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!

Meursault Les Grands Charrons 2002, Michel Bouzereau et Fils

This little beauty recently came up at an auction and I was lucky enough to get it. I had the pleasure of visiting this domaine back in 2007 with G and ACC - am in haste and can't find my notes from the trip, but I do remember that we were favourably impressed with the purity and elegance of the wines. However they're one of the top producers of Meursault and therefore prices tend to be on the high side.

G and I had a bottle last night. It's a beautiful pale gold colour and I decanted it for half an hour before we started guzzling, which past experience has shown helps it to open up. G's reaction to his first sip was an expletive, but in a good way; mine was "hell, yeah". This is wonderful serious Meursault, rich and buttery but also with a grapey quality. G observed that the oak is completely integrated, and the finish goes on some time. It's not a premier cru but the vineyard is just north of the premier cru belt, and this could compete with many premier crus in my opinion. It went perfectly with our roast chicken.

Marc-vellous!

My love of marc dates back to 2000 when G and I went to Beaune for our summer hols. We stayed at Hotel de la Cloche in Place Madeleine, and on our first night were in the mood for something simple so we went to a pavement cafe on the square where we had some hearty Burgundian fare and ended up with a huge brandy glass of marc each, probably about 3 measures. That night, dehydration kicked in big time. I'd been brought up on stories of how you weren't supposed to drink French tap water so it was a fairly dire situation. Since then, I've learned to ensure that 2 litres of water are at close hand any time I drink the stuff.

Marc is a spirit made from grape skins, seeds and stems from grapes which have been pressed to make wine - so it's basically the French equivalent of the Italian grappa. A glass at the end of a meal is the most wonderful thing, and I still remember the time I attempted to bring back a bottle of 1978 vintage marc but it got crushed in the taxi (long story) and ended up perfuming my rucksack. I got some strange looks on Eurostar that day.

ACC made my day a few weeks ago when he offered me some of this vieux marc de bourgogne from Henri Felettig. I haven't had the opportunity to visit this domaine, but they're based in Chambolle-Musigny in the Cote de Nuits. G went last year and raved about their wines, but he hadn't tried this. It's not cheap at £37.50 a bottle, and when I saw that I'd ended up with six bottles I was a little bit taken aback as for some reason I'd thought I was sharing the half-case with someone else but apparently not. I was slightly worried as to how I was going to get through it given that I also have three bottles of prunelle from Dufouleur at the moment. (Prunelle is like amaretto on steroids, sweet and almondy, but G doesn't like it so I'm having to drink it by myself, the horror.)

It turns out there won't be a problem - the first bottle barely lasted a week. This stuff is like no other marc I've ever had. It comes in a very heavy 70cl bottle with a yellow wax seal, always a sign of seriousness. I think it must be very old as it's incredibly mellow, with the classic nuts-and-raisins nose, and goes down with no fieriness, so you wouldn't think it was 40% alcohol. There has been no dehyrdration effect to date and all in all, it's a life-enhancing drink, a genuine eau-de-vie. I don't envisage that getting through the rest will be any great hardship, indeed we've already made a start. Now all I need is some of Anne Parent's marc to do a comparative tasting...

Hurrah for marc!

Bruno Desaunay-Bissey

On Thursday I was very excited to get the chance to go to an impromptu tasting down in Battersea organised by ACC to try some wines from a producer he has recently found.

I somehow braved the new door entry system and found the new office which was just as full of enticing goodies as the old one used to be, if not more so (marc so he he).

We kicked off with a glass of cremant from Agnes Paquet which was perfectly nice but for me, less interesting than the Dufouleur vintage cremant, of which I'm eagerly awaiting a new delivery of the 2007 and will then blog up.

Then it was onto the reds, which were from Bruno Desaunay-Bissey who is based in Flagey-Echezaux. Flagey is in the heart of the Cote de Nuits, between Vougeot and Vosne-Romanee. The bottles we tried were all from the 2008 vintage.

First we had a village Chambolle-Musigny, which had a vibrant nose and was quite light, soft and elegant on the palate. We thought it would be drinking in about 2 years, so one wouldn't need to wait too long. A bit of a crowd-pleaser I would say. Am seriously considering treating myself to a 6 pack.

Consulting the excellent maps in Coates, I see that Combe d'Orveau, the vineyard, is right on the Flagey border, and part of the vineyard is classified as premier cru, although not this particular part. I smuggled the rest of the bottle home with me so here's a photo, showing a traditional style label. Also, it's only 12.5% alcohol which is a plus point as far as I'm concerned.

After that there were two premier cru Vosne-Romanees, one was Les Rouges and the other I can't remember as I've somehow managed to lose my tasting notes, duh! Was it Les Beaux Monts? Les Rouges had a lot of red fruit although as ACC said this might be purely suggestive as a result of the name - he got raspberry, while N and I got redcurrant. The other one was more typique, with darker fruits and more power and richness, and would probably need 4 years or so to come round.

Finally we moved on to a pair of grand crus, a real treat for me as I very rarely get to drink anything at this level. We had an Echezeaux and a Grand-Echezeaux. N turned to vintage car analogies at this point and suggested (I hope I got this right) that the Echezeaux was like an old Bentley while the Grand-Echezeaux was like something sleeker. Certainly it was a delight to drink, with all the qualities of elegance, finesse, and structure in place, and while I'm wary of acquiring a Grand-Echezeaux habit, it's very tempting to get a bottle, tuck it away in a safe place and come back to it in 10 years. This is the highest level of red burgundy, and the price seemed very reasonable considering that. All in all, an excellent addition to the EPW portfolio of producers.

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.

Musings on sherry and other topics

I haven't been drinking all that much lately, partly because I had my annual booze-free week while cat-sitting for my parents, partly because G has made a controversial rule that he's not drinking mid-week unless there's a good reason, and partly because it's just so hot, particularly in my penthouse suite (i.e. 9th floor studio flat).

One thing I have been drinking lately though is halves of manzanilla!

I have Jancis to thank for this discovery. She mentioned this in her FT column a couple of weeks ago, and my quest for sensibly-priced halves of jerez was at an end. This manzanilla from Barbadillo costs £4.45 a half from Waitrose Wine Direct (I haven't seen it in the shop) - click here - and with free delivery (hurrah!), a case of 12 was £53.40 and came within the week. A half bottle is a great size for two or for me by myself over a couple of evenings, and a lovely cold glass goes down a treat at the end of a hard day bean-counting. It's proper manzanilla too, vibrant and zingy, and great with a bowl of olives or pistachios.

While we're on the subject of Jancis, I was recently carrying a cup of tea down the corridor when my chief executive asked me to come into his office. It turned out that he wanted to give me the FT supplement on investing in wine, as I am not only head bean-counter but also in charge of the office cellar. I was heartily amused to read her recommendation that Coche-Dury Bourgogne Blanc was an excellent investment wine. Coche-Dury makes some of the very best white burgundy and the only one I've had (= been able to afford) is his bourgogne, which can to my knowledge only be obtained in minute quantities from a particular restaurant in Beaune with spectacularly customer-unfriendly opening hours. Memo to Jancis: WTF?

However, she hasn't completely lost her marbles, as in addition to the sherry recommendation, it has recently been brought to my attention that she selected Edward Parker Wines (do I get a discount for this shameless plugging, ACC?) as the best wine supplier in an article on her Purple Pages here. Unfortunately one has to fork out £69 a year to subscribe to the Purple Pages so I can't read the whole article, but congrats to EPW in particular for beating Corney and Barrow, one of the top London wine merchants, quite a triumph!

In other news: on Monday we had an office outing to the nearby bowling lanes and afterwards ended up somehow at Fortnums wine bar which I rate highly. Some went for the claret flight while my colleague C and I shared a bottle of gewurztraminer 2007 from Domaine Bruno Sorg. I chose this because back in the day C used to like medium-dry wines such as riesling, and she thought she liked gewurz because she had enjoyed a Paul Cluver gewurz from South Africa. Unfortunately she didn't go for the more full-on style of the Alsace version so I ended up having to take one for the team... shame. Yesterday she gave me a bottle of the Paul Cluver for my birthday, which I am sampling as I write, and I can confirm that it is in a much a drier style. Not bad, especially well-chilled, but slightly bland and more international. Interesting that gewurz can vary so much. NB I see from the website that Fortnums are still offering £10 corkage on the wines from the shop in the wine bar, which is an excellent thing.

On a related note, there's been some press lately about a BYO club in London whereby you pay £75 for a year and can then pay a corkage rate at a number of participating restaurants. A quick look at the club's website here shows that participating restaurants include Club Gascon, Arbutus, Angelus, and various other stalwarts. However, annoyingly, restrictions appear to apply at many of them. All in all, I'm not convinced. The Hawksmoor has been doing £5 corkage on a Monday night for some time now and I still haven't made it - largely because I can go to the Ginger Pig and cook my own steak for about a quarter of the price. Now, if somewhere really fancy like Le Gavroche or the Connaught did corkage, I'd be interested... oh well, am not going to hold my breath!

I've been rather intermittent writing on here of late. In future I'm going to try to write something every weekend - stay tuned!