Morning:
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A bottle of finest Tooting
Bill Mouland, Evening Standard07.04.08
One day it may rank alongside the great vintages of Chassagne-Montrachet, Margaux and Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
This pale rosé is, however, slightly closer to home, having been "estate" bottled in the garden vineyards of Tooting Bec. It may not match its swanky French cousins in nose and taste - but it does have rarity value.
Only 30 bottles of the 2007 vintage were produced after a cooperative effort by a handful of residents using grapes from their own vines.
And as word spreads through Wandsworth - better known for its Young's beer - this year's harvest should be much bigger (if not better).
It is the sort of effort Wolfie Smith, hero of the Seventies BBC TV classic Citizen Smith and leader of the Tooting Popular Front, would be proud of. "It's a worker's collective, so Wolfie would definitely approve," said one of the grape growers, Patio Garden Centre owner Stuart Mungall, a friend of Citizen Smith star Robert Lindsay.
Mr Mungall and his wife Joan inherited a huge vine, growing Brandt dessert grapes, when they bought the garden centre and had tried to make wine from it before. "The results were revolting," he said. Last year he joined the cooperativesuggested by Richard Sharp via a community website.
The grapes, of several varieties, were taken to the Bookers Vineyard in Bolney, West Sussex, to be pressed and turned into wine. The vineyard produced bottles and labels for the wine, named Chateau Tooting, Furzedown Blush, in honour of its location and pinkish hue.
Mr Mungall said: "We have had a tasting and it is fair to say that noone actually spat it out. It's certainly not pretentious."
Mr Sharp said he got the idea for the project while lying under the pergola in his garden, drinking wine and looking at the grapes on his vines."I had seen villages in southern France diligently preparing for their grape harvests. Was it too ludicrous to imagine I could create a Tooting wine from not only my own, but my neighbour's grapes?"
He now plans to recruit vine owners from across London. "The great thing about the project is that it brings people together, and there's a nice glass of wine at the end of it," he said.
Knock it back ... just like Stella
ENGLISH wines are supposedly improving, and there has been interest from champagne growers in buying land in Sussex. It's not such a mad idea to produce wine in a city, either - there are decent small vineyards in Vienna and Nice. But I'm afraid it's hard to see a stampede towards Tooting just yet. There's a promise of apricot flavours on the nose that doesn't quite follow through. In fact, there isn't much of anything on the palate - it's pretty sharp, almost metallic. Still, I would guess it's no more than about eight per cent alcohol - the label doesn't say - so you can knock it back on a south London afternoon much as you would Stella.
