South-western comfort

The problem with classic Bordeaux-style wines, even some of the best, is their long steady finish, like licking polish. Tanic, chewey sometimes with some velvet, but no surprise. And don’t we just love’em. It is true that after a complex affair with big Burgundians, a nice uncontroversial Clarety wine can be appeasing, a sort of comfort zone.

This wine is not from Bordeaux, yet understands this sentiment perfectly well. Indeed, if you want to taste a postcard of a very good classic, get this one. Vieillefont Domaine Mouthes Le Bihan 2002 is good stuff indeed. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Malbec all combine exactly as they should. Nothing exciting, but after the Vaillard, reassuring. It is this kind of experience that has many wine drinkers convinced that Bordeaux is better and it is hard to argue. Vieillefont is not strictly a Bordeaux though, but Côtes de Duras (or St Jean de Duras to be precise). That’s effectively in the Bordeaux region, straddling the Garonne, Dordogne and Gironde (Bordeaux’s department). It has its own “appellation contrôlée” though.  We got this wine in a rather original wine bar in central Paris called Le Garde-Robe. A hip and slightly pretentious place where you can sip wine, check out the ageing goaties and buy from an extensive range of obscure and not so obscure wines. A woody rather than a pebbly finish to this shop, but with erratic advice leading to sometimes disappointing buys. While it is fun to discover some of these wines and hats off to them for trying, in this shop they are soemtimes ridiculously over-priced. Maybe they buy them in expensive from wineries that are themselves overpriced, or maybe the shop’s owner just wants a big fat margin. Vieillefont from Duras is steady as she goes though, and a good buy, and worth Doyle’s 12/20.

Pinot Noir from Chile

Chile is one of those wine exporters that people politely agree produce good value wines of appreciable quality. I have to say, I have never had an excellent Chilean wine. Last night at dinner we had Villard’s Expression Reserve from Casablanca Valley. A 2006 bottle was probably far too young to drink. I got it in a good shop, or rather a well-appointed shop, of the new designy variety: nice balance, crisp, pebbly finish…I mean the shop. The wine itself did not qualify for such attribution: over-oaked and over here. At 14% it was probably slightly too heavy in alcohol, though perhaps this has something to do with exporting it. I could taste the pinot noir in there though, which is an achievement for some countries, for we all know how hard it is to reproduce real Burgundian style pinot noir, some French-inspired Californians being a notable exception.  The Chilean bottle looked suitably Burgundian though, the contemporary kind, light with a gentle midrift shape. It says on the bottle that Casablanca Valley enjoys sea breezes, which it says extend the ripening period of the hand-picked grape. It is rare for pinot noir not to be hand-picked, and I am not sure why the ripening season has to be long, since a grape is not an apple and the magic moment that gives the grape its excellence is not easy to identify. I disagree with the bottle that it is well-balanced, but I have had worse. Slightly too tarty for me (that strawberry flavour was a little too sugary for my taste), which ageing 50% in French barrels could not fight back. This was confirmed by tasting another heavier, more tanic, non-pinot wine and then going back to the Villard. Unfair? No, a good pinot noir can hold its own against even a tough Syrah or shiraz. The price was not bad though, so if you love pinot noir and want to try it, go for it. Perhaps a 2005 or 2003 would be better.  Doyle gives it a generous 10 out of 20.