Chryseia vertical tasting with Bruno Prats

On a soggy Saturday morning I headed to the ‘discovery theatre’ at the Landmark hotel for a vertical tour through Douro estate Chryseia, presented by owner Bruno Prats, formerly of Château Cos d’Estournal, and Rupert Symington of the Symington family, who co-own the estate.

After selling Cos, Prats has ventured into the New World, with Viña Aquitania in Chile – a joint venture with Paul Pontallier, and Anwilka in South Africa. The Symington family approached Prats in 1998 to co-head Chryseia, with the aim of making a non-fortified Douro wine in the Bordeaux style from a selection of the best grapes.

Symington touched on the difficulties of making a still wine in the hot Douro, with lack of acidity and over-extraction sited as the two main problems. Prats went on to explain that the Chryseia blend, aged in 100% new French oak, is made up of grapes from four Quintas, with two main varieties used – Touriga Nacional, which, like Merlot, brings roundness and finesse, and Touriga Franca  – the Cabernet Sauvignon of the Douro that gives the wine its backbone. A number of the earlier vintages also contain a small amount of Tempranillo-like Tinta Roriz.

The wines were tasted from cradle to grave, starting with the 2007, the unanimous favourite, and ending with the 2001. Freshness is the thread throughout; something Prats and Symington feel passionately about. Their goal is to combine the exuberance of the Douro with the elegance of Bordeaux, and with the stunning 2007 vintage, they just might have done it.

Tasting notes

Chryseia 2007

Medium purple with fresh, bright, red and black Rhône-like fruit and vanilla sweetness. Rich, lively and full-bodied in the mouth, with attractive white pepper and spicy notes. Smooth, rounded and voluptuous, with grippy tannins, it had wonderful weight and a luscious lingering length. The wine of the masterclass.

Chryseia 2006

Made from 60% Touriga Nacional and 40% Touriga Franca, 2006 was a hot, stormy year. The wine needs a lot more time to come out of its shell. Deep ruby, on the nose, the cherries, red currants and raspberries were slightly jammy and cooked. The palate was fresh but rather characterless. Needs time to develop.

Chryseia 2005

A blend of 70% Touriga Nacional and 30% Touriga Franca. Deep ruby, the nose was the most Bordeaux-like of the bunch with a lovely herbaceous character and mineral core. The black cherry fruit was supple and mellow, and I found hints of lavender and violet. Smooth and round on the palate, with chocolate, licorice and sweet spice wrapped around velvety tannins. Complex, long and delicious.

Chryseia 2004

2004 was a strange year in the Douro, with no rain until August, when the heavens opened for most of the month. Deep ruby, I spotted quite a lot of sediment in the glass. With 64% Touriga Nacional, the typical red fruit aromas of cherry and raspberry dominated. Fruit forward and soft on the palate, it had silky tannins and hints of peppery spice and chocolate on the finish.

Chryseia 2003

As we al know, 2003 was a scorcher. This year bucked the trend with Touriga Franca dominating the blend at 63%, which showed extraordinary expression in ’03. It showed a seductive raspberry and cherry nose alongside delicious smoky bacon aromas with hints of chocolate and mocha. Smooth and fruit forward on the palate, with velvety tannins and bell pepper developing into a long, sweet finish.

Chryseia 2001

The weather in 2001 was textbook, so it’s unsurprising the wine showed so well. Made with a decent amount of Tinta Roriz, I found raspberries, strawberries, cherries on the mid-palate along with violets, dried prunes, thyme and roasted bacon notes. Intense, fruit forward and floral, it has retained a wonderful freshness, with soft tannins, white pepper, spice culminating in an earthy finish. Remarkably young for its years; will go on and on. 

Cristal: hip or hype?

Last weekend we hosted our Decanter Fine Wine Encounter at the Landmark Hotel in Marylebone. It was a great turn out - just under 100 producers from around the globe came to show off their wines, including Château Palmer, Chapoutier, Seghesio and Craggy Range. Château Palmer were showing their 1996, which proved such a hit queues around the stand were five deep with tweed-clad gents jostling one another, glasses aloft, in hope of a drop.

A number of the wine world glitterati flew in to present masterlcasses, from Michel Chapoutier and Christian Moueix to the charismatic Angelo Gaja, who provided the highlight of the weekend by comparing Cabernet Sauvignon to John Wayne as a lover and Nebbiolo to Italian screen legend Marcello Mastroianni. Wayne, he argued, would be strong and powerful but a bit boring, whereas Mastroianni would bring something different to the table (or bed) every night.

I got to try some sensational wines over the two days, my highlights being Angelus 2004, Chryseia 2007, and Gaja 1976 Barbaresco, which was to die for. I'd been looking forward to the final masterclass of the weekend – Louis Roederer, as we were going to be serving Cristal 1999 in Jeroboam. They were brought into the kitchen in their bright orange wrappers like giant Christmas presents. Three of them; the three kings. We unwrapped them and left them to chill in the ice box until we received orders to pour.

Created for Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1876, Cristal gets its name from its crystal clear, flat-bottomed bottle. Fearing assassination due to a rocky political situation, the tsar ordered the bottles of his favourite fizz to be made clear and flat so they couldn't be laced with poison or planted with a bomb.

In the late 1990s, with the emergence of 'bling' culture, rappers like the Notorious BIG, P Diddy and Jay-Z chose Cristal as their Champagne of choice, ordering it by the case load in clubs and boasting about their conspicuous consumption of it in their lyrics. Cristal became a byword for cool in the hip-hop world; the Champagne holy grail. Moët just wouldn't cut it anymore - it had to be Cris.

But the love affair with Cristal ended for Jay-Z at least in 2006, after Louis Roederer managing director Frederic Rouzard made the following comment in an interview with The Economist when asked if he thought the association with hip-hop would harm the Cristal brand: "What can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business." Jay-Z quickly boycotted Cristal, moving on to Armand de Brignac or 'Ace of Spades' as it's been nicknamed, which is quickly replacing Cristal in hip-hop circles as the trophy bottle to be seen sipping from.

But what of the Cristal 1999? How did the cult cuvée perform on the night? By the time I got some in my glass, after two of the three bottles were poured in the masterclass, it had gone flat. It was like arriving at a party an hour too late. As I sipped it, I imagined what it might have been like, had I tried it as soon as the cork popped. It was certainly light and elegant with a complex and alluring honeyed nose, but worth £2,200 a bottle? Of course not. No wine is.

Panic grew in the kitchen post-masterclass when doing the routine bottle count. Where was the third Jeroboam? The masterclass leader sent a search party out to the Champagne room, while we combed the kitchen fearing the worst. Could an opportunistic ticket holder have crept in and shoved it up his lambs wool jumper? Surely not. The search party returned empty handed. We were still a Jeroboam down. Retracing the bottle's last steps, I rushed to the ice box and flung open the lid - there it was, laid back, luxuriating in the ice.