Category: Wine

Categories
Kania Lodge Wine

From pallets to containers

Sixteen years ago I imported what was probably the first pallet of New Zealand Sauvignon to be landed in Poland. It came from Soljans, a small family-owned winery from just north of Auckland run by the ever-smiling Tony Soljan whose family had emigrated from Croatia to New Zealand in the early part of the 20th century.
It was an instant success. I had bought the Sauvignon Blanc especially for Kania Lodge so that I could offer guests something a bit more interesting than was generally available in Poland at that time. But guests immediately began taking a case or two with them when they left. Soon I was getting phone calls from Warsaw and other cities from people desperate to get their hands on some of Tony’s Sauvignon Blanc.
That was the genesis of Wine Express, a mail order company I started a year later to cater what was clearly a demand for more exotic wines than currently available. Soon we had an ever-expanding list of wines from family-owned wineries, some of them famous, from most wine producing countries in the world.

Photo courtesy of enofaza.pl

But we kept promoting NZ Sauvignon Blanc. While continuing with Soljans, we quickly expanded our range of New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs to include wines from Dog Point, Jules Taylor, Rockburn, Te Mata Estate, Kumeu River and, more recently, Woollaston and Supernatural. We’ve for sure the largest range of Sauvignon Blanc available in Poland.
Now we have turned out attention to promoting other wines that New Zealand does so well. Kumeu River, for example produces some of the world’s best Chardonnay. Pinot Noirs are coming along too and there were plenty of them at the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise wine tasting in Warsaw last week. The on-line wine magazine Winicjatywa voted Jules Taylor’s Pinot Noir as the best at the show and praised their new Gruner Veltliner. Te Mata’s Gamay Noir was also singled out for high praise.
Of course there were many other top class wineries exhibiting at the show and I hope they find importers for their wines. They’ll join a dozen or two already here. Many of them , like us, are now importing container loads rather than the single pallets I started out with all those years ago.

John Borrell

Categories
Travel Wine

The judgement of Paris

Californian wine came of age in 1976 at a blind tasting in Paris which pitted the top Chateau from Bordeaux against some largely unknown wines from the Napa Valley. To everyone surprise and the French wine industry’s mortification, previously unsung Californian producers like Stag’s Leap and Montelana bested Bordeaux icons like Chateaux Mouton-Rothschild and Haut-Brion. California has never looked back. Top wines from the Napa Valley fetch hundreds of dollars a bottle, and there are long waiting lists for the tiniest of allocations of the now great Californian names.

But in the last decade or so, something interesting has happened. Californian wines have become a bit more like those from Bordeaux. And Bordeaux has become a bit more Californian-like. That is to say that the top Californian wines have become a little less voluptuously fruity and oaked, and top Bordeaux reds a little fruiter and more rounder. Warmer weather in Bordeaux has played a part in this, but winemakers on both sides of the Atlantic have consciously incorporated some their rivals’ best features into their own winemaking. The winners are neither California nor Bordeaux, but us, the consumer.

John Borrell

Categories
Restaurant Wine

Shining brightly

It’s great that Poland now has a Michelin star restaurant, and a very good one at that. Atelier Amaro was awarded its first star last week, an acknowledgement that owner Wojciech Amaro has created something uniquely Polish that measures up to some of the best cooking in the world. It helped, of course, that Wojciech has worked in some of the world’s top restaurants including El Bulli in Spain and Noma in Denmark, both winners of the prestigious “best restaurant in the world” award.

At Atelier Amaro, which you’ll find at Agrykola 1 next to Lazienki Park, Wojciech has built his ever-changing menu around traditional Polish ingredients, some well known but many of them grains and plants that once formed part of the Polish diet but no longer do. When I say menu, this is not a telephone-directory size book with hundreds of choices. You simply choose the three, five or eight-course tasting menu.

I chose the eight course option when I ate there with my wife this winter, a rare act of gluttony on my part. I’m glad I did. The food was spectacular. I particularly enjoyed the plum soup with linseed oil and onion dumplings and the fact that the fish course was served with millet and the duck with buckwheat. Confirmation of just how good the then star-less Atelier Amaro was, came when I visited Berlin with my family over Christmas. As a treat, we dined at the 2-star Michelin Lorenz Adlon Esszimmer in the Adlon Hotel overlooking the Brandenburg Gate. It was very good. But Atelier Amaro was better.

Needless to say you’ll find our wines at Atelier Amaro, including two of New Zealand’s very best; Kumeu River’s sensational Estate Chardonnay and Dog Point’s Sauvignon Blanc. You’ll be in the hands of an excellent Sommelier, Pawel Białęcki, who will tell you all about them.

John Borrell

Categories
Travel Wine

Wine, not war

It’s nearly 30 years since I was last in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. There was a civil war going on then and I was Time Magazine’s correspondent in Beirut. Now the civil war is across the border in Syria and I have swapped writing for wine, a sensible thing to do at my age.

This time I was in the Bekaa to meet Fauozi Issa, owner and winemaker at Domaine des Tourelles. It is one of Lebanon’s oldest wineries and Faouzi is producing some interesting wines; Decanter Magazine recently rated his Marquis des Beys, a blend of Cabernet and Syrah, at 93 points.

I was keen to taste the wine and to meet Faouzi and his family. At Wine Express we like working with family-owned wineries and enthusiastic young winemakers. Neither disappointed.

Fauozi, who studied oenology in France and worked at Chateau Margaux, bubbles with enthusiasm. The 2009 Marquis des Beys was as good as an expression of the Bekaa’s terroir as any Lebanese wines I have tried. I’ll share my tasting notes later.

There is also a seductive white made mostly from Viognier (apples an pineapples) and an everyday red made from Syrah and Cabernet which was soft on the palate and full of fruit.

It was a great tasting and we’ll shortly be bringing Faouzi’s full range o Poland.

Categories
Wine

The better the company, the better the wine

Wine is something best enjoyed in the company of other people. The better the company, the better the wine seems a good and memorable adage. I’m reminded of this whenever I am asked to name the best bottle of wine I have ever had. Since I’m getting old and therefore have had time to drink thousands and thousands of different wines, that’s not an easy question to answer. I can remember the most expensive, a bottle of Chateau Margaux for which I paid the kind of money that would have bought me a pallet or two of eminently drinkable wine from somewhere else. I remember the most I have ever drunk at one time, several bottles in a session with friends in Africa which left me with a headache for nearly a week. I remember the most prescient choice I made when compiling our wine list; a bottle of Pinot Noir from California which was later chosen to be served as President Barack Obama’s inaugural lunch. I also remember dozens of great and/or interesting wines I have enjoyed with friends over the decades; wonderful New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, patrician Grand Crus from Montrachet in Burgundy, majestic Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa Valley and breathtakingly good Pinot Noir from the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley in South Africa.

But the best single bottle? I think it would have to be a bottle of cheap, sparkling and semi-sweet wine called Barossa Pearl and widely available in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960’s. I was 19 at the time and I shared it with a pretty, clever and subsequently amorous girl just a year or two older than me.

John Borrell

Categories
Travel Wine

Murcia, the new Puglia?

Few people have heard of the Spanish grape Monastrell. They are much more likely to have heard of Mouverdre from France or Mataro from Australia, both of them clones of the original Spanish Monastrell. The reason for the grape’s obscurity is that until recently it was grown primarily to produce bulk wine which was shipped off, often abroad, to add colour and body to more anaemic wines with better name recognition.

But just as Primitivo from Puglia in Italy has in recent years shrugged off its bulk wine image and become a sought-after single varietal, so too is Monastrell from Murcia in Spain rapidly becoming much more than just a tanker or blending wine. In fact, a recent visit to Murcia in the south of Spain has left me wondering whether Murcia might not be the new Puglia and Monastrell the new Primitivo, an increasingly popular grape in Poland.

There are many similarities. Both regions are in the hot, dry south of their respective countries. Both grape varieties tend to produce full, fruity and sometimes tannic wines. Both Primitivo and Monastrell are often great value for money, especially when compared to wines from better known regions in their own countries. Chianti in Italy and Rioja in Spain spring immediately to mind.

On my visit to wineries in both the Jumilla and Yecla denominations in Murcia, I tasted single varietal Monastrell with 93 Parker points and met winemakers who believed they will soon achieve scores in the high 90’s. I also tasted Monastrell with Parker scores in the high 80’s which could be retailed in Poland for less than 30 zl a bottle.

In fact they will be within a month or two. Check our website for Monastrell from Murcia early in the New Year.

John Borrell

Categories
Wine

CHRISTMAS GIFTS

Kosz delikatesowy Wine Express

Categories
Wine

Jonathan Maltus

When Chateau Teyssier’s Jonathan Maltus was our guest at Kania Lodge in Kaszubia a few years ago, he spent much of the visit on the telephone to California in order to source both grapes and finance for a new winemaking venture there.

He was successful on both counts and this week a small allocation of the 2009 vintage of his World”s End Californian wines was delivered to the Wine Express warehouse just opposite lodge, It is a selection of single varietal Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc with names that only an aging rocker like Jonathan could have come up with – Little Sister, Against the Wind and If six was nine.

The 2008 vintage World’s End which we cellared a year earlier also had names from songs by his favourite rock groups – Good Times, Bad Times (Led Zeppelin), Crossfire (Stevie Ray Vaughan) and Wavelength (Van Morrison). Just 1,200 cases of these wines were made and they were promptly sold out to merchants like me after receiving Parker scores ranging from 92/100 to 95/100.

We’ve just put both the 2008 and 2009 vintage wines up on our website so you can check out the descriptions there. They are not cheap, ranging from 180 zl to more than 600 zl a bottle, but top class Napa red is never cheap. At the top end that’s about the same price as you’d pay for Jonathan’s fabled Le Dome, a cult wine which Parker has scored as high as 98/100.

If these prices put you off then the good news is that Maltus also makes one of the best value Bordeaux’s I have ever tasted. Pezat is technically a Bordeaux Superiore from Entre-deux-Mers but it has much of the character of a really good St Emilion. And so it should; the vineyard is just a footstep outside the St Emilion appellation.

It is generally scored in the 88-90/100 range which is very good for a Bordeaux costing just 59 zl. We’ve just taken delivery of 1,200 bottles of the 2010 vintage of Pezat because we’ve just a few cases left of the 2009. You can drink the 2010 now or cellar it from 2-5 years.