Prizewinner palates

01 January 2000
Prizewinner palates

Eating onions is not the best way to prepare your palate for a wine tasting. Jan Paddock, winner of Caterer's Guess the Grape Competition at Hospitality Week, had hoped to take part before lunch, but she didn't make it to the Caterer stand until the afternoon.

But, despite fried onions at lunch, she identified correctly the grape variety of each of the four wines in the blind tasting, and the country of origin of two of them.

Paddock summed up the wines as "very pleasant everyday drinking wines". She is sales and marketing manager at the Renaissance restaurant, which is part of the Three Hammers Golf Complex, Wolverhampton. Wine is her first love.

The group, although now incorporating a golf complex and restaurant, started business as a wine importer. The restaurant still imports its own French wines, though it buys Spanish and New World wines from other shippers. Paddock is responsible for the restaurant wine list.

None of the 150 who entered the competition found it particularly easy. Blind tasting is a challenge at the best of times. In a busy exhibition it is just that bit more difficult. So the fact that nearly a quarter of the entrants spotted the first two grape varieties is an indication of how much progress people in the hospitality industry have made in wine knowledge.

"Wet dog?" offered tourism minister Viscount Astor, sniffing the Sauvignon and trying to place the aroma. Astor visited the stand after officially opening the exhibition. He pronounced the Chardonnay "a fruity little number". Catering college students queued up to put their newly trained palates to the test, with much conferring and a few frowns.

New world and old

The competition was designed to focus attention on grape varieties and the number of countries in the New as well as Old World which make wine from the traditional classical grape varieties of France.

Caterer chose moderately priced wines available in the UK that were considered suitable for restaurants and wine bars. Contestants were asked to suggest dishes to go with each of the wines.

For the competition, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand was selected, because of the success of the grape in that country. The Mills Reef Sauvignon Blanc 1994 has all the qualities one would hope for in a New Zealand Sauvignon.

There is fulsome, tropical fruit on the nose and palate, but it has backbone and none of the overwhelming herbal qualities which the grape brings with it in some other New World countries.

Clive Dixon, head chef at Lords of the Manor Hotel, Upper Slaughter, astutely suggested a hot goats' cheese salad to accompany it. He had recently visited the upper Loire and noted the affinity of Sauvignon and cheese. "I'm trying to learn about wine, region by region," he said. The Sauvignon Blanc was the most widely recognised grape in the competition.

The second white was a Chardonnay. This ever-popular grape usually makes excellent wine, but it can become flabby and too buttery in some hot climates where insufficient attention is often paid to maintaining a balanced acidity. Too much oak is another common fault.

The Fleur du Cap Chardonnay in the competition comes from south of the equator and has a roundness about it. This ensured that no contestant mistook it for anything from Burgundy.

Yet it retains a fresh, clean fruit, which recalls the Old rather than the New World. It was this paradox that led a number of contestants to suggest correctly South Africa as its country of origin, rather than one of the New World countries associated with blowsy, oak-laden Chardonnays. A nice suggestion for a dish to go with it, from the winner as it happened, was pasta with lemon butter.

The reds were more of a problem. Most difficult was the Pinot Noir. Though a relatively easy grape to identify, it is rarely associated with Italy where it is known as Pinot Nero. Though several people guessed the grape, few spotted the country. An exception was Henri Chapon, head sommelier at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons. He got the country right but marred an otherwise exceptional entry by mistaking the grape for Syrah, an understandable error when you taste the wine.

Chapon was surprised when informed after the competition of the origin of the wine, which had impressed him with its firmness and accessibility.

The wine comes from the Breganza area in the north of Veneto. It is made by a co-operative - Cantina B Bartolomeo - which has a total production of no less than 60,000hl of wine a year. The Pinot has an uncharacteristic fullness and earthiness for a young wine of this variety.

There should have been no mystery about the fourth wine - a generic Bordeaux. This is predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon and is made by Michel Lynch. It has the deep colour, fine tannins and blackcurrant fruit which is associated with the region. Several contestants spotted the grape and the country, but a surprising number of people mistakenly detected various Italian grapes and an Italian source.

Thanks to John Artis for supplying Caterer with tasting glasses for the competition.

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