On the Saturday morning, we had another fantastic breakfast and this time I located the proper coffee stand which was worth the wait. Then it was time for the “grand seminar” which was a series of panel discussions and tastings held in the theatre at Linfield University. This fell into three parts and I believe the presenters rotated between three different venues due to capacity constraints, so it must have been a bit strange for them to be giving the same talk three times in rapid succession. The format for each session was that the chairman spoke for a few minutes and then each representative from a winery spoke for a few minutes. It wasn’t at all clear when we were supposed to be tasting the wines, so I found myself surreptitiously doing it while they were talking.
The theme for this particular IPNC was sustainability, a tricky subject. Climate change is clearly a big issue for the wine
industry, and there are steps that can be taken to reduce emissions such as using
lighter glass bottles or even other forms of packaging, cutting back on
capsules etc. I enjoyed hearing about permaculture, electric tractors, regenerative
agriculture and phytotherapy, the building up of natural defences.
But some
speakers took it a little too far, in my opinion. The representative of one
winery in New Zealand informed us that they ask their visitors where they have
come from and where they are going afterwards, and include this travel in their
records of carbon emissions. Another speaker made a reference to Black Lives
Matter and it all started getting a little political. Quite honestly, I didn’t
attend the IPNC in order to receive a lecture on social justice from someone
much, much richer than me… One was also aware of the vast number of bottles of
San Pellegrino lying around all over the place which presumably were imported
from Italy!
Moving swiftly on… Of the wines that we tasted during these sessions, I particularly enjoyed:
- the Blanc de Noirs Extra Brut Reserve 2016 from Brundlmayer in Austria which was very champagne-like
- the Savigny 1er cru Aux Vergelesses from Domaine Simon Bize et Fils. Chisa Bize gave a very good talk. She’s from Japan and took over running the domaine after her husband died ten years ago. It was interesting hearing how she had questioned their approach to winemaking and gradually modernised it. Santenay has never been one of my favourite villages in Burgundy, but she is producing some very pure, delightful wines which thankfully lack the offputting gravy/meatiness that one sometimes encounters. I see they are represented by Jeroboams in the UK
- Sunday’s Child 2021, a
pinot noir produced by Hope Well in the Eola-Amity Hills region of Oregon,
which had some agreeable complexity to it.
We returned
to one of the lawns where we found a table for
another excellent lunch. The wine people at this table were from Coline Clemens
and we’d actually chatted to them in the queue for dinner the previous evening.
They were good company and they had chilled their wines, which made them very
drinkable despite the relatively high alcohol level. A good time was had by all!
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