Cadman's Wine Blog

Cadman Fine Wines has just been reviewed by Chris Kissack (aka the Winedoctor.com).

Here follows an excerpt (for the full review, including wine reviews, please visit the Winedoctor website)…

“…Cadman Fine Wines has been trading online for several years now, and the website and business appear to be going from strength to strength. Established in 2004 by Giles Cadman under the umbrella of the Venulum Group, a private company providing investment services in property and wine, Cadman Fine Wines was created to provide a retail service to complement the well-established investment business. At the helm of the group is Giles himself, a man with a clear and innate passion for wine, aided by sales and marketing manager Paul Trimming, among others….it is worthy of mention that there is no minimum purchase limit, so if it is just one bottle that takes your fancy, then that is all you need to buy, a feature of which Cadman is especially proud.”

“The world financial system – so the columnists infer – may break down at any moment. The business of digging up gold and burying it again in deep vaults just is not working. As to investment, gilts, equities are so hazardous it would not surprise us in the least if even the gnomes of Zurich are now secretly swapping carats for Claret.” (Winter wine list by Peter Dominic Ltd, published in 1965!)

In their list you could pick up a case of 1959 Lynch Bages for the princely sum 22 shillings – £1.25, I believe. But should you now wish to drink this little gem it would set you back £6000 a case!

Now that’s what I call wine investment.

In 1978 the Baron chose the Canadian artist Jean-Paul Riopelle for the 1978 vintage – he liked both designs submitted by Riopelle and used them in equal measure – so in this Mouton Rothschild vintage there are two labels – and we have one bottle of each design in stock.

Well, it’s out in print and up on the web.

Our brand new fine wine list is chock-a-block with classic labels, old favourites and new wine finds from some rarely seen corners of the wine world.

The web is a great place to buy and compare wines, of course, but every fine wine enthusiast needs a printed fine wine list for their coffee table; and if you have not received a copy of our fine wine list, please
email us for your copy now.

To celebrate my 8 weeks on Twitter, and not giving up, I have decided to give away a bottle of 1969 Lafite. I buy a lot of wine from my own vintage and although this particular one is not amazing, it is still very enjoyable and always interesting to taste something 40 years old. I actually think I have aged a little better than the wine, but that’s just my view.

With all the hype and excitement about 09 primeur I thought I would have some fun and hold a contest, the rules are:

1. Accurately predict the chateau release price for one bottle of Lafite Rothschild 09.

2. It must be in US dollars.

3. Two things to work out; the release price and the currency conversion from Euros to Dollars.

Please reply on my personal blog page (Include your Twitter name and your guess). The competition is open to anyone over 18 in a country or state which allows the importation of wine. If there is more than one correct guess I will ask a second question as a decider. This is for fun and it is part of a wine price forecasting tool I am developing as a PHD subject.

Giles Cadman, Chairman Cadman Fine Wines

Thursday afternoon at Bordeaux airport provided a chance to catch up with many others from the Trade all returning home to either London or Bristol after their week’s tasting; many had come out for either/both longer and in more force than other years due to the hype.

We found a fairly broad consensus that whilst the overall quality is high, it is not as even as the other great recent vintages of 2005 and 2000, but there will undoubtedly be some very fine and long-lived wines from 2009; the peaks perhaps more pronounced than both 2005 and 2000 where winemakers have got it right and managed to combine the huge density and opulence with ripe, fresh tannins and balance. As ever, the quality of work in the vineyards and winemaking in the cellar is evident in those that have been successful and also noticeably lacking on those that have not.

Turning to Thursday’s tastings, Richard and I were more pleasantly surprised than we had feared – despite the predominance of very-ripe (occasionally over-ripe) Merlot in the wines, those who benefited from the cooler clay soils and limestone base and who picked judiciously early have produced some very fine wines, which do retain freshness, balance and appeal alongside their immense richness and intensity. We did not taste a huge range of Pomerols, but the overall quality seemed higher than usual, with wines like La Pointe, Clos du Clocher showing fairly strongly – bodes well, coupled with notes from others, for the superstar estates of Vieux Chateau Certan, L’Eglise Clinet and L’Evangile which we will taste during our field trip in early June.

Saint-Emilion showcased its usual mixture of fairly modest mediocrity
alongside some better efforts; we liked Beau-Sejour Becot, Figeac, Pavie Macquin, La Clotte, and we thought the Troplong Mondot was class in its own inimitable full-on style, but all were undoubtedly outdone by Angelus with 95+ points.

We were also both delighted to see very good wines from Castillon, Fronsac and Blaye – Christian’s intense Chateau Veyry, a sublime offering from Canon-Fronsac’s Cassagne Haut Canon and a terrific showing from Bel-Air la Royere respectively being the highlights.

So a day, which certainly provided more encouragement and identified a further few stars of the vintage as far as we were concerned.

It will be fascinating to also see more of the post-tasting reviews as they emerge in the near future…

Mike Kin’s update after a full-on day of tasting on the Left Bank…

It has certainly proved to be another fascinating day, rather bearing out what we had felt yesterday:

a) The wines on the left bank again showed a tremendous density and concentration of tannins, many also bear the hallmark of the very high alcohol levels. Those that are most successful have managed to retain more
elegance, balance and a distinct freshness of fruit and acidity on the finish; many however have not achieved this and simply appear to be huge and lacking vitality, making them quite demanding and heavy to get through.

b) Same questions raised as yesterday regarding the style of the wines and
where they might be headed in the future – we are uncertain as to whether we can buy into the idea that this is like 1982, 1947 or the latest look-a-like vintage banded around today, 1929! It certainly does not appear to have the same qualities of 2005 or 2000 whatever the Bordelaise would have us believe.

Richard Marlowe has coined the phrase ‘a bodybuilder vintage’ courtesy of the extra body and power that almost all the wines seem to have taken on – it’s a good analogy. Bound however to appeal to Parker as well as Suckling. Further concerns re: pricing expressed today, talk of 300 euros release price for the 1st growths; acknowledgement that they need a good commercial en primeur campaign to also have a kickback to the large stocks that are sitting in most places of 06, 07 & 08.

c) We tasted through all the UDGC offerings from the left bank – Saint-Julien, Pauillac, Saint Estephe, Margaux, Medoc, Haut Medoc, Listrac and Moulis as well as the Sauternes / Barsac and also looked in on the Cru Bourgeois tasting fairly briefly.

Winners of the day were Branaire-Ducru (Saint-Julien) with 94 points; Pauillac’s Pichon-Longueville (Baron) scoring similarly or just higher and Haut-Bages Liberal with 93 points; in Margaux, the difficulty of the high alcohol in the Merlot manifested itself more fully – Ferriere with 93 points was on its own to offer some traditional Margaux elegance and floral notes, whilst we were undecided how Rauzan-Segla’s massive form may take shape.

The lesser appellations, as is normally the case by and large, failed to excite. Likewise, it is obviously not a great year for the dessert wines most just showed heavy, sugary, syrupy character with little focus, definition or aromatic complexity.

We are slightly fearful for what tomorrow on the right bank ma bring…news of super-ripe (over-ripe) Merlot and alcohol levels over 15 degrees does not bode particularly well. At least we can look forward to a few good wines in the Cercle courtesy of Christian Veyry, the Loriauds and La Clotte…

I have been fortunate to have tasted so many wonderful old wines over the years. In fact, there are not many vintages from 1900 onwards that I have not tasted.

Obviously, some vintages are barely drinkable, but generally, there is some wine, port or sherry to be tasted. It was never my intention or a target to do this, just the pursuit of pleasure. When I taste I like to sit back and think about what was happening at that time in history; traffic noise, laugher, or the news of the day are just a few of the pictures and sounds that flash through my mind. For me, wine should provocate and create an emotional response.

I am currently at my British Virgin Islands home in the Caribbean; I have business here and love spending time in the sun after the long British and Canadian winters. The only downside is that the humidity and heat make it difficult to appreciate fine wines and almost impossible to maintain temperature, especially the interference of air-conditioning. What does work well is Champagne; I have steadily built up a collection and open a bottle or two when the occasion permits.

We have had a very good start to the year, which built on the success of 2009 and positive news last week in all our business sectors meant only one thing, Champagne!

I opened a magnum of 1961 Moet with a couple of great friends. I try to only buy magnums of champagne to age, as I have been very disappointed with bottles in the past. (A quick tip – make sure that you decant older vintages of Champagne to avoid the tartrate crystals.)

But back to the actual wine…Moet’s 1961 was golden yellow (sorry forgot to take pictures!). Huge brioche and honey, into ripe pineapple aromatics with enough acidity to lift clean off the palette, leaving the bubbles to dance on your tongue. Zero oxidation and none of that sherry-like taint that some bottle-aged Champagne has. In short, we got excited, we talked, we laughed, and we raved about this wonderful experience.

In summary, the ‘61 Moet, made at the dawn of the swinging 60s, was evocative. We felt naughty, charged, and the conversation moved to music, dancing and being outrageous. Well, as outrageous as a group of 40 year olds can be. We tried to imagine how much fun the students were having picking the grapes, probably stopping off on their way back from St Tropez in their Triumph Heralds to earn a bit of cash. We talked about our parents, a time without iphones, twitter or blogging. It was a wonderful evening and something I will always remember.

We cannot wind the clock back, but from all of the wines I have tasted from the 60s this is the one that I felt gave me a little a sneak peak of that time.

Thank you Moet.

The bottle we opened was disgorged in 2001, and I think this is the main reason it was so clean bright and fresh. The house of Moet was founded in 1743 by Claude Moet, but it wasn’t until his grandson got together with M. Chandon that the most well recognised of all Champagnes was created. Moet et Chandon is now the largest Champagne house in the world, producing over 20 million bottles a year. It is possibly the most well recognised brand and their Dom Perignon is possibly the greatest Champagne in the world.

Well, one short afternoon into our tasting schedule for Richard Marlowe Snr and I, and as one would expect, given the way that the 2009 vintage has been touted since the latter part of last year, the hype is intensifying.

Attendance at the tasting seemed to be up on last year, and there appeared to be more nationalities in evidence, including the Americans interestingly.

Impressions from our first few hours in situ and our first tasting covering Graves/Pessac-Leognan:

a) Undoubtedly the vintage has produced some huge (monstrous) wines – the sheer density and richness of tannins, fruit weight, alcohol in some wines is quite staggering.

b) This can make the wines appear rather New World in style and give the impression of low yields to increase the concentration; whereas in fact it is down to mother nature who appears to have given another set of formidable characteristics to the vintage.

c) This does raise the question as to whether this is actually what you would expect / want from Bordeaux wines? Thus far we are yet to find wines that fully demonstrate the elegance, harmony, structure that one might hope to find in top Bordeaux. And we were both asking ourselves where the wines may go from here given their huge density, concentration, opulence? And they do not sit entirely comfortably with Richard’s desire to find a wine which is digestible and encourages you to drink it!

d) In so far as Pessac-Leognan is concerned, the usual mixed bag I am
afraid; all the wines certainly showed typicity for the vintage. The whites marked by a ripe predominantly stone fruits core and less of the citrusy / minerally style of gentler years; the reds demonstrated a pronounced torrefied black fruits / spicy mocha, dark chocolate character. Of the wines that showed, as normal the leader of the pack was Smith Haut Lafitte with the white scoring 92-93, and the red 93-94. Not far behind in the reds was Les Carmes Haut Brion scoring 92-93. Richard’s note for Pape Clement rouge says it all: ‘Ultra concentrated, huge tannins, some fresh fruit character but utterly monstrous. 92′

We are hoping for a better day tomorrow, with a chance to see how the
Cabernets coped with nearing 14 degrees of alcohol as we tackle the Medoc.