restaurant mark-ups aren’t the exclusive preserve of European cities. We chose to enjoy the excellent local delicacies – grilled sardines on tomatoes with a very decent and modestly-priced local rosé, El Mogador, produced from ‘bush vine’ varieties that one would find in Southern France – Carignan, Grenache and Cinsault, legacy of the country’s time as a French protectorate.

Marrakech is a heck of a place; medieval menagerie meets modern metropolis. You could spend whole days shopping in the Souks (and, by God, my wife tried), or hours marvelling at the street perfomers in the Jemaa el Fna or the wonders of Yves-Saint-Laurent’s Jardins Marjorelle. One afternoon, I zipped off on the back of a moped for a hair-raising ride across town for a few hours in a steam bath (hamaam). This was a public affair situated in the down and dirty dyers’ area of the Medina where fathers and sons were stretching limbs and cracking joints throughout the complex. I was well-guided through the etiquette and minded not to fall into the trap of a friend who had nearly caused a diplomatic incident in Japan when he decided to wash his feet in the onsen’s communal rinsing bucket. Suitably cleansed, it was back across the city for a sun-downer on the terrace of the Mamounia, a splendid Art Deco hotel that was a favourite of Churchill’s.

Mamounia Gardens

This short blog can’t do justice to such a beguiling city but, if you’ve not been, I’d heartily recommend a visit. J’y reviens!