Part of the view from the Decanter tasting room: chimney of Tate Modern and St Paul's
The biodynamic calendar is divided into four types of day – leaf, fruit, flower and root. Wine is believed to taste at its best on fruit days when it will be more expressive and less well on the other days.
Over the last two days I have been involved in a Decanter magazine tasting of Saumur red, Saumur Le Puy Notre Dame and Saumur-Champigny. Like the rest of the panel I was looking forward to tasting some lovely wines. Sadly many of the wines we tasted yesterday were very disappointing, closed up, tannic and lacking charm. Having tasted a number of delicious 2009s recently I was very surprised.
After the end of yesterday's tasting – we assessed between 30 and 35 wines, I went on to the Charles and Philippa Sydney's Loire tasting at the Royal Society of Arts. Here the whites, especially 2010 Muscadets and various 2010 Sauvignons were showing well. The reds, however, which included some wine that I had tasted very recently and liked were as dumb as the reds from Saumur in the Decanter tasting. This was confirmed by Charles Sydney who wondered where all their fruit had gone.
After the end of yesterday's tasting – we assessed between 30 and 35 wines, I went on to the Charles and Philippa Sydney's Loire tasting at the Royal Society of Arts. Here the whites, especially 2010 Muscadets and various 2010 Sauvignons were showing well. The reds, however, which included some wine that I had tasted very recently and liked were as dumb as the reds from Saumur in the Decanter tasting. This was confirmed by Charles Sydney who wondered where all their fruit had gone.
A plausible explanation arrived this morning as it was immediately obvious that many of the remaing wines were showing much more attractively today than yesterday. Tasting over we discovered that today was a fruit day. Whether this was the factor or there were other atmospheric changes or changes of pressure, etc, I'm not sure. However, the wines generally tasted better today. Did the wines change? Did we? Or did both change?
