© by Nigel Lelew • This Month Hi Ellie ... so it's April Fools Day ... I'll resist the temptation to make any comment! But what I will tell you is what I'm going to talk about this morning ... and that's Organic and vegetarian wines. This morning is all about what's in ... or not in ... your average wine bottle, apart of course from fermented grape juice! Because as we'll see theres a lot more to the wine making process than just crushing the juice from the grapes, fermenting it for a bit and then bottling the result. Think about the way in which the market in fresh produce has changed to embrace organically grown vegetables for example ... so why not take the process one stage further and have wine made from organically grown grapes. As the supermarkets have found with the fresh produce ... the market for organically grown produce isn't huge, but there is significant demand. And so it is in the wine business. Like in so many other forms of agriculture, growers and consumers have started to think whether the continued use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides are actually good for either the land or the person who consumes the produce ... in our case the wine drinker. Well now the choice has been given to the wine consumer. There are organic wines on the market, grown without chemical assistance and labelled with the magic word 'organic'. Now whether the organic wines taste any different is hard to judge. It's a bit tricky to have both organically and non-organically grown grapes in the same vineyard ... that's what you'd need to really tell if there was a difference in taste in a particular wine! What I can tell you is that across the board, organic wines do tend to have a more concentrated flavour ... And that's because without the chemicals you tend to get less fruit from each vine, so the grapes tend to have a little more flavour ... and that gets passed down into the wine. Now let's look at what else can get into wines and try and unravel why you could possibly want vegetarian or even vegan wines. Surely there's no animal products in wine is there!? ... Well that assumption kind of breaks down when you start to look at the processes involved in actually making the wine. To get wines that are clear of all solid particles, so they look clean and bright, some wines are filtered ... and other wines have a fining agent added to them. It's the job of this fining agent to attract all of those small particles in the wine and drag them to the bottom of the barrel where they can be easily removed. So what's the matter with doing that I hear you say ... nothing really until I tell you that things like egg whites, gelatine and milk are regularly used as fining agents. Until not so long ago ... something to do with the BSE crisis...some winemakers would use dried Ox blood to fine their wines ... pleasant thought isn't it Ellie! So labelling the wine vegetarian, or perhaps even vegan, doesn't seem so daft after all. It means that none of these products have been used in the winemaking process. So go and have a look at some of the back labels along the supermarket wine aisles and you'll notice one or two wine labels use the words vegetarian or vegan ... now you know why! And just to take the debate one stage further why shouldn't we have an ingredients list on wine labels ... what else that we eat or drink doesn't have that information on the label? Well in fact the good old EU in it's legislation actually bans the listing of ingredients on wine labels ... I find that somewhat bizarre! So I actually support what the Co-op is doing ... guess what you'll find on the label of a Co-op Cape Chardonnay and a selection of other Co-op wines ... yep ... an ingredients list ... actually breaking the law to sell wine with an ingredients list on the label. I'll tell you it's actually comforting to look at it and see grapes as the first item! The Tasting I've brought a couple of organic wines in this morning ... firstly just to have a couple of glasses! ... but then to see if we notice any taste differences Both the red and the white are from California, and in fact from the same producer, Bonterra, literally meaning 'Good Earth', so theres the first organic message. They are actually the organic arm, if you like, of the Californian label Fetzer. OK so let's start with the white. it's 1998 Bonterra Chardonnay ... I always get this fear when I go for a Chardonnay especially a Californian one, that there will be a huge slug of oak that will ruin it ... but those days are largely over, ... let's have a look. Colour One thing about the colour ... it's not as deep golden as I would expect from a Californian Chardonnay ... so it's looking promising on the oak front!!!! Aroma One thing that you notice about this wine as soon as you take the cork out, is the aroma leaps out the bottle at you ... and as we've been talking you get the odd whiff of Chardonnay ... give the glass a swirl ... it's a wonderfully sweet lemon/lime aroma almost florally ... let's see what the taste is ... Taste Take a glug ... just full of citrus fruit and theres a slightly tart apple there as well ... and it's a long finish, and theres a hint of sweet oak but it's certainly doesn't overpower ... that's a stunning Chardonnay. So that was Californian Bonterra 1998 Chardonnay, available from Wine Rack and Threshers at £8.49 ... I think that's such an outstanding Chardonnay that it's worth the extra money, and don't forget that organic wines will normally be more expensive, for the same reasons as our organic produce is ... because the yields are lower, ... it costs more to produce the same quantity as non-organic. OK, now for our red this morning, and I said that it was from the same producer, and again it's an organic wine ... it's 1996 Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon ... so let's see what we think about this one ... Colour In the glass it's a dense wine ... it's a kind of deep crimson colour Aroma Give the glass a swirl ... this doesn't have quite as big an aroma as the Chardonnay. it's black cherry and blackcurrant ... and do you get the mint on the aroma ... that's from the oak ... Taste let's take a glug ... theres certainly deep cherry fruit in there, minty vanilla comes through strongly, and you can get those tannins in there too, not harsh but enough to give the wine a bit of 'bite'. That's 1996 Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon ... a brilliantly intense cherry and mint taste ... and maybe we can see the concentration of flavour in this organic wine that we talked about earlier. Again from Wine Rack and Threshers at £8.99, ...don't you think it's worth it Ellie. • Next Month We're off in the Lear Jet again to look at Spain ... what a lovely thought! ... to see where Spanish wine has got to ... so I look forward to that ... and I'd like to finally say, Ellie, that it's been brilliant to come in here with you once a month, so we'll all miss you and I'd like to wish you all the best ...
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