The Wine Explorer: A Guide to the Wines of the World and How to Enjoy Them

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Introduction

There was this wonderful view set in a blameless blue sky… we were chatting about cricket, the wine was twinkling in my glass and I just thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Sir Trevor McDonald

Like Cyrano de Bergerac, my nose normally arrives at a vineyard about fifteen minutes before the rest of me. I am an explorer, and a wine explorer needs a good nose to sniff out the best and most exquisitely crafted wines in the world. That’s my job: I buy and sell wine for a living. It would appear, however, that my job description isn’t understood by everyone. I was rather taken aback when a few years ago I arrived at my 11-year-old son Harry’s school to be met by one of his teachers who said, Ah, Mr Mitchell, I gather from your son that you’re a drug dealer – how’s business?

I’d like you to follow my adventures so I can reveal the inside track to you, the intriguing world behind the labels, so that you can accompany me on a light-hearted journey through the most interesting vineyards on earth. I want to share some remarkable stories, copious humorous anecdotes and uncork some of my discoveries with you.

There is something rather beguiling about the juice of the vine which attracts perfectly sane people into this hazardous and impecunious industry. It’s hard work, often physically demanding, with limited return, but there is also an enchantment, excitement and enduring appeal which makes it all worthwhile… most of the time. A miraculous alchemy takes place when a bottle of wine is opened and shared. I suppose you could say that water divides the nations of the world, but wine unites them. It’s not just that the vineyards seem to be located in some of the most naturally beautiful territories of the world, surrounded by outrageously fabulous restaurants, where local food and wine join together in a sumptuous embrace; it’s something else, it’s something intangible, dreamy and irresistible. One of my Bordeaux suppliers once remarked to me that he didn’t really sell wine, he sold dreams.

I know what he means. Sometimes I am emailed by people who have visited one of the vineyards abroad which I represent in the UK. There was a couple who were married at a vineyard called the Red Hill Estate on the magical Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne in Australia; memories and daydreams of that special occasion could be revisited by opening a bottle from that same vineyard, possibly from the same vintage as their visit, and whilst drinking they could feed on the memories evoked in vino veritas. There is a truth in the beauty of an experience, if Keats will forgive me for saying so.

Sometimes wine can enable us to remember and relive that experience and dream that dream again. I remember a few years ago I visited the Napa Valley with my wife. We took Ned, our eldest son, who was six months old at the time, around the wineries in a backpack before leaving to spend a couple of days in Yosemite National Park. The last vineyard we visited was called Frog’s Leap, and I spent two hours being shown around and tasting the wines from this organic winery in Napa. The wines are elegant and restrained – certainly more subtle than many of the wines from this region – but marketed brilliantly by the owner, John Williams. While we tasted the wines he told me of the evening he spent with some friends, sitting around the fire with a beer, trying to decide what to call the vineyard, when a frog leapt out of the undergrowth nearby and hopped across his line of vision. The decision was made! I bought a couple of bottles from John to fortify us on our onward journey. When we arrived at the little log cabin in Yosemite it was freezing; snow had fallen recently. Darkness descended, and, having put Ned to bed, Nicola and I sat in front of a blazing log fire with a bottle of Frog’s Leap Zinfandel, poured into a jug sitting by the fire, gradually warming. It was a magical evening; we talked and talked, and sipped and sipped, and this wine was just magnificent. It had the most beautiful balance of ripe fruit and subtle oak; as it breathed it was developing complexity, and served at warmish room temperature, it was silky and seductive – just breathtaking. The wine had so many stories to tell, and so did I. If I am ever lucky enough to taste a bottle from the Frog’s Leap winery today – and these wines are not inexpensive – I always remember that special evening in Yosemite, and it is the wine that brings those memories flooding back.

Unfortunately, a considerable amount of wine imported into the UK is incredibly dull. Much wine lacks character, is bland and blended for the mass-market volume brands, mainly sold off the shelf and massively discounted in a supermarket or big retail chain. These concoctions increasingly all taste the same, are made to a price which is predetermined by the retailer, and the final wine lacks attitude, identity and soul. The winemaker has to deliver despite these cuts in his margin, and in so doing the final wine is compromised. It is becoming nothing more than a simple commodity.

This is not a phenomenon that is unique to wine. Smoked salmon used to be a very expensive, rare and genuinely special food. Its texture was a delight, as you chewed its juicy, intense, fine, subtle flavours, which were infused with savoury and spicy scents from the smokehouse. Nowadays most mass-market smoked salmon sold in the supermarkets is farmed in such great quantities under dubious conditions that it is no longer something rare, scarce and exceptional but instead tastes of absolutely nothing. I understand why consumers pay for such tasteless rubber, but I think it is madness. The only thing one can taste of the profuse farmed smoked salmon is the lemon juice and pepper which is sprinkled liberally on each slice to give the fish some flavour. We all perceive smoked salmon as a treat and a luxury, but in truth the farmed volume product has been so debased that it no longer represents the best in fish.

The same principle applies to meat, where again mass production, whether for chicken, lamb, pork or beef, has dramatically reduced its flavour and character. Prices have fallen, for sure (although they seem to be on the rise now), but the quality of much cheap supermarket meat is poor. The water content is high, the meat is not hung for long enough to enhance flavour and the texture is lacking when compared with the free-range organic alternatives.

There is still a delicious alternative to mass-produced farmed salmon, and it tastes distinctly different. Well-hung free-range meat from a good butcher also tastes completely unlike the alternative. If you’ve ever tried a flame-grilled, grass-fed, free-range cut of beef from the Argentinean Pampas, or wild Alaskan line-caught smoked salmon, you’ll know what I mean.

So back to wine: the average price paid for a bottle of wine today is around £6. The tax alone on a bottle at this price accounts for more than half the total cost of the bottle. In fact, it is two taxes – excise duty and VAT. The government charges us VAT on the value of the excise duty, a tax on another tax, just to make sure we are fully taxed on our alcohol. Add the additional cost of the glass bottle, label, capsule and closure, not to mention the cost of bottling and packaging, results in rather less than £1 for the value of the liquid inside the bottle. This unimpressive wine will be mass-produced and created to meet that price point. The final wine will taste synthetic and lack definition, intensity, character and flavour. There could also be a hideous concoction of chemicals to cause all sorts of potential hazards. The simple truth is that by paying a little bit more for a bottle of wine the enhanced quality is disproportionately increased. This is because the duty on wine is a flat rate per bottle, so the proportion of the wine’s price which is accounted for in tax is diminished as the price rises. This leaves more money to be spent on the quality of the liquid inside the bottle.

It reminds me of the story of the father who walks into a restaurant with his son. He gives the young boy three 10p coins to play with to keep him occupied. Suddenly the boy starts choking and going blue in the face. The father realises the boy has swallowed the coins and starts slapping him on the back. The boy coughs up two of the 10p coins, but is still choking. Looking at his son, the father is panicking, shouting for help. A well-dressed, attractive and serious-looking woman in a blue business suit is sitting at the bar reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. At the sound of the commotion, she looks up, puts her cup down, neatly folds the newspaper, places it on the counter, gets up from her seat and makes her way, unhurried, across the restaurant. Reaching the boy, the woman carefully pulls down his pants, takes hold of his testicles and starts to squeeze and twist, gently at first and then ever so firmly… tighter and tighter! After a few seconds the boy convulses violently and coughs up the remaining 10p, which the woman deftly catches in her free hand. Releasing the boy’s testicles, the woman hands the coin to the father and walks back to her seat at the bar without saying a word. As soon as he is sure that his son has suffered no ill effects, the father rushes over to the woman and starts thanking her saying, I’ve never seen anybody do anything like that before – it was fantastic. Are you a doctor?

No, the woman replied. I work for the Inland Revenue.

There really is an alternative to mass-produced bland wine which doesn’t have to cost the earth. I have discovered a small group of vineyard owners scattered around the world who are inspired to produce something rather special in small parcels from their bit of land and which represent exceptional value.

Compromise is for relationships, not for wine!

Hugh Johnson wrote, "The point of drinking wine is to drink what thrills you." There are some special wines created by passionate and determined individuals who have followed their dreams and, against the odds, have triumphed in producing the most exquisite nectar. These are stylish wines with individuality and real character produced with flair on a relatively small scale. Perhaps the reason I believe in these people is because I am completely bored with tasting shabby, miserable wine blends which have no definition, sense of place, individuality or identity. Wine is to be enjoyed heartily, but as my late mother used to say, Life is too short to drink poor wine.

I think Robert Mondavi, the renowned American wine producer, was right when he said, Wine to me is passion. It’s family and friends. It’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit. Wine is art. It’s culture. It’s the essence of civilisation and the art of living.

Wine does give pleasure; sometimes just a fleeting pleasure, but sometimes the kind of pleasure which I believe is far more profound.

My job is to nose out the finest wines, often off the beaten track, scattered around the world. You and I are searching for the same thing, but what should we both be looking for in a wine? The answer is simply personal excitement and enjoyment. What we want is to pay a reasonable price for a really fabulous experience. As Jeremy Clarkson might say, I’m searching for a Ferrari in a bottle for the price of a Škoda.

It is this feeling which the supermarkets and newspaper offers play on: 50% off, they scream. Buy one case of wine and get a second free of charge, the text declares. This case should cost £79.00, but we are discounting it down to £30.00 for a limited period.

Everyone wants a special deal, and some of the supermarkets, larger retailers and mail-order outfits are determined to appear to offer extraordinary bargains. There is a danger, though, that at 50% off, either the original price was inflated, or the normal margins on the bottle are excessively high.

Recently I came across a supermarket offering discounted champagne during Wimbledon week. The offer was half-price champagne down from £31.00 a bottle to £15.50. It was a champagne I had never heard of, and since some of the non-vintage Grande Marque champagnes such as Veuve Clicquot, Pol Roger and Bollinger are retailed at the early thirty-pound level, there is no way in my opinion that this offer was genuine. The proper retail price for this unknown champagne should have been about £20.00 a bottle at most, so the offer was really just offering a few pounds off the authentic price of a very average-quality champagne. The perception of the deal and the reality of the offer were poles apart. It’s all very well saying caveat emptor, but this is deceptive, contemptible, debases the wine industry and treats consumers as fools.

What I’m looking for in a wine, on the other hand, is something exciting and distinctive, a bottle you would be seduced by in your wildest dreams.

I was speaking at a dinner recently, when the man sitting next to my wife leant over to her and whispered, Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine that you would marry a wine merchant? My wife replied, My husband doesn’t appear in my wildest dreams!

So I’m searching for genuine natural flavours, not synthetic confected ones. I’m looking for the free-range equivalent, the line-caught wild option, rather than the mass-produced farmed one. I’m hunting for exceptional wines which don’t have a well-known expensive brand name for which you pay a premium. Some well-known brands are very expensive in relation to the quality of the liquid inside the bottle. How much of the bottle’s cost goes into advertising? Often the wines I discover are close to a well-known vineyard, or in the neighbouring village, on similar soil. If you buy the well-known Châteauneuf-du-Pape, you will pay a premium for the name, whereas if you buy the less-well-known Sablet from a neighbouring Côtes-du-Rhône Villages, it will be half the price and very close in quality to the Châteauneuf.

So this book is a distillation of the stories and amusing anecdotes garnered over twenty years of seeking out the finest wines from small, little-known boutique vineyards. It gives a glimpse of the mysterious world behind the label to reveal the crucial factors in a professional wine buyer’s decision to purchase. In so doing, many of the answers to those questions you’ve always wanted to ask, but never dared, are disclosed.

Exploring Behind the Label

"I can certainly see you know your wine. Most of