Krug Clos d'Ambonnay 1995

This year Krug are releasing a new cuvee, a blanc de noirs, which is already causing a stir on the wine market. The 1995 Krug Clos d'Ambonnay is on track to become the world's most expensive bottle of wine on release, with a retail price tag of between £1500 and £2000. That puts it slightly beyond the realms of DRC La Romanee Conti, Petrus and Le Pin. A microscopic 14 barrels of the wine were produced, and it is estimated that a mere 2,000 bottles will be available upon its release sometime in May. A few lucky Krug collectors were given a VIP tour and tasting and were offered the opportunity to purchase two cases (12 bottles) of the wine at £12000 per case in bond. Needless to say they all took the golden opportunity and one case has already seeped onto the secondary market being sold at auction in Las Vegas for a mammoth $26000.



I first heard about the wine in February when we were visited by Charles-Edouard from LVMH who is the Krug Brand manager. We were planning the Krug gourmet dinner that we are having in December and it was then that he dropped the information that Krug would be releasing a brand new wine later in the year. He teasingly offered us the run down on the wine and we were generously offered an allocation. The mere thought of a blanc de noirs from Krug set my want glands into overdrive and I knew that I wanted to list it, no matter how much it cost. I knew the prices of the Krug Collection and their crowning glory the Clos de Mesnil were expensive, but cost be damned I wanted it. All I had to do was persuade my GM that we needed it and that I could sell it at some stage. So imagine my surprise when coming in to work earlier today to discover that an order has been placed and confirmed for 3, yes three bottles of Clos d'Ambonnay 1995. I had to pinch myself! Then I found out the price. Stunned is about the only way to describe it. The Krug Clos d'Ambonnay is now going to be the most expensive wine on our wine-list at around £4000 a bottle (we sold the £5000 La Romanee Conti 1985 at the weekend!). With May races coming up Im desperate to sell a bottle so that I might hopefully get the chance to taste it. But one thing is for sure, with articles in the Financial Times and all the hype surrounding its release, the first vintage is going to be an instant collectors item, and when that happens the prices can start getting very silly indeed.

Australia Day Tasting

Danny and I went up to Edinburgh over the weekend to attend the Australia Day tasting at Our Dynamic Earth. We spend the sunday night in Glasgow, where I tried to find some of my old haunts (unsuccessfully, most of them it would seem have changed, closed or even been demolished) and ended up a bit pissed in Subway scoffing a 12" meatball sub at about midnight (on a sunday!!!!!). We drove over on monday morning after a quick detour to stock up on Square Sausage (a scottish delicacy!) then proceeded to take nearly twice as long to find the bloody place, once we were in Edinburgh, as it took to drive over from Glasgow!! But eventually we got there and we got down to some tasting.

The new venue was quite good, lots of natural light, plenty of space, and a circular layout which seems to make the place bigger on first impression. We started out with the whites, and managed to taste a few good whites on the Alliance wines stand with Giles their MW. The Tassie rieslings and Pinot Gris' were pretty good and may be worth a few listings. Further round the room we spend a bit of time with Francis from OW Loeb who was there with Phil Sexton from Giant Steps. Phil is an interesting character, a brewer by trade they started making wine in the Margaret River with a winery called Devils Lair and a beer called Little Creatures. When they sold up, they moved over to the Yarra valley where they set up Giant Steps and Innocent Bystander. The two labels share many outstanding qualities but their defining characters would be that Innocent Bystander wines are winemaker wines, whereas Giant Steps wines are Vineyard wines. By that I mean that IB wines are the product of winemaker "manipulation" in the winery to create consistent products - good well made wines that use cultured yeasts to produce certain characteristics in the wines. Whereas the GS wines are the products of the fruit grown in the vineyard. Minimum intervention, wild yeast fermentation, they will show marked differences from vineyard to vineyard, vintage to vintage. For me the two standout wines where the Giant Steps Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay and the Tarraford Vineyard Pinot, both showing really complex layers of flavours, with soft fruits layered with defining earthy characteristics. Then we had the muscat!!! OMFG it was divine!!!!!!! Cheeky little half bottles of heaven - light, slightly sticky, just sweet enough with a hint of petillance. The guests are gonna love this one. Phil and his marketing guy were there telling us the first vintage they made of this they made some 600 cases. It sold out. The second vintage they made about 40000 cases, it also sold out. The next vintage comes of the vines in about three weeks. They are planning on making some 600000 cases of it, and it looks like it is already all sold out. It should be on the shelves about five weeks after the harvest, which is a pretty impressive turnaround.
By now we'd done about all the whites we were interested in and so we cycled round again and hit the reds. We spent some time again with the Giant Steps guys before we moved on over to the Cult and Boutique stall and spend a bit of time there with the guys. They had some fabulous big reds, including a stonking grenache, with a seriously wallet unfriendly price!!! But they had a few wines that Im interested in, so hopefully we will be able to do something with them.

Overall it was quite a productive day, I got to see a few old friends and faces, and despite the dominance of the supermarket brands, there were some great little wines there and I reckon that a few will end up on the list over the next few months. We had several hundred miles to go home, so after a brief dinner at the nearby Pizza Express we headed home. Not a bad little jolly.

Mountford Estate Pinot Noir 2004, Waipara New Zealand.

At first glance it looks like a fairly typical example of a kiwi pinot. Admittedly the label is quite understated for a kiwi red, almost a cross between a burgundy and a modern claret label, with a large "watermarked" M forming the backdrop to the lettering. It comes with a cork, which is becoming increasingly rarer from New Zealand, but that is really where its unremarkableness ends. For this is no ordinary wine, this is something quite special and quite unique, for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that the winemaker, C.P. Lin is blind.

Mountford's vineyards were planted in 1991 with the first vintage being made in 1995. In 98 they built a small winery at the base of the gently sloping limestone hills. Their 15 acres (approx 3 hectares) of vineyard is planted to an eclectic mix of burgundy clones and mutations of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which viticulturalist Gerald Atkinson says best complement the burgundian nature of the soil and climate. The various parcels of vines are all harvested individually and vinified seperately before being brought together by CP Lin to create some of the most finely tuned, well balanced wines outside of Burgundy. These are fairly big wines for Pinot, de-stemmed fruit, open fermented and then cold macerated for upto a week before spending 16 months in french oak (extortionately expensive in New Zealand) upto a third of it new oak gives these wines some serious backbone. The fruit is bright and very forward - black cherry, a touch of wild strawberry and a hint of damsen fruit. On the palate the same dark fruit flavours abound, all nicely drawn together with fine tannic structure and a touch of sharpness to finish the wine off. It wasnt cheap, hells bells, but then what Kiwi pinots are? But you have to admire the abilities of a blind winemaker to bring all the various components of that blend together in such a harmonious package. They do say that when somebody loses a sense such as sight, that the other senses become more attuned to compensate for the missing sense. It is said that CP Lins sense of smell and taste is so refined that he came to the attention of Mountfords owner at a small restaurant. CP is said to have announced to his table that he could smell a Monte Cristo no 5 being smoked, the very brand of cigar that Michael Eaton happened to be smoking at a nearby table. As they got to talking Michael realised he was in the company of someone with extra-ordinary talent. As they supposedly tasted the previous vintages of Mountford CP apparently told him the wines were crap, and why. He was offered the job of improving them and the rest as they say is history. Ive only tasted one vintage, and I have to say that Im hooked. This is definately a keeper, and once I have a bit of spare cash, Im buying a case for myself!! Production is quite limited, and from what I hear from NZ the 2005 vintage was so small that it I doubt it will be exported.