In the fast-food industry, an employee who stays on for a whole year is awarded a star to wear on his chest. Someone so lacking in talent and ambition that he flips burgers for a second year gets a second star. Hence Billy Two Stars, a useless individual, going nowhere, without fresh ideas or innovation.

In the airline industry, seniority is all-important. The more senior you are the more choice you have and the more money you get. And sometimes the more stuck in your ways you become. When crew would brag of having 25 years’ experience I would ask, “Actually, that’s just one year of experience repeated 24 times. What have you learned in the last 12 months?”

In the wine industry the most exciting wines are being made by young, enthusiastic wine-makers. Men and more often, women, straight from university, with hands-on experience in the vineyards, eager to try new ideas and reluctant to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. Not that they lack respect for the traditions and knowledge of the original wine-makers but ‘more of the same’ is not what they want to do. The result is new varietals being grown in older vineyards, new plantings in areas previously untried and modern techniques applied in the cellars to produce fresh, interesting and exciting five-star wines.

Not Billy Two Stars.

As I wandered around the tasting last week, I overheard an interesting snippet of conversation regarding Familia Belasco’s recent purchase of vineyards in Mendoza, Argentina. The Argentine vendors thought they had pulled a fast one on the ‘Gallegos’ who had bought the 70 hectare vineyard. (As the English have Irish jokes and the Irish have Kerryman jokes so Argentines refer to Spaniards as ‘Gallegos’, simple fishermen from Galicia.) The old Malbec vines, densely planted in 1919,  are very low yielding so, little appreciating that quality outsells quantity every time, the Argentines thought they had duped the purchasers into buying a useless plot of land. The magnificent, rich, powerful Arguentota Malbec 2004 and the huge, purple, chocolaty Swinto Malbec 2005 were testament to the wisdom of the Familia Belasco.

There’s a little wooden sign hanging in my cellar that reads, “Life’s too short to drink cheap wine.” But when is a wine cheap? Last week, José Antonio Cruz invited me to the launch party at the Vinoteca in Pamplona to celebrate Bodegas Familia Belasco winning the 2008 Grand Golden Bacchus award for their Marco Real Reserva de Familia 2004.  What a magnificent wine! A bright cherry red, complex fruits and vanilla spices on the nose with sweet, ripe fruits balanced by firm tannins, long and full in the mouth.

Roser Girbau, the oenologist, talked of her efforts, the labour and expense involved in its creation; hand-picked grapes from their own vineyards, manually selected, fermented in state-of-the-art, temperature controlled stainless steel tanks then aged in new French oak. It is easy to understand how a wine with this massive investment behind it can beat off competition from 1683 other wines in a blind tasting to win Spain’s top prize. I’m pretty sure anyone with enough money can craft a wine to win competitions but how much would it sell for? I was astonished to hear the venerable and proud Don Juan Ignacio Belasco reveal that the Marco Real Reserva 2004 will hit the shelves next month at around €10 a bottle. This is a wine created for consumption not competition. What a bargain!

Juan Ignacio went on to say that there were wines costing over €200 a bottle entered for the Grand Bacchus competition.   My wine tutor, the much revered Arthur Bone used to say, “Ask yourself two questions when tasting a wine. Do I like it? Can I afford it?” Well, I, for one, cannot afford €200 for a bottle of wine no matter how much I may like it. “But is that expensive?” asked Juan Ignacio. He went on to say that in his opinion, a wine is only expensive if it fails to meet his expectations; a €10 wine can disappoint and thus be a waste of money whilst a €100 bottle could astonish and turn out to be a bargain.

I was astonished by the Marco Real.

Toodle Pip!