The Burgundy Portfolio 2010 en primeur tasting part deux

On Thursday evening, I attended this Burgundy Portfolio wine tasting which was held at the City University Club. The first mission was to find the venue which at first glance appeared to be a pub - then I spotted the discreet entrance and walked up the stairs to the second floor which was good exercise. It was only when I got there that I spotted the lift!

I was greeted at the door by ACC, grabbed a glass and got down to business. There were two tables and things were on a help-yourself basis which seemed to work well and as far as I could see everyone behaved themselves with pouring quantities. This can sometimes be an issue and when I was on the cruise a couple of weeks ago I was amused that the Americans with whom we sat for meals poured very stingy glasses of wine for everyone, while the Canadians on the same table poured themselves glasses full to the brim. Which might explain why the Canadian guy had a very purple face. But I digress.

The first table consisted of wines not yet shipped to the UK and I hadn't tried any of them before. The domaines present were Didier Montchovet, Albert Joly, Chateau Genot-Boulanger, Maison en Belle Lies, Jean-Pierre Bony and Yves Chevalier. Of the whites, my favourite was the 2009 Puligny-Montrachet from Albert Joly. Generally the reds were more my cup of tea and I enjoyed the 2010 Beaune 1er Cru Les Greves from Maison en Belle Lies, which is perhaps not surprising as I do love Beaune.

However, the stand-out wine of the evening in my opinion was this Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Damodes 2010 from Domaine Jean-Pierre Bony. Pretty much everyone I spoke to liked this, whereas there were differences of opinion on almost all the other wines. I got redcurrants on the nose and found it a lighter style of NSG which isn't an appellation I usually go for. It had impressive length too. ACC explained that part of the Damodes vineyard is premier cru, but this wine is made from grapes from the non-premier cru bit. This is the kind of thing a Burgundy geek like me likes to look for as often it indicates good quality but without the premier cru premium. At £270 a case in bond this seemed to be good value.

Then it was onto the second table, featuring wines which have already been shipped. I was amused to discover I've already bought about half of them.

On the left were some Chablis from Domaine Gilles and Nathalie Fevre. Once again it was the Petit Chablis 2011 that impressed me the most, especially at £12.95 a bottle. It was enjoyable to drink something so approachable as the wines on the previous table will not be ready for some time. S noted that it wasn't very Chablis in style - it's quite fruity rather than minerally - and we speculated about what Petit Chablis is exactly. It turns out that as with Burgundy, it's to do with the classification of the vineyard and the Petit Chablis vineyards are the ones further out that aren't good enough to be generic Chablis, 1er cru or grand cru.

In the ice bucket in the middle of the table were old favourites the Cremant and the Rose from Domaine Felettig, both of which I've had a case of and have enjoyed over the summer. There was also a Fleurie 2010 from Domaine de Sermezy which O rated highly, and a Santenay from Bachey-Legros which I liked a lot, but was now only available in magnum. While I love the magnum format (and have fond memories of the tasting a few years ago which was a series of controlled experiments, proving that wine from magnum really does taste better), until I move to more spacious accommodation there's a limit to how many magnums I can utilise. ACC told his habitual joke about how it's the perfect size for dinner for two...

Then there were two wines from Domaine Audriffed - a Bourgougne Rouge and a Vosne-Romanee. I liked both of these but have already bought some of the former and have some other Vosnes from the same producer so didn't bite on this occasion. It was nice to confirm that I still liked them though!

The room had the most leather sofas crammed into a small space that I've ever seen, along with a picture of HRH which pleased Baron McGuffog. I really liked the vibrant tiles set into the fireplace. However, on perusal of the leaflet about the club, I discovered it's only open at lunchtime on weekdays so probably not one I shall be joining in the near future.

Finally, it was good to see at least one Master of Wine there who was famous enough for me to recognise! All in all, another very enjoyable and educational evening.

Odds and sods

Today’s post is going to be completely lacking in narrative structure, but instead will be a meandering ramble taking in the past couple of weeks.

First, I went on a cruise along the Moselle and the Rhine with my mother for four days at the beginning of September. This wasn’t a wine tour but we did have a dinner in Strasbourg beforehand where we had this Riesling from Gustave Lorentz (a whopping 17 euros) and flammekuchen and some rather delicious puddings.

Flammekuchen - spot the difference. One had extra Munster!

My pudding - nom nom nom

Mum's creme caramel - she seemed pretty happy with it!

We got up at the crack of dawn on the Sunday morning and a coach took us from Strasbourg to Cochem on the Moselle, a journey involving some exciting hair-pin bends. Here we got on the boat which travelled the next day to Koblenz and then back down the Rhine to Strasbourg. The Moselle is very pretty and when the boat was moored, I could see fish swimming about in the river. The towns we stopped off at were mostly small places and very touristy so I didn’t buy any booze to bring back.

Cochem, on the Moselle

Steep vineyards by the Moselle

It was nice to see so many vineyards and often they had their name on a big sign visible from the river. I was impressed by how steep they were – sometimes the gradient looked perilously close to 45 degrees. I wouldn’t fancy working in them. The gentle slope of the Cote d’Or is bad enough after a moderate Burgundian lunch.

This cat sensibly stayed in the shade and shunned the strange English women who wanted to talk to it

I got back to A de V Towers last Saturday to find that G had drunk all my marc so he will have to get the next batch in (hint hint). This week we've mostly been drinking my house red and white – the Bourgogne Rouge 2009 from Odoul Coquard and the Bourgogne Blanc 2008 from Anne Parent. Both are showing really well at the moment and are just the ticket after a hard day slogging at the coal face.

"Ne bouillez pas!" the somewhat bossy instruction on the back label

Also, we've been finding that the sherry which I wrote about last time works very well with some soupe de poissons. This stuff, intermittently available from the Waitrose tinned soup section, is amazing and you can feel it doing you good as the Omega 3s work their magic.

Sadly, the Inverse Law of Labels didn't apply in this case

G got adventurous at the weekend and picked up this bottle of red Macon-Serrieres 2008 from the People’s Supermarket down the road in Lamb’s Conduit Street. I wasn’t very familiar with red Macon, but it turned out to be similar to Beaujolais. It didn't wow us. I wasn’t feeling particularly well that evening so that may have influenced my judgement, but we didn't finish the bottle which is very unusual!

During the week I indulged in some cider – this Rekorderlig and some Aspall Lady Jennifer’s.

I bought the Rekorderlig because it was Swedish. It describes itself as “Premium Strawberry-Lime Cider” so really I should have realised what I was letting myself in for. It was sickly and frankly not very nice.

The Lady Jennifer’s was much better and was light and dry as described. However after all the manzanilla we’ve been drinking, I fear I’ve lost my taste for fizzy commercial cider.

Things I’ve enjoyed this week:

1. A meeting with a professor who described a formidable high-level Coca Cola executive with whom he’d had dealings as “the kind of woman who eats a bowl of rusty nails for breakfast, just to get her in the mood”. Not an expression I’d come across before but delightfully pungent.

2. Listening to The Menu, a weekly Monocle podcast presented by a guy with a very weird accent. This turns out to be Markus Hippi who I gather is from Finland, which explains a lot. The programme is mainly a series of interviews with various international food-related people and it seems the whole archive is available! There was a particularly interesting piece on the renaissance of craft beers in London which made me want to investigate further.  

3. Discovering that Bring It On: the Musical is showing on Broadway. This is the kind of news that makes me very excited. Of course everyone will be familiar with the film version of Bring It On, about rival groups of cheerleaders and starring none other than Eliza Dushku of Tru Calling fame (#sarcasm). I’m still working on persuading G to join me on a weekend trip to NYC. He seems strangely reluctant. 

An empty packet - the cheese itself didn't hang around long enough to get a photo

 4. Speaking of Trou de Cru, guess what I found in Waitrose. It’s been rebranded by the mainstream producer of Epoisses as a “Petit Berthaut” but to me it’s a Trou and mighty fine it was too. Still, one baulks slightly at the price differential – this was £3.25 whereas a normal Epoisses is twice that, yet the Epoisses is four times the size. Some sort of equation involving square roots seems in order.

5. While we’re on the subject of cheese, I’ll try not to gush too much about my trip to Pascal Beillevaire yesterday evening but let’s just say that when it came to choosing a goats cheese, the lovely woman who runs the shop decided she wasn't happy with the ones on display, so despite a sudden flurry of customers she took the trouble to go down to the store room to find the perfect goats cheese for me and came back with this.

The cheese of glory!

“Is it a Pouligny Saint-Pierre?” I asked innocently and she was suitably impressed at my powers of cheese-identification. I'm still glowing with self-congratulation, although I know perfectly well that this is a very easy cheese to identify, being such a strange pyramid shape. I also received yet another free chocolate mousse and a brace of natural yoghurts. Apparently they're doing cheese and wine evenings on the first and third Thursdays of the month – am seriously tempted to pop along for one of those some time.

6. A wine tasting held by ACC of the Burgundy Portfolio on Thursday night, which deserves its own separate post and will receive it in the near future. 

7. Finally, the excellent news that Eurostar tickets have been booked for New Year in Burgundy! Can’t wait.