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!