Usually when I compare prices on either side of the Atlantic, we Brits are charged considerably more for the same wine than wine lovers in the most competitive markets in America but this week, thanks to the fact that Bibendum Wine’s summer sale starts today, it is the Brits who have access to (by far) the best price. From today Dr Loosen, Blue Slate Riesling 2006 Mosel is available at just £4.91 here, having admittedly been reduced from £8.80. According to www.winesearcher.com, prices per bottle in the US vary from £12.99 (about £6.50) to a robust $34 (£17) – surely shome mishtake?
The name Blue Slate, a nice, possibly incidental reference to the infamous Blue Nun, refers to the slate soil that characterises so much of the middle Mosel valley that seems to imbue the grapes ripened by radiation from it with a strongly mineral, racy character.
I tasted the screwcapped 2006 recently and thought it would have been a bargain at £7 a bottle. It’s still wonderfully fresh and crystalline – and at just 8% alcohol it qualifies as one of the (Mosel) wines that Hugh Johnson recommends for drinking not just while reading a book but while writing one. It is bursting with ripe fruit yet has great zing too – like a sports drink of the most stimulating sort. (The word Lucozade features in my tasting notes.) Thanks to all that acidity, the overall impression is far from sweet – and this is precidely the sort of wine that goes so well with many Thai- and Vietnamese-inspired dishes – as well as making a great aperitif.
Erni Loosen has a fair claim on being German wine’s best-known ambassador. He was the German producer we featured at greatest length in the award-winning Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course tv series for the BBC and you can also see him on this video – he’s the long haired one. He is delightfully outspoken and thoroughly unstuffy, yet is a firm believer in upholding the best traditions of the beautiful and extraordinary northern wine valley in which he is based. A thoughtful wine producer, he commented recently, as reported here, about how climate change is making Riesling grapes ripen much more successfully each year – so much so that it’s getting difficult to find wines that qualify for the least ripe Kabinett quality level. He also makes the wine, Eroica, that arguably re-introduced Americans to the great Riesling vine – with Château Ste Michelle in Washington state, which has become America’s number one Riesling zone. I may say however that in my experience Eroica isn’t nearly as fine as this Blue Slate Mosel bottling, yet costs about the same in the US. You can find out more about this versatile producer at www.drloosen.com.
I really do think that for once this wine is seriously underpriced, and I’m sure it will still be fine in a year’s time too – though don’t buy it if you insist that all wines must be bone dry.
A dry, red in Bibendum’s sale that is almost as much of a bargain is Alamos Malbec 2006 Mendoza, the entry level label from the Catena stable, reduced from £7.55 to £5.24 a bottle and a very creditably serious Argentine red for the money. Regular price for this in the US seems to be around $9.99 so the Bibendum price is, relatively, less of a bargain for Brits than the delicious Riesling.