How far has James come on with his knowledge of wine since the first series? James has become a bit of a wine ponce, to be honest. He now thinks he knows rather a lot. He picked up a lot along the way, but not always in the right order. He's not the oafish, Harry Enfield 'I'm not interested' character of the first series. In place of that he's become this slightly disturbing, far too eager character.  By the end of this series he was telling winemakers what they need to do. They let him get on with it, quite amused by this nice hairy English bloke drinking their wine. Though I have to say he was much more fun trying to impress me with his wine knowledge than looking miserable, as he did in the first series. He made a big deal out of Two Buck Chuck [a wine that sells for under $2 in California] and said we should all be drinking that. He was blithely unconcerned about the hypocrisy of it all, rolling his eyes at the really expensive wines, but did he finish those ones? Of course he did. It's only when he sobered up later did he start grumbling about the price. Wine myth one: You can't drink red wine with fish"You can. Modern red wines have loads of fruit and go perfectly well with salmon, cod and turbot, though they don't go quite so well with really oily fish like mackerel. The old idea was that fish flavours make the bitter tannins taste metallic. This can be true, but modern wines are now a lot less tannic than before. So no red Bordeaux with cod and chips, but definitely try Australian Grenache or French Beaujolais with your fish supper." California wines have traditionally been pretty expensive in the UK. It's now the case that there are two kinds - the ultra-cheap and the high-end wines. Do you think that California wines are too expensive at one end and too cheap at the other? The wine in California is fantastic at the top end and terrible at the bottom. The middle is where most discerning wine drinkers want to find decent wines for everyday, the £6-7 bottle, but there's a real shortage in the middle. People think of California (and Australia too) as solely for cheap wine. There's great Syrah and Chardonnay from the Edna Valley, south of Paso Robles, that you can buy in the UK - it's called Marmesa. You should expect to buy a decent California wine for £8.99.
 A few pounds off a bottle is a good way to try a new wine, but don't be fooled by these price cuts
You can't make interesting wine if you're cutting the price, so it's always the producers, rather than the supermarkets that suffer. A few pounds off a bottle is a good way to try a new wine, but don't be fooled by these price cuts - a £4 wine that has been knocked down from £6 was generally never really worth that in the first place. In the US, it's all about instant gratification - it's not about leaving things to quietly mature. It's not about being happy with your lot in life. The European way might be to plan the future for the children and the grandchildren, but Americans want to achieve in the prime of their lives. Everything needs to be big and brash, so they make rich, oaky powerful wines to impress the critics.
Where do you stand on the cork versus screw-top debate? I like screw tops. For good winemakers who know what they're doing, they make much more sense. The wine that comes out of a screw-top bottle is much closer to that made in the winery. I do like the gamble with the cork though, but I guess you do need to be a wine enthusiast to get pleasure from the fact that your wine could go either way. You're basically shoving a piece of bark into the top of your wine and hoping for the best. Screw-tops will age wines for longer than corks, though there's a chance they may age them in an anaerobic ways. I've tried 20-year-old bottles of both and found that with the screw-top the wine is fresher and more interesting, but younger tasting. The cork wine tastes 20 years old. Wine myth two: Screw caps are only used in cheap wines and cork is always better"Cork is a piece of bark and will add a flavour. If you’re lucky, it will be a pleasant flavour. Test this out: leave a cork overnight in water and taste the water in the morning; it will be scented, woody and cedar-like. The problem is that cork is prone to taint, developing something the scientists call 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), which we call 'corked wine'. Screw caps are not just cheaper, they can also be quite high-tech. They can be designed to let in a small amount of oxygen, as cork does. Screw caps work particularly well for young whites, where freshness is everything, such as for Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and young Chardonnay. We're yet to see if they stand the test of time when the older screw cap reds - which do need a slow supply of oxygen to develop properly - start to come through." Do you think that the willingness of California's winemakers to move away from varietals toward blends is a positive step? Yes, if a lot of them are actually blending. Although many say they are, they're not really. Old vines blend fantastically - they're accustomed to the heat and Californian conditions, as opposed to, say, Bordeaux. California is not Maritime and cool - Santa Barbara is the same latitude as the Sahara. You have to go two more states north to get to the same climate as Bordeaux, thorough northern California, Oregon and then Washington. Wine myth three: Older is always better for red wine"Red wine doesn't have to be aged. By the time most red wines hit the shops, they're ready. In the old days you had to leave reds for the oxygen and air to break down the tannins and acidity. Old-fashioned wines could be horrible and you needed that time to draw out the best elements. These days winemakers have developed lots of ways to add flavour to wines - as well as storing the wine in wooden oak barrels with their nice vanilla sweetness, they also add planks of oak to a stainless steel vat or a 'tea bag' of oak chips to infuse during fermentation. People didn't have these tricks before. Now cheap reds can be pleasant and drinkable and they really don't need to be aged. A really good red might even be drunk straight from the vat." People must ask you for wine advice all the time. If you only had one bit of advice to new wine lovers, what would it be?
Discover the country or grape you like and for a special occasion, always trade up what you know
What you like is what's good and don't ever let yourself be coerced into buying a wine that's too expensive from an area you don't know or like. Be experimental in the supermarket - you don't need to talk to anyone there or embarrass yourself. Discover the country or grape you like and for a special occasion, always trade up what you know. If you normally drink Chilean Cabernet or Australian Shiraz, simply buy a more expensive bottle than normal. |
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