A brief history of the Qatra Wine Club as written by Dr. Antoine Schranz
- ranhyn
- Sep 5, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 13, 2022
A fortuitous meeting in the 1990s between me and Roberto Balbo at Wands Cash and Carry Wine Shop in Qormi and shortly afterwards with Simon Attard (a friend of Roberto) led to the discovering of a shared common interest in, and love of fine wine. This sparked off the idea of creating a club of a friendly group of like-minded persons to meet and enjoy good wine. The article shortly afterwards by Albert Cilia Vincenti in the Sunday Times of Malta about a wine exhibition organised by Farsons in 1996 highlighted his interest in wine and led to his being invited to join and become another of the founding members.
An initial informal meeting of this group was held at the Attard residence of Simon on the 12th March 2000, and from the start it was decided that the club, called Il-Qatra (on my suggestion), would be a non-profit, self-financing organisation independent of the local wine trade. This Maltese word means ‘drop’ literally but figuratively ‘alcohol/wine’. Around this same time the first meeting of the founding four was held at the Santa Lucia café and restaurant in Attard where the crucial decisions were formulated concerning blind tasting as an objective criterion and a proper dinner (rather than the usual cheese and biscuits fare at wine tastings) as accompaniment.
The principal aims of the club were to explore the fascinating world of wine rather than drink the label and for members to discover and develop their own tastes, relaxing among a group of enthusiasts and enjoying wine responsibly. The intention was that neither the wines nor the tasters would be in any form of competition, the scope being simply to learn to evaluate wine and find personal preferences. Discovering great wines but also eye openers and many pleasant surprises was meant to be the thrill of the activities. The basic idea was to make learning about wine more fun and less expensive, and gain an informative and entertaining experience, balancing the social with the educational.
Well aware how heavily influenced one can sometimes be by names, reputations and prices of wines rather than by their inherent quality, it was decided from the beginning to adopt a blind tasting format that in spite (or because) of its potential to reveal, often in a humbling way, one’s limitations, was considered to be the best way to learn how to evaluate wine unbiasedly. The club also intended to have a nice balance of discerning wine enthusiasts from different walks of life to promote diversity and so bring unique perspectives to wine appreciation. To enhance all this, appropriate food was considered essential, as it provides the perfect complement to wine tasting and supports the notion that drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life’s most civilised pleasures.
It was therefore agreed to hold monthly meetings with blind tasting of 4 different wines of various selected themes (according to grape variety, regions and/or countries, etc.) accompanied by a well-planned matching dinner. Venues were carefully chosen for their ambience and professional level of service. Wines were bought from all sources, the focus being as much as possible on important regions (old and new) and good vintages, but also included those not available locally at the time - these were imported mainly with the help of Albert. .
The first club meeting was on Wednesday 6th December 2000 at the Bologna restaurant in Valletta and included the founding 4 and an initial 8 invited members – viz. Lino Callus, Juanito Camilleri, George Felice, Klaus Frey, Remo Mifsud, Mario Mizzi, Dennis Montebello and Michael Tabone. The wines of the evening were Torres Corona Mas La Plana 1995, Chateau Malescasse 1996, Chateau Pontesac 1995 and Domain Boyar 1996. The event was felt to augur well for the future. A year later Simon retired for personal reasons and Mario Mizzi accepted to take his place on the committee. He proved to be a great asset as treasurer too.
The club kept on steadily growing in experience, size, quality and reputation. The well attended monthly meetings included later reports on the sessions and the results of the secret voting on the wines. Special December Anniversary gala dinners (partly sponsored from club reserves) became a yearly highlight and regular Summer ‘Ladies Night’ sessions were very popular too. Also organised were diverse activities including in particular the inviting of respected foreign wine makers (like Ernest Loosen, Cinella Colombini) and renowned wine connoisseurs (like Giulio Perugini) with the help of Roberto, who lectured on special wines they purposely brought over for the evening. A more recent event was ‘Le Donne del Vino’ coordinated with the Chaine de Rotisserie.
I like to think that the format worked well and proved successful thanks also and in great part to the support and participation of the fine group of members who helped make the wine club the island’s foremost one. Over the 20 years of club activities no fewer than 1200 different wines were blind tasted from all over the world and provided a rich learning and social experience. The sessions kept on demonstrating that although drinking is easy, proper tasting is both a skill and a challenge, and have clearly shown that the evaluation of wine is also very much conditioned by personal preferences, experience and mood. But most of all they resulted in regular, most pleasant events.
Time took its toll and at the end of 2020 the tiring initial committee decided with heavy hearts to close this long chapter but were very happy to pass on the baton to a new committee made up of experienced and knowledgeable club members, confident that they would keep on enhancing this worthy project. The handing over event was held at the Hotel Phoenicia on the 16th December 2021 (after a long hiatus due to the Covid pandemic). It was very well attended and included as wines: Champagne Agrapart Terroir NV, Savenniers Joly ‘Le Vieux Clos’ 2016, Flor de PIngus 2016, Barolo L. Sandrone ‘Areste’ 2016, Chateau Figeac 2010 and Tokaji Oremus Aszu 5 putt 2013. At the end of the gala dinner and after the concluding speeches were delivered, a lovely Riedel decanter for each of the founding foursome and an excellent bottle of Chateau Palmer 2000 to share were very generously donated as parting mementos by the new committee in name of all the club members. This was greatly appreciated and will surely remain a fond remembrance of an unforgettable long time together.
Long live Il-Qatra 2022
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