Montes Alpha

           One of the great things about wine is the way it can transport you back to the past.

I had this experience recently when a friend and I shared a bottle of Bodegas Zugober’s Belezos Rioja Gran Reserva 2013. We pulled the cork on it, poured out a couple of glasses and had a sniff. It was such a pleasure that I almost started laughing, and it was supposedly a mediocre vintage!

It took me back almost three decades to my teenage years in the south of England. At the time I was a smoker – a minor act of rebellion, against nobody in particular – and I had a penchant for a brand of French cigarettes called Gitanes. The packaging was of unmatched brilliance, a long white box with a wispy image of a woman shrouded by smoke on the blue sleeve.

I asked my drinking partner, who had never indulged in the joy of smoking, if he detected the whiff of tobacco on the nose. My question was met with a rueful shake of the head. But to me it was overpowering. It was so good that I almost went for a walk around Edinburgh in search of this majestic French product, and I don’t even smoke anymore. I consoled myself by smelling a cigar for a couple of hours.

Sometime later, in a cupboard, I came across my old Little Black Journal of Wine, which many years ago travelled to the other side of the world with me. I would scrawl tasting notes in here while a student. I quickly tracked down the entry for what was once my favourite wine, the Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon from Colchagua Valley in Chile.

I used to frequently buy this wine from my local supermarket in Tokyo, whose buyer clearly had impeccable taste. There was a specialist wine shop over the level crossing, but I was deterred by the fact that every single bottle came in cellophane wrap, gifting being a big thing in Japan. Also, they didn’t have the Montes Alpha. I would drink it out of a plastic mug in my minuscule apartment, and it tasted fabulous. (When I mentioned to a friend back home that I drank a Barbaresco from this cup, he was appalled).

My tasting note was thorough, reflecting the fact that I was studying for the WSET Diploma in my spare time. It was also prosaic: blackcurrant, mint, coffee, chocolate, herbaceous (green pepper). I reckon I was stretching things with the coffee and chocolate, and I was definitely way off when I wrote that there was high acidity, but I was pleased to see I hadn’t felt the urge to employ the dreaded term ‘complex’.

I remember feeling that I hadn’t quite done the wine justice, though, except by drinking a lot of it. There was another flavour, which I just couldn’t put my finger on. It would take another five years or so before I finally worked out what it was.

One spring afternoon my wife and I drove into the Scottish Borders to Abbotsford House, which was once the home of the legendary Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. In the period since our previous visit, a café had been constructed. We sat upstairs and ordered a slice of blueberry cheesecake. I felt a little thrill as I tasted it, for it transported me back to that tiny flat down a narrow alley in Japan. This was the missing flavour, blueberry cheesecake!

I’ve had many bottles of the Montes Alpha Cabernet since returning to the U.K., but none have seemed to quite match the one I had in Tokyo, which was the 2013 vintage. Maybe it was a great year after all.

Published in The Wine Merchant, November 2024.

Chongqing

   Two things were clear as the plane from Beijing passed over Chongqing that afternoon in February. First, the place is massive. Second, it's very polluted. A hazy grey veil of smog lay above the seemingly endless landscape of high-rises and the rivers that flow through the city.

   This first impression of sheer size and pollution proved to be accurate. As we walked around the mega-city in the evening, my throat was scratchy and both my chest and the skin on my face felt tight. It reminded me of my first visit to Beijing in 2007. They've cleaned their act up in the capital, so blue skies there are quite common now. 

   Not so in Chongqing! The rain came the next day, and with it low temperatures and even lower clouds. The pollution eased, but another reminder of Beijing in the noughties was omnipresent: men puffing away on cheap cigarettes. As a former smoker, I don't mind tobacco smoke, but the Chinese brands have a very strong and pretty foul aroma. It did occur to me, however, that it was no worse than the stench of the cannabis which is a feature of British streets these days, and at least it's legal! 

   Very little is old there, sadly. Chongqing served as the capital of China during World War Two, and was blitzed by Japanese bombers as a consequence. Tens of thousands were killed and there's a museum hidden in plain sight where you can learn about the destruction. The Nationalists carried out more bombings in the civil war. 

   The city planners went on a construction spree in recent decades. Buildings soar from the water's edge. Remarkably, the top floor of one of these edifices might correspond with ground level, because the city is built on such steep hills. This was the case with our hotel, where we exited the lobby on the twentieth floor and passed over a short bridge spanning a chasm that led to a small square. 

   At night the skycrapers near the water create a striking spectacle. They are lit up in blue, yellow, white and red, sometimes with advertisements for foreign companies like Pepsi and AXA, more frequently with illegible Chinese characters. The cost of this light show must be astronomical.

    

    The best thing about Chongqing is the food. My favourite Chinese dish is Chongqing la zi ji (deep fried chicken with dried chillis), so I was excited to eat it in situ. I discovered, however, that in Chongqing itself this chicken dish can reach such levels of tongue-numbing heat that you simply can't eat it, no matter how many weak local beers you wash it down with. 

    We left Chongqing on a bullet train from a station that resembled an airport. 

Temple of Heaven

    I like old travel books very much. I have a copy of Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, which was first published around two hundred years ago, and which I keep because I hope one day to travel overland from the north to the south of Spain. It may seem incredible that my main motivation for holding onto the book is to see whether a couple of his observations about Spain still hold true. 

    I've always found these antiquated texts to be a great source of travel inspiration. Imagine my delight, then, when I rediscovered my copy of Nikos Kazantzakis' book Japan, China, written in 1935, in a flat in Beijing. It had lain there undisturbed, in the dark, for at least five years.

    So it was that I decided to go to the Temple of Heaven. Kazantzakis had left this memorable description of his visit ninety years ago:

   ... you climb up farther and you reach the third, the highest terrace. All around as far as the eye can see, an endless plain, the desert that surrounds Peking. And your head feels that it is elevated in the sky...

    Spindly cypress trees line the long avenue that leads from the West Heavenly Gate of the Temple of Heaven. Eventually you turn left, and head towards a large enclosure. In the centre, up three sets of marble steps, is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, where the Emperor 'offered sacrifices to pray for bumper harvests and favourable rain'. It's a magnificent edifice, with a three tiered roof of blue tiles. You can't enter the hall, but you can peer into the dark interior. Being tall, I was able to avoid the melee that formed outside each of the apertures.

    The panorama from the top platform, whose stone surface is crumbling from the heavy tread of countless visitors, is special. It's not very high, but Beijing is such a flat city that you can see for miles. Outside the walls is what looks like a forest of tightly packed trees, then, in the distance, you can see the urban landscape of Beijing. Beyond that, to the north west, is a mountain range, only visible on clear days when the cold north wind chases the haze and clouds away (I went twice, so I know). The desert Kazantzakis spoke of has been covered by buildings, but you can sense it in the dry, dusty air.  

    Kazantzakis was moved by his visit all those years ago:

   When I ascend to the Temple of Heaven... I feel that man is truly sacred, mysterious, a wheel full of magic powers that creates matter in the image of his heart.

    Those days are long gone, however. Now the Temple of Heaven is the territory of attractive young women having their pictures taken. Some are in traditional Chinese dress, while others are fabulously, if rather incongruously, attired in high heels and very swish coats and dresses. Some have a retinue: a photographer, and someone else whose role I couldn't determine. Apparently, having their pictures taken here is a social media phenomenon. At any rate, they really know how to pose for the camera.