(Old Article) The Good Life - Wines of Cairn o Mohr

Between 1975 and 1978, two people did more to revolutionise wine drinking in Britain than anybody else. But their names will not be found in the wine literature of the day, nor will they be seen interviewed in Decanter or referenced by Parker. So what was the wine that changed the British public’s wine drinking habits? Peapod Burgundy!

The BBC sitcom ‘The Good Life’ starred Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall as Tom and Barbera Good, a middle class couple who shun a conventional life for one of self sufficiency. Along with their Goat called Geraldine and a cockerel named Lenin, these characters introduced home made booze, particularly wine making, to the United Kingdom. All of a sudden, people all over the country were rushing off to buy demijohns and yeast in the hope of producing free alcohol. The results were varied, usually with elderflower wine being the most successful, but Britain was inspired. My father even made Onion wine, that apparently tasted disgusting but made very good organic weed killer.

Nowadays, it is mainly the hippies, veggies, Scottish Patriots and folk who like dressing up in Medieval costume that drink fruit wines, and one company has a huge following amongst this customer base. Cairn O Mohr, based near Errol in Perthshire, takes the central belt of Scotland’s natural success in growing raspberries and brambles and makes them into a fruit wine. The question I had to ask was why?

So I gathered together five of Cairn O Mohr’s wines together to see what these wines were like. Losing the will to live when I was looking through the choice of flavours was the start of this whole unpleasant experience, and it is here I should admit a prejudice. In my years as a wine retailer, I have had a dislike of the people who have bought these wines. More often than not there is a funny smell coming off them (I think it is the marijuana), and they are so blinkered against every other wine in your shop that is not made out of weird things like gooseberries and bulls snot. They also try to engage you in conversation about them, usually starting with the words “have you tried these, they are wonderful…”. If you say that you have never tried them, you can’t get into that conversation and it is for this reason that I have never tasted these wines before, or indeed, visited the winery that is only 20 miles from where I live. I, sadly, do not have that luxury any more.

With a Spring Oak Leaf and an Autumn Oak Leaf pairing of wines, I had to try these first. Mixed with Elderflower, these two wines have very distinct flavours. The first smells like a dustbin bag filled with fruit, the second like a dustbin bag filled with really rotten fruit. Both have elderflower battling to get through, but this is more than likely due to the fact that the wines are “fragrant with elderflowers” which I am certain means “with added elderflower wine because oak leaf wine sucks and nobody will buy it in it’s natural state”. Both these wines are far too alcoholic, all you notice on the palate is the booze and a mass of unpleasant white pepper. The Autumn Oak Leaf has a finish that is very clean, but there again, bleach is very clean and you wouldn’t want to drink that.

The next wine I tried was Rhubarb. I love rhubarb. Put it in a pie, stew it, make it into jam, even just dunk the end of a stick of it in granulated sugar and chomp on it raw, Rhubarb rocks. What you should not do is make it into wine, but that is what Cairn O Mohr have done. It smells of stewed rhubarb, which is hardly surprising, and a little lemon, but nothing much else. The palate is more rhubarb, with a soft, sweetness but then the alcohol hits you again spoiling it all. Aside from this, for extreme rhubarb fans, this could be ok. I, however, am not extreme and it sucks.

Reds were next, well, a neon pink Raspberry flavour was next. The aroma wasn’t all that bad. It is all about the fruit. Raspberries leap out of the glass and a fresh berry zing smacks you in the nose. The palate though, mucks the whole thing up. The booze is there again, with bitter, confected raspberries that have a nasty sweetness about them. It is drinkable, but the alcohol is just such a problem. Staying with berries, the Bramble flavour is the most near to proper wine. Smelling like a far too young French Cabernet Sauvignon, this has confected bramble fruit and a leafy peppery smell. The palate is far too tangy and dry and then you get sweet, flabby fruit on the finish which totally ruins what was an almost acceptable wine.

These wines are a waste of perfectly good fruit, its as simple as that. Instead of making wine, the fruit used should be made into the world’s greatest fruit juices or jam or fruit pies… basically anything except wine. Tom Good may have made and drunk Peapod Burgundy, but he was trying to be self sufficient and he got to de-dungaree Felicity Kendall every night, so he had a really Good Life. Drinking these wines, means you don’t.