this week

Wines Past and Present

By Georges Meekers

The other day, at a car booth sale, I struck gold. Carefully shrink-wrapped, and complete with a couple of ancient grease stains, was the wine list from The Roadside Inn, a long forgotten à la carte restaurant in St. Andrew’s.

A three-colour charcoal drawing on the cover shows a bottle of Burgundy and a pair of Martini glasses filled to the brim. Inside are listings of various wines of course. Their vintages and reasonable prices suggest the list is between 30 and 40 years old.

This was the heyday of sweet fortified dessert wines, and the array includes Port, Sherry, and Sauternes. Claret and Burgundy are listed along just a few domestic, antiquated ‘brands’.

All in all, the wine list from the Roadside Inn speaks of a different era, when Maltese wine had not yet made the leap to establishing its own clear identity.

Today, at the brink of 2002, the old wine list gives an idea of how much progress Maltese winemakers have made.

Current wine lists, in contrast to the age-old Roadside Inn one, usually surprise rightfully with their breadth of excellent Malta grown quality wines.

Last week, Delicata released yet another two unique wines as additions to the Malta grown Medina Vineyards range: a 2000 vintage Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2001 Medina Vineyards Rosé (which is the first Maltese rosé made entirely from Grenache grapes grown locally).

There really seems no reason to pine for the good old days, except perhaps for that ritual of including a sweet dessert wine as an essential part of a quality dining experience as the patrons of The Roadside Inn were used to do.