Down at his local with J.

The observant among you may remember a lunch last summer at a friend's house in South London, where copious - what a surprise, eh! - quantities of excellent wine were consumed by said friend and yours truly, to expand our wine knowledge but mainly to have a good time. We wine trade delinquents like our wine and, occasionally, consume a fair amount of it, for better or for worse.

You will know, dear reader, from following my scribblings, that I have been on enforced exile from my natural habitat of London, entirely due to my inability to:
a. Find gainful employment
b. Finance a life in London, as a direct result of (a).
While this does not mean that I have retreated to a monastery or live a cloistered life, it has certainly limited my vinous excursions. Back in London I have made a - small - effort to put this right, so had lunch with my friend J.; he kindly provided a couple of bottles to entertain and amuse us while we scoffed delicious food down at his local hostelry. As a warm-up we had a pint of beer each, and I availed myself of a delicious pint of Wandle, perfectly served.

Pub food has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 30 years, even disregarding gastro pubs (some have extremely ambitious menus), of which this is one. Most pubs can now serve food that is at worst acceptable and at best very good indeed, and the Jolly Gardeners is at the very good end of the scale, with a simple but imaginative menu and a rather splendid selection of bar snacks. In fact if someone locked me in there with a constant supply of the various snacks I would not be disappointed, so long as I also had a pint or two of their splendid beers on tap.

Our two wines, a white and a red, were both interesting and eminently quaffable, with the white the clear winner for me: pineapple and butter, pronounced yet subtle at the same time, signposted a superb chardonnay from New Zealand that, but for a slight exuberance, could have been a star from a top Burgundy vineyard. Lots of complexity and character without the typical New World exaggeration make the Kumeu River 2016 a cracking bottle of wine and a real treat for me, as it was the first time I had come across it.

The red was a Bordeaux from the 2012 vintage, a St. Emilion Grand Cru to be precise, not a frontline performer but an impressive bottle nevertheless, coming as it does from the Ausone stable; we possibly did the Chateau de Fonbel a disservice by drinking it now, as the wood was presently dominating the relatively subdued but substantial fruit. I would really like to re-taste this in two or three years time, perhaps with a juicy steak or equivalent, rather than the excellent but diverting hamburger of today. This is young and vigorous, as you can see from the colour, but presently without the plush juiciness of its appellation.  Don't get me wrong, though, this is still a superb bottle of wine but, the living and evolving thing that it is, may be better in the future. And, dear reader, as you well know, I prefer wines with some age (as much age as possible???) allowing them to show their full 'true' colours.

I must admit that we were rather, if not entirely, well behaved and limited our consumption compared to other occasions, as we both had further commitments during the day, professional or otherwise. All you need to know is the we had a good time catching up, enjoyed ourselves and that we are already looking forward to meeting up again. Hopefully soon.

And I'm looking forward to returning to The Jolly Gardeners soon to enjoy some more of their warm hospitality, with the friendly atmosphere of a perfect local and the kind, considerate staff. What's not to like?

Wine in restaurants, in Greece or elsewhere

Anyone who has ever visited Greece will know that when you go out to eat and wish to select a wine you are faced with two initial choices: house (jug) wine, usually out of a wine box and served in a carafe by the kilo, and bottled wine. In some cases there is only house wine, in others what bottles exist are badly kept and out of condition; in all cases the house wine is much, much cheaper than any alternative.

There is a myth that any self-respecting taverna or restaurant in Greece will go out of its way to ensure that its house wine is good and shows the place in a good light, much as is assumed about restaurants the world over. Alas, thirty five years in the wine trade has taught me otherwise: house wine is always temptingly priced but is the one on which the establishment makes the best return, rarely representing value for money. Were I not in my present impecunious state I would never order house wine and, indeed, in London I almost never do, as the cost of a pound or two more on a bottle yields a far better value-for-money ratio.

There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between - there are some restaurants, for example, where the proprietors also happen to own vineyards or have a wine business as well - and they are most welcome. Truly, though, most proprietors know little about wine and are guided in their choices by their suppliers, stocking what they think will 'shift' i.e. appeal to their specific client base without having a personal point of view. More ambitious restaurants are able to employ a professional (sommelier) to advise the owners on purchases and then aid the customers in their selection, but this is costly and beyond the means of most places.

Stocking bottled wine is not a guarantee of quality, unless some effort is made to keep the wine in vaguely decent condition, look after the stock and its rotation, and ensure that it is not left in the sunshine - there's a lot of that in Greece - or any hot place, standing up for long periods or in the vicinity of very pungent smells. Any proprietor who wishes to have a wide wine selection must build a proper wine cellar or purchase the requisite wine fridges, but this adds to the cost and it may not be easy to recoup this, certainly not in the Greece of today and after more than ten years of economic hardship, despite the fact that there is still money sloshing around.

The margins for restaurants are always much higher for drinks than for food - that's really where the money is made. This, coupled with that most natural human trait, greed, has given rise to an increasing tendency to charge a very high percentage on wine, even if it is fairly ordinary stuff, needing no cellarage or attention so little investment. This has led to the unpleasant sensation of getting ripped off: if you see a wine on a restaurant list for 35 euros and you can buy the same for 6 or 8 euros at your local supermarket you may feel aggrieved.

Where wine lists do exist to flog more than just house plonk, assuming they contain more than three or four standard wines, they hardly ever show the vintage of the wines displayed. The explanations - and I have ranted about this before, dear loyal reader - range from the disingenuous to the downright ignorant, charmingly put forward bu people who understand little of their chosen subject :
'Our suppliers change the vintages regularly'
'It makes no difference as it is always the same'
'Nobody has ever asked or complained'
And the inimitable ' That's how they do it in France!'

Aaaaaargh!

OK, sometimes 'house' wine is perfectly adequate and matches the style of food, but the best choice? Very rarely, I'm afraid!

Pavements (a.k.a. sidewalks) Greek style

Some of you may view what follows as a rant, and in a way it is. What it really is, though, is a cry of pain, of despair, for a country that with little extra effort could be achieving so much.

The ancient Greeks were amazing in the way that they managed to create buildings of incomparable beauty that have stood the test of time, buildings that were both properly functional and, at the same time, aesthetically perfect. This cannot be said of modern Greeks, however, and Athens is a sad testament to this. It almost seems that even designing something as simple as a functional pavement to be used by pedestrians these days is a challenge beyond existing abilities.

Joking aside, the disgraceful situation you see in the few simple photographs I've taken is due to two main reasons:

1. Greece (and Greeks) does not believe in thinking ahead or in any serious, proper planning. A pavement may be perfectly designed and built, roomy and usable, only for a plant/electricity pylon/whatever to be added a few months down the line, making it unusable.

2. There is a total lack of consideration for others, especially pedestrians - never mind the disabled - so that pavements can and will be used as extra parking spaces, rubbish dumps, commercial premises or whatever, leaving little or no room for the supposed intended users.

Modern Greeks, especially ones that hardly ever walk anywhere, other than maybe as a 'power walk' exercise, find these things trivial - if you mention the problems, the reaction generally is 'oof, come on, there are more important things in life, these are little details' - and of no concern to them. Why should anyone bother about something they rarely use, anyway? We seem to think that our convenience is far more important than anyone else's inconvenience, as if society is an entity of which we are a part only when it suits us.

This is another side of the mentality that led Greece to the current economic shit hole that it is still wallowing in, its economic woes continuing at the moment with only small real-world improvements. There is a side to our character that cannot be bothered to do things properly, to get things right from the start, to make sure something works and in the way it was designed to. We say 'entaksi' meaning something is acceptable (literally = in order) even when it clearly isn't and shouldn't be viewed like that; then we pretend all is well and are subsequently greatly surprised when the shit hits the fan. In behaving thus we let ourselves down but, more importantly, we let our children, our world and the future down.

The other funny/peculiar thing about pavements is that they are often treated as part of the road, even sometimes as an alternative, principally by motorbikes (ah, the lovely, lively delivery drivers earning a crust are the arch villains here...), but by anyone else who is able to as well. In one of the photographs you'll notice a massive Jeep Cherokee parked squarely on the pavement where it stayed for ages, and was back again in the same position the following day, impeding all pedestrians - it probably belongs to one of the local businesspeople who clearly wish to display how little they respect others, their customers included. Alas this miscreant is not alone, as many others will park wherever and in whatever way suits them. Others - hah!

This chaotic treatment of pavements occurs all over Greece, though my photographs only show Athens - and a privileged part of Athens at that - as there was so much that raised my hackles just there that I didn't need to search further. It is no better elsewhere, anyway,  but usually worse.

And for those of you who think I'm letting the side down by constantly criticising what happens in Greece, I've two things to say to you:

1. Then don't give me so many things to criticise, take away my reasons and I promise to stop whingeing and start praising... Boy will I praise away!
2. I criticise every other nationality whenever I find reason to, if I experience something negative or silly worth sharing, without exception, but as I'm spending lots of time in Greece currently...

Young wine, older wine, a matter of taste?

The wine industry is engaged in a continuous struggle - sorry, campaign to inform you - to convince one and all that wine should be drunk young. From the fuss made around Beaujolais Nouveau (the Beaujolais Nouveau has arrived!) to the exhortations that 'white wine doesn't age' or 'champagne should be drunk young' you would think that wine should be consumed almost the moment it is produced/leaves the cellar. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am writing this piece because I felt embarrassed about registering little of a red wine we consumed at the restaurant described in my last post, dear reader; such is my aversion to very young wines, especially reds. To put matters straight, it was not a Nemea red, but something new from the Kir-Yanni (Boutaris) stable in the north of Greece called 'Blue Tractor' from the 2017 vintage. The aim here, I think, is to create a popular brand as the grapes (Cabernet Sauvignon 50%, Syrah 30%, Merlot 20%) do not come from specific vineyards, so there is room to increase production as demand rises. The catchy name, the appealing cepage of grapes, the Kir-Yanni name and a label aimed clearly at the Greek market are all strong ingredients in the mix that should deliver strong sales. My apologies for not registering it and more apologies for not being able to supply you with a tasting note, as I found the aromas and flavours too heady and aggressive for my taste and promptly ignored it.

New World wines have created an expectation for startlingly vivid aromas and taste, often aggressively so, and have been credited with attracting a whole new group of people to taste and drink wine. Newcomers to wine tend to find this style of wine reassuring, the strong, simple and obvious flavours acting as a bit of a guide, and these wines in the main tend to be at their best in their youth. After a while, however, it is time for any true wine lover to move on to tasting and drinking more complex and subtle wines, discovering the true depth of the wine world.  For an old hand like me young aggressive whippersnappers, alas,  have little or no allure.

Wine is a living thing which develops every day and starts to show its real character with age - does that remind you of anything? Some wines have a greater capacity for improvement during the ageing process, others reach a point where they improve no longer and are simply old and tired, but there is hardly any wine that will not improve with a year or two in bottle. Yes, even Beaujolais Nouveau...

So why are we constantly told of the benefits of young wine and the perils of ageing? Why are we sold this image of young wine as great?

Any honest wine professional (i.e. who is not trying to sell you something...) will tell you that other than due to personal preference (which, don't forget, may be misguided or perverse) the real reason for this is simple : money. To hold on to a product after you have made it and until it is at its best costs money and, in the case of fine wine, a hell of a lot of money, as plenty of time is needed. This process, dear reader and wine lover, is being passed on to you by selling you the stuff early. Gone are the days when wine merchants, hotels and restaurants had extensive cellar capacity for ageing wines, so that their customers were able to buy them in peak condition and at the right time for drinking.

The wine business went through many difficult years, where property owners and serious wine merchants struggled to make money, as the power lay with the customers. There were many reasons for this including wars, changing fashions and technology, but this changed in the 1980s. As the wine estates' fortunes improved so the accountants moved in, advising on more profitable modes of trade. Grand hotel cellars were liquidated as an inefficient use of money. Wine styles were changed, therefore, for earlier, easier drinking. We, as customers, are now required to create cellars in our own homes if we are to age wines, or drink what's on the shelf. And what is found on the shelf is mostly young, so the industry needs to convince consumers that it's a good thing, the right thing to do.

Taste, taste, taste my friend, and discover what you really like within the price range (very important) that you can afford, and drink that. Personally I would be greatly surprised if you prefer young to slightly older or, like me, very much older, but it's your call.

Joseph's restaurant (Tou Zozef), Andros, Greece

Andros is the second largest of the Cyclades and a most interesting island indeed, as it has lots of water - most Cycladic islands are rather arid - and so supports a local farming industry that may be limited, but produces quite interesting things. Industrial scale agriculture is absent here and all such businesses operate on a small level and, in many ways, are the better for it.

Catering is also miles away from the international model of branded restaurants controlled by big groups selling standardised products produced in a somewhat efficient, if industrialised, manner. Here most businesses are family-run, independent, charmingly amateur and artisanal. Even the fast food joints do their own thing, though I have little personal experience so cannot report on whether it is any better or worse; as most souvlaki places (the predominant fast food in Greece) are independent everywhere and their quality varies widely I assume the same happens here.

In central Andros in the little village of Pitrofos, virtually invisible from the 'main' road that passes right by its premises, is a little restaurant that is as individual as they come: tou Zozef (Joseph's). The chef/proprietor has named it in honour of her grandfather (Zozef, whose cafe was sited there) and has made it the most unusual eating place on the island. Katerina Remoundou, known widely as Tata, is a larger than life character who, after a career in the media returned to her family's roots to create her own unique eating place. She aims to draw on local ingredients and recipes for inspiration, but is not afraid to modify or modernise where she feels it could be a real improvement, so has built a reputation as an innovative, yet also traditionalist, restaurateur.

Despite the quality of the food this is not a place for prissy customers looking for starched linen, spotless surroundings and over-fussy service, fine china and crystal glassware. Nor will it be competing for a Michelin star anytime soon. This is a simple casual place, earthy, quirky and warmly human, whose atmosphere is much affected by the mercurial proprietor. Tata at her best is warm and welcoming, solicitous and caring, ready to indulge your whim, if possible; rubbed up the wrong way she can be the opposite, and will quickly let you know that Zozef is her fiefdom.

To me this place is really about the imaginative treatment of ingredients, the unique tastes and textures Tata manages to give her food, irrespective of whether it is simple or elaborate. It is also a place that brings out the bonhomie in people - certainly the people I tend to see there or go there with - so that we tend to stay there for hours and leave feeling mellow and content. Wine has not, until recently, been a high point, but you can now find decent bottles of wine from a local vineyard and other bits and pieces picked up as and when.

On our latest visit, a couple of days  after Greek Orthodox Easter, she was running low on some ingredients but was still able to serve the four of us:
1. Boiled courgettes with a hint of olive oil, perfect in texture in a way I can never manage at home, with a nutty complex taste; I only managed to photograph the last couple of pieces...
2. A tomato, cucumber, greens, onions, spring onions olives and local soft white cheese (known simply as dopio, always superb and spicy here) salad, just as fresh and crunchy as it should be.
3. A potato and onion salad with lots of taste but a bit too much vinegar for some, though I loved the unusual tanginess; completely different to the familiar flabby, soft potato salads served with mayonnaise served in many places.
4. A bowl of melitzanosalate (literally aubergine salad, a coarse puree of aubergine, garlic, onion and olive oil) which was strong in flavour, tasty and filling.
5. An assortment of four cheeses differing in taste and texture, all very tasty and interesting.
6. An amazingly satisfying and unusual dish of pan-cooked  large prawns in a rich, buttery sauce with cheese and some crisped bread, bursting with flavour yet subtle at the same time, and a million miles away from the commercial prawn saghanaki found in many tavernas all over Greece. Worth the visit for this dish alone!
In case you are dying to know what we had to drink, the proprietor very kindly allowed us to bring some wine with us: JF and I had a bit (ha-ha) of rather nice organic rose from the Kondoyannis family near Corinth (bone dry, hints of red fruit on nose and palate, clean, robust and long, a great quaffing wine that will never leave you wishing you hadn't had it the following day!), while SK and MG shared a young (2017) red from, I think, Nemea, which I do not recollect other than that it was too gauche and youthful for me.

At this point I feel I must confide in you, dear reader: many years ago Tata was married to my oldest childhood friend and they have a lovely daughter together, so that I have known her for something like forty years, though after she and my friend divorced many years ago we lost touch. I renewed our acquaintance/friendship in the last few years when I first visited Andros and Zozef. I do try to keep my view of her restaurant objective, however, as she herself would surely expect; my evaluation of the place is like I would rate one that belonged to a complete stranger. It is a 'must visit' place on Andros if you are truly interested in food but it is quirky, so if you seek familiar, commercial- style atmosphere and food  you may be disappointed. I am a fan of the place and, generally, of Tata's approach to cooking, so am a bit forgiving of some of the place's little foibles - no, I'm not telling you, go and find out for yourselves if you are interested. If you're lucky (unlucky?) you may even find me there - I'll be one of the happy ones in a small group of people drinking lots of wine and eating the best the place has to offer.

Let me also reassure those of you who have heard horror stories about the toilets in Greek restaurants in general, and on some of the islands in particular, that there is nothing to worry about here, The toilets, whenever I have needed to visit, have always been impeccable!

Ad hominem addendum

It's almost impossible to make these things up: Yesterday I published my piece on how ad hominem attacks dominate modern Greek politics to an extent not found in most western democracies. Indeed I specifically noted that in many western countries such behaviour is frowned upon, seriously frowned upon. Not in the Greece of today, though, I stressed...

So what happens today? The smiling Mr. Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece and head of a supposed left-wing government, hot on the campaign trail in Crete and accompanied by (or, perhaps, supporting in his local area) the notoriously badly behaved Mr. Polakis (a deputy health minister who smokes wherever he feels like, including where it is forbidden by law!) came up with an amazing description for the leader of the opposition who, according to current polls, may well be the next Prime Minister of Greece.

Mr. Tsipras used a local Cretan term for a kind of billy goat found on the mountains of the island to describe Mr. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, MP and leader of the New Democracy party as a 'prancing billy goat'. He was trying to describe his opponent using what he saw as a demeaning term in order to illustrate his perceived superiority; this came about because Mitsotakis decided not to take part in a televised debate with him.

He is, alas, not alone in this approach, but he is the Prime Minister, a position that is meant to be about authority and dignity, not playground antics. At this level, even ridiculing someone should be clever, insightful, a bit more sophisticated and not like trading insults with the school bully. This makes me incredibly sad for the country of my birth - I just wish it were not so!

Ad hominem

In Western democracies, even when political disagreements rage, it is considered very much 'below the belt' to make ad hominem attacks. Even when it happens, as occasionally it does, it is viewed as very bad form, so there ensues quite a lot of tut-tutting and negative commentary, as President Trump has discovered - not that it seems to stop his rants on twitter nor limit his bilious invective during interviews. But I digress...

Recently, as you already know, dear reader, I have been spending quite a bit of time in Greece, where most political arguments are very much ad hominem, laden with sentiment and full of nastiness most certainly personally directed. Hardly ever is an expounded political position countered with reasoned argument as to why it is wrong/inappropriate or whatever. Rather, discussion focuses on the proposer's shortcomings as a person, their character (or, more often, their lack of...), their family's past going back to at least WW2 or before, anything that can be used as a weapon. The tone is, more often than not, at least condescending if not rudely aggressive and confrontational, and certainly unpleasantly personal.

Ancient Greeks may have cultivated logic and philosophy, but their descendants (of which I am, in theory at least, one) unfortunately give not a hoot, preferring emotion to logic and cultivating the illusion that this makes one more human, somehow more 'real'. We shrink from facts and figures, preferring instead to analyse personalities as perceived from the outside, ascribing motives and attributes to people barely known other than through the media. If they do not live up to our imagined standards we ridicule them, belittle them, talk about them as if we know them intimately and know they are not worthy. More importantly, we do not let little things like facts get in the way, preferring 'ideas', intangible concepts based on little but sentiment.

How else can we justify having an extensive (by current standards) part of the population who revile what they describe as fascism but believe that communism (as had been practised in the USSR and China) was a force for the good, an expression of freedom and progressive thinking? How else can we possibly still have a Maoist-Leninist party with fanatical devotees, when the facts about their idols and the things they got up to are freely available for all to appreciate? Why else did we accept the phrase ' the moral privilege of the (communist) left, promoted by the current government?

All attacks on any political figure in Greece begin not by belittling their work with facts and figures, specific and checkable, but with insinuations about their inadequacies as people, their perceived weaknesses of character, their faults; all these attacks are personal and the one thing missing, more often than not, is facts. And nobody feels the slightest bit ashamed about doing this, this grown-up version of a schoolyard quarrel.

Politics are dirty and unpleasant but needn't be so personal. Greece should move on and Greeks should grow up so that we get the political system that best serves us, not the current inadequate self-serving lot or the ones that preceded them in recent - and not so recent - years. Facts and logic are truly powerful weapons in a way that ad hominem attacks rarely can be, so we should use them instead.