Flicking through the photographs that we took at the recent The Oxford Times Wine Club dinner at The Corner Club I was delighted to see everyone having such a good time. Everything was spot on: great venue, fabulous wine, lovely food and really terrific company.
The evening opened with a presentation by Montes’ Eduardo Stark.
We do a lot of talking in the trade about vineyard sites and the importance of the terroir and it was great that Eduardo had put together the visual aids to help us all better understand what makes many of their sites so unique and able to deliver such high-quality wines.
There is nothing worse than a dry presentation and this one certainly was not; being both educational and delivered with a glass of Montes Sauvignon Blanc. The success, for me, of this wine is that it has the crisp, grassy, citrus quality that you would expect whilst having that lovely richness in the palate that seems to be the hallmark of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.
With the gastric juices flowing it was time to head down to dinner for the serious business of eating and drinking.
We had learnt our lesson from our first dinner and had spent a good deal of time with Corner Club chef, Martin, to find the perfect food for the wines, and the effort paid off.
The starter was a delicious chorizo and grilled vegetable salad with saffron aioli and we served it with two wines. The first was the Montes Malbec and the other, the Montes Merlot.
The Chorizo was sweet, not excessively spicy or indeed fatty. We all thought it was the best Chorizo we had ever had. Predictably, there was lots of interesting debate about which wine came through best with the food.
Theo, from The Oxford Wine Company, opted for the Merlot; he felt the richness and ripeness of the wine was the perfect foil. I meanwhile — along with most of my end of the room — thought the Malbec was better. We liked that the Malbec had more of a crunchy bite and felt that this enhanced the Chorizo’s sweet flavours.
Next, Martin had produced a sumptuous beef stew with pimentos which had all the flavour and richness required to take on the Montes Purple Angel.
On paper, this is a wine that I would have reservations about. It is a Carmenère-dominated red that spends a chunky 18 months in French and American barrels and comes in at 14.5% alcohol.
In short, it is no pushover.
For me to enjoy this style of wine, it has to have balance. It is no good having lots of fruit if there is insufficient acidity and tannin to give the fruit life.
Purple Angel does achieve this. It was a winning combination and the collective oohs and aahs round the table said it all.
Montes Alpha M is the estate’s premium wine and it is a Bordeaux blend (Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Cabernet Franc/Petit Verdot) of incredible power and presence.
A more robust and complex character than the Purple Angel, it was immediately obvious that it will only improve in time. We had put together a selection of hard, mature cheeses to eat with it and I felt that it was the cheddar that did the best job. Like the wine, the cheese had gutsy flavours and the richness to not be overwhelmed by the wine.
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