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The London International Wine Fair 12-14 May 2009 at ExCeL London First I had just been to see the latest collection at Frost & Reed, established in Bristol in 1808. The latest crop in King Street, St. James's, via Chelsea, shipped in from Basra. Not wines but the highly accomplished war art by Arabella Dorman, from the extreme climate of Maysan. Hard pressed soldiers working to the point where lesser mortals' pips would squeek. High spirited, highly skilled men and women not to be treated like vintages, laid down in cellars, preferably not laid down to rest in perpetuity. Imagine they make wine in Iraq too. The Golden Crescent and the Euphrates, the seat of agricultural expansion, is there a kuneiform for grapes and wine I wonder. Then I have just returned from my annual tour of duty at Royal Victoria Dock tasting wines at The London International Wine Fair. There is a sweet aroma of fresh, raw, grey mullet on my fingertips. My local Algerian fish shop has more choice than the supermarkets. I hope to make something for dinner and have two white wines from the local Indian off licence. I should have dropped into Berry Bros & Rudd while I was at Frost & Reed! But I wasn't enamoured by their Red Nose Day offer some time back. Unfortunately my local wine shops are pretty stagnant with the usual dreary rows of same everywhere labels. I dropped into the Tesco local opposite the fish shop but the shelf-filling was underway and it takes ten seconds to find nothing new. The salons du thé invading the north of the road make wine hunting an improbable sport. In the one glass a bright gilt gleam like the chrome handlebars while halting on the amber traffic light. In the other glass a wine that owes its colour as much to the glass as to the contents. I want to cook the fish in some sort of random rainbow recipe with whatever ingredients a near empty Friday fridge has to offer. The Gato Negro from Chile could catch the grey mullet? Miaow. But it is a shame to waste the nose. So I have to sacrifice the joke of the 'black cat catching the grey mullet in the soup' and settle for the Spanish wine Protocolo. The grapes at least have been baked under the sun in the centre of Spain. There's less nose but more bite. I think the Spanish white has more chance in the recipe than the Chilean white. That reminds me, last year's red grapes from the allotment pressed just a single bottle of the most stunning grape juice I have ever tasted. A virgin pressing! Now I am looking forward to the first harvest of my Eger cuttings. So to the latest tour of duty. Bang! Confronted by 100% pomegranate wine from Rimon winery. Explosive stuff. http://www.rimonwinery.co.uk/ Delicious. Maybe you missed the new art from the Middle East at the Saatchi Gallery, but they sold Peace Oil, and it would be interesting to create a dish that could contrast such olive oil and pomegranate wine. My little twenty-year-old bonsai pomegranate tree grown from seed has had a hard life, so I suspect this pomegranate wine comes with a premium price on its head. Was it just a coincidence, the show is so huge and anonymous, how do you find something other than by chance or intuition? I don't know what Van Gogh found in absinthe, but I prefer his art to its aniseed. If absinthe followed by pomeganate wine makes an unusual apéritif then it is delightful to settle in the sands of time and Sahara Vineyards. We learn about Tutankhamun and underworld journeys without identifying modern Egypt with wine! The whole story of http://www.saharavineyards.com/ is delightful. Karim Hwaidak is a cheerful host. My introduction to Egyptian history was in a sweltering Nissen hut in Malta during the Suez Crisis. My history teacher had visited Egypt with a precious roll of colour transparency film and his lessons remain etched in my retinas. Maybe Harrison Ford was really searching for Sahara Vineyards! The Ark of the Covenant was just a diversion. Why did I go to the Wine Fair? I am always in search of the perfect pinot noir. My supermarket stocks a modest Romanian red. It makes an easy Hungarian goulash. I can't get decent Hungarian wines. Locally there is nothing. I use Roija instead. Wines of Romania have a smart new label, Senator Varius. The Merlot and Babeasca Neagra blend is tawny and stringent. Their unblended label has an illustration of two artistocratic topers under the name Monser. The subtext, translated, reads 'The pure Romanian cultivars for the bourgeoisie and the light skinned or noblemen.' Oops. Are they playing on noble rot, or rotten nobles? The Austro-Hungarian Empire is long lost even longer than the British Empire. We still have the Commonwealth. At the remote fringe of the exhibition and the rather less remote terroir of Slovenia I discovered Ptujska-klet who have an uncommon wealth of wines. www.ptujska-klet.si or www.pullus.si It's difficult to get the tongue round the words but not so the wines. You don't want to spit them out. Reserve some quality time at the shows for this indulgence. Bojan Kobal makes his wines slowly but has the energy remaining to promote them at lightning speed. I was trying to follow a discipline: perception, appearance, nose, taste and sensation. These relate to deduction, eye, nose, tongue and gums. These lead to varietal, colour, bouquet, flavour and sensation. Normally I have to say 'Pardon my French' but this time it is simply pardon my Slovenian! The language might have Cyrillic roots and Roman alphabet translation, but my handwriting looks short of vowels. Start with the easy one. Pullus 07 Sauvignon, clean, balanced. Would I recommend it, Yes. We are joined by a couple from somewhere up north, in a hurry. But they stay awhile. I'll have to busk my notes. Did I understand that Renski Rizling is Rhine Reisling? Very clear and bright. The industry in Slovenia is 850 years old. 1066 and all that, Hastings. What were we drinking in 1066! Streams of mead for the friars, muddy stream water for the rest of us fish fryers. The Renski Rizling has a wonderful aroma. Bojan Kobal is getting more and more enthusiastic. Pullus Chardonnay. He says oily, I find rich bass notes. An exceptionally fine Chardonnay, too good for Sharon and Tracey. Sauvignon blanc combining four grape ripenesses. What a brilliant idea. Now that's an interesting melon like flavour. Zvrst black label. The preceding wines were white label. Zvrst black label. Go on, put some vowels in! R they txtng me, or wot! A hint of lichee. Sipon takes its name from those rascal French soldiers in Napoleon's time. They drank the Slovenian furmint and exclaimed "C'est bon!" Sipon. I don't know which way they trudged through but the Hungarians named a grape after the blue franc notes with which Napoleon's soldiers paid for their wine. Crikes, I thought these armies of yore fought, raped, looted and pillaged, but here the Frenchies are paying for their wine again. When they were in retreat some Swedish Finn serving the Tsar brought lilac back to southern Finland. Was it the lack of wine or the shortage of pommes frites that defeated them? The supply lines were too long. I've seen that famous lilac growing at Stensund where the baroness has her Summer house. Dreaming again, where was I? Slovenia. Modri pinot, warm, calm. Modra Frankinja, Blaufränkish, peppery. (That's the Kékfrankos in Hungary) Pinky chick rosé, pinot noir, blau Kölner. I'm not a rosé fan but Sharon and Tracey . The label might not get by, too much association of alcohol and tittilation? Now we are ascending the heights of their Rumeni Musket or yellow Muscat. A fair reminder of Tokaj but lighter and better. Laski Rizling, Suhi Jagodni Izbor. One of those words means selection, (izbor). It's the colour of golden mercury, as exquisite as honey nectar straight from the bee. It reminds me of nasturtium flowers in a summer salad but without the pepperiness, or dried mango without that cloying sweetness. I don't know if Marco Polo drank these wines before he went to China, but he should have when he came back. They would go well with European or Far Eastern cuisine. Even at the speed of Bojan Kobal's whistle-stop tour I feel I have savoured the whole spectrum of Slovenian wine. The Slovenian empire has just got bigger again. At this rate they'll be running Austro-Hungaria. Why are our shelves filled with so few wines from the countries of the European Community? I'm off to Brussels to campaign for wines to be shipped automatically, if we can't get the apathetic importers to jump to it then we will have to legislate for it! The word was out that a Portuguese wine had an amazing wrap-round label. I saw one but the stand wasn't attended to and the neighbour just one metre away didn't have the agility to talk to me about her wine far less her neighbour's. What are they here for? Why do they ship tons of bottles to London and then all I hear for an hour after the show from across the dock is the crashing of glass, empty, half empty, half full maybe even full bottles cascading after each other into waste bins.

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