The London International 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 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 , 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 , 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. See it in my smile, upon my visage, I came to learn about your wines and you were not there. I am still hunting for a pinot noir. The sign proclaims Man O'War. But I came in peace. Here we are in New Zealand. Home of Anchor butter, the best in the world. Diced lamb for my goulash, the best in the world. But I thought their wines were saltier than Australian, at least the ones I have bought in London. All that distance from the antipodes it has to be something special to bring wine so far. Man O'War, pinot gris 2008. Far more exciting than my memory of supermarket stocks of New Zealand wines. Bring it over, please. Archangel pinot noir 2008, maiden vintage. French , eight months, no sulphur. 500 cases. Good for a maiden vintage, good for bowling many a maiden over! Get the Cutty Sark repaired and sail for New Zealand on the maiden voyage. And to Judge Rock, pinot wines from Central Otago. Pinot noir 2006, tawnier, nice sensation in the gums. The colour is richer than other producers' rather deep blush looking thin reds. The Hungarian pinot noirs are of all shades but this New Zealand product is up with the best. Anchors aweigh. I learnt a bit about the shortage of glass for bottle making in Australia and the technology of shipping wine in bulk containers, huge shipping containers.

So it's time to break into this writing and make a hearty fish soup. I ransacked Napoleon style all the cupboards for ingredients; fresh ginger sliced and heated in olive oil. A huge French garlic chucked in whole just cutting of the growing tips to let the garlic cloves infuse the oil. Thanks Boney. A couple of diced white onions. The fish head split in half and boiled in another pan of water making a stock. Sieve that, I don't want a fish eye staring up at me! Add the stock to the casserole and add diced potatoes. I arranged the ingredients in a rainbow according to their colours, diced carrot, half a small tin of sweet corn, broccoli, dried pulses soften with five minutes in the microwave with water - plan ahead next time - petit pois, green French lentils, red rice, pre-cooked white rice. About half a bottle of white wine, the Spanish Protocolo. It's all simmering and the salmon gently slipped in. Last but not least the six slices of grey mullet on the bone, even more gently. While that is cooking a quick ciabatta dough mix goes into the oven for small fresh loaves, two fishes, how many loaves? It was going to be 'rainbow soup' but now looks more like 'multitude soup'. The black cat wine was a bit watery. The Protocolo wine was miraculously better able to stand up with this big soup. As an afterthought the black cat wine fragrance went nicely with a ciabatta bun and set honey. Bojan Kobal's Slovenian Pullus wines would all have partnered this soup! I'm jet-lagged, all the way from New Zealand to Virginia the wrong way round and all on a bowl of soup. From a delicious bottle named Octagon, a five year old red, to the neighbouring stand for Nebiolo from Breaux Vineyards Ltd. At least eight years, maybe even ten. It's a Spitfire Ale coloured wine, super tannic. Somehow I am already in DC, Breaux Vineyards, I missed the border. I thought the Vikings took vines to Vinland, but the Pilgrim fathers and their followers were obliged to take ten vines per man to Virginia, to our American colonies. They did well. Pity about the Boston Tea Party. Now we are back with at least one foot in Spain. Romero and Miller. Miller is still in the USA. And we have Navarro, black label, equal parts Tempranillo and Merlot, www.earth-wines.com The local cuisine uses lamb, vegetables, red peppers, onions and diced potatoes with white wine. Did this influence my fish soup with Spanish white wine? Thanks Romera! Sorry Miller, we ate it all. There came the end of the show, as abruptly as that, just as I was really enjoying myself. Wine buyers wherever you are, put these on your list for me please: Pomegranate wines from , Egyptian wines from Sahara Vineyards, everything you can get from Slovenia made by Bojan Kobal. Archangel pinot noir and Judge Rock pinot noir from New Zealand. Send a task force to Virginia and reclaim the colony and don't stop until you have captured Breaux Vineyards in DC. Anything else, Elvira? And a final footnote. I am interested in genealogy as well as oenology. Now I wonder if I have just made the wine journey of my mitochondrial DNA and my Y-chromosome. Yes, we are all out of Africa. They say the haplogroup T branched both East and West somewhere, maybe near the Rimon Winery. The Jordan River would be a natural route northwards. The crossing was at a time when the Sahara was more verdant, though I believe the Egyptian use of wine was imported from the Middle East, I'll have to dig deeper into the Euphrates wine history. My daughter's branch headed further East but remained T. That was a surprise. How big a coincidence can there be that you choose a wife with a similar ancient DNA? Now the Ice Age was pushing us back south. These were the Y chromosomes, haplogroup I1a. Distinctive in their exclusively European evolution. Three pockets of population were located in the Ukraine probably close by the T haplogroup, not so far from the Romanian pinot noir that I use. Yet there were evolutions in T to the product of T2. Then somewhere in the Balkans, close enough by those wonderful Pullus wines produced by Bojan Kobal. Another group was scattered between South-East France and Northern Spain. There we are again, the Rioja and Earth Wines' of Navarro blending Tempranillo and Merlot. Then the ice retreated northwards and the I1a tribe headed north and concentrated their popoulation in Sweden, Vikings. These men of the north backtracked as Norse men or Normans and came over in 1066. That's my male line established in southern England. My few vines are planted on Ice Age glacial moraine, Finchley chatter they call it. Other generations got to America all down the Eastern wine coast. It's too far fetched to think that your genetic travels influence your wine taste, but it's as good a reason as any for me to drink up and move on with my wine tour. The hunter gatherer is still searching for the perfect pinot noir, maybe it's in your Beaunes. Look out Gaul, there's another Norman invasion returning home. Lock up you daughters, this one has Viking blood! Just as formidable as Egri Bikavér. And you thought wine drinking was just guzzling down a bottle of Lambrini while you are choosing heels to go with that dress!

© Brian Marsh, 14 May 2009 email [email protected]