Coaching Party

By Peter Grogan

I've heard pinotage called a lot of things. Jay McInerny reckons it's ‘nail polish remover au poivre’. It's South Africa's ‘signature’ grape – but you knew that, didn't you, just like you knew it's a cross between pinot noir and cinsault.

At our typically rigorous tasting of the wines at the Coach and Horses the other week, I nonetheless did a bit of a double-take when I heard Monique – one of the ever-expanding N16 Magazine tasting panel – whisper ‘Branston pickle’. Before I had time to ask if I'd heard aright, Mr Rab – on my other side – mumbled ‘HP Sauce’.

I was going to settle on bloody red meat (with a whiff of lipstick), but I'll give them their bit of sauce on the side and add a bit to the growing lexicon of ‘Things Pinotage Tastes Like’. (There was another suggestion, from a dark corner of the far-left field, quite similar to my own thinking, which the panel deemed it would be most seemly to refer to as ‘having a Prince Charles moment’.)

There's no right or wrong when it comes to describing wine (thankfully, or I'd probably be stacking shelves at Morrisons) but I do sometimes wonder whether descriptions like these could possibly make anybody want to drink a wine that they’ve been told smells like a steak smeared with lipppie and HP Sauce. Fact is, The Coach’s Long Beach (£3.95/175ml - £12.50/bottle) is pretty good as pinotage goes (and it might go well with some of the meatier Thai dishes on the menu), but it's a grape that polarises people. Certainly Mr Rab came out in favour, and I’m pretty sure I glimpsed him slapping the bottom of the bottle to get the last drops out.

The Coach is much improved for its makeover by Frank, who also runs The Embassy down Essex Road. Time was when the red wine choices were between a tiddly, airline-style bottle of Stowell's of Chelsea Chilean merlot or a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Now everything is furnished by posh St James's merchant Justerini & Brooks's on-trade wing. (They're in fact owned by Constellation these days, the biggest wine beast of them all, so maybe they're not as posh as they were.)

The house red, Symposium (£3.50/£11.50), was described by somebody as a good ‘neighbourhood wine’. I think I get it – something you can be relaxed and informal with, in this case a glass of undemanding but cheerful, jammy, cherry, Beaujolais-style fruit for that first, after-work, down-in-six-glugs livener.

Montrose Vins de Pays d’Oc chardonnay (£4.40/£14.60) may be from humble origins, appellation-wise, but it seems to have a touch of natural nobility about it, as if it were the upshot of a roll in the hay between a ruddy-cheeked chamber-maid and the local Comte. So what you get is a nose with some of the buxom, tropical Chardonnay that is sent over from the former colonies but the palate is in the austere, flinty Chablis style.

La Florencia malbec (£4.10/£15.80), from Argentina (fairly obviously) was intriguing, and the panel were unanimous in thinking it the lightest-bodied (and coloured) example of that grape they’d come across. Nonetheless, it punched its weight with a chocolate-y nose and plenty of plummy fruit lifted by serious vanilla oak. There used to be lots of malbec grown in Bordeaux, and this seemed very French in style, nothing like the beefy, heavily-extracted wines that we get from Maradona-land (much as I like them – and him for that matter, in spite of everything). I wondered if it’s what the French malbecs of old would have been like.

I was gratified by the panel’s response to a big, rich Kiwi riesling from Palliser Estate (£19.80) which had the characteristic whiff of kerosene that good riesling should have, plenty of ripe fruit to match the sweeter Thai sauces and enough tingly acidity to cut through the oily aspect of the stir-fries. Mrs Rab readily agreed that it would partner the food rather well, and I was glad to be able to release her from the headlock so quickly.

Behind the bar, the excellent Steph (of course she is, she’s from Tunbridge Wells) kept `em coming. She liked the riesling but noted that more than a glass or so of white wine makes her sneeze a lot. It seemed best to switch back to the reds, and a very proper Chianti from the Colli Fiorentini (£18.80) followed. From the excellent 2004 vintage it has all the bitter cherry and almonds you’d want, and hints of pot-pourri and autumn on the nose. Loma Larga pinot noir from Chile (£22.60) gets points for lots of smoky strawberries (leaves and all) and, well, I’m just going to have to take it on trust that Monique was right about the bletted medlars.