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.
