Monday, August 30, 2010

A mixed bag!

Last Saturday we had plans to go out for dinner with T at Number Twelve which is a nice Italian place in the Ambassadors Hotel just up the road. However, T did his homework beforehand and discovered that although they had cheerfully accepted my booking, the kitchen was effectively closed for August, and some dodgy-sounding alternative menu was being offered instead. G popped up there to have a look and confirmed that this was indeed the case, so I cancelled the booking and G made an emergency trip to the supermarket while I did an emergency clean of my flat. Admittedly this didn't take long, am just mentioning it to make it sound as though I wasn't delegating everything to him while I lazed about on the sofa...




T generously offered to bring something, which turned out to be very much in the spirit of the Swiss Pinot Noir Society: a Bulgarian rose fizz, vintage 2006, made by Edoardo Miroglio if my decoding of the swirly label is correct. It was a nice pale pink colour and I recorded that it had a delicate fruity nose. So far, so good. Sadly before I could get a mouthful without preconceptions, T had already made a start and used the word "penicillin" and then G took a sip and said it reminded him of paracetamol. It was difficult to be neutral with those descriptions in my head, and indeed it did have a slightly grainy quality just like badly-dissolved painkiller, particularly on the finish. We manfully finished our glasses with the aid of plenty of pistachio nuts, but the rest of the bottle remained untouched. Fellow members of the SPNS, you owe us one.

Fortunately I had an emergency bottle of Tio Pepe in the fridge, which went very nicely with our gazpacho - it's a decent workmanlike sherry, especially when on special offer at Waitrose.

With the main course, an assiette of charcuterie, we had one of G's 1978 clarets, in this case Chateau Chasse Spleen which is from the Medoc and the website tells me is 73% cabernet sauvignon, 20% merlot and 7% petit verdot. It was a lovely dark colour, had a fabulous nose of tar and liquorice, and was very soft on the palate. I got a lot of black cherry. Delicious and not in the least bit stemmy.

This went down very quickly so we followed it up with Chateau du Tertre 1978 which is a Margaux. The label caused some amusement with its reference to Arsac - according to Wikipedia, this is a commune in the Gironde and absolutely nothing to snigger about. It had a heady nose and I found it sweeter and more obvious than the Chasse Spleen. Apparently it's made from a mixture of 40% cabernet sauvignon, 35% merlot, 20% cabernet franc and 5% petit verdot. A discussion of the relative merits of cabernet sauvignon and merlot ensued and I promised to give T a BIG BLACK MARK for preferring merlot to cabernet sauvignon. Tchah! But while I didn't think it was in the same league as the other, it was soft and drinkable and very enjoyable.

We then moved on to a comparative tasting of digestifs: G's ancient vieille prune versus my marc, and finally the dreaded prunelle. The vieille prune won the day, as you'd expect given its age and price - it was very elegant and light. I adore the bottle, which is definitely joining my bottle collection when we finally finish the contents (so far great restraint has been shown).

T said that the marc seemed toasted after the vieille prune. We all felt it stood up well and G thought it had had 20-25 years in oak and was probably made in the late 70s. T found a lot of fruit in it - grapes and raisins. I hope that it restored his faith in marc after an earlier, less fortunate encounter.

Finally, the prunelle. I'd had high hopes that T might like this and I could palm off my remaining two bottles on him, but I should have known he'd have better taste than that. It was extraordinarily sweet after the other two, and just rather unsophisticated. I note that G has written "Riedel must make a prunelle glass" which is indeed a fair point, although somehow I doubt that even a special glass could rescue it.

At this stage T became desperate and began drinking my Chambord black raspberry liqueur, which not even I drink neat but save for kir royales, while we had a lengthy discussion about which club if any I should join. I remain tempted by the Oxford and Cambridge due to the reference to Happy Vintage Port Friday Afternoon on its website, but even by my standards, I'd have to get through a hell of a lot of bargain basement vintage port to recoup the membership fee.

All in all, an excellent evening and thanks to T and G for their fine or at least interesting contributions!

2 comments:

  1. We walked by Twelve the other week and were curious about it. Let me know if you decide to try again!

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  2. I've been there a couple of times before and I like it. The food is very good and nicely presented and they have an interesting wine list. The downsides are that it does feel a bit like eating in a hotel lobby, and the service is often incompetent, but in an endearing way. They often have a lunch offer on so if you're around at lunchtime try to get that.

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