“I am a legend!”

The great Ben Collins is indeed a Bibendum legend. He’s been here from the very beginning, half his life in fact, selling fine wine to the great and the good around the country. On Monday night more than a few Bibendumites gathered upstairs at our local The Lansdowne to celebrate his 60th birthday. As befits a fine skier, it is, as Ben himself put it, all downhill from here.

For a man pickled in Pauillac, he is looking remarkably well as he heads into his dotage. Don’t rule out him trying to flog you Bordeaux 2031 en primeur.

The rules of admission were very simple: you needed to bring a more than decent bottle and a story or two about Ben. Neither were in short supply.

So what did we choose to drink in honour of one of our best loved colleagues?

Bastianich Vigne Orsone Friulano 2010
Besserat de Bellefon Brut Rose NV
Echezeaux Bouchard Aine & Fils (no-one seems to be able to recall the vintage of this one)
Catena Zapata Malbec Nicasia 2007
Barolo Bricco Rocche Ceretto 2004
Charles Smith Kung Fu Girl Riesling 2010
Chateau Batailley 2004
Chateau Batailley 1990
Chateau Batailley 1996
Chateau Belle-Brise 1995
Chateau Cissac 2000
Chateau d’Esclans Esclans Rosé 2010
Chateau Lagrange 2004
Chateau Paveil de Luze 2007 – in multiple imperiales
Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron 2004
Cuatro Rayas Verdejo 2010
Dr Burklin-Wolf Trocken Riesling 2009
Nuits-St-Georges Henri Jayer 1998
Howard Park Chardonnay 2007
Vouvray Clos du Bourg Sec Huet2009
Cote Rotie Jamet 1994
Katnook Estate Odyssey Cabernet Sauvignon 2003
Sancerre Les Hospices Paul Buisse 2010
Les Tourelles de Longueville 2003
Long Meadow Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon Napa 1996
Marotti Campi Luzano 2004
Maison Roche de Bellene Puligny Montrachet Les Referts 2008
Barolo Paolo Conterno 2005
Bourgogne Pinot Blanc Vieille Vigne Patrick Javillier 1997
Petit Chablis Patrick Piuze 2010
Petaluma Adelaide Hills Viognier 2009
Petaluma Hanlin Hill Riesling 2009
Prophet’s Rock Pinot Noir 2009
Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Brut Jeio Bisol NV
Quinta do Vallado Douro Tinto 2003
Valpolicella Classico Superiore Quintarelli 2001
Rex Hill Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2008
Rolly-Gassman Gewürztraminer 2007
Meursault Clos des Poruzots Domaine Roux Pere & Fils 2008
Rully Clos des Mollepierres Domaine Saint Abel 2007
Cotes du Rhone Saint Cosme 2010
Gigondas Saint Cosme 2009
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo San Calisto 2005 (I think)
St Hallett Blackwell Shiraz 2007
Brunello di Montalcino Talenti 2005
Vieux Chateau Certan 1993
Villa Russiz Collio Friulano 2009
Villa Russiz Collio Merlot 2009

There were quite a few of us after all.

Personal highlights included the VCC, the Jayer, the Jamet and the Huet. No surprises there, perhaps. I didn’t even see the Quintarelli or the Talenti at my end of the table. The last drop of Prophet’s Rock swigged from an all but empty bottle boded well for 2012’s drinking. It will arrive in our warehouse in the New Year.

As someone said to me over a restorative lunch yesterday, few people are lucky enough to work somewhere where 50 or so colleagues can come together for an amazing evening of great food and wine. That it was in honour of a true wine trade legend, just made the claret taste even better.

Happy Birthday, Ben.

For the last few days, myself and Fine Wine Marketer Juel Mahoney, have been in Brescia North Italy, for this year’s European Wine Bloggers’ Conference (EWBC).  Set in the heart of the Franciacorta region, where some of Italy’s finest bubbles are produced, this fantastic conference brought together 216 individuals from all over the world; individuals who all share a passion for both wine and the online conversation that surrounds it.

Now in its fourth year, the EWBC has gone from strength to strength, with 2011 seeing record participant numbers descend on the beautiful city of Brescia. The four day conference involved brilliant talks from the likes of George Taber, Jeremy Parzen, Emily Troutman, Paolo Casalis, plus video, photo, oral and written workshops, enabling participants to improve communication techniques, and learn the art of storytelling…the theme of this year’s EWBC.

Alongside all the serious stuff, there was also plenty of wine, with top tastings of Sparkling wines from around the world, Austrian sweet wine, a Franciacorta tasting and an Italian tasting, plus some fine visits to wineries within Franciacorta and the surrounding regions of Soave and Alto Adige. Enough wine to suffice the most eager of tasters, and with 216 wine fans armed to the teeth with their iphones, ipads and laptops, all the goings-on were being communicated around the world for all to see.

Here are a few snaps from our time at the EWBC –

The road to the Santa Giulla, the EWBC base -

The Impressive Conference Hall -

Piper-Heidsieck Brut Rare 1988 at the Sparkling Wine Tasting -

Italian Sommeliers at ease! -

Juel and Italy’s Franco Ziliani -

Video workshop with Paolo Casalis on the sunny streets of Brescia -

Some of Franciacorta’s finest!

An Italian invasian -

Brescia at night -

The European Wine Bloggers Conference 2011 took place in Brescia between 13 – 16 October. Check out all the chat of the ewbc by following the Twitter hashag #ewbc . If you are interested in communicating about wine in any way, shape or form then keep an eye out for the EWBC 2012.

Good food would choose Bordeaux. Or so the current marketing campaign for the region’s wines would have you believe. To help prove the link between Bordeaux and fine grub, Bordeaux Wines organised a masterchef style cooking competition for members of the trade and press.

The competition was hotly contested. Two heats of six teams were whittled down to six finalists. Bibendum’s very own Willie Lebus and Caroline Conner were among the finalists and all set to cook up a storm in search of the top prize. Then disaster struck. A combination of diary clashes and manflu meant neither was available for selection on the big day.

It was left to yours truly to step in as a late substitution, bullying my colleague Jenn to join me at the last minute.

The format was simple: choose your ingredients and then cook them over three hours in the sweltering heat of the kitchens at Westminster Kingsway College. The competition was fierce and contenders were taking it very seriously indeed. The teams worked in a hushed silence only perforated by the odd swear word.

Team Bibendum started with this:

Which over several hours (mainly spent sipping vin blanc and tinkering with a plum puree) we turned into this…

…and this…

Beautiful plates, I’m sure you’ll agree and they do say the first bite is with the eyes. Unfortunately for us, the second and third bites are not.

Despite pairing the cod, leeks and mussels with a beautifully fresh Semillon-based white from (I think) the Entre-Deux-Mers and matching a plump, fruity Merlot to the venison, come the final reckoning we lost marks for unimaginative use of ingredients, a watery beurre blanc, and a overly bolshy plum and blackberry sauce, amongst other culinary crimes.

Harsh words but then if you can’t stand the heat, you know what to do.

The winning team was Joe and Stefan from Restaurant Magazine who knocked up an awesome sea bass and mushrooms starter followed by some perfectly cooked wild duck. Clearly all that hanging out with the UK’s top chefs has rubbed off. Worthy champions.

Thanks to the CIVB and Summit SP for organising and for letting the Bibendum subs take part at such short notice. We had a ball and will definitely be back for more next year.

This week saw the launch of Bibendum’s very own delivery vans, with the trucks sporting our colours and loads of photos from our travels around the world and recent events.

With Bibendum’s move to Trade Team, it was possible to put our own stamp on our delivery vans with a blank canvas available for our in-house design team. So following weeks of brainstorming concepts and hours of  slaving away over their Macs, the van design was finally born.

The vans are already in full swing around the UK outside the M25 and will hit London early next year. The first person to get a photo of one of our new vans around the UK and post on our Facebook page, will win a bottle of something tasty!

Making a first appearance at Bibendum HQ in Primrose Hill this week, we grabbed a few snaps of the design in all its glory.

Let us know what you think of the designs…and don’t forget, if you see the vans out and about, take a photo and post on our facebook page to win something vinous!

On Tuesday, I was speed tasting some of the reds at our W1 tasting to check for TCA or other problems before we opened the doors. I wasn’t taking my time to think about balance, fruit or quality. I wasn’t writing notes and mentally composing potential food matches. It was open, pour, sniff, slurp, spit and move on.

Until I reached this wine and I stopped in my tracks.

I used to drink a lot of it a few years back. For a while, it was my house red, an ever-reliable stand by for a midweek bowl of pasta or a trip to a pal’s for dinner. Then for some reason, I stopped drinking it. No doubt, something else caught my wandering eye, something newer and (temporarily) more exciting. It’s time to start drinking it again.

The name isn’t the easiest to decode if you aren’t a keen student of Italian wines.

‘Aglianico’ is the grape. It is one of Italy’s most interesting indigenous varieties: tannic, perfumed and full of freshness. Some call it the ‘Nebbiolo of the South’.

‘Vulture’ refers to Mount Vulture, the conical larva pit that overlooks the vineyards of the Basilicata region.

Mount Vulture has provided the dark soils that give this wine its sub-brand: ‘Terra di Vulcano’ or Volcanic Earth.

‘Bisceglia’ is the name of the winery and the surname of Mario Bisceglia, the man who has invested his millions in trying to raise the profile of his home region. Mario is from Lavello, a poor but beautiful hilltown that was once home to Horace – he of ‘nunc est bibendum’ fame and the man indirectly responsible for the name of this website.

Get past the label, and the screwcap, the liquid is a deep, dark ruby. The nose is full of dried rose petals, plum sauce and sweet spices. The palate is juicy and fresh with a bite of chunky tannins and mouth-watering acidity. The cherry fruit has a bitter-sweet edge.

On its own it is simple but delicious, with olive oil, garlic and some hard pecorino alongside it absolutely sings. Throw in a spicy, fennel-scented sausage or two and you will have a feast.

www.agricolabisceglia.com

Yesterday was our Bibendum W1 trade tasting, held in the grand splendour of Chandos House in central London. Our resident photographer, Tom Jacques, was out and about with his camera and we’ve published some of his shots below. You can see more on Tom’s Flickr page.

The wines were looking great. Vietti Barolo Castiglione 2006 was immense: perfumed, tannic, powerful and bright. Keeping on an Italian theme, Fratelli Barba’s cheap but oh so cheerful Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Colle Morino 2009 was light and fresh but packed with bitter cherry flavour. New World lovers were making a beeline for St Hallett’s Garden of Eden Shiraz 2008 – a fantastic, well-mannered wine that tips the scales at a very well-balanced 13.5% and proves that not all Aussie reds are sledgehammer wielding blockbusters.

Away from the bottles, the biggest surprise was the evening turnout. It was the first time we had run a trade tasting later in the day. Conventional wisdom says trade tastings take place during the day and consumer at night. It seems the rules need to be rewritten. We had more people through the door after 8 o’clock than between 2 and 4pm.

This was definitely not our last evening tasting for the trade.

The story of Priorat is one of the most amazing in wine.  An isolated, deserted rocky wilderness to the south-west of Barcelona it has been transformed from a forgotten rural backwater to the home of Spain’s most expensive wine in just over 20 years.

As recently as 1990 the Catalan government published a large book celebrating 1,000 years of viticulture in the region. Priorat did not even warrant a mention. With just one dirt track road connected the largest village with the rest of Spain and rudimentary infrastructure no-one wanted to know about it.  Making wine here was hard work and you got little reward, as most was sold in plastic drums for pennies by the local co-operative.

It took a chap called Rene Barbier to recognise that these ancient gnarled vines clinging to unfeasibly steep slopes had the potential to make world-class wine. Today one wine, Alvaro Palacio’s L’Ermita sells for a couple of hundred pounds a bottle.

Priorat’s isolation is its greatest feature. A land that time forgot, with century-old vines, gnarled olive trees and a unique soil type called Llicorella, a cool dark-brown slate that sparkles with quartzite. It is this soil that gives the wines what Jancis Robinson describes as their “mineral essence”.  The wines are powerful and concentrated but unlike some other hot climate wines, the best Priorats are fresh and bright rather than jammy and cumbersome.

If Priorat has a problem, it is that it has been too successful. Nearly all the wines are expensive, even ‘basic’ examples seem to start at around £15. This means that few people get to try them which is a crying shame. It means the wines remain the preserve of those with deep enough pockets.

Happily there is a budget-friendly alternative; Montsant is Priorat’s neighbouring region and while the best wines here may not have quite the pulse-quickening excitement of a top Priorat they offer outstanding value for money.

Etim Negre 2007 is a great example. Full-bodied and spicy with rich red berry and dried fruit flavours, it packs a hefty punch. It isn’t particularly subtle or refined but it full of character and personality. I fondly remember drinking it perched at the counter of a Barcelona wine bar, a plate of local ham and cheese in front of me. I think I paid E1.50 a glass. It costs a bit more than that over here but is still a regular feature on my dinner table at home.

Its been a sweaty one here in London over the last week, with some seriously humid weather. Spare a thought for all the poor commuters stuck on the underground in searing temperatures…no wonder London is a ghost town in August as half the city disappears.  Well for all of us that are still here, this hot, sticky weather calls for a certain kind of wine, a wine to combat the heat, offering a refreshing end to the day.

It has obviously got to be white, packed full of citrus fruits, without any oak and served really cold…number one choice has got to be a good Riesling.  Although I’m big fan of the Riesling’s of Germany and Alsace, for the hot humid weather you’ve got to go with the bone dry, limey juice of the New World.

Today’s wine of the week, Howard Park Riesling 2010, is the ideal choice for such a time of year. Grown in some of the highest vineyards in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, this cracking Riesling offers awesome lime fruit, partnered with that flint and slate minerality which characterises the best Aussie Riesling.

Not as much of a household name as its distant neighbours of Southern Australia, in the Clare and Eden Valleys, Great Southern Riesling can really hold its own, and is both excellent young and following a few years in the cellar. Tucked away in the south-western corner of Australia, the Great Southern is the country’s coolest region, and is blessed with the winemakers favourite of warm days, with long hours of sunshine, and cool nights. Ideal for varietes such as Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz.

Consistently rated as one of Australia’s best Rieslings, there is no question of quality here.  Howard Park are known for finding the best terroir in Western Australia, using a variation of soils and climates to get the very best from each varietal, creating a stunning expression of the grape in question.

A few reviews in the press are also in agreement, with this month’s Decanter Panel Tasting calling the wine “Attractive to drink with a lovely natural acidity and a long, moreish finish”, awarding the wine 4 stars. While Australia’s James Halliday awarded the wine 95 points in his Wine Companion 2012, describing it as having “a flowery bouquet with hints of orange blossom, followed by utterly seductive juicy fruit palate” with  “minerally acidity on the finish and aftertaste tying all the components together.”

Perfect summer drinking from the masters of dry, limey, mineral Riesling!

Over the last few weeks we’ve been having a sort out of the many thousands of images we have on file here in the marketing department.  With so many producers and so many keen Bibendumites eager to visit these wine producing regions, we’ve over the years accumulated a huge array of winery and vineyard pics.

Big fans of wine and all that encompasses it, it was fascinating to look back through these images from across the world, with some going back many years.

You could say…once you’ve seen one vineyard, you’ve seen them all.  But some of these images are fantastic, and really show how stunning wine producing regions can be.

Here are a few of our favourites from our European producers -

Bodegas Tabula, Ribera del Duero, Spain -

Casa de la Ermita, Jumilla, Spain –

Dinastia Vivanco, Rioja Alta, Spain -

Castello Banfi, Tuscany, Italy –

Quinta do Vallado, Duoro, Portugal –

Alois Lageder, Alto Adige, Italy –

Talenti, Tuscany, Italy –

Dr Loosen, Mosel, Germany –

Looking for the next big thing in wine? It might just turn out to be the Americas!

Historically the only South American wines to reach our shores came from Chile and Argentina, but with the emergence of exciting new regions, this is now a thing of the past. Gone also are the days of the sweet Zinfandel rosés and mass produced Merlots of the US.

Today fantastic fine wines are being made throughout the Americas, including countries such as Uruguay, Brazil and Mexico, as well as a continued increase in quality within the wine making big guns of Chile, Argentina and the USA.

Quality is on the up and it’s having an impact on the UK market. Last year alone, £763m was spent on wines from the USA in the Off Trade – up 2.2% on the previous year, and with the emergence of new producers and a focus on quality, there are high hopes for the future.

From Washington State in the north all the way down to Patagonia in the south, the range of altitudes, climates, grape varieties and terroir means there is something to tickle everyone’s taste buds.  And let’s not forget a certain event in Paris on 26 May 1976!

Here is a quick look at three countries and three wineries really pushing the Americas forward. With excellent winemakers in these interesting regions they are creating some fascinating wines.

USA -Washington State & Charles Smith

Across the pond the irreverent and wild-haired Charles Smith is producing smashing wines from K Vintners in Walla Walla, Washington State. Having previously spent a decade in Europe managing various rock bands, Charles was inspired and encouraged by Christophe Baron of the celebrated Cayuse Vineyards.

His focus is largely on small batches of Syrah sourced from top single vineyard sites from across the Columbia Valley. Today his wines are now amongst the most sought-after in the states. In 2009 he was named Winemaker of the Year by the USA’s influential Food & Wine Magazine, and after tasting the wines, it’s not difficult to see why.

Brazil – Campanha and Seival Estate

Travelling south over 6000 miles lies Seival Estate in the region of Campanha, Brazil. Here we are beginning to see the production of some outstanding wines. The estates Castas Portuguesas wine is a brilliant blend of Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz, an echo of Portugal’s Douro valley. While the uber-premium Sesmarias blend of Tempranillo, Cabernet, Merlot, Touriga Nacional, Tannat and Petit Verdot, really underlines the country’s potential for producing fine wines.

Uruguay – Maldonado & Alto de la Ballena

In the tiny country of Uruguay, Tannat is making a big impression. Introduced into the country in 1870 by Frenchman Pascual Harriague, this grape variety has flourished in its soil and climate. It now represents almost 40% of the country’s wine production and since the 90s Uruguay has happily been exporting its wines all over America.

Producer Alto de la Ballena, based near Punta del Este (one of South America’s largest seaside resorts, if you are ever in the area), are producing extremely well-balanced, approachable wines that are full of dark, spicy Tannat fruit. Their Reserva blends Tannat with 15% Viognier in a Cote-Rotie style that is particularly interesting.

Read a recent B Times post from our Americas tasting, where we looked at boutique producers, natural wines, and old Californian Pinot Noir.

Plus a recent wine of the week, which highlighted a small, boutique producer from Chile – Garage Wine Co, Dry Farmed Old Bush Vine Carignan 2010 (Maule, Chile)