Wine Pairing: 2022 Casa Santos Lima “Valcatrina”, Alentejano, Portugal

As usual Kami no Shizuku was obsessing over priceless French reds while I was drinking cheap and cheerful. As in ¥980 from Kaldi, but what the wine snobs of the world don’t want you to know is that cheap wine can be delicious too. Kaldi is the closest Japanese equivalent to Trader Joe’s I suppose, at least where wine is concerned. Most of what they sell is plonk, but there are absolutely diamonds in the rough. I took a flyer on the Valcatrina (Portugal of course is known much more for Ports than still wines) based on some good web reviews, and it’s shockingly good. Rich berry fruit with an undercurrent of spice and black coffee.

There are no apostles at the pulpit this week. And even a white wine in a supporting role – two, if you count Champagne. It’s a very light-hearted episode, along the lines of a wine mystery. Some wine has been stolen from the cellar of Yutaka’s old villa – five bottles worth ten million Yen –  and when the caretaker reports it to the police they decide Robert Doi is their prime suspect. He may look the part of a tramp but he owns the park he’s squatting in, and his net worth apparently runs into the billions (of Yen, but even so). He has no need to steal anybody’s wine, much less Yutaka’s.

Robert gets his revenge on the cops as only he can, and Shizuku and Issei (with Miyabi and Loulan in tow) head out to the villa to try and solve the mystery. It’s interesting seeing them team up, and their relationship is progressively growing less antagonistic as the story progresses (though introducing himself as “Yutaka’s only son” seemed very pointed). The caretaker has had three other recent guests – an architect, a real estate appraiser, and a Karuizawa-style woodcarver. All three claim to be ignorant about wine, but given that the caretaker manages to let them all know where he kept the key to the cellar, it’s a given that one of them is the culprit.

So we have our classic Agatha Christie setup, will all the suspects (at those values, this is murder!) gathered together for a dinner to “apologize” to them for the whole kerfuffle. A plan is hatched to get the killer to reveal himself, with Issei playing the role of organizer and Shizuku sommelier. A Champagne starts us off, followed by a sublime Le Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru “Les Pucelles” from Olivier Leflaive – yes, a Sasquatch sighting, it’s a white wine (and one of the best). The wine is over-chilled – a common mistake with whites – as a trap for the culprit. Then order is restored, and a red Burgundy appears – a Domaine Leroy Romanee St. Vivant, one of the greatest wines in the world – served in glasses that reek of fish.

Well, that proves a bridge too far for the guilty party, and he tips his hand. It’s Morishita-san, the woodworker. He has a sob story – he agreed to be a guarantor for a friend who defaulted, saddling him with a huge debt he’s 10 million short of covering. Even so, he stole ¥10 million worth of wine – this resolution smells as off as those Burgundy glasses to me. Not only does Shizuku agree not to have Morishita arrested, the real estate appraiser hooks him up with a potential gig at another villa, this one recently purchased with the intent of opening a restaurant.

Be that as it may, this segues into the next phase of the story. This villa had an undiscovered wine cellar (that happens more than you’d think). And it’s full of old bottles with worn or missing labels. That wine could be worth the GDP of a small country, but not if no one knows what it is. The challenge is to appraise the contents when, in many cases, the bottles have no obvious identifier of the producer. It’s another challenge for Shizuku and Issei to work on together – we’re definitely starting to see a theme here – and this one could potentially be very interesting for the wine geeks (guilty) in the audience.