Puzelat Touraine Pinot Noir '10

£13.68, Les Caves de Pyrene

Many friends old and new, animate and inanimate featured in a recent holiday to Mallorca. With varying levels of success.

Amongst the most prominent disappointments were a host of Mallorcan wines that previously I had loved, but now seemed clumsily oaked and over-extracted. Bottles from Anima Negra, and Miquels Gelabert and Oliver were all found wanting, and refuge was found only in Estrella Damm, Herbes and Jaegermeister.

On return to blighty then some tonic was needed. Like a good friend a good wine should have levels; I want to be able to talk Hegel to it for hours and analyse bouquet, or go on a bender and drink it with a straw. Step forward Thierry Puzelat and some Pinot Loire...

Apples and red fruit on the nose. Stoniness too. The palate just so bright and alive. Cherries, sour rasberries and a long minerality. Sexy and silken. The deftly light tannins make me think a little carbonic maceration was involved somewhere down the line, but I don't know. Fucking great: a right gude-willy waught.

I'm not writing off auld acquaintance just yet. But I might just be taking a cup or two more Puzelat in the near future.

Spanish Airport Cheese and Serrano Sandwich

€5, Palma Airport

And so once again we found ourselves in just saddest position in space-time mankind has yet experienced: Palma Airport, on the way to Stansted.

And even yet this despair proves time and again powerless to destroy the ineffable wonder of the Spanish Airport Cheese Sandwich.

But I was drunk and in the mood for experimentation, and the conflagration of these factors led me to a twist on the theme: the Spanish Airport Cheese & Serrano Ham Sandwich. It's a Ronseal number containing nothing but cheese, ham and bread and none the worse for it. Don't fuck with the classics, nobody wants a Bowdlerised sandwich.

That slightly stale ciabatta-style bread is my madeline; Valencia Airport all those years ago, with the vagrants and their dogs and their ugly Catalan. The mastication required stretches this sandwich to full twenty minutes. €5 isn't cheap for a sandwich, but Sister's hotdog was over in five, so that's value right there.

The cheese is obviously what this sandwich is all about. Two thin slices of a tasty, salty, cheddar-type affair. We'll stop there- I'm not about to unweave this rainbow.

If only they'd left it. The ham is low-quality; stringy, hard and requiring the trimming of fat that makes the whole affair rather more of a trial than necessary. It also pushes us a little far over the salt-line which meant sister and I had to drink the best part of two litres of San Miguel with our meal. Though we did get free hats to congratulate us on this. Swings and roundabouts.

My quarrel with this sandwich is fairly petty. It's still very highy recommended: 18 points at least. Just a pity it always comes when it does.

Cherished, strengthened and fed, without the aid of joy.

Domaine Lucci Pinot Gris on Skins '10

£14 (ish) for 50cl, Les Caves de Pyrene

I love my little Sister for many reasons; I love her because she is funny and fun, because we share interests, because she is pretty, earnest, silly, passionate, irreverent and intelligent. But most of all I love her because she's fucking peculiar and because she has booked me a holiday to Mallorca.

Something appropiate to celebrate then. My cellar was unfortunately unable to furnish anything Mallorquin, but 'fucking peculiar' is something of a forte... Red Pinot Gris from Australia in just the cutest little wax-sealed bottle you could possibly imagine.

God only knows what mutant clone they've macerated to get this colour, somewhere between a deep dark rose, and a light Pinot Noir, and slightly cloudy.

The nose opens big. Strawberries, cream, toffee, confection: singular, promising and unapologetic.

The palate is completely discordant; crisp and one-dimensional with a lithe citrus flavour, no mid-palate. The tannins lend a bit o' bitterness and the brevity a whack of alcohol. A bad and loveable wine.

You can't have it all and I'll take weird over good any day of the week.

Miquel Gelabert Torrent Negre 20 Aniversari 2005

Sa Bodeguita d'es Pi, €15 (€30)

Anyone following the annual Bordeaux en primeur pig-circus will have noticed something peculiar these last few weeks. The Bordelais no longer have good, bad and average vintages, they have different ones.

As if in some collaborative effort to prove the passing of time, growers, merchants and critics have universally hailed 2010 as neither better nor worse than 2009, merely "different".

A long overdue and begrudging acceptance of the wonderful plurality and variation available to the wine consumer? Whaddayathink?

It all sits rather uneasily in a system based around scores, Vintages of the Century, and the idea that there's some kind of objective and quantifiable definition of what is 'good' Bordeaux. Quite frankly I'm surprised the entire system hasn't imploded under the weight of its own contradictions.

Which is a pity, becuase although I quite like the stuff, it makes me disinclined to drink it. And with celebrations due I wanted some Cabernet-Merlot seriousness.

There was only one thing for it: a bottle Torrent Negre 20th Aniversari 2005 I had purchased in a restaurant the previous week. The owner had not only let me buy a bottle 'off', she had also rung the producer Miquel Gelabert on her mobile to find out what grapes were in it, and then (I discovered later) charged me precisely half what it was worth.

40% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Syrah, a curious triptych, but the Mallorquins are a funny lot so we shan't hold it against them.

The nose opens with a little brett sweatiness, though this is gone after ten minutes in the glass, leaving ripe raisins, stewed plums and a hint of savouriness.

The palate continues this, it's massive in every way, porty with big thick syrupy red and dark fruit, but little herbaceous touch on the finish. A healthy tannic structure, a seemingly well-integrated blend and no heat from the 14.5% alcohol.

Big, brash, heavy, expansive stuff, and remarkably, not the same as (for example) something else.

Sa Bodegueta de's Pi

4 Calle Sipells, Cala Millor, €30 pp inc wine

Thursday had come up with an alacrity that was frankly astonishing. Most of the middle of the week seemed to have collapsed in on itself like a disappointing soufflé. I vaguely remember drinking a fair amount of good wine, catching, killing and eating a helluva lot of sea urchins, and hosting a party for a man that was (allegedly) going to prison the next day.

What I had not done was much dining. I measure out my life in sauce ladles; meals are the anchor points, a Maxwell's Demon against the encroaching entropy.

So it was off to Sa Bodegueta d'es Pi, an improbable corner of Paradise very well hidden inside the Dantean awfulness of Cala Millor.

The place is run by the eponymous Pi, her mother in the kitchen and her father, an old family friend of mine who may or may not be called 'Mel'.

A nod to convention sees customers furnished with a menu on entry. More experienced diners, however, are easily distinguished by the combination of nonchalance and contempt with which this is flicked away before requesting simply 'Tapas'.

This gives mama free rein in the kitchen which experience suggests is a very good thing indeed.

What happened this time was possibly even better than I have ever had here before, a tour de force of inventive Mallorquin cooking.

Sobrassada fried in honey was good enough for me to suggest that our meal had peaked too soon. Pa Amb Boli was proper, yet posh and zingily fresh. The spinach croquettes are almost a signature dish here, but this time paled in comparison to courgette stuffed with salt cod (good god!) and the subsequent steak; black and blue on a barbecue, thickly sliced, and blood(il)y brilliant.

There are no words.

AN/2, the femme fatale of serious Mallorquin wines, was a perfect match to all this. Sexy acid-cherry Callet, with a smoky, noir twist of Syrah.

The pricing here is low and slightly arbitrary, the wine list wonderful, the service perfect, food brilliant, and setting lovely. If you ever have the calamitous misfortune to find yourself in Cala Millor: go.

12v 2009

£20.10, The Sampler


I am an ill man, both generally and in the immediate present.

That February is a good 10% shorter than many months is entirely necessary. Leaving it much longer would pose serious health risks to the population- plague, pestilence and bouts of suicide would sweep the land. Leap years are difficult.

My current malady meant that 4 Kilos 12v's promise that it was a wine that "connects to the central nervous system and recharges the batteries" seemed appealing.

In 2006 Francesc Grimalt, then of Bodegas Anima Negra, uprooted and set off on his own viticultural adventure. And along with a musician by the name of Sergio Caballero, lumped 4 million pesetas (hence "4 Kilos") on a winery of their own.

I have an inkling that on the previous occasion I had this I thought the 2008 markedly less interesting than Anima Negra's equivalent offering, AN/2. But then again, I don't remember if I remember that situation particularly accurately.

The website lists a composition of 40% Callet and Fogoneu, 30% Syrah, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot. Throwing a few 'noble' grapes into the mix strikes me as shorting varietal character as a hedge against obscurity. But vamos a ver...

When treated well Callet can produce good, deep, pure wines with the structure for ageing. Vineyards are small and scattered and vines reporduce sexually rather than clonally. Which leads to a helluva lot of variation and seeming confusion about which are Callet and which Fogoneu.

The colour is a pure dark purple, with perhaps a slightly lighter rim. Cabernet is apparnt on the nose, with lots of cassis, some mint, and maybe a nostalgic whiff of VA, harking back to their garage-bodega days.

Drying tannins, good acid and some pepper make this a fairly savoury, almost austere, wine and I think a little more Callet or Merlot might have done favours. It's clearly young, but I'm not sure it has the intensity of fruit to stand up to much time in bottle.

Clearly a quality product, and far more interesting than many Mallorquin reds, but not quite what I was after. Any potential nerve-calming effect was comprehensively decimated by the "Michelin-Man-on-acid" label, and it may be March 'til I recover.

Macia Batle Blanc de Blancs 2009

World of Wines, £15

We had only known each other a few short hours but I was beginning to think Marjorie might be The One. She didn't say much, but then she didn't cost much either, and many would consider both of these attractive qualities.

I may have woken that morning in another woman's bed but by mid-afternoon Marjorie and I had already drunk ourselves silly in Camden, eaten salt beef in Stockwell, seen away a bottle of good-ish Marcillac and attempted to buy a house next to a nightclub. The initial outlay was diminutive, but keeping her in the manner to which she was rapidly becoming accustomed was clearly going to put a dent in the wallet.

All this fun had put me in an adventurous mood and so, mid-way through the first Snakebite of the day, I left her in the capable hands of my Northern Irish friend to embark on a speculative mission to the nearby Wines of the World.

A sparse and indistinct selection yielded a single diamond amongst the rough- Macia Batle's 2009 Blanc de Blancs. Comically overpriced at £15 (around 6 euro in Mallorca if I recall), but nevertheless an essential purchase.

Along with Jose L Ferrer, Macia Batle is one of the giants of Binissalem D.O. Although the winery in its present state has only existed since 1996, it has rapidly made a name for wines at all price points, and is leading the way amongst the larger producers on the island for Moll-dominated whites. I remember being slightly disappointed by the '07 Crianza last summer, but buoyed by the benign influence of my decollated friend I was confident the Blanc de Blancs would justify the vineyard’s reputation.

This proved sadly misplaced. The wine itself is lean and green, with raspy acidity and little sugar despite only getting to 12.5% alcohol. Flowers on the nose are overwhelmed by oak, which comes through on both the nose and palate and makes the Chardonnay all the more apparent. An interesting wine, not bad, but certainly unbalanced.

No grape in the world wouldn't ripen in Mallorca's reliably hot, dry summers. But after the feast of San Bernado on August 20th things start getting a little more unpredictable; torrential wind and apocalyptic rain is not unknown in the first few weeks of September. The harvest is a crapshoot.

The Binissalem Regulatory Council rates the 2009 vintage as 'Excellent', but I reckon something spooked Macia Batle into picking a little early... This Blanc de Blanc seems a tad under-ripe, and has a slight bitter finish. They've lumped on the oak to try to disguise this, but it ruins the aromatics of the Moll, leaving an astringent Chardonnay.

The wine stands as metaphor for our whirlwind romance. Zippy, unhinged, bittersweet and expensive, but ultimately lacking depth.