Reviews (May 2010)
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Wine Review
by Helen Savage
If you’ve heard of the Malbec grape it’s likely that you’ll associate it with Argentina, where it’s widely planted; but Malbec is French, and has been grown near the old town of Cahors for as long as anyone can remember. Cuttings of it were first planted in South America by immigrants from South West France in the 19th Century.
In Cahors, the locals call it Côt or Auxerrois, but having cottoned onto the commercial success of Argentine and Chilean Malbec, they too have adopted its international name and have even taken to writing it on their wine labels, a move that goes a bit against the French grain. Quality wines there are usually labelled according to the place they come from – not the grape they’re made from.
Cahors’ reputation was founded on intense, even ‘black’ wines that were popular in Britain in the Middle Ages. Later, even more concentrated black wine was made by cooking some of the grapes before fermentation. This jammy brew was used to beef up lesser wines in the early 19th Century. In the late 19th Century there were around 40,000 hectares of vines in Cahors, roughly twice the amount of Malbec planted today in Argentina. And then the deadly American aphid phylloxera arrived.
Although there were attempts to revive the vineyard, especially in the years after the Second World War, severe frosts in 1956 destroyed most of the remaining vines. Replanting gathered pace in the 1970s and there are now around 4,000 hectares of vineyards, scattered on the high limestone ‘causse’ and on the gravely terraces of the River Lot.
I have visited Cahors fairly regularly over the last 25 years and still feel that I’ve got a lot to learn. I’m still trying to understand Malbec itself. On paper, it’s a deep-skinned variety with relatively low acidity and fairly high tannin, but I’m often struck by what tastes like a relatively high level of malic acid, which tends to suggest a slight sourness, and damsonlike fruit.
Indifferent winemaking didn’t help. Thin, tannic wines, lacking in fruit did the region no favours. I remember one gorgeous little number that had been stored under a layer of liquid paraffin, a little of which got into the wine. I was assured by the winemaker that it was perfectly harmless and would float to the top. Unfortunately it didn’t taste terribly good.
More recently, a number of growers have tried to impress by making wines so concentrated that you could stand a proverbial spoon upright in any of them. They don’t impress me, but I’m not too bothered because they’re usually so expensive that I can’t afford them.
But I’ve also found that contrary to the advice in my older books and guides, well-made Cahors can age beautifully. We recently opened a bottle of a wine that cost very little when we bought it ten years ago - Domaine de la Banière 1997. I rather imagined that I would end up using it as the basis of a meaty stew; but it was beautifully balanced and still full of fresh, plummy, spicy fruit. And it strikes me that the best wines, like this, taste more like black cherry and plum than of slightly sour damsons.
One of the leading growers in the area is the affable Jean-Luc Baldès. His Clos Triguedina wines are sold here by Waitrose and the Wine Society. I haven’t tasted the Waitrose wine recently: Malbec du Clos, but I have always enjoyed its juicy fruit and it’s great value at around £7.29.
Jean-Luc is fearless in his attempts to make the most of what nature and the previous six generations of his family at Clos Triguedina have made possible. He recently launched a deliciously pink, sparkling Malbec, a first for the region, and his sweet white made from Chenin Blanc grapes is superb; but his most extraordinary effort is ‘The New Black Wine’, an attempt to bring the semicooked wine of the early 1800s into the 21st Century. Part of the harvest is gently heated before fermentation. It is a remarkable wine, though to be honest, I’m more impressed by his more conventional efforts: the easy-drinking, wonderfully fruity ‘Petit Clos’ (the 2007 is £8.95 from the Wine Society) and Clos Triguedina pure and simple – a more complex, lingering wine (the 2006 is £13.50 from the Wine Society). ‘The New Black Wine’ (2006), by the way, is a snip at £34.06 from the Wine Society.
Wine of the Month
Raimat Viña 24, Albariño 2009£8.99 Oddbins Wonderfully zesty dry white from a Spanish grape grown not in its home soil of Galicia but in the hotter Catalan climate of Costers del Segre. A great success: it’s slightly salty, but has bags of spicy pear and lime fruit. Try it with a spicy fish dish.
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Film and Faith
by Luke O sbaledston
The Men Who Stare At Goats (2010)
Certificate: 15
DVD Rental Release UK: 29th of March 2010
Cinema Release UK: 6th of November 2009
Length: 89 minutes
Director: Grant Heslov
Stars: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey.
There is an oft-quoted opinion, which occasionally I share, that the trailers you see for films whilst waiting for the main feature in the cinema contain the best parts of the film being advertised. In short, if you’ve seen said trailer, then you have seen the bits worth watching in the film, and might as well not bother watching the full release.
In the case of The Men Who Stare At Goats, I agree – the trailer is, rather desperately, the ‘funniest’ thing about this film, and even the trailer is not very good, or very funny, unless you are the kind of person who roars with laughter at the Orange commercials shown before main features in cinemas too. If you find those commercials funny, then read no more, but make it your business to see this film, because you will probably bust a gut laughing at it. If you hate the Orange commercials and find them completely unfunny and a waste of time, then read on, reassured that this is not the film for you either.
The biggest problem with this offering is that it purports to be a comedy. It is, of course, what I call a ‘Hollywood’ comedy, i.e., devoid of humour, but full of big names. There was a time when Hollywood could, very occasionally, manage both. So, we have the odd cast of Clooney et al trying to play it deadpan with unpromising material about military research into psychic phenomenon. Clooney can just about manage it – he is not a very versatile or convincing actor in my view – as can the rest, but the long running joke of ‘Jedi’ in the military with, ho ho, Ewan McGregor (late of the three ghastly ‘new’ Star Wars films in which he played, tee hee, a Jedi Knight) - you appreciate that the subtlety at play here is thin and unfunny from the start. By the time it is repeated for the fifth time, then you know something is amiss.
The only charitable thing to commend this film is that it is 89 minutes long, which is good, because many new films seem to confuse quality with quantity, and go on for far too long. This film confuses unfunny and uninteresting, with funny and intelligent. An attempt at satire is running down an Iraqi kidnap victim in the desert. He later helps the main protagonists, (Clooney and McGregor) and is probably about the most interesting character in this film. If you doubt me, watch some of the extras on the DVD, which feature real-life former military personnel who were involved with the US Army’s research into psychic phenomena. You will find them about as riveting as a politician. With such unpromising original source material, it does not seem to have dawned on the makers of this film that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or a dead goat for that matter.
If you are unlucky enough to be given a copy of this film as a present, I would suggest leaving it in the shrink wrap and finding a George Clooney (or Ewan McGregor) fan and giving it to them. Either that, or use it as a novelty coaster for your coffee table. It is not the worst film ever, which is part of its problem – its sheer mediocrity. I know of some people who stare at the Blessed Sacrament in prayer – a much more profitable exercise than watching this film.
e-mail: FrLuke@angelic.com
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Book Review
The Galloping Stone
Edited by Gillian Allnutt,
published by New Writing North,
ISBN 9780955882968 (£5)
www.newwritingnorth.com
In 1902 the artist Jacob Epstein illustrated a book called The Spirit of the Ghetto, about the human types then to be found in the Jewish areas of New York. As a son of Jewish immigrants, Epstein had good reason to be on the side of his subjects.
The pictures and text of The Spirit of the Ghetto are an attempt to knock down Prejudice's most dangerous and persistent henchman, Ignorance. The Galloping Stone has a similar format and agenda: it's a new book compiled by local poet Gillian Allnutt, intended to give a voice to a group of people who often go unheard: refugee victims of torture, of whom we have a good number in the North-east. Gillian worked with representatives of this beleaguered set of people during a seven-month residency in Newcastle funded by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.
The resulting book is beautifully put together, and amazing value at just £5. If there were an annual prize for the book that achieves the most impact with the fewest words, the winner this year would be The Galloping Stone. The text is made up of prose and verse pieces composed by refugees and the people who work with them, some of them translated into English from French and other languages. There are also excerpts from Gillian Allnutt's journal, kept during her residency. he book is illustrated with colour photographs by Keith Pattison, again of the refugees themselves and the staff who help them. The photos are incredibly sharp and detailed, but they are all sympathetic windows into the lives of these remarkable people.
There is no doubt that the process of writing was in many cases therapeutic for the clients represented in The Galloping Stone. The resulting texts are heart-breaking, of course, but they also remind us of the possibility of healing for these people, of our responsibility to them, and the simple fact that they are part of us.
Simon Webb
Simon works at the North East Religious Learning Resources Centre, which has bases at Carter House in Durham and Church House in Percy Main, Newcastle.
www.resourcescentre online.co.uk
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