The word potential is a lovely one, is it not? Give it a quick Google and there are quotes from intellectual giants such as Winston Churchill, Aung San Suu Kyi and Sarah Palin on the subject. And potential is what Chiang Mai has in terms of wine. Alas, it is still just potential. There are new wine bars springing up everywhere, it seems – and I’ve been to quite a few. Problem is, the wine being served is still often rubbish. But it shouldn’t be. It’s not just that the wine is treated badly – as I have said before, if you bully a wine in the bottle it will sulk when it is poured into the glass – it’s because the wine buyers at many of these lovely new establishments are buying in stuff they shouldn’t.
One of the tricks producers use to sell their wines is to agree to ship the one that tastes nice on the proviso that the buyer also agrees to take a few cases of the vineyard’s less enjoyable specimens. This is why so many restaurants and bars have whites and reds all sporting identical labels. Unfortunately, being able to make a decent Sauvignon Blanc does not necessarily mean the wine maker is any good with Merlot. But that’s the economics of wine.
Economics are to blame for the silly pricing as well. Unless somebody at the Ministry for Wine does something about the ridiculous import duty I fear buyers will continue to focus on the bottom line and purchase accordingly rather than look to serving up something that even vaguely tastes like it was squished from a grape.
However, ranting about the quality and price of wine in Thailand is far too easy and boring so – Pinotage. This is my New Year top tip: when perusing the wine list at a bar or restaurant, stop perusing and go straight for the Pinotage. “A bottle of the fruity South African red, please,” is all you ever need to say.
I don’t know why Pinotage has been so reliable. Perhaps Thailand has an accord with South Africa that if it agrees to import tanker loads of the grape paste that goes into making the execrable drink that passes itself off as wine under the moniker Mont Claire, they will throw in a few bottles of the good stuff with it.
It’s a bit of a surprise that Pinotage appears to be a grape to bank on here, because it is seen by many as the opposite. Like Pinot Noir, the often moody, temperamental bugger of a grape that was crossed with the more hardy and predictable Cinsault to produce Pinotage, the wines are known for ranging from excellent to bloody terrible. This South African beauty definitely tastes like a new world wine, even though it comes from a cross between two very French grapes. This may be the reason that some people tend to discount it. Although it can sometimes have a bit of an off-putting painty smell, it also has a smoky, tropical fruity, earthy, slightly burnt flavour and stands up well with spicy Thai dishes. The great thing about Pinotage is that it can be drunk as a light-bodied baby and will develop into a full-bodied smasher of a wine over the years.
As with many stories concerning wine, there are differing ‘legends’ behind the creation of Pinotage. However, facts should never get in the way of a nice story, so here goes. This most famous of South African varieties was created in 1925 by a university professor attempting to combine the subtleties of Pinot with the more robust Hermitage, the South African name for Cinsault at the time and the reason for the portmanteau Pinotage. (Personally, I think Herminoir has a nicer ring to it.) He planted the seeds and brilliantly appears to have forgotten about them. The garden in which he planted them became overgrown. It wasn’t until a team from his university were doing a clean-up that a young lecturer with knowledge of this sort of thing spotted the seedlings as he was passing by and rescued them. They were grafted onto rootstock and South Africa’s flagship grape was born.
Today, Pinotage has a range of styles worth exploring, as well as the frequent advantage of a slightly more acceptable price tag than some of the poorer red efforts one stumbles across in Chiang Mai.
I’ll drink to that.