Over the last few years we have seen a massive growth in the supply of wines from all over the world, some good, some not so good. We have seen changes like screw caps, initially scorned by all, now accepted in homes and restaurants all around the world. One curious fact about screw caps is that they have been accepted more readily by women, while men still hanker after the traditional corkscrew. Personally, I have only had one bad wine from a screw cap, but several from bottles with corks.
We have also seen the growth of organic wines, from being a mere oddity two or three years ago to now being a sizeable selection in places like O’Brien’s Wines and Cases Wines Warehouse. Why bother with organic wines? Well, if you consider that in order to produce the huge volumes of wine many of the mass market wineries felt was necessary to keep shareholders happy, they pumped masses of pesticides, artificial fertilisers, fungicides, herbicides, and other potions onto the crops each year. Then over time the build up in residues has to work its way into the wines and therefore into our food chain. Needless to say many wineries have taken great care to keep this to a minimum, however it does make a case for sampling organic wines. There are also good and bad organic wines, the key is the producer, if interested find out what principles they apply, what level of production they expect from their vines, etc. They are generally a bit more expensive than non-organic, however, one that I tried lately from O’Brien’s is called Eco Balance, €7.99 on offer, and it deserves a 10/10. It is a pinot noir, perfect with turkey and most red meats, to use an old fashioned term it is a stonking great wine especially for the price. Another is AN2 and available in Cases on the Tuam road for €19.99.
How to determine when best to drink a wine (leaving aside things like vintage time — charts that set out how very fine wines mature over several years depending on the particular vintage ), I would like to recommend a thing called the biodynamic calendar. It is based on the movements of the moon, which not only controls the world’s tides but has an influence on all living organisms including human biology and the way plants grow. The moon circles the earth once a month and on its way passes through the four constellations. Each constellation is connected with one of the four elements; fire, water, earth and air. The earth element affects a plant’s roots, the water element its leaves, the air element its flowers, and the fire elements its fruit.
The calendar is the result of 55 years of research by a woman called Maria Thun who lives in central Germany, and for the last 50 years she has produced an annual biodynamic calendar for sowing and planting. Many gardeners, private and commercial, have been using her principles with remarkable success. Some wine growers have been experimenting over the years with these methods and are totally convinced of the benefits. One such person is Benjamin Leroux who I met in Beaune and he told me a few interesting facts about some of the principles he uses. If a vine dies, so be it, no longer do they run out and buy something to kill whatever pest there is, it is accepted as natural. He employs a man and a single old fashioned horse and plough to dig between the rows of grapes. He fines (strains ) his wine when the gravitational pull of the moon is strongest. Benjamin is regarded as one of the very best wine makers in Burgundy.
Two of the UK’s biggest wine supermarkets will only hold testings for wine critics according to the biodynamic calendar. So how does it work? Each day or part of a day in each month is designated a fruit, flower, root, or leaf day, and it is only recommended to drink your wine during fruit and flower times. Sure you can drink any wine on any day, but many experts agree that to get the best you should follow the fruit and flower dates. The moon moves in and out of constellations at different times so the calendar might show that a good time for drinking wines start at 6pm on a particular day and finishes some time the next day.
To give you some tips for Christmas 2010:
• Christmas Eve is good from 8pm to midnight.
• Christmas Day is best avoided — how many will do that?
• St Stephen’s Day is good all day and all night.
• New Year’s Eve is good all day up to 8pm.
If you want to get one of these guides with all the dates for December 2010 and each month for 2011, it is stocked by Cases Wine Warehouse on the Tuam Road for €5, it is called ‘When Wine Tastes Best – 2011’, by Maria and Matthias Thun.
Finally, there is an app available for your iPhone called Wine Tonight. The app only has ‘today’s information’, so to plan ahead you will need a copy of the book. I am certainly going to use it during the next year.
As this is my last article before Christmas Day, I wish everyone a great Christmas Day, don’t eat or drink too much, and most of all enjoy the day.
