LAZY HAZY DAYS IN SINGAPORE

• Back home for a few weeks but almost wish I had stayed in Europe given the poor air quality.  This has been a stinker of a year for pollution and does not encourage people to come and spend time in Singapore unless they have no choice.  Most of the time people do have a choice.  Even the Indonesian government is finally getting concerned about the damage to health and the environment.  The problem is unless people are prosecuted and punished the benefits to individuals are sufficiently high to outweigh any damage they perceive to themselves and their immediate surroundings.  So slash and burn continues.  Remediation is always too late.  The only solution is prevention and prevention requires removal of the corrupt local officials who nod and wink.  We need arrests, preferably high profile.  

The problem here is that the police are also often on the take, while the army is probably in on this and benefiting financially in many of the places where you would like to send them to round up the usual suspects; and they will be the usual suspects.  It is the same people year after year after year.  There is no mystery.  People know who they are.  There is a way to put an end to this particularly noxious pollution, but there is as yet no real will.  

• One possible ray of sunshine, assuming you can see the sun, is that the situation is so bad that a proper home grown driven environmental movement might at last get going in Indonesia.  So much of the effort has been driven in the past by foreigners and NGOs from outside.  If villagers start dying (and some reports say that is now happening) protests could turn ugly.  Since the army and police do not seem very interested a bit of on the spot vigilantism may be the only near term antidote. 

• At least we have lovely music to listen to take our mind off the fact that the air smells of smoke.  The Singapore Symphony is in fine form as usual, though their annual programme of A Night at the Movies lacked a little something this year; and was not as enjoyable as last year.  The associate conductor managed the process with a more sensible mix between commentary and music.  I think he may have had feedback from the 2014 event that we are there to listen to the orchestra not the man with the baton.  In any event the mix was much more appropriate.  Yet the flow this time was missing, and some of the pieces were jerky.  Nothing came close to Alexander Souptel’s Schindler’s list solo.  That said the orchestra were at their best with the brief piece from Psycho, the famous stabbing scene; and the best moment was the segway into the finale of Mission Impossible. 

• It is Friday and the smog is awful again.  There are the usual warnings.  We are in seriously unhealthy territory on every scale.  I have a pretty simple test.  When I arrive in my office in the morning can I see the ships just beyond the Marina Bay Sand Resort sitting out there at sea waiting for something to do, and are the cranes at Jurong visible?  Alas the answer this morning is no and no.  I can barely make out the iconic boat at the top of the building let alone anything further away.  If there are any real boats out on the water, they are not visible from the OCBC building.  Today is a bad one.  We are not putting any picture on the blog this time because you would not see anything.  My visitor from Beijing said he could not wait to get back there because the air quality at home was so much better!

• Saturday arrives.  I feel like I am no longer a blogger but a smogger.  The PSI is supposed to be 227 today where we live; yesterday the high was 244.  This morning does seem a little clearer, but if yesterday’s high was 244, I am 21.

• Thank goodness for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.  Nothing like a fantastic concert to lift the gloom; and we had one with Haydn’s Die Schopfung or The Creation to us other Anglo Saxons.  What a magnificent piece of music.  Somehow I had managed to get through life without stumbling across this masterpiece.  Cannot wait to find it again.  Lim Yau brought it together beautifully.  The SSO were a finely tuned machine.  The singers were breathtaking.  I am not sure who shone brightest.  Martin Nyvall, the tenor, was pure joy.  Yet for me the crown goes to the baritone Kresimir Strazanac whose duets with the soprano Larissa Krokhina were out of this world.  And then there was superlative support from the Singapore Symphony Chorus, and the NAFA Chamber Choir.  Massed voices over 100 strong singing in perfect harmony are something else.  Two hours went by so fast it seemed like only twenty minutes.  You leave with your spirits lifted. 

• Monday, and the visibility from my office is more or less the same as when the PSI was well over 200 on Friday.  The index reads 158 at 7 am.  Will be going higher.  We are still in the unhealthy zone, but it looks and smells very unhealthy.

• One solution if the haze is getting you down and there is no concert to attend is to go out for a good dinner.  Garibaldi is one of the top Italian restaurants in Singapore, and deservedly so.  The Antipasto misto make a winning way to start a meal.  The Aldo Conterno Barolo 2007 from one of Piedmont’s top growers is so enjoyable that the wine restores a sense of goodwill to the world (with the exception of Indonesian arsonists).   

No More Terrible Years in Tuscany

Life as a wine grower in our part of the world has been a hard slog of late.  The Euro has been too strong due to Germany, and the weather has been either erratic or down right nasty.  The last time the crop was both good and large was 2008.  Some producers like Rampolla, La Massa and Casaloste extracted excellent 2013's, but the vintage was small.

2015 is a year to celebrate.  Most important: the crop is a corker.  The grapes are close to perfect.  The quantity could be up 50% or even more compared to 2014.  At the Vino al Vino wine festival in Panzano everyone was smiling.  Expectations are not just for a good year, but for one of the truly great years. 

Picking began early and the weather has cooperated.  Indeed it cooperated all year with rain when required, but not too much, plenty of sun but cool nights, and rain and sun roughly in the right order!  As one winemaker said to me “If I do not make the best wine ever this year it will be my fault.”. 

So we are looking forward to getting our hands on large quantities of this year’s output in two years’ time when the Classico comes out, and in three years’ time when the Reserva emerges from the casks.  This vintage should be that rare treat that drinks well when young yet also ages gracefully and for longer than usual.  Conditions have not been so helpful everywhere else in Europe so Tuscany should shine when the experts deliver their verdict.  In addition a lower Euro, partly courtesy of Greece and partly courtesy countryman ECB President Mario Draghi, means prices should be more competitive than they have been.  Truthfully 2014 was no great shakes but let’s put that behind us as here we come with cheaper and better, a winning combination for Tuscan wine makers, and especially our friends and neighbours in Panzano.   

We invited a leading independent wine merchant from London, Johnny Goedhuis, to stay for the festival.  He came with a colleague and we were able to take them around to seven producers the following Monday and Tuesday.  They were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the wines sampled.  Their clients should get the chance to buy at least a few of Panzano’s local stars through Goedhuis and Company next year.  Remarkably some of the best names here have no or at best inconspicuous representation in the UK.

 Conca d'oro with Fontodi behind:  Charlie Whittington, Johnny Goedhuis and James  

Another interesting recent development has been the arrival in the Conca  D'oro of new investors, buying up vineyards and agritourismos, and spending serious money to take them up market.  This will make a difference.  As our friends from Singapore said when they stayed in a couple of villas over the summer:  they come to enjoy the scenery and history, the fine food and wine and the culture; but they want to do it with good air conditioning and proper bathrooms.  Too many offerings fall short of the required standard.  At least in our area that is changing.

The biggest change will be the three year renovation of Villa Vignamaggio, scene of the film Much Ado about Nothing starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.  This wonderful villa will get the full treatment and should emerge as a five star gem complete with spa.  The new owner is the Chairman of Napster, someone who can afford to drop tens of millions of Euros into an upgrade.  He has ambitious plans.  He already bought another property in the valley.  The potential of Vignamaggio with excellent position, good land and old vines had not been properly realised under the previous ownership.  Even the Mona Lisa Reserva is not as good as it should be.  This is likely to change.    

A Dutch investor, a successful businessman, recently bought the biodynamic boutique of Renzo Marinai.  Renzo is a magician with wine who plays music to his barrels; different composers for the different wines and blends.  Fortunately he stays in place as the new owner expands the acreage.  We expect the quality and personality of these wines to be maintained as its availability becomes wider.

Renzo Marinaia and his team selecting the grapes

A Swiss investor just renovated a local agritourismo with great style and taste, in the process introducing a new price point to our Commune : the 400 Euro room.  There will be more such rooms coming soon.  Thus Asian tourists looking for luxury together with the best of Italian experience surrounded by vines and olives, will find it in Panzano.

Over at Villa Le Barone, a long-time favourite for travellers to this part of Chianti, the owners added some newer rooms and are upgrading the swimming pool.  The hotel continues to draw rave reviews from people who like character, a lovely location and outstanding family cooked fare.  The food is so good only hotel guests get to enjoy it.  While somewhat rustic the charm that pervades this place and also the charm of the service more than compensates for any old fashioned elements.  The honour bar is a reminder of a bygone age of tourism. 

There is investment going on in the village as well.  A new wine bar has opened that offers two wines from every local producer in one place.  Still we prefer to eat at Enoteca Baldi where the food is spectacular and inexpensive.  Mimmo used to be the executive chef at the Berkeley Hotel in London.  And people travel from all over the world to enjoy one of the three restaurants run by Dario Cecchini.  Google who is the world’s most famous butcher?  Our man in Panzano comes up.  The only problem is that after eating his bistecca Florentine nowhere else will it ever taste as good.

 

This little corner of Tuscany is moving up in the world.  New investment and new people are reviving what was always the most choice part of Chianti.  House prices have stablished and are starting to inch back up.  The atmosphere in the village is completely different from what it was twelve months ago.  As another winemaker said to me “2015 could be the vintage of my life time.  I have been waiting over 20 years for this.”  Let us hope he is right.

 

To go from the particular to the general September’s consumer confidence in ltaly is the highest since 2002.  Good to know it is not just Panzano where things are getting better.

 

A brief postscript to this voyage.  Once again I was unfortunate enough to be scheduled through Munich.  Without doubt this is one of the world’s worst airports and a place to avoid at all costs if you can, especially if you hope to change planes.  Unfortunately there are times when there is no other sensible route.

 

I have attempted to make 9 connecting flights via Munich over the past three years.  Four times I was foiled, including my latest attempt to get from Kiev to Geneva.  On another occasion I made it, but my bags did not.  So in a majority of cases with an average theoretical transfer time of around one hour ten minutes, and most changes taking place in the very same terminal, the transfer has not been possible in practice.

 

Late flights appear to be routine, but it is the airport itself that is part of the problem.  Arriving from Kiev you have to go through a full security screen.  With over 100 people and precisely one line open, that did not work well.  There were plenty of people standing around doing nothing.  They seemed to enjoy the distress of passengers wanting to get screened quickly so they could get on and go to their departure gate.  Around half the people on my plane were trying to connect to another flight.  Most did not make it.  It took nearly half an hour before the last person off that bus got through both security and immigration; and the bus itself took nearly ten minutes from plane to gate.  Had we been illegal Syrian refugees no doubt processing would have been faster and less thorough!

 

I am getting to know the Lufthansa lounges in Munich Airport far too well as I had to wait once again for a later flight than the one that I was originally booked to take.  At least they have good sparkling water on tap.  My advice : try hard to avoid Munich Airport.  It is clearly run by a former employee of Volkswagen’s R&D Department.  This hub proves that the much vaunted German efficiency does not include airline passenger management.  Munich may have a nice exterior, but the guts give users indigestion.  Frankfurt is a dump, but at least at that airport you can usually get on the right plane.