Amsterdam round up

Keep death off the roads - ride on the pavements.

Following on from previous coverage of Dutch wine we made further inroads into the merchants of Amsterdam with rewarding results. Rewarding for wine in general if sadly not as far as Dutch wine was concerned.

Our conclusions from previous visits were

1. Dutch wine is very good.
2. Unlike the UK where sparkling wine accounts for about 2/3rd of production, the reverse is true in the Netherlands - maybe even less.
3. Dutch still wine in our opinion is generally better than English and Welsh table wine.
4. The Dutch have an unaccountable prejudice against their own wines. One merchant described Dutch wine as white, sour and expensive. Not in our experience.
5. It is very difficult to buy Dutch wine in Amsterdam at least. Most of it is grown in Limburg in the south of the country and simply doesn't make its way up to the North. Not a huge journey you would have thought.
6. Dutch wine can achieve about 1% higher alcohol than English or Welsh wine, sometimes reaching 13%. Grapes such as Riesling can ripen there whereas they have not much hope of doing so in the UK.

Spot the English wine!

This time we discovered some nice wine shops selling an eclectic range of world wines (including a bottle of English sparkling white from Nytimber at E.125 a bottle but still no improvement in the supply of Dutch wine.

Grapes include Regent and the Blattner variety Pinotin

Johanniter, Solaris and the Blattner variety Riesel.

One welcome exception was at Schiphol airport of all places where you could buy a Dutch white and a Dutch red. We have only tasted the white so far. It's surprisingly good which is what you can say of Dutch wine in general.

Cave Rokin is still one of the few places that can be relied on to stock the odd bottle of Dutch wine.

We were determined to buy another couple of bottles of Thorn's excellent Dornfelder which they stock. This grape is difficult to ripen in the UK but obviously not in the Netherlands.

Johanniter from Van de Breede Beek was also an excellent find on a restaurant winelist. Why do we have so little Johanniter in the UK if you can make such refreshing wine as this with it? For the record it was bred in Freiburg from Riesling, Seyve Villard crossed with an unknown reststance partner, Pinot Gris and Chasselas.

Quite a few of the nice wine shops we discovered said that they were waiting for the new season's wine to come in. Meanwhile there was no lack of interesting bottles to be fondled and even bought.

 Our greatest find was an Abrostine in purezza. We had never heard of Abrostine but it appears to be an ancient Tuscan variety found between Firenze and Siena. D'Agata isn't tremendously encouraging: 'Abrostine may not be the second coming of Pinot Nero but it's not Concord either.'. In a subsequent tasting it performed brilliantly and was definitely more-ish.

This discovery was by courtesy of De Wijnhuys. A beautfully curated selection from all over.

You would be very happy to have this as your local winemerchant.

Grapedistrict is a small but nicely formed chain. Cute name.

De Gouden Ton was attractive too.

As was Wine and Roses.

Chabrol Wines was particularly interesting as they act as agents and importers with several prominent names of smaller wineries on their list.

They were also very helpful in our various quests. The name of this outfit has an interesting derivation:

Faire Chabrol is an old southern French custom among winemakers that Chabrol owner Rex Neve has enjoyed many times during his years in Bordeaux. It starts with pulling a hearty soup or broth. Pour it in a bowl at the right time, choose the right red wine and enjoy. However, as soon as you can see the bottom of the bowl through the soup, it is time to put the spoon aside and add a generous splash of red wine. Then bring the bowl to the mouth and drink greedily from the resulting brew. Rex was so charmed by the intense pleasure on the face of the winemakers, it exactly matched what he feels with wine, and therefore, once back in the Netherlands, decided to call his store Chabrol.

Indeed we bought a bottle from them just for fun; a de-alcoholised Bacchus from Germany. Always on the holy grail search for 0% alcohol wines, this one was no better than the rest so we're not adding a photo here.

Amsterdam really does cater for every taste. There is even a shop dedicated exclusively to Bourgogne.

 Albrecht and Janssen are exquisite in their selections and presentation.

Foolishly we asked about any raer grape varieties. This caused much merriment since Burgundy is made exclusively from Chardonnay, Aligote and Pinot Noir as everyone knows.

To save face we countered with the rather weak suggestion they might have some Cesar. Even more mirth with the assurance that no good wine had ever been made with that grape. They may be right.

We fancied the great Harpsichordist and Organist Gustav Leonhardt might have known Albrecht and Janssen. He was very much a Burgundy man and lived around the corner on the Herengracht.

Last but very much not least was De Wijnwinkel.

Olle Swets

The presiding genius is Olle Swets who has run the company for many years and now owns it. Like Chabrol Wines, Olle is also an importer.

The first impression was good. Extraordinarily good in fact. Being a Saturday, Olle had a tasting on the go and what a tasting!

There was an unprecedented vertical tasting of a Chianti called Percarlo. No less than seven years from 2008 - 14 were open for anyone to taste. Serious stuff but also how welcoming and how generous with the message loud and clear 'we would like to share this great experience with you.'

In our usual boring way we were after wines other than Chianti however and took a reasonably serious look at the stock.

By an amusing coincidence we came across a Bombino Bianco and a Nero di Troia together - exactly the grapes we had sourced from Hatfield last autumn.

Amazing to find here the wines of our friends Antico Cantine Migliaccio 

(Ponza).

There was plenty of choice. Olle says he imports many discoveries he makes in Italy and Spain and his shelves are unique for that reason. He's a regular at VinItaly and was rather dreading going there again for the umpteenth time but his customers can be happy with the result.

We left with this interesting Penedes blend of Grenache Blanc, Macabeu, Xarel-lo, Parellada and Sumoll. Gerard Depardieu no less has left behind on Vivino the comment 'Une belle sauvagerie.'

There is a red version made from the same grapes in different proportions!

What will they think of next?