Let me speak of life's finer things
As I was standing in front of a supermarket wine rack the other day wondering what I could have for dinner with a cold ham salad, a fellow came up to me and said: 'Doesn't matter what you buy. You like everything.' How so? I queried. Well, he explained, whenever he read this column he never found me ranting about wines I hated. How come? he demanded.
The reasons are simple. Why waste space telling people what not to buy? Is it not more helpful and positive to give tips about wines that taste good and are value for money? Scores of wines on the market are disgracefully overpriced, acidic enough to burn through the belly of a brontosaurus or simply not very good and not worth the money.
One plonk on sale for $39 in many small corner stores throughout Hong Kong should have a health warning instead of a label: it is vile muck.
But do you want to start your weekend reading about that? Or would you rather I mused about Mouton Cadet from the great and noble estate of Baron Philippe de Rothschild? Yes, I thought so.
The present Baroness Rothschild, the baron's daughter, told me years ago that even members of the most renowned banking, investment and estate-owning family in Europe could not afford to drink Chateau Mouton Rothschild every day.
Well, neither can Hong Kong journalists, alas, because a bottle of the distinguished 68 vintage of this grandest of grands crus costs $2,918.
No, what Baroness Rothschild sips with her supper at the estate in Pauillac is the Mouton Cadet - or so she says. This is very much the inferior brother of the premier cru.
To be very frank, it is very ordinary vin ordinaire - a basic red wine at a rather fancy price.
It cannot compete with much better reds from Australia, California, South Africa, Chile and Bulgaria - yes, Bulgaria - which sell for much less.
What the marketing whiz kids in Paris have done is come up with a run-of-the-mill table wine and slapped on the sacred Mouton name.
Chateau Mouton Rothschild at Pauillac is one of the five premiers crus of Bordeaux. It stands at the very pinnacle of the French wine aristocracy (along with Lafite, Latour, Margaux and Haut-Brion).
Mouton Cadet is very different: the grapes are not grown on the sacred soil of the estate, but contract-farmed by a multitude of growers.
The idea was to give consumers a reliable decent wine to drink every day, something that could be guaranteed to taste good but not to drain the family inheritance to buy a bottle.
Hence the Cadet, which is on sale at outlets such as Park'N Shop at $119 for the red and $109 for the white.
Many other great wine houses have adopted similar marketing ploys.
There is nothing wrong with this, so long as you do not think you are buying a chateau-bottled grand cru when what you are really getting is an everyday wine.
The Cadet is a solid red. It is made of good - though not great - grapes a la Bordeaux.
It is tasty, has lots of fruit in the mouth, is well balanced and has style.
It is a good wine and, chances are if you drop into a bistro around Medoc and have a glass of red it is going to taste pretty much like this.
