Peter Grogan

Beery Bounty - Part 3: Famous Belgians

Wine No Responses »
Apr 302012

Belgium is beer’s idea of Heaven, where the globe-bestriding march of the lager brands comes to an ignominious halt in the sticky Flanders mud, where shiny-faced drinkers cherish their local, often deeply idiosyncratic styles – made by thriving, dedicated small producers – and beer is on the pedestal that is the exclusive preserve of wine everywhere else, especially for accompanying fine cuisine. Well, they had to get something right, didn’t they?

Of course not everything is as rosy as the cheeks of those discerning drinkers (who are however shipping nearly a third less of the stuff than they did 40 years ago) – brewers do get bought up (Stella Artois, long ago, by what is now AB Inbev; Affligem by Heineken) and there is more bog-standard stuff than before (although even “white van” Stella – in the embossed tinnies found in metropolitan offies – which is brewed there, is hugely superior to the UK-brewed version) and, in among the couple of dozen unique Belgian styles, there are some that only a local could like. Taken overall, though, the good stuff is arguably the best in the world.

Some of the styles …

abbey beers – similar to the Trappist beers but made by (avowedly) commercial companies … don’t get me started but AB Inbev’s Leffe Blonde does seem to taste saccharine-y, doesn’t it (although the Brune doesn’t)?

ales – sometimes made in the style of British versions, which is encouraging (De Koninck, Palm)

bière brut – fine things intended to be made in the image of, and with similarly labour-intensive methods and prices as, Champagne … we’ll see (Bosteels)

lambics – are “wild beers,” and they taste of the woods: wine-like, tart – sour even – and smoky and spicy. They are a true artisan product, using a third raw wheat in the grist, just a few hops as a preservative and then fermented over an extended period – sometimes years – by airborne yeasts which are encouraged to thrive in a hygeine regime that would give most head-brewers the screaming ab-dabs. An acquired taste, the best route in is via geuze (aka gueuze) the semi-commercial form, which mixes young and old beers (Belle-Vue, Cantillon, De Ranke, Girardin, Timmermans); fruit beers like kriek (with cherries – Liefmans) and framboise (with raspberries – Chapeau) are made with lambics and are fine as long as you think of them as being something somewhat other than beer

red and brown beers – tart enough to shock the uninitiated, the former with a vinegar twang, these are a Flemish speciality (Rodenbach)

saison – strong, sharp, copper-coloured ales brewed for summer (Dupont, Fantôme) and catching on with UK craft-brewers

Trappist beer – unlike monastery-breweries elsewhere Achel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle and Westvleteren produce a specific style (or range of styles) unique to them in the traditional “triple” and “double” beers which are the results, respectively, of the first and second soakings of the mash, and are thrice and twice as strong as the third, a “small beer.” The former – rich, strong and complex – are, along with an upstart “quadruple” style, among the finest things a brewer can do.

witbier – Hoegaarden, the brand that got the whole white beer wave started, was set up by Pierre Celis who subsequently moved to the USA and became something of a cult figure among brewers of cloudy ales. It’s the biggest brand, now owned by AB Inbev, flavoured with bitter orange peel and coriander seed (and perfectly OK, as long as you have some lemon to cut the soapiness)

wicked beers – the late Michael Jackson – no, not that one, but the ur-beer writer – came up with the term to plug the gap in the nomenclature for a bunch of beers made to flatter Moortgat’s peerless Duvel (pronounced Doov’l and literally “Devil” after an early guinea-pig apparently pronounced it a “devil of a beer.”) From Flanders, with it’s light body and billowing head it looks like a lager but it’s top-fermented to 8.5% abv – you’d never guess, until it’s too late. (It’s little brother Vedett is a saintly 5.2% abv, by the way.) Other good ‘uns are from Abbaye des Rocs, Achouffe, Anker, De Proef, De Struise, Drei Fonteinen, Alken-Maes (Grimbergen), Lefèbvre, Proef, St. Bernardus and not least Mort Subite (but at least I’d be dying happy in the peerless perfection of their Brussels bar)

Posted by Peter Grogan at 3:17 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

BEERY BOUNTY - Part 2

Wine No Responses »
Mar 282012

 

The by-product of yeast invisibly replicating itself is our beery bounty and that fungal fecundity gives us one of our most important preservative processes. The “ploughman’s lunch” may have originated as a cheesy bit of ’70s advertising copy but those horny-handed tillers of the sod would be eating the cheese-free version without the wonder that is fermentation. There would be no bread, pickles or beer either – so not much of a lunch at all, in fact.

The process of brewing may be longer and more complex than that of winemaking but the end-product is less complex. Don’t get me wrong – there is no man alive who loves beer more than I (or if there is, he should seek therapy immediately) but the beauty of beer is in some way in its very simplicity and straightforwardness, its honesty. If we want complexity then it is to be found in the huge palette of styles and flavours … a doom-dark dunkels doppel-bock is beer just as the lightest, laciest of lagers is beer and their footholds are analagous to those of, say, port and prosecco in the wine branch of the family tree of booze.

To make either of them the grain – inavariably barley, but wheat beer is big (I mean BIG) in Germany – is first soaked to induce the germination process and begin the release of the complex sugars locked up in the grains: after drying it’s further “kilned” to turn it into “malt” and the degree to which this is done determines much of the character of the beer – the darker the roast the darker the beer; after getting rid of the tiny sprouts from that brief germination period the malt is milled into “grist,” which then briefly becomes “mash” while it’s soaked in hot water in a mash tun before the liquid, now called “wort,” is separated and transferred to a brewing copper for the addition of the other three ingredients- water, hops and yeast. The purity and balance of minerals in the former is critical and almost mystical qualities are attributed by some brewers to the properties of the water they use – they get bored, I imagine, and pissed, of course.

No doubting the influence of the hops, though, – these primæval frilly pine cone-shaped green flowers are little resinous hand-grenades of super-charged bitterness and provide the descant flavour notes to malt’s baritone. They grow on vines (but called bines, like you have a heavy cold) in Kentish hop-gardens. They smell remarkably like their cousin marijuana – so they tell me – and have antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and preservative qualities in addition to their contribution to flavour. Discussion of the variety (the best-known English variety is Golding while Czech Saaz are the most revered), their preparation – dried or fresh (“wet-hopped”) and heady with resin – and the timing of incorporation (“late-hopped” for maximum impact) are matter for almost devout nerdism.

There is a myriad, a plethora, a cornucopia of ways of making – and tweaking – beer. Unfortunately, such things as myriads, plethoras and cornucopiae have a tendency to attract clouds of obscurantists, obfuscators and sophists. “I wanna go to an inn for some ale,” announced an in-coming Yank-in-law once, prompting the whispered conflab: “What the hell is ale? And what’s an inn?” We know in our bellies what they are but the unmemorable answer is that ales (the original beers) are top-fermented, i.e the yeast does its business on the surface of the brew. New-fangled lagers, devised only in 1842 in Plzen, Czechoslovakia as the first crystal-clear, light-coloured beer before going on to colonise the globe in double-quick time are made with bottom-fermenting yeasts and aged (“lagered”) for a period before consumption.

Bottle-conditioned beers have a little unfermented sugar remaining when bottled so undergo a second fermentation – a bit like Champagne – and they need careful pouring not to disturb the sediment (Worthington White Shield). All sorts of other ingredients are used from time to time, not necessarily to the detriment of the brew, both in the grist – rice, oatmeal, maize wheat – as well for manipulating body and alcoholic strength (sugar) and for flavouring – fruit, fruit peel, and herbs and spices like coriander, ginger, saffron and juniper. Don’t know about you, but it’s all making feel rather thirsty.

Posted by Peter Grogan at 1:46 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Beery Bounty - Part 1

Wine No Responses »
Mar 072012

 

“Beer is God’s way of telling us that he loves us and wants us to be happy.” Benjamin Franklin is misquoted on all those T-shirts that strain at the seams to contain the consequences of all that love. Indeed, there is often sufficient acreage for the correct version: “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy” without dropping the point-size.

The love goes back a lot further than revolutionary America though. It has been speculated that the reason that humanity gave up the hunter-gatherer existence and settled for an agrarian life was because they wanted a regular supply of grain – not for the bread they made from it but because what they really wanted was beer.

Anybody loitering in an English town at 10pm on a Friday night might be forgiven for doubting it but there is a compelling case to be made that civilisation was founded on beer – or perhaps founded for beer is more accurate.

The earliest documentary evidence of brewing is from Sumeria, approximately 6000 years ago. There was beer-making activity before that but not much in the way of written language – possibly a cause-and-effect thing was going on there – but by the time of the Egyptians there was a sophisticated beer culture with numerous styles being made and serious consequences for purveyors of duff beer (such as being drowned in it).

It’s a stretch to think of it as such but – if all booze is one great big dysfunctional family – then beer is grain- (or seed-) wine (and, though this may push it too far, its distillate, – whisky – is therefore oak-aged grain schnapps, i.e. vodka).

Beer is much more difficult to make than wine, and only for lack of anything else – or serendipity – would anybody choose hydrolised starch as the base for a wine. Serendipity may have started it in Mesopotamia but the reason it came into its own in Northern latitudes was probably as a solution to the problem of the relative scarcity of fruit. But, in the civilising stroke of genius that was the planting of grain, it overcame the infuriating seasonality and capriciousness of fickle fruit. Grain keeps … fruit doesn’t … beer all year!

 

Posted by Peter Grogan at 12:47 pm Tagged with: ,

HOW TO BUY WINE - Part 9: A word on "discounting" ...

Wine No Responses »
Feb 292012

Your average UK wine drinker knows what to expect from your averagely-priced wine in a UK supermarket or multiple (and the average price is still under a fiver). They expect unexceptionable, reasonably well-made, “easy-drinking”, and – above all – consistent “Wednesday night” bottles. In a word, it’s about familiarity and, unfortunately, we know what that can breed.

When the same wine drinkers spend north of a tenner, they’re probably hoping for something to make their dinner party guests sit up and take notice. I’m not the only sozzled hack who is concerned that people no longer have any idea of what to expect from wines in between those price levels. The £6-10 range can – with careful selection – be a real sweet spot for value as the proportion of the price that actually represents the wine in the bottle, as opposed to taxes and fixed charges like bottling and shipping, rises exponentially with each extra pound spent. The problem is that the big winemakers and the big wine sellers have muddied the waters with so much systematic discounting.

Presumably, very few people are sufficiently taken with a particular wine that has been discounted from, say, £8.99 to £4.49 to subsequently pay the full price when there’s another, similar-seeming bottle from another of the big brands parked next to it which is now apparently on sale at half-price. There are so many that there must seem to be no reason ever to pay more than a fiver or so.

The poor bewildered punter, standing friendless and frequently clueless in the typical four-, five-or six-hundred bottle wine aisle could very easily be forgiven for asking themselves whether any wine can actually be worth seven or eight or nine quid or are they risking – in buying one – falling into the elephant trap that is the zombie, “un-discounted” wine? The answer, of course, is that there are many but so advanced is the erosion of confidence in that price-bracket that only careful selection or – better yet – buying from independent merchants can offer relief.

So there are two basic rules of thumb: the first is that the the better the wine is the smaller any discount is likely to be and the second is that any wine discounted by 50% (or more! – there are a few out there right now …) is probably only ever worth the discounted price in the first place.

Posted by Peter Grogan at 4:50 pm Tagged with: , , ,

How to Buy Wine Part 8: Wine Merchants: Mail Order and Online

Wine No Responses »
Feb 212012

 

Obviously, many wine merchants and supermarkets will deliver wine to you – by mail or other means – and, with most retailers having an on-line presence, the definition of “mail order” is very blurred these days. But there are differences in what the purely mail order and online merchants and wine clubs do, chief among them being that often the wines are “pre-selected” and if that sounds alarming it’s because most of the time it is. The sector – with about 5% of the UK market – is bestridden by Direct Wines, set up by Tony Laithwaite in 1969. They run The Sunday Times Wine Club, Telegraph Wines, Averys, British Airways Executive Wine Club, Virgin Wines – which was started by Rowan Gormley, who now runs Naked Wines – and of course Laithwaite’s itself (formerly Bordeaux Direct). I’m relieved that their Barclaycard Wine Service appears to be defunct because even the idea of having a credit card company that charges up to 27.9% interest against a base rate of half of one per cent choosing anybody’s wine gives me the willies. Dunno if the Richard and Judy Wine Club is still going. Don’t care either.

All of them have some good wines but they’re unlikely to send them if you don’t ask for them – why would they? Importantly, there has been a uptick in quality generally from some of their outfits and the fact that – to the astonishment of many in the trade – a couple of years ago Laithwaite’s took a delivery of their own in the form of Justin Howard-Sneyd MW from Waitrose, where as head of wine he took their list from primus inter pares among the grocers to nobody-in-second-place. Hopefully this signalled a seriousness of intent as far as quality is concerned. They don’t generally do anything much under six quid – presumably distribution costs are too high. (From Laithwaite’s, try Alegria Old Vines Cariñena £6.99, Alma Andina Torrontès- Sauvignon Blanc £7.99, Giesta Dão 2010 £6.99 – all by-the-case prices. A few favourites from Virgin: Ca’ di Ponti Grillo Sicily £6.99; Araldica Piemonte Barbera £6.99 Hans Lang Rhengau Riesling Kabinett Trocken £10.99; Juan Gil Monastrell £9.99).

I haven’t tried anything at all from Naked as they don’t seem to have much under 7 quid unless you subscribe as an “Angel” and agree to a regular £20 payment per month. The angel angle is that they “invest in independent winemakers” and the regular payment means you “get better wines for supporting winemakers directly.” Hmmm.

The original mail order merchant, The Wine Society, is a very different kettle of fish.  Founded as a co-operative company in 1874 by a “committee of gentlemen” at the Albert Hall with the purpose of purchasing wines in “unadulterated condition” direct from the producers and offering them to the membership at the lowest possible price, it still does the very same. Another of the `Objects of the Society’ was `To introduce foreign wines hitherto unknown or but little known in this country’ and they were selling Californian Zinfandels and Australian wines 100 years ago, which is rather impressive. Anyone can join but forget the Groucho Marx line about not wanting to join any club that would have him – the quality of the wines is very high. My own Eureka! moment with wine was a Sancerre from the Wine Soc which had – alongside the usual quality of being a reasonably efficient inebriant – the hitherto unknown one of being completely delicious.

The Society’s White Burgundy is a fine thing for £7.50 and tells you everything you need to know about their standards. Down – but not dirty – at the Grogan’s Heroes price-level their Chilean Merlot  (£5.95) is made by Concha y Toro’s charming and dynamic (no, I don’t fancy him – well, not much anyway) Marcelo Papa. He’s one of the most important winemakers on the planet right now – one of a small number of people who are changing everything and I doubt that anybody makes more wine better than he does. It’s a big, fresh, rich, bright, saturated, minerally, fruit-cakey thing but not at all o.t.t. As for his Chilean Chardonnay – from cool-breezy Limarí -  I just hope I don’t get given it to taste blind because I  might get carried away.

Of the new(ish) wave of internet-only merchants, Swig and Slurp stand out (they’re separate entities, as evidenced by the third person plural, and anyway who would  name their business with a tautology?).   I felt a little thrill when I clicked on Swig‘s “Best Sellers” list and the first item on it was A.A. Badenhorst’s “Secateurs” Chenin Blanc from South Africa – sad, or what? – but it was one of the most exciting wines I tasted last year. According to their search criteria prices start at £7.95 so they won’t be troubling Grogan’s Heroes at the moment but they do have some very nice wine.

You can tell an awful lot about a wine by the company it keeps (and vice-versa) and although I don’t know much about Slurp I do know quite a few of their (relative) cheapies from some of our Local Hero merchants –  Ancora, Alpha Zeta and A Mano among them. Blimey, that’s just the ‘A’s! I’d better get on to them sharpish – see you later!

 

Posted by Peter Grogan at 3:57 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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