2010 Events, but first... November!

Written by Linden Wilkie | 27 October 2009

Well this site has been up for two weeks now and I'm so grateful for the 829 unique visitors to this site since then. I hope to honour your visits with suitable new content.

I had hoped to get a new article of two before now, but since getting this site live I have been busy getting the start of The Fine Wine Experience 2010 programme underway. That includes two Gaja single vineyard verticals, Chateau Latour, a 1962 Bordeaux horizontal tasting, Phelps Insignia back to the inaugural 1974, a mommoth Jaboulet La Chapelle forty vintage two-evening tasting, DRC Richebourg and Marquis d’Angerville Clos des Ducs verticals. Phew!

But that is winter / spring 2010, and we have still not seen out 2009. Before this year is out there is an Italian WIMPS at – you guessed it – The Ledbury this Thursday, Keith Prothero’s charity dinner mentioned in my first blog post – that’s this Saturday. It raised £13,000 for Pebbles, which is a fantastic outcome.

November will see two particular highlights. Firstly – Climens, Climens, Climens! My vertical takes place on November 3^rd in London, Gareth Birchley’s Climens dinner for Bordeaux Index on 13^th and Juerg Richter’s Climens vertical in Zuerich on 17^th. A combined report will follow...

Secondly, the Hospices de Beaune auction takes place on Sunday 15^th. I shall be there to buy a barrel (or two) for a small consortium of enthusiasts. It will also be my first chance to taste some terribly young yet by all early accounts wonderful pinot and chardonnay from the still fizzing 2009 vintage.

But there is also a major Tokaji tasting on November 2^nd, the Institute of Master of Wine annual claret tasting on November 4^th (2005s!), a Rousseau Clos St Jacques vertical on November 10^th, my Classic Claret II dinner on November 19^th, and a number of other private events. If I get through to the other side I shall have lots to write about. The first half of December looks no less relentless... and then a little wine abstinence I think!

Meanwhile Philip and I have been tinkering with this website in response to some helpful comments. Firstly, you can register to receive updates from me from time to time. If you want everything hey presto! you can get RSS feeds of this site’s updated content, and you can now leave comments. I welcome these and shall do my best to respond.

Return to Prohibition?

Written by Linden Wilkie | 15 October 2009

Last night I watched the BBC’s Horizon documentary ‘Do I Drink Too Much’, in which addiction expert John Marsden explored the addictive nature of alcohol. Marsden begins with the personal demon of his father’s alcoholism, and the paradox of being an addiction expert while knowingly exceeding the NHS limit of 21 units of alcohol per week. It sets up an anti-alcohol bias from which Marsden never falters throughout the one hour piece.

Next Marsden meets Professor David Nutt who explains pharmacologically why we like it. A “remarkable drug, many people use different aspects of it to serve their own purposes”. It has the tranquilising effect of Diazepam, the dopamine buzz of Cocaine, the anti-depressant effect of Prozac, the addictive potential of heroine, and the barbiturate / anaesthetic effect of Phenobarbital. Quite a cocktail! Nutt concludes ‘if alcohol was discovered today, it would be classified under the Misuse of Drugs Act’.

Marsden then takes us on a personal journey of discovery of his own relationship with alcohol as he is poked, prodded and guinea pigged through various tests for liver damage, neurological reward system triggers, and addiction, interspersed on the one hand with damning statistics about the UK’s binge drinking culture and the damage it’s doing, and on the other with painful memories from Marsden of his father’s problem.

Forty-seven minutes of weaving these threads readies the viewer for the documentary’s grand idea:

Alcohol is such a dangerous drug. Already 7% percent of UK adults are showing signs of dependency, and in a decade the number of us going to hospital because of drink has gone up 70%. So should we even drink at all? A colleague of mine has come up with a seriously radical idea. He wants to eliminate alcohol, to design an alternative drug, one that you could simply add to a soft drink. But the difference is that it would not be addictive. It would not harm your brain or your body. You’d get all the benefits of drink without the danger. If his drug works, ideally the next generation of children will not even touch alcohol.

Marsden’s piece certainly paints a sinister picture of alcohol without even faintly brushing over the scientific studies that have pointed to its health benefits. But there was something in this grand idea of replacing alcohol that left me far more concerned. The idea that an alternative to alcohol could be added to a soft drink addresses perhaps pharmacological substitution, but entirely misses the contribution alcohol has made to gastronomy. There’s no drug + soft drink that could ever substitute a 1945 Mouton-Rothschild, or a 2001 Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr.

Yet, if you look at the American political debate prior to the introduction of Prohibition there in 1919, gastronomy didn’t come into it. Neither did it at repeal. In an opposite sense, neither did gastronomy come into arguments about the UK’s more recent ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces – a move which allowed those of us who enjoy food to smell it instead of cigarette smoke in restaurants. No, the argument there was solely about the health damage cigarette smoke was doing to the restaurant staff through ‘passive smoking’.

Marsden’s piece provided a jolting reminder that while I enjoy wine for gastronomic pleasure in its boundless nuance and variety, for the way it connects people around the table, and the drinker to the maker, and place of its origin, and history... and yes, for the pleasure of the alcohol, none of these benefits will matter a jot if the public mood swings toward alcohol prohibition. The arguments that hold sway will be exclusively health and public cost based on the one hand, and liberty based on the other. Views like mine that wine is an important part of our civilisation will be in a distinct minority. A depressing thought and one that I hope I don’t have to see come to fruition (if that’s the right word!).

The BBC’s Horizon documentary ‘Do I Drink Too Much?’ will remain viewable on BBC iPlayer for UK residents until approximately 13^th November 2009.

Grand Charity Dinner

Written by Linden Wilkie | 13 October 2009

Well the site is now live – at long last. It’s a relief, and now the responsibility to keep it up to date begins. Although I mentioned this in the first entry below, special mention really does deserve to go to Philip Walsh of Terra Prime, who worked all sorts of hours to get this up in a short space of time. I hope this leads to some further work for him, he comes recommended.

I’d like to tell you about two related subjects. First is a charity dinner taking place on Saturday 31st October., with an eye-popping, jaw-dropping line up of wines. It’s organised by Keith Prothero, a keen wine enthusiast and philanthropist who lives part time in his native England, and part time in his adopted home, South Africa. There he has done a lot for a local charity Pebbles, which helps special needs children in South Africa.

This is the second year Keith has organised a ‘Grand Charity Dinner’, donating some rather amazing wines from his cellar. Places to this event are up for auction at the Wine Pages Forum.  That’s the second thing I wanted to tell you about (already mentioned in 46 Hours at The Ledbury part 2: WIMPS Bordeaux Lunch) is the forum itself. Run by Scottish wine journalist Tom Cannavan, it provides a home for and has helped create the UK’s online wine community. Wine topics are discussed online, and numerous lunches and dinners are organised offline (called ‘offlines’). To bid on Keith’s Grand Charity Dinner you need to register at the forum. Doing so comes recommended anyway. I’ve made a lot of friends there over the years and you’ll find it a welcoming place to discuss wine.

This month’s other significant wine event – if I do say so myself! – will be my 30-vintage vertical of Vega Sicilia Unico. Held over two consecutive evenings in London – Tues 20th, Weds 21st Oct – it will offer an amazing depth of discovery oof this, Spain’s first growth. For details, please send me a note via the contact page.

Welcome!

Written by Linden Wilkie | 11 October 2009

Welcome to my brand-spanking new website. I’m so excited!

For those of you who know me through my events, I’m sorry! I know I have been prattling on about getting a site like this one up, but it has always been pushed to the back burner.

This is the site where I will be putting my reviews of events – those that I organise, those that I attend, accounts of wineland travels, meetings and the odd interview with wine people, thoughts on wine and tales of debauchery. As broad as that is, the ‘blog’ part is less fettered – a place for short entries, a bottle over lunch, ramblings, gripes, harebrained ideas, stuff.

For those of you who don’t know me, hello! Wine was my hobby and something of a growing obsession when I lived in my native New Zealand, but in 2002 it was time to do wine full time and that meant one thing – moving to London. Seven years on and I think of myself not as ‘English’, but certainly as a Londoner – naturalised British in two days’ time – but always a Kiwi at heart! Following an MBA in 2002-3 I was still naive enough to want to set up my own little venture - The Fine Wine Experience, and with the help of my wife Aiko, I haven’t looked back since.

It hasn’t made me wealthy, but I have become rich with fine wine experiences. I just love it! I get to taste, drink, eat the best, travel and meet amazing people. I’m not a snob, but I do believe in an elitism of a sort – there’s nothing wrong with striving for perfection. Indeed, the area that interests me the most, is where wine, food, dining and beyond are created by people with that sort of fire in their belly. Brett Graham at The Ledbury personifies that in its most relaxed, un-snobbish, Antipodean way. The first four pieces to go up on this site relate to 46 hours of back-to-back meals there. Those, and the other four cover the past two weeks.

I have numerous ideas for this website and there’s a lot I’d like to add, but I need to crawl before I walk, and with the great help of Philip Walsh of Terra Prime Hosting, wanted something clean and functional. Any feedback welcome send me a note via the contact page.