Diary of a Shopkeeper, 19th May 2024

I’ve come south for a few days to attend a big trade event, the London Wine Fair. Will I discover great new producers, and learn about exciting trends in the wine world? I’ll tell you next week.

For now, all I can report on is what I did last night, which was have a very enjoyable get-together with friends and family at 40 Maltby Street, a restaurant under a railway arch in Bermondsey. It was a high and graceful brick arch, and we could’ve been in the kind of classy place MasterChef contestants get sent in the semi-finals, if it wasn’t for the rolling thunder every 10 minutes when a train rumbled overheard.              The food was definitely classy: beautifully presented, delicious, and making good use of seasonal ingredients like asparagus – almost as good as Jane Cooper’s Orkney asparagus – alongside staples like smoked haddock in lovely crunchy-creamy croquettes.

Being here on a wine trip, I was obliged, of course, to check out their list. The enthusiastic staff were delighted to provide more information than the terse words on the blackboard listing of wines by the glass: ‘Tricot. Désiré. ’22. 8.60.’

The restaurant is an offshoot of a wine importer based in another railway arch just along the road. Both buinesses are dedicated to a particular approach to winemaking. The importer’s website says they work with winemakers who are, ‘eschewing the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers in their vineyards in favour of letting the land and the grape speak (sing even). In the winery, fermentation is the result of wild, indigenous yeasts and heavy-handed techniques are not used at any stage of the wine-making.’

All that sounds good to me. We have many organic wines on our shelves – some certified organic, others following organic principles but avoiding the bureaucracy of official approval. We tend to work with small or at most medium-sized producers. Our wineries are often family affairs, run by a husband and wife, or a team of siblings; sometimes they are cooperatives that buy grapes from dozens of farmers, but with the winemaking team remaining small and true to its individual vision.

There’s a harmony between that scale of wine production and our own shop, and indeed with almost everything in Orkney. If we were living in the middle of the Anna Creek Cattle Station in South Australia – all six million acres of it – we might feel in tune with factory wines fermented in steel towers the size of a Flotta tank, but as it is we prefer the Small is Beautiful philosophy, whether applied to Orkney beef farms or wineries from around the world.

The importer, Gergovie Wines, thinks similarly. Their bottles, they say, ‘are not industrial products but a direct expression of grape, place and personality.’ So when the waitress recommended an Auvergne blend of Aligoté and Chardonnay – that ‘Tricot. Désiré. ‘22’ – saying it was delicate, citrussy, and refreshing, it seemed the ideal glass to start a meal with.

It wasn’t bad. The colour was surprisingly dark, and the wine completely opaque – it looked like cloudy lemonade – but I know that bottling wines unfiltered is a common approach amongst winemakers whose approach is labelled ‘Natural.’ More troubling to me was that the other white wine our party tried looked and tasted almost identical, despite being from a different part of France, and being made with different grapes.

The same problem cropped up with the main course reds. The Calvez-Bobinet Piak!,  made in the Loire Valley from an obscure, light-bodied grape called Grolleau, was almost indistinguishable from Le Petit Domaine de Gimios, Rouge de Causse, made in the much warmer area of Saint-Jean-de-Minervois in the Languedoc, from a blend of over 19 varietals, including Syrah, Grenache and Muscat.

Were the wines we tried, ‘a direct expression of grape, place and personality’? No. If they had been, the four I’ve mentioned would have had markedly different aromas, flavours and textures, reflecting their origins. Instead, one of the whites was more acidic than the other, but otherwise they were both vaguely white-grapey – refreshing only because they were well chilled. The reds were worse: soupy, possessed of little or no fruit, lacking freshness or any distinct character. In short, they had no spark of life, they did not sing.

This is my overwhelming experience with wines that get categorised as Natural. I love the stories that are told about them – I just don’t like drinking them.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 23rd May 2024. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.