International Booze Contest: Italy vs Vietnam

A couple of weeks ago I thrilled you with tales from my Vietnamese honeymoon, one of which involved coming into possession of a bottle of bootleg longan wine. I remember my first impression on tasting it was that it was a bit like grappa, and I have made no secret of the fact that I’m a big fan of the grappa - it’s not as readily available, as varied or as complex as whisky, but I think it is probably my second favourite spirit.

So one of the first things I thought of when I got my grubby little mitts on that longan wine, was that I would have to do a comparative tasting at my earliest convenience. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, weighing in at 40% ABV and costing £48: Domenis Blanc e Neri grappa – aged 18 months, and already victorious in a contest with the budget Grappa JuliaSuperiore. 

The challenger this evening is the 45% longan wine, distilled by a guy in the Mekong Delta, presented in a plastic bottle, and costing something like £4.70. May the classiest spirit win.

In terms of presentation there are some interesting considerations. Blanc e Neri comes in a box, and the bottle has a plastic cork. Any kind of cork is a good thing when it comes to spirits. With this one, there’s no squeak on opening, but there’s a magnificent and resounding pop. The longan wine though, is homemade. It’s rare. I had to go all the way to Vietnam to get it. That makes it incredibly cool in my opinion. Unfortunately it comes in a plastic bottle, which makes it look like something you might find on the floor at a festival.

There isn’t actually that much difference in colour between the two spirits. The grappa has been aged for 18 months, so it’s not white like all the other grappas I’ve ever had. If there is any difference, then it is that the grappa is very slightly deeper in colour.

I’m afraid that while I did get a brief description of how the longan wine was made – which essentially confirmed that it was distilled – there was no information with regard to aging. I must presume that, since newly distilled spirit would be clear, that it has been aged – or if not aged as such, the colour is the result of being stored.

The differences really started to come out when I got to the nosing. Blanc e Neri is fragrant, fruity and rich while longan wine is… weird. It’s unmistakeably east Asian, but beyond that I don’t know how to describe it.

I realised at this point, that longan wine isn’t really that much like grappa at all, and I don’t know how I ever came to think it was. I suppose it must have some element that led me to think that but alongside the real thing, they are quite different.

It only took a couple of sips alongside the grappa to give me the impression I didn’t really like the taste of the longan wine all that much. My tasting faculties must have been acclimatised to Vietnamese flavours while I was over there, as it has a kind of bready flavour in contrast to the fruity tones of the grappa that I didn’t notice initially.

Soon after the test began I found I was trying to get the longan wine out of the way so that I could relax and settle into enjoying the grappa so, to cut a long story short, Domenis Blanc e Neri is victorious once again.

Thinking back now, when we were tasting the longan wine originally, the guide and the guy who made it were knocking it back quickly, while I’m used to eking out every last drop of flavour from whatever I’m drinking, and now I think I know why. I could finish off the rest of my bottle that way, but I don’t really see the point in drinking something if you don’t want to taste it. If you didn’t want to taste your liquors, you wouldn’t get interested in booze because the cheapest vodka at the supermarket would be sufficient.

I thought at this point that I might be stuck with this bottle for some time, and I’d probably end up tipping it down the sink. I had figured that most of my friends wouldn’t be very interested in it but it goes to show that you shouldn’t go assuming all your friends are the same. Several were willing to give it a go and one or two even said they thought they liked it. I took it along at one point to a meeting of the Manchester Whisky Club, and while I didn’t honestly expect anyone to want to try it, to their credit the general attitude was one of enthusiastic curiosity. No one was concerned about the possible adverse health effects of drinking unregulated alcohol. What does that tell you? I can’t say anyone actually liked it, but a number of people were willing to give it a try. I’d like to thank everyone for that.

When I bought it I was hoping the longan wine would be a suitable replacement for my grappa as it gradually dwindled to nothing, but while I was wrong, I like to feel I got some good value out of it. No, I never enjoyed it while relaxing on the sofa or in the garden, but it provided an interesting talking point and proved good entertainment when friends came to visit.

The high point for me actually, was when we went to a bring your own booze Vietnamese restaurant, just north of Manchester’s city centre (Vnam). I took a couple of large beers, as you should, but I’d been thinking hard for a few minutes about taking a bottle of spirits with me too. We just couldn’t figure out between us whether there is an etiquette about these things and whether it is even allowed to take anything other than beer or wine. In the end I didn’t bother finding out (though to be fair, I should have done that just so I could let you know), because I remembered I had the longan wine, and it might provide a nice accompaniment to the Vietnamese food. It actually did. I had wanted to ask the staff at the restaurant whether they knew what it was, but my friend Claire said I shouldn’t because I’d look like a dick. I took her advice. I was still hoping they might notice it – honestly, you could smell it across the restaurant when I opened it. Gav and I polished off the bottle between us and got nicely smashed. The food was pretty awesome too.

Well, I’ll be heading to Italy towards the end of next month, so I’ll finally get a chance to replace that bottle of grappa without having to remortgage. I think some Italian brandy will be on the cards as well. As ever, more on that sometime in the future.

Now, you might have noticed that it isn’t Friday. Yes, I’m afraid I couldn’t be bothered to post on Friday night and since I am often busy on Fridays, and less so on Sundays, I think Sunday will be my regular day from now on. It shouldn’t matter much to you, to be fair. So! Instead of having a great weekend, I hope you had a great weekend and continue on to have a satisfactory week. I’ll see you next Sunday.

Grappa face-off

Following the Friday night on which I did a comparative tasting of my 5 whiskies, I decided on the Saturday to do something similar with the two grappas that I had in. You’ve met one of them before – Grappa Julia Superiore(38% ABV) – here and here, but the other was a new acquisition that I haven’t told you about yet – Domenis Blanc e Neri (40% ABV), that I picked up from Carrington’s in Didsbury.

It was two days before Christmas, and we were over that end of town getting some supplies, and putting together a Christmas hamper for some very good friends of ours. I decided it would be a good opportunity to invest in a new bottle of grappa.

They only had two in stock, which I have to admit surprised and disappointed me somewhat, since it suggests I may have to order online in future. One was the Domenis Storica that is already a favourite of mine (that you can read a little about here and here), so I had to go for the other – Blanc e Neri. It was a couple of pounds cheaper than the Storica, and the bottle was 20ml bigger. This would also prove to be the first aged grappa I’d bought (not including the one I got long ago from Vom Fass, because I can’t remember any details about that one…), at 18 months. Considering it is aged and there’s more of it, I don’t know why it works out to be less expensive than the Storica – hopefully it’s not because it’s not as good, but rather is reflective of the staggering 10% difference in ABV – Storica being a heroic 50%.

I don’t know whether it was just because it was Christmas, or maybe people don’t often spend around £50 for a bottle of grappa for themselves, but the lady in Carrington’s seemed to assume I was making this purchase as a gift, but no; it was for me – I seriously don’t actually know anyone else who likes grappa. The same thing happened when I went in there to buy my El Jimador tequila. I don’t think I mentioned it in my earlier post on that, but the same lady assumed I was buying it to share with friends. No, I said, It’s for me – well; I might let some friends try it… but mostly it was for me. And if it was to be shared with friends, it was only so they could see how interesting and refined I am.

In the picture there, you can see the two grappas in their glasses. Obviously there’s some difference there, with the Domenis Blanc e Nero having taken on a luscious golden colour, while Julia – as standard - is translucent. And so, on to the nosing and tasting…

Now, in my Budget Brands: Tesco Grappa post, I admitted to being quite impressed with Grappa Julia Superiore. It remains the only grappa I’ve ever seen in a UK supermarket, and at £13 a bottle it’s a fraction of the cost you’d pay for other grappas. The only disappointment is the unremarkable and discouraging 38% ABV.

However, when compared side by side with a more premium brand, Julia’s failings are all too apparent – because this Domenis Blanc e Neri is an absolute de-light. Really; some of the flavours I was getting from this glass brought to mind a very classy single malt whisky, of the kind that has been finished in a sherry cask. It was sweet but not too sweet, a little salty, with a very nice tongue burn, and only a little bitter on the finish. Very classy indeed. I’m only an enthusiastic novice, but I feel pretty confident when I say that. Just thinking about it now makes me want another glass, and in fact, of all the spirits I have at the time of writing, this is probably now my favourite. I can taste it right now, just thinking about it. And you know; I like whisky, and keep several in stock, so that my favourite spirit from my cupboard isn’t on of them: that’s saying something.

My original intention when buying grappas was to just get the cheapest available, and while this was the cheapest available, it is already entering the premium spirits category as far as I’m concerned (shall we set the threshold at £50 for now?), so I guess that puts that idea to rest. I can see that The Whisky Exchange has a few more varieties for less than £30, but at least five of them are the same brand as each other, just based on different grape varieties, so that’s not necessarily ideal.

In conclusion then, let’s not take anything away from Julia. If you want a bottle of grappa without much outlay, and you’ve got a decent sized Tesco nearby, it is going to do the job – as long as you don’t try it alongside something special. That’s pretty good. If, on the other hand, you’ve got £50 spare, and you can justify spending it on some fancy booze for yourself, I find it hard to believe you could be disappointed with Domenis Blanc e Neri. I think the bitterness on the finish does put it slightly behind the Storica in terms of overall quality, but it has enough going for it to earn a hearty recommendation from me.

Grappa is a criminally underrated spirit, here in the UK. I think it’s about time you made the effort and gave it a go. You listening? I’m going to make it my mission to put grappa on the UK map. I don’t know how – perhaps by mentioning it a lot – but hopefully we can get some more brands in supermarkets before too long. Is that a bad thing, mind? All the specialist off licenses are already going out of business round here, so maybe we shouldn’t be neglecting them in favour of the convenience of evil multinational supermarkets (not naming any names). Yeah! Nevertheless, get out there and get some frickin grappa.

Blimey, I almost forgot my weekly update! So, I'm afraid that will be all you'll hear from me for about 3 weeks because the missus and I are off to Vietnam. I'm definitely looking forward to picking up some duty free and seeking out some Mekong Whisky, so there should be plenty to tell you about when I get back. Try not to miss me too much. I'll try to tweet from time to time, so you can try following me there, if you like.

Ok, keep your lives booze-fuelled, and I'll see you when I get back. That is all.

Booze Wars! Tesco's Grappa Julia Superiore vs RuaVieja

Good evening everyone, it sure is nice to welcome you to this week’s blogpost. Just a brief one this week, and while I don’t want to lower your expectations too much, it probably isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it. You can start now.

Since returning from my honeymoon in Ibiza [now more than] a few months ago, I’d been waiting for an opportunity to conduct another booze wars experiment; pitting the bargain orujo I’d picked up (RuaVieja, 42% ABV) against the cheapest grappa I’ve ever seen in the UK, Tesco’s GrappaJulia Superiore (38% ABV). 

I think this is the first time I’ve ever had two spirits of this type in the house at the same time, so the chance to compare was not one I was going to pass up. Grappa and orujo are both spirits made from distilling pomace, which is the stuff that is left over from wine making – stems, skins etc. It differs from brandy in that brandy is actually distilled wine. From my experiments so far, I have to say I have a preference for pomace spirit.

I took out two glasses as you can see, and poured similar amounts of spirit into each. Both looked identical to me, so I moved straight on to the smell test. I had a good sniff, and detected that the Julia is significantly more fragrant than the RuaVieja. I offered them to Mrs Cake to smell, but she has a cold and can’t smell anything. So, into the lounge I went for some tasting and to finish watching The Taking of Pelham 123 with John Travolta and Denzel Washington (which surprisingly isn’t bad – I know!).

Proper tastings should be conducted without distractions according to whisky expert Jim Murray, but real life is conducted with background noise and entertainment. I was drinking in real life, so getting comfy in front of the telly was the method.

In contrast to the smell test, the RuaVieja performs better than the Julia in terms of flavour. Julia is sweet on entry but bitter at the finish, while RuaVieja appears to me to have greater depth. It’s a pleasure to drink, and an absolute bargain whether you pay the 3 euros 90 that I was lucky enough to get it for (have I mentioned that before?), or the full price of 12 Euros – which is still cheaper than the Julia.

Julia isn’t bad when you think about how much you tend to have to pay for grappa in the UK. It isn’t the best quality, but if you really need a bottle of grappa, you can’t turn your nose up at £13. ‘Who really needs a bottle of grappa?’ you might ask. Well: I do. Perhaps not at the moment; I’ve got the RuaVieja, and I think I’ll be drinking that first.

Another trip to Spain is on the cards this summer, so on top of everything I’m looking forward to hitting the booze shops and the duty free again. I think you can be fairly sure I’ll be picking up some more orujo at some point along the way.

In other news, last night saw the first physical meeting of the Manchester Whisky Club, which went off very successfully. I’ll probably write a bit more about that in the coming weeks. Once again, it is the weekend, and as usual drink features very highly on my agenda – going out, staying in; it doesn’t matter, I’ve got some booze and it’s going in mah belly. Tonight I’m thinking pub, homemade pizza, cans, homemade caipirinhas, cracking open a new bottle of vodka and special spirits to finish. That was quite a poetic sentence. Tomorrow I’m thinking pub sesh and dinner out. Sunday I’m thinking a couple of quiet drinks at home.

Before I take my leave then, I’d like to wish you all a splendid weekend, and I hope you’ll pop back next week when I’ll have something else for you, something better. Hopefully. Till then, you can follow me on Twitter if you like inane comments about booze and stupid thoughts that seem funny when you type them, but actually aren’t. Laters!

The Black Grouse - a whisky to try before you die?

With my (second) stag do approaching [golf weekend], and stocks of the Caol Ila Cask Strength running low, last week I decided it was time to pick up a new special whisky. Having acquired £20 in Sainsburys vouchers, and knowing that I’d be passing a Sainsburys on my way home from a trip to the dentist, I figured I’d call in, and see what they had.

On a previous browsing, I’d noticed the Black Grouse at £17.99. It’s from the Famous Grouse family, and it’s a blend, but my 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die guide marked it out as… a whisky to try before you die. That’s sure to be special, I thought, and after having a cursory browse of Sainsburys’ wares anyway, that was what I opted for.

Could this bottle explain why
brandy isn't seen as cool?

Now, I should have known better, but I let myself get a bit excited. I know, but it had been at least a month since I’d allowed myself to buy any hard liquor – possibly even two (though Brenda had brought me a litre bottle of St Remy brandy back from Paris, and her mother had brought me a 75cl bottle of Windsor Canadian whisky from Canada in that time… and come to think of it, I bought that Grappa Julia Superiore on the eve of my previous stag do…) – but the thought of it certainly brightened up my day.

It was a very hot day, so after I’d stashed the bottle of Black Grouse in my rucksack, I headed for the exit, and decided to take my jacket off and carry it home in one of the straps of the bag – while still wearing the bag, I might add. I really should have been more careful because when it got to the point that I needed to take my arm out of the sleeve, the short tug caused me to drop the bag on the floor – I still hadn’t gotten outside the door.

My immediate thought was, that’ll be all right, but as soon as I picked the bag up, I could see there was whisky leaking out of it – loads of spots like when you get a bad nosebleed.

It’s funny, the thought processes you go through in these situations. Your brain quickly scans the possible courses of action. Obviously though, there weren’t any. There was no way of saving the precious whisky, and there was no way I was going right back inside to buy another one. The only positive aspect of the situation was that, as I’d exited to the back of the store, there was no one around to see my calamity. It even crossed my mind to try and get a taste before it had gone completely – by sucking the wet fabric of the bag or something – but I knew the disaster had taken away any pleasure a sip of whisky could possibly bring, and that bag has seen the floor of a fair few Manchester buses in its time, so I left it alone.

I looked around for a bin, and there wasn’t one so - I’m not proud of it but I had to go to a particularly secluded bit of ground nearby and dump the box containing the broken bottle. I commenced the long walk home, upset and smelling of whisky.

I’d texted my best man Phil beforehand that I was just picking up something special, as he was coming over for part two of my stag later that week. Less than 5 minutes later, and I was texting back that I’d dropped the bastard. I also felt I needed to express my sorrow to Brenda, who I called just as she was about to leave for her step class.

It took me the whole evening to get over it. It was less than £20, and it wasn’t even my money, but for some reason that made it worse. I’d been looking forward to spending that free money, and fate had laughed in my stupid face.

I couldn’t even have a drink that night. Some might drink to drown their sorrows, but I drink for pleasure, and the thought of drinking something just made me sad. [sob]… what might have been, I would have thought.

It was pathetic really, but Brenda indulged me, and bought me a replacement bottle with her own money a couple of days later – despite my protestations, I might add. I had a feeling Phil might be intending to do the same, so I told him, and he said that had been his intention. He bought a new driver for the golf weekend instead – and that was a good move, because he scored pretty well.

All of this brings me to my impressions of the Black Grouse. As I said before, it is included amongst 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die, so expectations were fairly high. It is described as being in the Islay style, so should suit me right down to the ground, and reviews on the Whisky Exchange are mostly favourable, with some comparing it to the single malt, Tallisker.

Plastic bottle - like
mouthwash, only better

Now, I have had a bottle of Tallisker before, back when I was new to whisky, and it didn’t float my boat. Unfortunately the Black Grouse doesn’t strike me as particularly special either. On the Thursday night when Phil came round, I started him with a glass of Windsor Canadian, then a Grant’s and then a Caol Ila before cracking open the Black Grouse. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to try a new blend (after the smooth sweetness of the Windsor and the peaty richness of the super strength Caol Ila), but I’d say we were both somewhat underwhelmed. Rather than try another glass, Phil actually requested more of the Windsor Canadian.

I decided it would take a few more tastings to appraise the Black Grouse fully, but a few days and a few more appraisals later, and I’m no nearer enjoying it. I can just barely taste the peat, and the flavour isn’t very complex. What lingers is that bitterness that so far seems to me to be what gives a cheap blend away.

One of the reviews on the Whisky Exchange spoke of pouring it over an ice cube and then leaving it for half an hour. That seemed like a good idea to me, and I’d like to say that it opened the whisky up a little, but it still doesn’t have the complexity and richness that my favourite whiskies have. It cost £18, and it tastes like £18 of whisky. What more can you expect, really?

There is of course, still much tasting and experimenting to go, with over half a bottle remaining – I’ll definitely try adding a couple of drops of water, but can’t really see the point when it’s only 40% ABV anyway. Sadly, it hasn’t filled the position of ‘special whisky’ that it was intended for, but I still have a bit of the Caol Ila left, and I’ll be able to hit the Duty Free in Ibiza in less than four weeks, so hopefully that will turn up a gem.

Well, that may be all from me for a few weeks. I have got a few posts that are ready to go, but I’m not sure I’m going to have time to post them. I’ll be busy finishing up wedding arrangements, getting married and then going on honeymoon. I think all that should give me enough material to last the rest of the year, so I promise I’ll be back in September and I’ll at least try to get one more post in before then. I suppose summer will be over by that time (the leaves are already falling off the trees in Levenshulme), so make sure you eke as much pleasure as you can out of what’s left of it. It’ll be Christmas before you know it.

Budget Brands: Grappa from Tesco

The cost of the four holidays I had last year is catching up with me, and I have some big expenses coming up – home insurance and the like – so the austerity measures are hitting pretty hard around here. Not the government’s austerity measures; my own. There’ll be no spending with reckless abandon for a while – except for the stag do, the second stag do and the honeymoon, where I’m looking forward to hitting the Duty Free - but facilitating those is a large part of what these measures are aimed at, so things aren’t all bad.

Still, a man needs some short term things to look forward to, so I went to work last week with £20 in my wallet, and I told myself, if I had enough left at the end of the week out of that £20, I would allow myself to buy that cheap bottle of grappa that they have at Tesco. So I needed to have £13 left. If you budget for 5 a side at £6.20, that would leave 80p. So there was to be no chocolate and crisps whenever I got hungry, no bacon and sausage barm first thing on Friday morning, and definitely no takeaway pizza for lunch. It was going to be hard, but these travails make us stronger.

Enough about my financial strait jacket, what about the grappa? Well, yes, of course I made sure that I had £13 left at the end of the week. The carrot and stick approach worked very well. How good though, could a bottle of grappa at £13 possibly be? Obviously I wasn’t expecting it to live up to the standard set by the Domenis Storica that I bought in Venice last year, but retailing at £45-50 in the UK, that one is a little beyond my every day means if I want a nice glass of an evening. If Tesco’s product is even half as good it would be a bargain and a potential new favourite.

The budget brand in this case is Grappa Julia Superiore. It’s the only grappa available in Tesco, and I haven’t seen any other grappas in other supermarkets, so I assumed it would be the equivalent of Bells whisky. Nevertheless, my burgeoning interest in grappa is such that I had to try it.

It has an ABV of 38%, so it is budget standard in that area (the Domenis Storica was an impressive 50%), but in the bottle it looks the part - it’s an interesting shape, and it appears to be made in Italy (as opposed to the Italian part of Switzerland or San Marino, which are the only other places that grappa can come from). Nowhere does it say, “bottled for Tesco”, or anything discouraging like that, though there are descriptions on the back in French, English and German – to me that’s not a great sign, but cool yer boots…

It’s also a full size 70cl, whereas the Storica was a conservative 50cl. A bit of geeky maths tells us you’re paying 18.6p per centilitre for the Julia and a massive 90p per centilitre for the Storica. A bit more geeky maths tells us that the equivalent quantity of Storica would cost £63 - drop for drop, that’s 5 times more than the Julia.

The cap is screw top, so there’s no satisfying squeak-pop on opening, but it has the right smell, and it tastes right. It doesn’t have the lovely sweetness of the Storica, but its (slight) bitterness isn’t overpowering or lasting. It makes a very good first drink of the evening, and I have to say, for £13 I’m satisfied. If I’ll ever buy this brand again, only time will tell – I’m not sure what my grappa needs are yet, but if you do get a craving and your funds are limited, or you’re bored of brandy like the checkout assistant at Tesco said he was when I bought this, it would be worth your while to give this a try.

I was explaining to the assistant that grappa is like brandy, but made differently, and come to think of it, if we widen our net of comparison to compare this grappa to brands of brandy, say the Courvoisier VSOP that retails around £30, I think I much prefer the grappa – it’s half the price, and out of all the sipping bottles I have at the moment, it’s proving to be the every day go-to. No, it’s not as special as the Caol Ila cask strength whisky, but it’s precisely because that’s special that I don’t go to it every day.

The Storica was special also, and all the more precious because of its limited quantity, so while Julia doesn’t quite reach the heights that that one scaled, it’s affordable to the wallet and acceptable to the palate. What more can you ask for?