Recent drinking round-up!

In no particular order...


I recently got some wine out of storage including this white St Romain 2008 from Vincent Perrin. I bought a case after tasting it at the domaine in January 2010 which I blogged about here. I was interested to see that my case was actually 2 boxes of 6. Still, je ne regrette buying 12! It was exactly how I remembered, with a fruity, floral quality that a lot of chardonnay doesn't have. Refreshing and zingy.

Also coming out of storage was this old friend, Yves Darviot's Beaune Greves 2002 (and magnums of 2005, which are waiting for a special occasion...). This is one of my desert island wines and it was great to try this vintage at last. It didn't disappoint.

This was a Cote de Brouilly which ACC brought round one night. Cuvee Zacharie, by Chateau Thivin. I foolishly chucked the bottle without noting the year, but it gets points just for that label, what a horror! It was fruity and rich, and quite gamey. Serious beaujolais.

Thanks are also due to ACC for bringing me back this bottle of marc from his travels. I can only apologise that it did not last long enough for him to try it... Made at Domaine Morot, it was enjoyable, with a good nuts-and-raisins thing going on, but I have to say it was no match for the Felettig which remains the gold standard of all things marc.

A double-bill of Odoul-Coquard... first the 2008 Bourgogne Rouge which is really quite delicious. G bought it, not me, and I'm kicking myself. Shall be looking out for it in 2010. And then the 2007 Vosne-Romanee which I was expecting to be good. It had lovely sweet, warm fruit on the nose, blackcurrants and chocolate, and on the palate was very soft and supple, quite light for a Vosne. "Lovely", "beautiful" and "pretty" were all used to describe it. This is only a village wine, but we decided that if it had been a premier cru, it would have scored a 9. Praise indeed. We felt it was drinking now but had a good future ahead of it too, no rush.

A double-bill of Alsace wines from Hugel, both en demi. 1973 Gewurtz and 1979 Muscat. You would not have guessed they were that age. Still absolutely singing.

And finally, this little number which I picked up in Selfridges on Friday: Gutierrez Colosia Fino. This is also a half bottle and wasn't cheap at £11.90 but I fancied trying it to see if it was worth it. It does seem I paid through the nose (Selfridges' pricing policy: think of a number and double it) as these people have it for £8.75 a half. Also, I had been suffering due to the lack of La Goya which spookily became unavailable from Corneys just after I bought a case. Have just checked and see that it's back, hurrah!, but seems to have gone up to £6.29 a half - even at that price, it's worth it. Anyway, the Gutierrez stuff was a fantastic pale colour, and clean as a whistle. It really was very good and went very well with the excellent nuts from the Middle Eastern counter but I don't think I'll be rushing to buy it again.

Sunday lunch, 18th July

Last Sunday it was my turn to host lunch. I used the fact that it was my birthday the previous Sunday to justify wheeling out some nice bottles.

While we were waiting for ACC to arrive, G produced this half of Hugel gewurz 1976, which was a different 1976 from the one we'd had at the Savile on Friday - this was the bog standard as opposed to the Selection Personelle. Alsace nerd, moi? It came in a 34cl bottle. G opened and poured, and you can see the colour from the photo, which led to immediate suspicions that it was ferked. One whiff confirmed this - very pungent indeed - and down the sink it went.

Fortunately I hadn't known G was going to produce this, so I'd already chilled a nice half of manzanilla which made a more than acceptable substitute. I note that I'm now down to my last 2 halves of this (when did I buy it? um about 3 weeks ago...) Je ne regrette rien, it has been ideal summer drinking.

For our starter we had some smoked sea trout which G had procured from a stall in Borough Market. It was lovely and went very well with a bottle of Domaine Leflaive bourgogne blanc 2007, which I have blogged about before so will not go into details. ACC provided some welcome expert advice, namely that this wine is not going to get any better, so that means no particular reason to hold onto it - hurrah!

For the main course we had roast fillet of beef which I got from the Ginger Pig, served cold with some salad. ACC had kindly brought along this Auxey-Duresses premier cru from Domaine Roulot 2002. We looked the domaine up in Coates to find that he gives it 3 stars, which is the score he gives "the best" - high praise indeed.

It was a relatively light colour with a slight amber tinge. On the nose it had a lovely, sweet fruit which I found quite heady and intoxicating. On the palate, it was absolutely delicious, and congruent with the nose. Rich and sweet yet light and soft. It reminded me of a red Chassagne, which is possibly my favourite style of Burgundy, very elegant. We all agreed this was a great lunchtime wine.

With the cheese, we had this Nuits St George premier cru Aux Perdrix, from Domaine du Perdrix, 2000. I knew that we'd had this before, but consulting my notes afterwards I was surprised to see it was actually the same vintage we'd had before too! Last time we gave it a 10, but this time it only got a 9.

It was a much darker colour than the Auxey, and on the nose had a lot of dark chocolate, prunes and black cherry. On the palate it was rich, deep, and mellow. I thought it actually had some parallels to the Auxey in its maturity and softness but this was very Cotes de Nuits style (darker flavours and black fruits) whereas the Auxey was very Cotes de Beaune style, lighter and with more red fruits. On this occasion, Roulot came out top - it was lunchtime after all, and qute hot in my flat. In future I should remember to save my C de N monsters for winter evenings!

We rounded off with coffee and a glass of G's mystery madeira which had a Berry Bros & Rudd label. He estimated that it came from the 1930s and was probably a malmsey. There must be a novel to be written about madeira detectives.

Dinner at the Savile, 16th July

Last night G generously hosted a dinner for me and my family at the Savile, to celebrate my birthday which was last Sunday. We brought the wines ourselves, and spent many enjoyable evenings planning exactly what we would have. In the end, all the wines turned out to be French, what a surprise, but I restrained myself on the burgundies as thought it would be fun to have some different things for a change.

We started off in the bar with a bottle of non-vintage Bolllinger rose, which G acquired from our local Unwins when it was closing down, and got it at about half price I believe. Everyone raved about it, and it had a lovely fruit and weight. The perfect start to the evening.

Then we went upstairs to the restaurant and continued proceedings with this 1976 gewurztraminer from Hugel, part of G's Hugel acquisition back at the beginning of the year. It proved very popular and my mother even asked me what it was. As on previous occasions, we found that its age had given it time to mellow and it had become something really interesting.

We followed up with the Hugel riesling 1969 which prompted some humorous comments as this was the year my brother was born. For me, it was less wondrous than the gewurz, but still lovely mature Alsace, and went very well with my marinated mackerel.

Next was an old favourite, the 1999 Vosne-Romanee Clos de Reas from Michel Gros. I've had several bottles of this and it had never failed to disappoint. So it was inevitable I suppose, that the one we had last night with my family wasn't quite as good as the previous bottles. I don't know if it was coming to it after the Alsace wines or what, but I found some strange appley top-notes going on. They diminished with time and with the accompaniment of red meat. G agreed that it wasn't quite what we'd hoped for. Still, that's burgundy for you, you do get these bottle variations.

After that, we moved on to a bottle of 1996 Hermitage La Chapelle from Paul Jaboulet Aine, an iconic wine of the northern Rhone which I love. I bought this bottle after a tasting held by ACC, for no particular reason except that he was offering a good deal on it, and put it on the rack for a rainy day. My family all loved it as I thought they would, particularly my sister-in-law who has dangerously expensive tastes when it comes to this sort of thing. But it would be hard not to like this wine - powerful yet elegant.

We finished off with this Rivesaltes 1982 which G bought from Waitrose It's a 50cl bottle which is a good size, and everyone got a couple of small glasses. A very pleasing dessert wine, not too sweet, which went well with everyone's various puds.

Then it was back downstairs for coffee and brandy for some, and then a whistlestop tour of the club including a very bad performance by me of the Entertainer on the piano in the ballroom. Memo to self: resist the temptation to play the piano after a bottle of wine!

All in all, a very enjoyable evening.

Recent drinking round-up 2

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. It's taken me a while to get organised and take photos of the things I've been drinking over the past few weeks, but here they are. In no particular order, largely because I can't remember what we had when...

Savigny-les-Beaune les Fourches 2005 from Champy, en demi. This emerged from a Norfolk cellar which shall remain nameless, and I was happy to acquire it although it was a bit of a risk as I hadn't tried it beforehand, and G predicted doom. Fortunately the gamble paid off!

Maison Champy are negotiants based in Beaune and I've been there a couple of times. The last time we had an extensive tour with the delightful Sophie which was brilliant - we got to poke around in their cellars where they have stuff going back about a century - but overran by about two hours, causing us to abandon our plans of a leisurely lunch and have to eat a quiche on a park bench instead, but I won't hold that against them. It was a good quiche.

I always think Champy are very typique - they somehow always seem to capture the essence of a village. This Savigny is very good indeed - tres Savigny, smooth and velvety and elegant but with a richness. If this were a premier cru, it would be scoring an 8. I love the fact that it's in half bottles, and I love the fact that I have 24 more in bond, in two packs of 12 so I can get some out soon and the rest when I can't delay gratification any more.

Auxey-Duresses Les Clous 2007 from Sylvie Boyer. I got this as part of a mixed case of interesting whites in the £12-18 range. This was the most interesting and inevitably also the most expensive of the bunch. Very accomplished. I believe some sort of family bust-up means that she's not making wine at the moment but on the basis of this I do hope she gets back in the game soon. Have to deduct a few marks for the screwcap though - tchah!

Bourgogne Rouge La Chapelle Notre-Dame, from Domaine Nudant, 2007. I picked up a case of this last year and it's one of my house reds. It's relatively light and sometimes has a hint of apricot kernels and a slight muskiness. G is not a big fan (although there's some bottle variation and he has made favourable comments a couple of times) so I tend to neck this myself when he's away for the weekend. I've enjoyed it but don't think I'll be rushing to buy any more - plenty more bourgogne rouge in the sea, so to speak.

Cremant de Bourgogne from the Duchesse de Magenta. Sadly this was my last bottle of this wonderful cremant. I think it's blanc de blancs (aka blanketty blank) and it's much more of a champagne-style cremant than some. We were lucky to get the small allocation that we did and am not expecting any more to be available so there we are. Heigh ho.

Ah, an old friend. This is the Bourgogne Rouge '07 from Domaine Parent. G and I have been getting through this stuff like nobody's business. The 2007s were relatively light and charming, so this doesn't need decanting and leaving for an hour, which makes it convenient for weeknight drinking. Plus I have to say the label is stunningly beautiful compared to most of the monstrosities out there. Clearly this is the exception to the Inverse Law of Burgundy Labels which I will discuss in a later post. Stay tuned!

It has been drawn to my attention that I rarely (never?) talk about wines you could buy in the supermarket on this blog. That's because I don't buy much wine from supermarkets. I mainly drink Burgundy and any Burgundy in a supermarket is going to be produced in mass quantities in order to meet the demand, whereas it's the small enterprises that produce the interesting stuff. However I will from time to time buy other wine in a supermarket, and 9 times out of 10 it will be sherry when Waitrose have a special offer on. I love all sherries and in the summer, a glass of cold fino or manzanilla goes down very well.

This La Gitana from Hidalgo was on special a couple of weeks ago - a couple of quid off, so it was about £6.50, and very nice it was too, chilled, with some pistachio nuts and some almonds. NB it's important to treat sherry like a proper wine and not leave it open for weeks - drink up asap. Under no circumstances behave like an elderly aunt, put it in a wooden cabinet and wheel it out again at Christmas.

This is Chateau Tour Cormeil 2006 - a claret, gasp! It's really nice and has that blackcurranty thing going on, and everyone in the office loves this too, we had it at a Christmas party and it went down very well. Not hugely expensive by claret standards - only about £12 I think.

The other night G got back from Rutland with these two beauties from Hugenot - a Marsannay and a Gevrey-Chambertin, both 2005, so we thought it would be interesting to try them side by side. The Gevrey was powerful and muscular and beefy as expected - G had already had a bottle a while ago and had given it a good review - but the Marsannay was a revelation! The fruit jumped out of the glass at me (which is always a good thing) and it was vibrant and very juicy and delicious. I don't know much about Marsannay except that it's the most northern of the villages in the Cote de Nuits, practically at Dijon, and that I always get it confused with Maranges, which is down in the south. Need to start paying more attention.

Last but by no means least, the other night we had one of G's Alsace haul, procured after the Alsace dinner. This was the 1970 Sporen. It was an absolutely beautiful golden colour, and quite dry and refreshing. Remarkable to think that it's 40 years old. Wonderful!

Hugel dinner

On Thursday night it was back to the Savile to meet G and some friends of his, one of whom has an extensive collection of old wines from the Alsace. I've been meaning to learn more about Alsace wines so this was very exciting. I walked through Fitzrovia and Mayfair in the rain and turned up dishevelled, cold and wet, so it was great to walk into the bar and find a glass waiting for me.

The wines were all from Hugel and we tasted 11 of them going back to 1967. They looked amazing in their tall green bottles with the distinctive yellow label of Hugel. We kicked off with a Sporen 1970, made from a mixture of grapes, which was a lovely golden colour, quite dry but very Alsace in style and made a fantastic aperitif but I also thought it would go well with food.

Then we had a half of Muscat 1979 Cuvee Tradition, which J told me is one up from the standard cuvee. This was a paler golden colour and very dry. I'd normally expect a muscat to be quite grapey, but this wasn't. G described it as "dangerously drinkable" and certainly to come home after a hard day's toil and find one of these in the fridge would be very welcome.

The Gewurz 1973 was an amber colour and slightly murky so we had our suspicions even before tasting it - and yes, it was seriously maderised, but some around the table found that quite attractive. Fortunately the Gewurz 1973 Selection Personelle (which J told me later became Cuvee Tradition) en demi was on song. It was a pale gold colour and was quite fat and mellow with a good finish. J described it as being "in good shape for a 36 year old". Ahem. I described this as being the best so far in my opinion. Not that I was biased in any way due to the vintage...

Then we had the same wine from 1976, an excellent year in Alsace, which was fragrant, full and big with no hint of the scent of "granny's handbag" as ACC likes to describe it, that rather heady turkish-delight type perfume that gewurztraminer often has. This was even better than the 1973. And then we had the Gewurz 1976 Reserve Personelle which was a step up from the Cuvee Tradition. This was magnificent, a real showstopper and the wine of the evening - it was big and rich and would go brilliantly with pate and brioche.

The wines we tasted towards the end of the evening were sadly less reliable - the Gewurz 1983 Reserve Personelle was maderised, the Tokay d'Alsace Cuvee Tradition 1981 was corked and the Riesling Reserve Exceptionelle Auslese 1967 was "not correct" - again I think it was maderised judging from the colour. These things are to be expected when one is tasting such old wine, and I found it interesting to taste them anyway (well, all right, maybe not the corked one).

We rounded off the evening with coffee and calvados and rattled back to Bloomsbury feeling educated about old Alsace and very grateful to J for giving us the opportunity to drink such amazing rarities.