Pernand-Vergelesses 1er cru Sous Fretille 2007, Rapet Pere et Fils

The other night we treated ourselves to this Pernand. I cunningly didn't look up beforehand where it had come from or how much it cost, so as to minimise preconceptions. I was also not entirely clear about where P-V actually is. Checking the yellow book reveals that it's near Aloxe and Ladoix.

It had been living in the fridge for the past 2 weeks (uncharacteristic self-control on my part!) so it was very cold. I decanted it half an hour before G got home.

It was a pleasing light straw colour as you can see. I found it rather dumb on the nose, possibly due to the excessive refrigeration.

On the palate it was quite sharp and austere - a refreshing wine - more Puligny than Meursault - but there was some honey there too. It had great length. G thought it was fabulous while I thought it was merely very nice, so we had a divergence when it came to scoring - he thought it was a 9 whereas I was stingy and only gave it an 8, so that's what it will get on the giant spreadsheet.

Talking to him about it later in the week, we think it may have been the "getting home after work on a hot day to find a lovely cold glass of white wine waiting" effect that caused him to rate it so highly. Tchah! I would never let such factors influence my judgement... Anyway, winter now appears to have arrived so we won't have that problem again in the near future.

We thought this was £25 wine and when I checked afterwards, I found that it cost 29 euros so that was pretty spot on. It came from Mon Millesime in Beaune. All in all, good stuff but I shan't be rushing to have more when there are so many other premier crus out there!

Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire vertical!

The other night after a hard day at work I succumbed to temptation and cracked open a bottle of my 2006 Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire. Shortly afterwards, G appeared and informed me that he had opened a bottle of (NB my) BGO 2005 downstairs the previous evening and still had some left. Immediately the light bulbs flashed on and a vertical tasting ensued.

Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire isn't something you see much of and I've just attempted to find out what the definition is, without much success. Basically it's a mixture of pinot noir and gamay, so it's a bit like a passetoutgrains, but passetoutgrains has to be at least 1/3 pinot, whereas I'm not clear if any such restriction exists for BGO.

Both of these wines came from Domaine Michel Martin, who happens to be the owner of the gite we have stayed in several times in Chorey-les-Beaune. I've tasted there twice and always enjoyed it very much. Monsieur Martin is always twinkly and welcoming and his wines are quite humble but delicious of their type.

Recently I acquired a mixed case of the 2005 and the 2006. The 2006 (on the left) has a vibrant red colour and is smooth, relatively light and very quaffable. My only quibble is that I get a slight stemminess on the finish. However, having been out in Burgundy for the 2006 harvest, we saw that a lot of the grapes were full of rot, so to produce something this good from that vintage is actually quite an achievement.

The 2005 is a darker, murkier, plummy colour. It has perhaps greater intensity and is well-rounded. Weirdly, we've discovered it gets better a day after opening. 2005 was a fabulous year for burgundy so I would predict that the 2005 BGO would beat the 2006, but what is surprising is how good the 2006 actually is.

Label detectives will note that the label underwent quite a transformation between the two years. Think I preferred the old one - the inverse law of labels means that this probably bodes well for the future! Hope he produced some BGO in 2009...

Sunday lunch in Brixton, 12th Sept

Last Sunday G and I went round to ACC's pad in Brixton for lunch. It was an absolutely beautiful autumn day, and there were lots of goodies on the menu!

We kicked off with a comparison of two whites, my Bouzereau Meursault 2002 and an Auxey-Duresses 1995 from Domaine Veronique de MacMahon provided by ACC. The Bouzereau was its usual self and I have blogged about it before so won't go over it again. The Auxey was fascinating. It had a nose of lemon and honey. I think if I'd been tasting it blind I would have mistaken it for a riesling, as it had a core of lime juice acidity. Very vibrant and we all liked it. It made the Meursault seem quite fat by comparison. Check out the classy wax seal!

Then we had a comparison of two reds: a Chassagne-Montrachet 1er cru Abbaye de Morgeot 2006 from the Marquis de MacMahon provided by ACC versus an Echezeaux (grand cru) 1997 from Denis Thomas which I brought along.

The Chassagne was lovely - a gorgeous ruby colour. Very pretty and scintillating. It was classic Chassagne and reminded me why this is my favourite style of red burgundy, perfumed and elegant. We gave it a 9 for premier cru project purposes. Which, consulting my giant spreadsheet just now, is remarkably consistent as we had a half of the 2001 a couple of years ago and gave it an 9. Pleasing.

The Echezaux was rather a mystery as I picked it up for a bargain basement price at a recent auction. We weren't familiar with the producer but made the assumption that you don't get to produce grand cru burgundy unless you have some idea what you're doing (with perhaps one notable exception ahem) and it didn't disappoint. It was browner than the Chassagne, not surprising given its age, and more meaty on the nose. Rich, serious, delicious, intense, and mellow. That's probably enough adjectives. ACC liked the label and in particular the way the E of Echezeaux is in red. That's very classic, apparently.

Then we moved on to the hard stuff and in particular this old Bisquit cognac. At this point I was starting to flag and my handwriting becomes completely indecipherable except for "PRINCE BERNARD" which I clearly thought was an important point to note. Also "1956". Presumably the label detectives thought it was made then? It was very mellow and there was no fieriness left in it, which worked for me.

The food was great as always as ACC is very talented in that department - the smoked haddock and lentil terrine and tarte au praline were particular highlights. Thanks very much to ACC and we shall have a rematch in due course (better expand my terrine repertoire quick)!

Sipsmith Gin

Despite the name of this blog, I am not solely an Amatrice du Vin but also an Amatrice du Gin (and indeed myriad other alcholic substances).

The Waitrose mag had a huge plug for Sipsmith Gin this month and to show that I have not remotely learned my lesson after the blue gin debacle, I immediately went into credulous yuppie wanker mode and had to get some. It's made in Hammersmith and is all very artisinal and they only make small batches, the sort of thing of which I thoroughly approve. It's a remarkably precise 41.6% alcohol and cost the princely sum of £24. It also set the security alarm off as I left the shop but I decided to be nonchalant and pretend it wasn't me.

The article was illustrated with pictures of hairy men with beards who make the stuff, who look more like members of CAMRA than what I would expect a gin-maker to look like, although come to think of it I have no idea what I'd expect a gin-maker to look like. Possibly something like myself, after G discovered a juniper tree growing at the family estate in Rutland. But apparently the Sipsmith guys found it very hard to get a licence to distil so don't hold your breath.

Anyway, the same mag had a recipe for a pear martini so I also bought some ruinously expensive pear juice in order to have a bash, and that's the reason why this evening's post is even more rambling and inane than usual. This stuff is good!

My adaptation of the recipe (as I forgot to look it up beforehand and therefore forgot to get a lemon) is as follows: bung loads of ice in cocktail shaker, add a splash of elderly vermouth, then add equal quantities of gin and pear juice. This has turned out very well-balanced and not too sweet, which was my main concern, so I think the lemon can probably be dispensed with. The flavours complement each other well and it has a nice autumnal feel to it. This would be a good cocktail to make when you had company as the pear juice allegedly only lasts for 3 days after opening which means I have a lot of martinis to get through before Tuesday. Must get cracking!

I think a proper assessment of the gin will have to wait until I've made a dry martini or a G&T with it. But first impressions are favourable.

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!