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AWE INSPIRING NEWS • Winter 2014/2015 • Issue 42 4 1 0 2 W M e m l u H n a s u S © e t o r a z n a L En Rama + Lanzarote + German Pinots + Double Pruning & Winter Harvest + Music & Wine + Art & Wine + Plumpton + Champagne + Slovenia + Ridge Vineyard + Domaine Montirius + Friuli-Venezia Giulia + Rare French Varieties + German Riesling + Languedoc-Roussillon Editor's column tastings. So why not use music or art as a way of getting to professional wine educators. And while members of the the heart of a wine? Laura Clay and Lindsay Oram tell us wine trade may be familiar with the idea of wine by about two alternative ways of appreciating wine and education, it seems the general public, even those who Susan Hulme MW however unusual they seem, who knows what will help are members of wine groups and societies, may not be. students make a connection with a wine? However we do Much of this edition is concerned with our attempts to it though, I’m sure we will continue to enthuse, inform Perhaps I need to broaden my focus and to remember that communicate what can sometimes seem elusive to many, and educate the public in this most wonderful subject of my job is not just to promote the AWE, but to namely how to describe what we can taste in the glass, ours. communicate more fundamentally about what it is to be a the relationship of wines to their origin and the wine educator. This is something we can all do, by getting differences between vines grown on different continents I hope you find something to interest you in this edition the message out about what we do, day in day out, week or maybe just in the next field. and I’d like to wish you all a successful and prosperous in week out. One small step in this direction is that future 2015. issues of this newsletter will be available to view on our Anne Krebiehl MW tries to convey the character of website, allowing not just those in the wine trade, but real German Pinot Noir but finds it difficult to pin down given wine consumers, to read about what we do. the variety of soils and methods of production. Sometimes Chairman’s column a style of wine is not as clear cut as we might think, as by Cheers, Heather Natasha Hughes MW explains when she uncovers what Heather Dougherty en rama sherry really means. The German classification * En Rama Sherry - Natasha Hughes MW - 3 system, as summarised by Charles Metcalfe in his Riesling * Malvasia Volcánica! - Susan Hulme MW - 5 There’s nothing like talking to “ordinary” wine consumers article, may put further barriers in the way of * German Pinot Noirs - Anne Krebiehl MW - 8 to bring you back down to earth with a bump. understanding what is already a complex subject. And * Ridge Vineyards by Gilbert Winfield - 9 sometimes the borders between regions are more blurred * If you don't like the wine, change the music - Laura Clay - 12 I was slightly taken aback a couple of weeks ago, when a than we might think as I discovered when I visited Friuli * Plumpton/UK Wine Research Centre Update - Chris Foss - 13 lady at a tasting I was running commented “I’m intrigued and Slovenia recently. * German Riesling - Charles Metcalfe - 15 to hear that you describe yourself as a wine educator. * A Champagne Refresher - Richard Bampfield MW - 17 What exactly is that?” As this comment came at the end of Often the key to understanding these wines it seems is to * Looking For Taste - Lindsay Oram - 1 8 the tasting, rather than the beginning, it threw me even taste them, often, and ideally in situ. Being able to taste * Things we've forgotten to remember - Heather Dougherty - 20 more. Had I not just spent the last couple of hours Malvasia Volcánica in Lanzarote undoubtedly added to * The Perfect Brew? - Helen Savage - 22 educating the 30-odd people in the room about the wines my appreciation of the special character of these wines * Wine Without Borders - Susan Hulme MW - 24 of Virginia? It seemed obvious to me – but clearly the and the students who accompanied Helen Savage on a * Slovenia Wine Festival - Paul Balke - 26 connection between what I had been doing and the term trip to Vacqueras will probably never forget the lessons * Double Pruning and Winter Harvest: Extending the frontiers of ‘wine education’ was not obvious to this lady. learned tasting an evolving wine at its source. viticulture in Brazil and other countries - Tufi Neder Meyer - 28 * AWEsome Wine - Helen Savage - 29 As Chairman, I would like to make it my mission to raise As educators however, we are usually faced with the task * AWEsome Book - Wendy Gedney - 30 the profile of the AWE as a body of independent, of explaining all of this without vineyard visits or vertical * Member Updates - 31 Page 2 AWE Inspiring News - Winter 201 4/2015 The trade’s enthusiasm for en rama And how many of you have seen a really larger) in order to exclude only the continues unabated. At the last count cloudy en rama? Surely, if the wine is grossest of impurities. However, one (conducted while I was researching the unfiltered, a substantial number of bottles producer filters its en rama to sterility (to topic for my MW dissertation), 15 of the should be thick with yeast cells. my mind this begs the question of what 23 sherry producers shipping fino and the difference might be between this En Rama manzanilla to the UK were exporting at A generous sprinkling of the trade are also producer’s en rama and its standard least one en rama as well a standard under the impression that en rama is a bottling. by bottling. Although volumes are small, en single-barrel bottling. You don’t need to Natasha Hughes MW rama has achieved the one thing that have a maths degree, though, to calculate Three producers fine their wines and three seemed impossible a few years ago – it’s that it would be impossible to ship as cold stabilise their wines. Oh – and that got people talking about sherry. much en rama as, say, Barbadillo or thing about en rama being drawn off in For almost as long as I’ve been writing Hidalgo, without having recourse to a spring, while the flor is at its thickest? about wine (coming up on 15 years, in But although en rama is flavour of the multi-barrel bottling. Most producers draw their en ramas off case you’re interested), sherry has been month, it’s important to ensure that we twice a year, in spring and in autumn, seen as the wine trade’s problem child. don’t lose our taste for it in the long term. The truth is that our British perspective on while a substantial minority draw their en The generation that loved cream sherry is Guaranteeing that this happens, however, en rama is a rather romanticised one. rama off on demand (although some slowly dying off, and most consumers means addressing the elephant in the en Sure, if you happen to be in Jerez, you can producers do, indeed, bottle in spring have yet to be persuaded to love the drier rama room. My research revealed that buy a ‘true’ en rama, one in which the only). styles. Like the Red Queen, the sherry there’s little understanding – even among wine has been bottled straight from the trade was running fast but getting importers and stockists of en rama – of the barrel, with no messing around. But this All of this may leave you wondering what nowhere. Until, that is, the arrival of the true nature of these wines. kind of en rama is local wine for local en rama actually is. Pending a decision flashy new kid on the block. people. from the Consejo, the closest we can Well over half of the wine trade believe currently get to a definition is by stating En rama sherry became the fortified drink that en rama is not filtered, fined or The confusion stems from the fact that that the vast majority of these wines are du jour soon after Gonzalez Byass otherwise manipulated before it is bottled there is no official definition of en rama bottled with minimal intervention (and launched its Tio Pepe En Rama back in ready for export. Let’s stop and think destined for export markets. As a result, minimal filtration), with the aim of 201 0 (the small number of en ramas about that for a minute. Stable as sherry is, producers are effectively free to slap an en reproducing (as closely as possible) the available in the UK prior to the Gonzalez it is not stable enough to cope with a rama label on any wine they want. experience of drinking sherry straight from Byass launch had received little attention). journey to the UK from southern Spain – Although there’s little abuse of this the butt. The initial run received terrific word-of- in many cases followed by time spent freedom, there’s also little consensus mouth publicity and, before you knew it, sitting on a shelf or in a wine rack before about what anyone means by the term. It is certainly true that en ramas do, the stuff had sold out. By the time the a bottle is opened and drunk – without all For instance, the vast majority of generally speaking, seem to be stylistically 2011 shipment arrived, the wine trade had kinds of problems manifesting themselves.

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