Letter of the Month in Decanter Magazine

 

Darkness

   I'm standing at the end of a line of about a dozen people. They are all strangers to me. We're underground - I don't know how far below the surface - with our backs close to a brick wall. A single torch provides some illumination, then I hear a click and and we're plunged into pitch darkness. 

   We're not in danger, however. We are in fact paying customers on a tour of the Victoria Tunnel, which stretches for a couple of miles below Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 

   It was built in the ninteenth century to transport coal. Not for the first time, I'm grateful I was born much later, for it literally isn't wide enough to swing a cat in. It's also very low. My hard hat keeps scraping the arched brick ceiling, obliging me to lean forward, and playing havoc with my lower back. At one point I sense the first stirrings of panic, brought on by the sheer claustrophobia of the place. 

   In places the floor is wet and I can hear the dripping of water. The walls in these sections are covered with a weird brown scum, which we're told takes several months to remove should you touch it. 

   In the Second World War the tunnel was converted into an air raid shelter. 'Many people were afraid to use it', according to my guidebook, a statement which comes as no surprise at all. 

   Our tour guide shows us the latrines, which look like steel buckets. Apparently, those desperate enough to go had to sit back to back and use newspaper rather than toilet roll to clean themselves. For a moment I consider disclosing that I had a friend at university who did this voluntarily, but I decide against it. 

   Near the end of the two hour tour, I think I have some idea of how the hardy folk of Newcastle must have felt during an air raid. I'm cold, uncomfortable, hungry and I want to leave. A story about how the tunnel got its name flies straight over my head. 

   Eventually we are liberated. I remove my helmet and practically run to Grey Street, where I wolf down a lasagna. 

The Craze for Japan

 In a glass cabinet inside a magnificent white room in the centre of London there is a book. It was published over a hundred years ago, to mark the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition in the capital, and it's open at pages 22 and 23. I do not exaggerate when I write that, as I read the text on the left hand page, I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 

   Perhaps I'm particularly susceptible to the written word. One of my few treasured possessions is a book by Nikos Kazantzakis called Zorba the Greek, whose last chapter I have defaced with highlighter. I think it might be the greatest thing I've ever read, and when I open the pages, yellow with the passage of two decades, I feel the same sense of shivery excitement I experienced in London. 

   What set me off at The Craze for Japan exhibition was nothing more than a passage about the temples of Kyoto. The names were as familiar to me as household words: Ginkakuji, the Silver Temple, which is in fact not silver but boasts a wonderful garden; Nanzenji, with its viaduct and rock garden; Heian Jingu, famous for its massive orange torii gate. My mind swelled with the memory of sweat-drenched walks around these places. 

   Two temples, however, were unknown to me. One of these, 'Kurodanin', is in the north of the city, I learned, and is notable (at least it was, a hundred years ago) for 'two curiously trained pine trees'. One of these was called 'fan-shaped pine', while the other was known as 'yoroikake-no-matsu', so-named 'because warrior Naodane is said to have hung up'... who knows? For here, the page ended. 

   Reading that single page, and seeing black and white images of Kinkakuji, the Golden Temple, blanketed in snow, and the wooden temple Byodo-in, filled me on a sudden with the urge to return to that great city.  I hadn't been since 2016, which now felt like an eternity! I would go to Kurodanin and discover if one of those pine trees does indeed look like a fan, and find out who Naodane was and what on earth he hung up. 

   Inspiration comes at unexpected moments. In my case, it came courtesy of a free and low-key exhibition which I only learned about because I happened to be in London, and because I have fond memories of Green Park. If you like Japan, I recommend you go too. 

   The Craze for Japan in Victorian and Edwardian Britain is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday at the Embassy of Japan on Piccadilly. 

11.3.11

   In March 2011 I was living in a Japanese city called Fuji. The famous volcano rises to the north of the city and the streets and ugly buildings sprawl up its lower reaches. To the south is the sea; from that direction comes the foul smell of paper production. 

Fuji

   I lived on the rural eastern edge of Fuji, in a tiny apartment near a bullet train line. At night the frosted front window would be illuminated by the lights from super-express trains making for Tokyo or Osaka. Then the blackness of the countryside would return. 

   On March 11 that year I went home early from my job. I was washing dishes when I felt a shudder. It was almost imperceptible, and I asked my wife if she had noticed it. A few seconds elapsed, then the building started to shake violently. 

   Comically, we wasted a few seconds deciding what to do. We then rushed down the stairs - not a sensible course of action - and outside into the car park. I have only impressions of those few minutes: finding myself outside barefoot, still clutching a dishcloth; the swaying of the power lines; my heart pulsing rapidly; the sun; the quiet. I have no idea how long the trembling of the earth lasted.

   That was the first earthquake that scared me. I had only experienced one other, many years before, and it seemed somehow exciting: I was in a hotel in the south of Japan and woke in the middle of the night to find the bed moving. I was groggy with sleep, and wasn't even certain it was an earthquake until the next morning. 

   I can't imagine what the Great Tohoku Earthquake was like for those near the epicentre. Fuji was several hundred kilometres to the west, and I felt badly shaken up. For days I felt like I was on a ship at sea, and I went to sleep on edge expecting to be woken by an earthquake warning. I did ask a Japanese friend who had been in Sendai on the day about it once, but all she told me was 'Kowai' (scary).  

 

   Years later I returned to Japan to teach at a university. I would ask students about their experiences of the day. I guess it was like the Kennedy assassination: everyone remembered where they had been. One guy even said he had been having sex in a love hotel!  

   The German writer Goethe once remarked on a visit to Naples  that 'here people talk of [earthquakes] as they talk of the weather'. I eventually came to feel that way myself. Numerous were the occasions when I was roused early in the morning in Tokyo by the swaying of the building. It got to the stage where I didn't even bother hiding under my table. I would lie on my futon, half-asleep, and wait until the quake had subsided. 

    And yet, it's a fact that another massive tremblor is around the corner. I no longer live in Japan, but for my old colleagues and friends in Fuji, it's like being on a precipice. They accept it as part of life. I'm not sure I could.

La Rioja Alta

    

    We arrive in Haro at midnight, where, in true Spanish fashion, our host Francisco proposes a drink. A lone bar is open, and the silent streets and empty room suggest they might consider shutting early on a Monday. Most of us order a caña as George Michael plays on the speakers and an alsatian sniffs around and howls for attention. Despite the delicious cold beer, I decide against a tour of the deserted town and crash out in a huge room with oak beams on the ceiling. 

Tempranillo vines at La Rioja Alta S.A.

    

    The last time I went to Spain was four years ago, yet, as I wander around this famous wine town the next morning, waves of familiarity wash over me. A man's voice booms out from a café; a half-hidden figure leans out of a second floor window and beats a mat againt the wall; two nuns in black habits walk past a church; a woman stands on a street corner selling lottery tickets. There are old buildings with long cracks down the middle, and lovely views beyond the town over to hills and vines. 

    I came here for the wine, of course, and the sight of a row of trees shaped like gobelet vines turns my mind to the tasting ahead of us. We drive the short distance to my favourite Rioja producer, La Rioja Alta S.A., in the Barrio de la Estación. I ask Francisco, who is driving, which Rioja he likes the most, other than his employer's. 'Who asked this question?!', he jokes. 

    The wines are lined up for us in a crescent: eight reds and a solitary white - 'to cleanse the palate'. I'm not usually a big fan of whites, but the Lagar de Cervera Albariño is delicious, with peachy aromas redolent of Viognier. 

    Although I've had most of the reds many times before, it's a joy to drink them again. My favourites are the 2015 and 2016 vintages of Viña Ardanza. 'The Garnacha is the DNA of Ardanza', says Francisco. 'It brings spice, liquorice' to the wine. The Garnacha grapes are grown on vineyards covered in huge pebble stones, 50 miles away in the hotter Rioja Oriental zone, we learn. 'The winemaker calls it little Châteauneuf-du-Pape', says Francisco. 

Garnacha vines in Rioja Oriental

    

    We don't finish all the tasting samples, which feels almost like a crime considering the quality of the wines. (A member of the party later tells me he went round the table polishing off all the flagship Gran Reserva 890, however). 

    Over a lunch of Riojan vegetable stew and barbecued lamb cutlets, we drain the remainder of the 890, plus several more bottles of the Ardanza, including a velvety 2005 vintage. I ask in Spanish for more of the vegetable dish. 'His Spanish is good!' the waitress tells Francisco, filling me with pride. 

    This was my first trip abroad in over three years. I returned home tired but euphoric, with three goals: to go back to Spain; to drink lots of wines made by La Rioja Alta S.A.; to take up Spanish again. I can certainly achieve the first two objectives; we'll see about the third...

    

    

    

    

White Wines of the Rhône Valley

    I visited the Rhône Valley in the summer of 2016, staying in Orange and Rasteau. I wandered around deserted stony vineyards, drank carafes of wine in restaurants that served indigestible cuts of meat, and experienced the terror of a giant bee flying up my shorts on a train platform. I love the region and, inspired by a recent book by Matt Walls, decided to do a spot of tasting. In this post I'm going to concentrate on whites, and will turn to reds another time.

A vineyard in Rasteau

    The 2018 E. Guigal Côtes du Rhône (£12, Tesco) has a lovely aroma of pear, peach and melon. It has plenty of body, befitting a wine that contains 60% Viognier plus sizeable doses of Roussanne, Marsanne and Clairette, and a noticeable bitterness on the palate. Like most whites from this warm and sunny area, there's not a lot of acidity, but it's not flabby, probably owing to the Roussanne and a splash of the acidic Bourboulenc grape. The alcohol is high at 14 percent, but it doesn't stick out. It's excellent value. 

 At £40 a bottle, the 2016 Jean-Luc Colombo Condrieu (Oddbins) certainly isn't cheap. Nor is it very good. I had this wine over two years ago and felt that the oak wasn't in harmony with the Viognier grape. The issue this time around was different: the wine is past its best. The aromas are elusive, and I was obliged to plunge my nose into the glass for a good sniff. The initial smoky Burgundian note proves fleeting and gives way to a very light tropical fruit aroma and a hint of petrol. The palate is rather watery, offering a suggestion of pineapple; the most interesting aspect of the wine is the kiss of tannin which you can sense on your front teeth.

    Guigal's 2017 Condrieu (£39.99, Majestic) is in a different league. It smells fabulous, like a super rich peach and apricot yoghurt overlaid with new oak. The wine has a wonderfully lush mouthfeel which, combined with the heady alcohol and stony/tropical flavours of the Viognier, brings to mind a Sauternes, albeit one with no sugar! There's enough acidity to make your mouth water, taking the edge off the booze. It's an immensely satisfying drink, and I kept thinking it would be the perfect wine to drink with a roast chicken. 

    In my opinion, whites from the south of the Rhône Valley can suffer from having too little Viognier in the blend, or perhaps none at all. The 2017 Chante Cigale Châteauneuf-du-Pape (£26, Woodwinters), is a case in point, Viognier being forbidden in this legendary appelation. The wine has many good points: it really fills the mouth and has a voluptuous texture, thanks to partial barrel fermentation. Despite the elevated alcohol, there's a notable freshness on the palate, courtesy of the 60 percent of Bourboulenc, Roussanne and Picpoul in the blend. It also has a distinct mineral touch. Still, I felt it lacked something. The fruit leans towards the tropical but the flavours are a little hard to pin down, and it doesn't have the explosive aromatic lift of a fine Viognier. 

Cairanne

    During a tasting in the wine village of Cairanne five years ago, I asked what flavours Grenache Blanc, the mainstay of white wines in the southern Rhône, brings to the table. 'Rien (nothing)', was the answer. The grape makes up half of the 2019 Boutinot La Fleur Solitaire Côtes du Rhône (£10.50, Woodwinters), and you can see where the man was coming from, for it's somewhat hollow on the palate. There's a nice pear character on the nose, though, which returns on the finish. A quarter of the wine is fermented and aged in used oak, giving it a touch of creaminess. The acidity is decidedly low, maybe due to the crazy heat of 2019, and you can sense the alcohol in your throat. 

    

   My last tasting sample was the 2019 Le Plan des Moines Les Silènes Cotes du Rhone (£10, Villeneuve), which has higher acidity than the average white from the southern Rhône. More typical are the abundant body and intoxicating alcohol. The stone fruit aroma is reticent, while the palate is more stony and salty than fruity. 

 The nature of the blend had me scratching my head. According to the wine merchant, it's 50% Grenache Blanc, with the other half Clairette. It seems too fresh to be a blend of these low acid grapes though. I think it's likely to contain some, perhaps a lot of, Roussanne, which has more acid and might account for the stony, mineral note. Evidence to support this comes from the back label, which reveals that Grenache (the red kind, I suppose) and Roussanne are the principal grapes used in the producer's wines. One thing's (almost) certain: there's no Viognier in this one.  

Note: Like the 'Emperor of Wine', Robert Parker, I purchased my own samples. In my case, of course, there was no alternative. 

A Parting

 

The three of us met in an izakaya close to the library. Outside it was sultry, a typical June evening in Fuji. We didn’t eat much, just a few sticks of yakitori, and we drank three or four glasses of beer each. The Australian was in good spirits. He was eager to leave Japan and the city that had served as his home for three months. He had come for the wrong reasons, he told us, although we never found out what those reasons were. He was tired of being broke. Maybe he would have lasted longer if he hadn’t been sent to the back of beyond, but there it was.

Yoshiwara Honcho Station

After dinner we crossed the huge vacant lot opposite Mos Burger in virtual pitch darkness and walked in the direction of Yoshiwara Honcho Station, where cockroaches scurried along the single platform in the heat of summer. The arcaded street was as usual deserted, and we went up some stairs to an empty bar which had been the scene of a few amusing drunken incidents.

In fact, a lot of very funny things had happened in those three months. There was the can of chu-hi he had shotgunned in Mini Stop, the wrestling match with the Japanese guy with bad breath, the eye infection, the dance in the Peruvian restaurant, the short-lived friendship with Three Tooth, the cardboard box which had come to serve as furniture, the empty jar of pasta sauce used for cheap red wine. Now it was over.

After a couple more beers the American and I got up to leave. We said our farewells and I for one felt quite moved. I would miss this Australian. Before we parted he had one final, inevitable, request to make of us.

“Have you got any money? I’m gonna stay for a bit and I haven’t got any cash.”

We both handed over a few thousand yen, and I never saw him again.