Overcoming grape prejudice

It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it.

As anyone who has ever been on a date will know, it’s easier to bond with someone over what you don’t like rather than what you do. A shared liking for Keith Floyd is good but a shared loathing for Nigel Slater, well, that’s romantic dynamite. So it is with wine. I gave a little cheer when I read that Remi Cousin, head sommelier at Le Gavroche which is closing its doors this year, would not allow New Zealand sauvignon blanc or prosecco in his cellar. Good man, I thought, I’d like to have a drink with him.

It’s amazing what Peter Hall can do with seyval blanc

But as fun as these prejudices are, I feel that it is my duty as a wine lover not only to overcome my dislike of certain grapes and styles but to positively embrace them. Take sauvignon blanc, for example, I came of age when New Zealand wines were taking off in the late ‘90s. Naturally I took against the grape. They were all a bit too obvious, too showy with those big tropical fruit flavours. Later when I became a wine writer my heart would sink when I went to the big supermarket tastings where there would often be 20 sauvignon blancs in a row, all made in the Kiwi style often with the same yeast variety and by the same flying winemaker.

It was in Romania of all places that I had a sauvignon blanc epiphany. The German winemaker at Prince Stirbey in Dragasani makes an old vine version inspired by riesling - it’s aged on its lees in a huge oak vat for over a year followed by four years in the bottle. You might think that this would be just the wrong way to treat a grape that majors on fresh grassy flavours but it was wonderfully honeyed and nutty. Not unlike an aged semillon or, yes, a good dry riesling.

Defining by grape variety is often not a good way to think about wine. Pinot gris from Alsace, for example, tastes nothing like pinot grigio from Italy, though they are the same variety. Perhaps the most maligned grape of all is müller-thurgau which is blamed for the destruction of the great name of German wine as growers in the ‘50s and 60s began planting this high yielding high sugar accumulating riesling/ sylvaner cross on fertile plains that had previously been used for cereal crops. It was once popular in England too but there’s very little of it left, replaced mainly by champagne grapes and bacchus. Good riddance, you might think, as it usually went into pale imitations of not particularly good German wines. And yet Sergio Verrillo at Blackbook winery in London manages to coax gorgeous stone fruit flavours from this unloved variety, blending it with reichensteiner, another unsung grape. 

Sticking with English wine, as I’ve recently published a book on the subject, Owen Elias veteran winemaker at first Chapel Down and now Balfour in Kent, describes seyval blanc as barely a grape making wine that tastes of cabbages and potatoes and yet there’s Peter Hall at Breaky Bottom crafting some of the country’s best sparklers from seyval.

Now I’m not a grape socialist, some varieties clearly have greater potential than others. Riesling is usually more interesting than reichensteiner but what you want to do with a grape, where you plant it, how you grow it, how you crop it, when you pick and how you make the wine is just as important as what the grape is. Previously neglected grapes have a habit of surprising you. Back in the ‘90s grenache, cinsault and carignan were all largely seen as workhorse varieties in the Languedoc, Australia, South Africa, Chile and Lebanon. The EU and other bodies used to give grants to pull up these varieties in favour of syrah, cabernet and chardonnay. Now some of the most interesting wines from these countries come from these previously grapes. Grenache in South Australia now costs more than cabernet sauvignon. 

Fashion is a fickle thing especially with grapes.Yesterday’s ugly duckling might be tomorrow’s swan. It’s not as much fun as nursing my prejudices but I’m keeping a mind about everything… even pinotage. 

This originally appeared in Wickham Wines’s magazine, The Drop.