Amelia Singer Featured in the Financial Times Wine Guide

Read the article in the FT here

Welcome to the first part of this three-part alphabet of wine in which I highlight aspects of the wine world that were virtually unknown in the last century.

Azores: The Azores, Açores in Portuguese, represent that rarity, an entirely new source of wine. Well, not that new. Azores wine was extremely popular in North America in the 18th century, before powdery mildew and then phylloxera almost wiped out the islands’ vineyards — just as they did on Madeira. The main producer, the Azores Wine Company, based on Pico, the chief wine-growing island, was formed as recently as 2014, taking advantage of government and EU subsidies to recuperate abandoned vineyards and build a stylish winery and small hotel (total plantings had shrunk to 120 hectares). These are the craziest-looking vineyards in the world, tiny plots of vines trained low and sheltered from the wind by a honeycomb of drystone walls made from the local volcanic rocks.

Brett or brettanomyces: A sort of spoilage yeast most common in reds, first identified more than a century ago, that has probably been around for as long as wine has. But what makes it a 21st-century phenomenon is the sharp age divide between those who can recognise it and those who can’t. Younger or more recent wine students are taught to identify brett’s odours — variously described as Band-Aid, sweaty saddle or decidedly animal — and to see them as a wine fault (Australian tasters are particularly unforgiving about a whiff of brett), whereas most older tasters either tolerate or ignore it. Some wine professionals, even wine producers, actually like and encourage a low level of brett. Bo Barrett, 72, of Chateau Montelena in Napa Valley, for example, freely admits to being one of the few American wineries that still uses a little brett — “with great care because it spreads like wildfire, but we think it really does add a little layer of complexity”. Oak barrels provide a perfect hang-out for this controversial yeast (regarded as an integral part of some Belgian beers). Once a cellar is seriously infected, a complete replacement of cooperage is generally required.

Celebrity wine: Truly a 21st-century phenomenon. Wine traditionalists tend to be snooty about Kylie’s rosé, Graham Norton’s New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and Snoop Dogg’s California project with 19 Crimes but, with the total number of wine consumers contracting, I don’t think we can afford to be. If it requires the sanction of a famous name to encourage someone to try wine for the first time, that’s fine by me. The wines I personally admire are more likely to be those made by celebrities who don’t use their names mercilessly to sell them. I’ve consistently been impressed by Idris Elba’s Porte Noire range of champagnes and have much enjoyed Sam Neill’s Pinot Noirs from his Two Paddocks estate in Central Otago. I’ve yet to taste Pink’s Two Wolves wines from Santa Barbara County but many years ago I was impressed to find her sitting meekly in the audience at a tasting. She also took the trouble to study winemaking at the University of California at Davis.

Diam: Launched in 2003, the leading brand of so-called technical corks, a sister company to Seguin Moreau cooperage. Particles of natural cork are treated to eliminate the risk of cork taint, in Diam’s case by using “super-critical” carbon dioxide, and then bound into a cork shape. Diam and its competitors offer different levels of oxygen ingress. The most expensive still-wine stopper Diam 30 allows in very little oxygen so is recommended for wines designed for a long life, whereas Diam 2, 3 and 5 are more suitable for earlier-maturing wines. Diam 10 is increasingly popular. When I visited its plant in Céret in 2017, I had no idea how important Diam would become. Today, two billion of the approximate 30bn bottles of wine stoppered each year boast a Diam. Etna: The first Etna wine I tasted was a 2005. By 2008, I was able to write in this paper, “Last month in Sicily I had the thrill of witnessing the launch of another new-old wine region, on the slopes of the decidedly active volcano Mount Etna.” The late Andrea Franchetti of Tenuta di Trinoro in southern Tuscany was not the first outsider to recognise the special qualities of the nervy, haunting, pale reds based on the indigenous Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio vines grown in ancient lava flows on the flanks of the volcano, but he was the first to organise an event that gathered together local producers to showcase just how special the wines are. The Contrade dell’Etna event is now a much bigger annual fixture — not least because so many high-profile producers from the mainland and the rest of the island have flocked to invest there. At the first event in 2008, which I attended, fewer than 40 producers showed their wines. Last year there were more than 100. There is now interest in Etna whites too. The local Carricante grape, pioneered by Benanti, can make exciting wines well worth ageing. This truly is a unique wine region.

Films: In the last century, wine drinking was still too peripheral an activity to be a central theme in mainstream films, but ever since Sideways promoted Pinot Noir as infinitely superior to Merlot in 2004, wine has featured in a plethora of them. A Good Year in 2006, loosely based on Peter Mayle’s book of the same name, was surely one of the weaker films by director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator et al) but it eventually inspired him to produce wine himself on his Mas des Infermières estate in the Luberon. Bottleshock in 2008 was a very loose reconstruction of the Judgment of Paris — the California versus France blind tasting in 1976 — which centred on the late organiser Steven Spurrier and the Barrett family of Chateau Montelena (see above). One of the most popular wine-themed dramas is Drops of God, based on the Japanese manga of the same name and now in its second series on Apple TV. But wine has lent itself more easily to documentaries than dramas. Released soon after Sideways, Mondovino was a tendentious diatribe against the globalisation of wine. More recently, an independent Australian company was responsible for both Red Obsession, about the Chinese love affair with wine, and Blind Ambition, which followed a team of untrained Zimbabwean sommeliers in an international blind-tasting competition. Somms have proved a rich seam for film producers. The first Somm series followed four would-be Master Sommeliers on their gruelling blind-tasting path (inspiring the Netflix drama Uncorked on a similar theme) and has been followed by Somm 2 and Somm 3. Sour Grapes told the story of jailed wine counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan, now apparently exhibiting his skills in Singapore. Glou glou: French term for wines high in easy-to-appreciate fruit and low in tannin, typically red, often relatively high in acidity and sometimes natural. The nearest English translation would be glug glug. The term emerged in the early years of this century to signal wines that were a reaction to the potent, oaky, high-octane reds fashionable towards the end of the last century. Glou glou wines are designed to be drunk young and with relish rather than obsessed about by wine buyers concerned with prices and scores. This makes them quintessential 21st-century wines, in which freshness and refreshment are virtues. There are wine bars called GlouGlou in both Shrewsbury and Amsterdam.

Hybrids: Until recently, only vine varieties that were fully paid-up members of the European vine species Vitis vinifera were regarded as respectable for wine production. Some American varieties such as Concord were accepted as suitable for grape juice and jelly. This is not to say that hybrids weren’t available. In the 19th century, when mildew then phylloxera imported from the US threatened to wipe out European vines altogether, there was frantic hybridising of American varieties with European ones in the hope of producing a variety that had the resistance to phylloxera and mildew that was presumed an attribute of American vines. In the 1950s, as many as 30 per cent of French grape vines were hybrids but their produce, typically copious but very unlike vinifera wine, was generally scorned. Today, however, vine growers can choose from an array of hybrids specifically bred to produce wines that taste reassuringly like vinifera but can boast such qualities as early ripening (for cool climates), resistance to cold winters (incorporating genes from the Asian Vitis amurensis) and needing no or very little spraying. There is a particularly tight-knit hybrid wine-producing community in the US. Those still fearful of the H-word sometimes call them interspecific crosses. Influencers: Wine writers are on the wane while online influencers are ever more powerful — or at least noticed. I’m probably not their target market and am woefully ignorant of what they say, but I realise how difficult it would be today to be starting out as a wine writer without an online presence.

From Azores to influencers Azores António Maçanita, O Original Verdelho 2024 Azores (12.5%) £41 Amathus Brett Ch Montelena, Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 Napa Valley (14%) £785 for six bottles in bond Bancroft Celebrity wine Porte Noire, Petite Porte Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru NV Champagne (12%) £45.50 Amathus, £59.80 Porte Noire King’s Cross Diam Check the number after the Diam on the cork to see how long the producer expects the wine to last Etna Mecori, Duo 2021 Etna Rosso (14%) £268.95 for six The Fine Wine Co Films Blind Ambition (2021) Glou glou Morandé, One to One Reserva País 2023 Maule (13.5%) £10.50 Majestic Gérard Bertrand, Le Chouchou 2024 Vin de France (11%) £13 Waitrose Arquils Syrah/Cinsault/Mourvèdre 2024 Sierra Foothills (13%) $50, Arquils.com/shop-our-wines (drink this natural wine soon after opening) Hybrids Breaky Bottom, Cuvée Koizumi Yakumo Seyval Blanc 2010 English Sparkling (12%) £80 Vagabond

Influencers Vince Anter, Libby Brodie, Cokie, Tom Gilbey, André Hueston Mack, Amelia Singer

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com