I have something in common with Enzo Ferrari, Steve McQueen, all of the Beatles except McCartney and Peter Sellars. We have all owned a Mini. In fact I’ve owned four of these little cars and still own one. It is a 1971 Mk 3 850 model with a faded blue colour on the outside and a cat vomit coloured vinyl interior, and it needs a total restoration before it would ever turn a wheel on the roads again. I love minis, aside from being the first ‘super mini’ and becoming a British icon, they are so fun to drive, as is obvious by some of it’s owners, and they are surprisingly spacious. But the thing I love most about them is the smell.Mini’s have a unique smell. It is a combination of oil, cheap mid seventies car interior, damp rust and a leaking petrol tank that is dangerously close to your rear seat passengers. Anytime I smell the inside of an old mini, I’m immediately eight years old in the red, ‘S reg’ 1000 model that my parent’s owned in the late 1980’s, with the car being driven by my mum, bouncing along the Yorkshire country lanes. I love them.
Conversly, I hate the smell of a Volkswagen Polo. The Mk 3 model to be precise. The smell is akin to that of cheap burnt plastic with a bit of singed dog hair thrown in for the hell of it. I don’t know what VW did, but I really cannot abide riding in one of these cars as nausea kicks in and I want to redecorate the dashboard! The aroma of these two cars evoke such reactions in me and I’m not at all certain if it is all me imagining things or not.
Over the weekend, I tried 2 Nuits St Georges from the 2004 vintage, and like the two cars, both evoked strong emotions – one good, one bad. The Mini of the pair was the 2004 Nuits St Georges Clos des Fourches by Jacques Frederic Mugnier. An outstanding wine with soft, earthy fruit, some herb and sweet cherry, an element like Amaro too on the nose – herbal and medicinal – leading to a stunning, gentle palate of cherry stone, some tea component and a long, dry, soft earthy finish. It was a very, very good bottle of wine and at £29 it was great value. Even the next day, after being open for eighteen hours, it was still holding up well, a little oxidised, yes, but still a stunning bottle of wine.
Then I tried the 2004 Nuits St Georges from Domaine Henri Gouges. Lets not beat about the bush here, it too is a good wine, but it triggered negativity from me. The problem lies in that it is a restaurant wine, which is brilliant if you are having this wine with a meal, but not great if you are a geek like I am and want to savour the development of this wine over time. Initially, there was full on sweeter fruit, some herb elements and a nice minty, sweet cherry aroma. The palate had a bit of milk chocolate, some cherry with a nice herb encrusted liquorice, and a bitter, pencil lead flavour that needed masked by a nice piece of pheasant! The finish was stalky, with some plum skin flavours. Three hours later, I went back to the wine and it was shot. Astringent, mean and vegetal with little going for it anymore. And that bothers me.
When you are paying the best part of thirty quid for a bottle, it should entertain you. The Henri Gouges is like the VW in that it is a great creation, offering exactly what the general punter wants, but falling short of generating any passion, at least of the positive kind! I know that most of this wine will be drunk within an hour of opening, and as a result will please almost everyone, and similarly the Polo will get you from A to B in comfort, but your journey won’t stay with you. The Mini generates passion, each journey you make to Tesco is like an adventure, with it’s go-kart like handling and it’s ability to perform Evel Knievel sized jumps over the smallest of speed bumps, you love driving the Mini. The Mugnier does the same. It might not be an upfront, bang for your bucks wine, that the Gouges does, but this wine takes your tastebuds on an adventure of taste. And like the Mini, it smells great too!
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