To clam or not to clam ? - a question of wine & terminology for the wine novice

I was at an entry level wine appreciation class, during the tasting session, I thought a Chardonnay that we were tasting smelled like a just-opened can of clam. clam? but the instructor never told us that clam was part of our wine descriptions...what was I to do?
My turn came and I gathered enough courage, risking embarrassing myself in front of the class, and came forth with my finding. True enough, the entire class of 15 cracked and went off on me.....clam? ?
Well, Mr. Lawson, our instructor took a sniff at the wine and another, and concluded that the wine did in fact had a clam nose ! Hehe...who's laughing now sh-heads !!

Gooseberries, basement, wet dog, cat pee, cedar, oak, musk... these are scents wine afficiados have detected in wines and adopted as part of wine vocabulary. Here's the problem, most of us everyday folks are clueless as to what these scents are. What does a wet dog smell like, and is the wetness result of a cat peeing on it? did the incident take place in a basement and was the basement floor made of oak or cedar wood? Hence giving it a musk odor? All foreign to many of us lah !!

Unfortunately, there is no crash course to becoming a wine expert. You can read one of those compact pocket wine book and start sounding like you know it all...and that's about all you are I guess ! For those of us who are serious and interested, certain amount of studying, memorizing and learning is essential; learn the basics of wine and the proper methods to enjoy it, memorizing words and terminologies, and experience new smell, palate and taste. If you have too much change in the pocket, you may want to look into getting a scent reference kit from France. A 54 scent kit from Le Nez du Vin by Jean Lenoir will set you back about RM1500 before shipping from the UK !

Enjoyment of wine is a dynamic & evolving life long process, just like a wine that continue to evolve years after being bottled and cellared. A bottle of wine and the subject of wine is never static. Every vintage is different, and the same wine evolves over the years for better or worse. New wine regions are opening up all the time, not only in the old world, but also in new places like Thailand, China, Cuba and India !! who knows, Chateau Tanahrata 2008, AOC Cameron Highlands?

So how does one get started ? 2 parts to make it simple;

theories & practical

Theories

the www, wine for dummies and many books are everywhere and information is aplenty on the net. Read up and just learn the basics one step at a time. You probably will never get to a point where your become completely knowledgeable on the subject. You might become more informed about wine compare to the person next to you but as I said, studying and appreciation of wine is a life long process.

Practical

Like riding a bicycle and many other things in life, you will not fully appreciate the experience by just reading and without actually doing it ! So the next thing to do is to go out and get yourself a hot*, charmimg* and full bodied* women.....opps I meant wine, and get started, and remember, a long finish* is good ! ( * these are actual wine terms ! btw). There are also wine dinners and wine tastings taking place around town from time to time. You probably have to pay for the wine dinner, but these are usually very well priced as the wine merchants are trying to promote their wines. Wine tasting are not that frequent compared to the early 2000s when there were a great number of small size importers. Nevertheless, keep your eyes open and get yourself on the mailing lists of wine merchants around town and they will inform you when there's a wine event taking place. I like wine tastings, as they allow me to work at my on pace, and usually, I get to taste no less than 30 wine at a session. Fact is, the more you taste, the more your olfactory senses will learn, and in time you will become a sharper taster with experience.

Our local supermarkets actually carry a good and affordable selection of entry level wines, which is good for the consumers. I suspect our wines on the retail shelves are cheap due to certain inadequacies in the enforcement of the laws that govern the importation of liquors and wines, but we wont dwell on that. From the wine merchants' point of view, cheap wines are good for the industry overall in the long run, as it makes wine drinking affordable as hence enticing potential wine drinkers to experiment. If you have a few friends that are just discovering wine, make a point to experiment wine pairing with our ever day cuisine. To me, wine and food pairing experience is not necessarily a formal fine dining set up with stuffy etiquette. I remember having a fantastic gastro experience with my friend Mr. Lim at a roadside seafood hawker place in Kepong. We'd have grilled mud crabs, Kum Heong Lala, Grilled Belachan Stingray, all paired with some excellent white wines from South Africa & New Zealand. We did look kind of odd, sitting there with our thermo bag, fancy wine glasses and our bottles of wine with a couple of stray cats hanging around our table looking for food scraps but we had some jolly good time ! Cheers !

PORT - fortified and silky !

After our Sunday tennis session last week, our tennis master cum CEO & chef d'insparational, whom we shall refer to as Big R, decided that our playing efforts that morning warranted Bak Cu Teh, so off we went to our regular BCT hangout in SS23. An authentic TeowChew join serving clear broth type BCT with good selections of Chinese Tea.

Over the course of the breakfast, Big R's doubles partner Terry brought up the subject of Port. What is a Port ? Is Port Klang a Port?, yes ! but a port of a different kind.....

Port, in Dionysusland is actually a Portugese red wine that has been infused with grape spirit to stop it from a complete grape fermentation. The result is a fantastic sweet desset wine (fortified wine) with about 20% alcohol. Versions of Port includes Vintage, LVP, Tawny, White Port etc.

The history of Port Wine dates back to the 17th Century in the the steep and rocky slopes of the Upper Douro and its tributaries in Portugal. The British were at war with the French and their traditional supply of wine from Bordeaux was cut off as a result. Wine from Douro Valley in Portugal was their alternative supply. Early shipments of wines from Portugal however, did not survive the long sea voyage through the Atlantic, and the British folks were getting vinegar instead of wine ! Hence, the process "fortification" or adding grape spirit to wine as a preservation method was introduced. Due to its high alcohol content, Port was well preserved and travelled well. Fortification also saw this wine developed into a product that is silky sweet, complex and opulent which could improve well over 20 years or more. These days, it is not uncommon for Port Houses to release their wines more than 7 years after bottling. Port wine is usually drank as dessert beverage after a meal and the general rule of thumb is to pair it with a strong cheese. My personal favourite Port moment involved a Romeo & Juliet Churchill, a glass of 82 Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port, and a purple velvet pool table with a good friend of mine !! Go seek out your own Dionysus moment Terry!

BTW, I have never paired BAK CU TEH with wine...wonder if a high altitude herby Argentinian Malbec or a Merlot will go well with it or perhaps my 82 Smith Woodhouse ? or is it too "heaty" to pair BCT with alchohol.. either way, I say just do the Moss & Winslet Analysis and you will not go wrong !

EVOLUTION OF A WINE KAKI

Over the years, I must have tasted thousands of wine from all over the world due to my job requirement. There are however, not many wines that I can distinctly recall in terms of their positive attributes . I can remember a wine being good, great or outstanding, but details..I would have to refer to my tasting notes if I had any. I discover wine drinking in Toronto back in the 80's, and today only a handful of wines I tasted stayed in my memory. One of these wines is Hillerbrand Muscat 1986; a quaffing, fruity, aromatic, off dry white wine from the Niagara Region. The wine tasted fantastic, and one of the reasons why I remembered the wine so well was because all my friends liked it and it was part of many of our fond memories . We had it at house parties and camping trips, and it was a hit every time.

Looking back, all of us were novice at the time when it came to wine drinking. A fruity off dry white was the ideal introduction to these new wine drinkers. The best First Growth would have turned us right off. Those of us who liked that wine at the time would probably have a very different opinion today as our palate matured over the years. In many non-traditional wine drinking countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, red wine is preferred due to influence of media and peers. We have jumped right into drinking red wine because it was more popular than white wine and red wine is perceived as being good for ones health.

To truly appreciate different types of wines is of course to taste as much wine as possible. But if we were to have a structured upbringing for a well rounded wine drinker, styles of wine that we introduce to a wine drinker, and the timing is crucial.The natural progression of wine drinking should be:1-Fruity Off Dry White 2-Dry White 3-Fruity Red 4-Dry Red.
Having tasted these different style of wine, it does not mean that we will then finish and stay at end category - Dry Red. You may find yourself preferring a fruity white or a dry red,we will always have our individual preferences, but what is important is that we get exposed to different types of wine and know our options. To me, choosing the right wine for the right drinking audience, occasion and food is key. If you are organizing wine for a YamSeng Chinese wedding, just bring a cheap quaffer that is off dry, not acidic and high in alcohol. Wine in these occasions will probably be drank mixed with ice, Coke or Sprite, and for obvious reasons we don't need a good wine. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to pair wine with food in a Chinese Banquets scenario, simply because these banquets have just too many courses, and to do so will probably take up too much time. Having said that, Chinese food with a few exceptions, can definitely go well with some great wines.
Try a dry, spicy Shiraz with a braised dried abalone in oyster sauce, and you will see what I mean....ok ok ...something we everyday folks can afford; spend RM35 on a salted roast duck from Petaling Street, get yourself a bottle of dry Chilean Cabernet (RM45), invite 2 deserving friends, make sure you have some decent red wine goblets(Schott Zwiesel-about RM30 each depending on what line you choose / New Convox in TTDI sells them).....you cannot go wrong with this combination !! and so the gastro journey continues !
Almost all food can be paired with wine to enhance your feasting enjoyment if you know how.
Chili heat spiciness kills wine,but Spicy or herby Malaysian food & Thai food can go well with some white wine ......Gewuz what ? talk to you soon !

Vin De Constance - Jewel from the Cape, South Africa

The first time I heard of a dessert wine was back in the early 90's, when an old friend of my told me hysterically (I think she was yanking her hair while talking to me) how good this honey liked sweet nectar was. She said it was so good that she had to restrain herself from drinking it too fast as only a small portion was presented to her.....

The wine in question here was actually a Canadian Icewine. A Riesling Icewine from Inniskillin Winery, in the Niagara Region to be exact. I was living in Toronto, Ontario at the time and just started discovering the wonderful and blurry world of wine. Toronto was a good place to learn wine because it was a modern cosmopolitan with many old and new world ethnicities, which meant melting pot of cuisines to go with wines, but most important of all, Ontario was importing vast number of wines from all over the world.

The first wave of migration (invasion some might say as the aboriginal people of Canada were the North American Indians, Inuits & Métis ) were mainly the French & English. Italian ( Toronto is the city with the largest Italian population outside of Italy in the world ), Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Koreans, Vietnamese, South Indians, Caribbeans, Russian, Polish and many other immigrants come over the years, due mainly to Canada's liberal immigration policy. Wine drinking culture was bought to Canada from the Old World very early on during the first wave of migration. I still remember my Italian landlord offering me this golden and murky glass of home made white wine with big alcohol content every month when I went to pay my rent. These home made wines were largely made form grape juice trucked from California and made in some Italian family's basement !

Niagara, Ontario's wine region is actually on the same latitude as Burgundy in France but without the prestige obviously. The variety of grapes and wine styles were limited due to its very cold climate and restricted wine growing areas, and as a result, wines were imported from around the world to cater to the demand of the new immigrants. Except for its Icewine, Canadian wines were largely insignificant and relatively expensive outside of Canada.

Unlike many wine producing regions from around the world. Torontonian were happy marrying their ethnically diversed cuisine with wines from Europe, US, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and even China. The province of Ontario was the largest importing body of wine and liquor in the world as it monopolized and controlled the entire importation and movement of wine and liquor in the province through LCBO or Liquor Control Board of Ontario. For people in the wine trade, this was like a Mafioso setup, as LCBO got a cut from very drop of alcohol sold in the province. For me, an enthusiast and a Sommelier student, it was heaven on earth as I had access to thousands of wines & liquors from around the world. 10,000sqft was not an uncommon size for some of the LCBO outlets. I used to wonder hours at a time in these outlets, looking and touching some of the world's most famous wines; Super Tuscans, Bordeaux First Growths, Great America Cabernets, Vintage Ports, Sauternes, or just your run of the mill type wines and liquors.

Simply, I was getting great exposure to all kinds of wines, including dessert wines of all sort; German Icewine, German & Austrian Trokenbeerenauslese, Canadian Icewine, Tokaji, Sauternes, Barsac, Vin Santo, Ports, and many others. I could see and had these wines in my hands whenever I visited my neighbourhood LCBO.

There was one wine however that I have heard and read about but could not find in LCBO, a legendary wine from the Cape in South Africa was no where to be found in LCBO. Upon further inquisition, I was told by my buddies in the LCBO that Canada could not import wines from South Africa because of the Apartheid Regime of Pretoria! Vin de Contance was a famous and highly sought after dessert wine as far back as 3 Centuries ago. It was not until 1998, that I had the chance to taste this magnificent dessert wine from the Cape, and where did I find this wine? in a Makro Hypermarket in Johannesburg !! Go Figure !

The original Vin de Constance, a natural sweet wine from today's Klein Constancia Winery in Cape, South Africa was the creation of Simon van der Stal, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in today's Cape Town in South Africa. The first vintage was 1685 and it was generally thought that Muscat grapes were used to make the intense and aromatic sweet wine. How good was VDC you may ask ????? Well, it was so good that a certain Charles & Jane mentioned the wine in their writing ( as in Dickens & Austen ). How good is VDC you may ask???? Well it was so good that Napoleon asked for it and so did King Louis Philippe of France. Fast Forward 300 years, and we are lucky that the renaissance of this great wine has taken place (I am not going to bore you to ZZZZZ with bunch of history, climate, geography and technical details)Click here know more about Vin de Constance. To be exact, 1986 was the first vintage of modern day VDC as we know it. Today Klein Constancia Estate in Cape Peninsular produces this great sweet wine using 100% Muscat de Frontignan. Go ahead and drink a piece of history if you come across it ...you wont regret it ! . Fine Bins in Kuala Lumpur is the importer of Vin de Constance the last time I checked.

Labels: wine

Kao - Hokkien dialect for things that are full bodied, densed, thick and strong

I recently attended a private wine dinner with a bunch of so call "wine connoisseur" ( most of them just read their first wine book- Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Encyclopedia). It was a privately organized wine dinner where a 4-coursed dinner was pre-ordered with a reputable fine dining restaurant in KLCC. I can't recall what the courses were as the food was not fantastic while adequate. The idea of the evening was for all of us to bring a bottle of wine irrespective of the food being served that night, just to compare notes.

Since our company for the evening was supposed to be wine drinkers of certain caliber, I figured I should at least bring something decent that won't cost me a bomb; a 2002 Almaviva (a Bordeaux Blend.Click here if you want to know more), which I got from a certain reputable discount wine shop in PJ New Town at a very decent price. Anyways, as it turned out, my selection was very well received and stood out well that evening as my wine was not only great, but it was the only none Aussie Shiraz, out of the 9 bottles of wines that was brought to the evening!!!!! (Nobody brought white wine btw....but that's another story for another time)

Now, here's where the KAO factor comes in. Malaysian and to certain extend our Southern neighbour, have been enjoying their kao Kao Malaysian style coffee long before Starbuck and Coffee Beans came to our shore. Most of us will still agree today that any Starbuck "Blend of the Day" will be concluded as being too watery by our standard. Bit too thin and Acidic for our liking. Malaysian like their coffee black, thick, sweet and in wine jargon full bodied, and to certain extend, that preference has influence our choice of wine as well.

I think we can safely assume that 90% of the wines drank in this country and maybe slightly lesser in the Asian region is red. Why? Reports about benefits of drinking red wine may have something to do with it, but the key is that the Aussie have done a great job marketing their country as a serious wine producer and their adopted grape - shiraz (Syrah in other part of the world. Origin in the Middle East and grown well in Rhone, France..find out more) a varietal wine to be reckon with. Of course it was not all marketing, they obviously have some seriously good Shiraz from Australia.

For what's more accessible in the market, a textbook Aussie red wine is like " being whacked in the face with a 2x4 plank". This wine is forwardly fruity, full bodied, not too acidic, low tannins, slightly off dry and has 15-16% in alcohol. Translated; a fruity, easy drinking full bodied red wine with lots of alcohol. Must be KAO!!!! and goes down easy too. To take this a step further in our evolution of red wine drinking...lets factor in our YaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmmmmmSeng culture, we like our yamseng routine and make any excuse for the opportunity to do it, and it is uniquely Malaysian Boleh! With us switching from hard liquor to wine in most social & private occasions, it is not hard for us to figure out why the a typical Aussie red is our choice of wine, at least until our palates mature somewhat .

CONG WA HONG'S CURRY LAKSA FOUND

16th November 2006 around 1.30pm; I had a few hours on my hands and just happened to be in the neighbourhood of Petaling Street AGAIN, so I went searching for that nostalgic bowl of curry laksa again. This time I was given proper direction by my friend Mr. Lum. (btw, one of the entrances into Cong Wa Hong is directly across the Public Bank in Petaling Street).
As I walked into the narrow, wet and claustrophobic back alleys, the place seemed & felt smaller, darker and dirtier than I could remember. As its name sake, the place is dominated by Chinese people running their stalls of fresh fish, pork, veggies, dry goods, chickens (live ones and slaughtered on the spot...SARS? WHAT?). The type of faces still looked the same except that now there were foreign workers galore.

The authorities were doing some publicity stunts by conducting a "raiding operasi" on a warehouse of some fakes ( wallets, DVD etc), crowd gathered in back of an old shop house and the city & custom uniforms were seen going through piles of fake stuffs. I counted 4 cameras ( the big serious type used by TV stations) and no less than 8 reporters interviewing some gentlemen in office attire wearing a tie....go figure. I guess you won't see any display of fakes until 5.30pm today as a result the raid !

Anyways, back to my curry laksa; finally found the place of my boyhood memory. The place still looked disastrously unhygienic. Ordered a bowl of bee hoon cos they were out of mee, and had a 100plus cos the rest of the made on the spot drinks looked unappealing. The curry laksa came with chicken, long beans, eggplant and cockles and some sambal belachan....overall not a bad bowl of curry laksa, except that I find the gravy too curry powdery. But a disappointment nevertheless as I could not derived the same sense of satisfaction based on my expectations and memories.
I am sure the food quality was still the same as the place was packed, but why am I disappointed by this bowl of elusive laksa which I had painstakingly seek out after all these years? "Perceived Preference" I say ! Well, as in all things in life, it is a question of preference over a given period of time; be it our preference towards food, cars, wine (read evolution of a wine kaki) & the opposite sex. Something that works for you may not work for me...Kate Moss frankly is too bony for my liking...... I am more of a Kate Winslet type of guy! you get my drift !

These days, my "comfort curry laksa" is found in a coffee shop in TTDI (another story), and I have to say, after my Petaling Street excursion, I consider this TTDI curry laksa be the best in its category (Penang, Serawak, Asam etc being the other category, learn more) thus far.
What is a good bowl of KL curry laksa? you may ask. Well, start with a good ikan bilis soup base, fresh curry paste and coconut enriched gravy is a must. The curry taste must not be too over-powering. Ideally, the condiments should have long beans, cockles, blood jelly, tofu puff, steamed white chicken, and must be eaten with a good sambal and juice of 2 calamansi to balance off the richness of the santan...good or not ?

Petaling Street, Kuala Lumpur - a local boy's Perspective

Back in 1980 when Federal Highway and Old Klang Road were the only main road & highway to travel from Klang to KL, and Sri Jaya and Lian Heng(or Lian Seng..cant remember) were the only public bus available, I remember going to KL was an adventure by itself. Pertama Complex and Sungei Wang was the only prominent malls around.My best buddy at the time Loke Gim Hoe, was my tour guide every time we go downtown as I had just moved to KL from Ipoh. We would go to a back alley in Petaling Street or CICONGKAI ( Cantonese translated as shark fin street , the name of that back alley was called CONG WA HONG, which means Chinese Alley literally.We would have our favourite and as far as my memories serves me, the best curry laksa in the world.
Envision this; back alley, beggars, stinky drain, rats the size of cat and greasy bowls and chopsticks, sitting under 40 degree C temperature and suffocating humidity...not exactly your McDonald's type hygiene scenario. Also envision this, Steamy bowl of santan thicken curry laksa (meehoon+mee for me please), tofu puff, blood jelly, pork skin, seeham, (couldnt afford chicken then) and garnish with an oily scoop of sambal....its was heaven on earth ! Time and time again we went back to the back alley hawker store to savour this masterpiece.
I was in the Petaling Street neighbourhood couple of days ago, so I decided to take a stroll down Petaling Street.Things still looked and felt the same like 20 odd years ago except for the fashion and the RM2 million roof/shelter/canopy whatever. Contradictions is what this place is about; it looks chaotic and yet you feel the unspoken order in every corner. You see the bleached blonde chinese kid selling fake watches and the Bangla guy selling fake Gucci bags. One get the feel that they are all being organized by some higher power who control all the transactions in this area.Fruit stalls, fakes, Clothing, cheap hotels, dvd, and bargain hunting tourists completes this hustling bustling scene. Despite the chaos and craziness, I felt safe and calm walking thru Petaling Street, and I dont recall seeing any Policeman and yet the sense of law & order exists. I still kept my wallet and cell in my front pocket, but the feel was good.
OK, I lied ! I did not just happen to be in the neighbourhood...I was there looking for that bowl of Curry Laksa ! Didnt have a clue where CONG WA HONG was as I wondered, and ended up not finding what I was looking for. I did however, stumble upon a decent bowl of beef noodle. A stall ran by a 40 something lady with her 5 Burmese workers. Nothing fancy but just your hearthy, clear soup beef noodles with tendon, tripe and thin sliced beef. hit the spot lah....and the search goes on (continue at post titled " Cong Wa Hong'curry laksa found)