SPNS dinner, 20th October

On Tuesday, it was over to the Savile Club for the next Swiss Pinot Noir Society event. Thanks to the trusty Victoria and Central Lines, I arrived at 7.30 on the dot to find no sign of the other participants. A tour of the sandpit, the bar and the garden revealed no fellow Society members and I was starting to wonder if I had the right day when fortunately P and D appeared - P having been on a similar tour of the building looking for the rest of us. G showed up shortly afterwards and as ACC and T had sent their apologies, proceedings could now commence!

We kicked off with this champagne from Morel Pere & Fils provided by P (NB that website may cause vertigo). None of the rest of us were familiar with it, but it turned out to be quite a hit.

It could only be described as effervescent, although "wild bubbles" was also used. It was generally regarded as very pleasant and well-balanced with some maturity and yeasty notes, and seemed like a steal when P told us what he paid for it.

We went upstairs for dinner and this Meursault-Genevrieres 1er cru 2006 from Michel Bouzereau et Fils was my contribution for the evening - the third of the trio I got at auction. I was delighted to get them, as am a big fan of this domaine, and once again this was top stuff.

It looked wonderful in the glass and was lovely, mature Meursault, not too fleshy but still typique. Another example of how producer trumps vintage when it comes to Burgundy. We thought it was impeccable and G and I agreed that it merited a 10 on the Premier Cru Project scale.

Then it was on to G's offering - a magnum of Chateau La Lagune (probably) 1985. The reason for the doubt over the vintage was that the label had torn off. It was hoped that the cork would reveal all, but sadly this was not to be. However, apparently this magnum came from a case of magnums of 1985 so it seems highly likely that it was also from 1985.

This was proper, mature claret with the classic cedary / cigar box nose - described as "school desk" by one participant. I wonder if Baron McG had been there whether he would have said "library book". It was generally enjoyed by all but there was a lot of it given there were only four of us, and it possibly started to go downhill towards the end.

A brief digression: I had this stuff on my Welsh Rarebit - had never heard of it until a recent episode of Jay Rayner's excellent radio programme the Kitchen Cabinet. Apparently it's a great source of local pride for the citizens of Sheffield. It was certainly good with Welsh Rarebit.

To finish, D had brought along this bottle of 1976 Tokaji Essencia. This was amazing. It had a heady, slightly volatile nose reminding some of pedro ximinez and others (me) of Turkish delight. Raisins, figs, prunes and toffee were all present and correct, and it was the perfect complement to our dessert of figs in a red wine sauce. It was very sweet - diabetes in a glass! - but there was no doubt that this was something very special indeed, and it walloped the competition to win the Wine of the Evening award. But there were no duffers on this occasion. Thanks to everyone for your contributions - another splendid evening.

Sunday night at mine

D came round on Sunday night for another evening of fine wine.

We started with this Pouilly-Fume from Oroncio aka La Maison Romane. This benefited from half an hour in decanter beforehand and showed as well as ever. We had it with some smoked trout which G had got from Borough Market and the challenge was not to guzzle it all while G carried out a lengthy dissection in order to avoid any Queen Mother-style fishbone incidents.

Then, it was on to the reds...

In the blue corner was this Opus One 1985 brought by D.

In the red corner, this bottle of Chateau Latour 1979 provided by G.

The Opus One is on the left in the photo above, and the Latour is on the right. The OO was slightly paler in colour and was drinking very well. It had a lovely silky texture, ripe plummy fruit, and I got a hint of pontefract cake. It was relatively easy-going and approachable but possibly started to fade towards the end.

After the 1968 Latour which we had fairly recently, the 1979 was a return to form. It was far more typical: big, majestic stuff, with the classic cigar box nose and formidable intensity. Apparently 1979 was not well-received when it first came out and one can understand why - this must have been a monster difficult wine in its youth. At 36 it was drinking very nicely.

I wouldn't say there was necessarily a clear winner, but it was particularly exciting to drink the Opus One as we wouldn't be able to find that over here.

With the cheese, we moved on to this Harveys Oloroso, bottled in 1953. G got this (not to be confused with Harveys Bristol Cream) at a recent auction and we weren't sure if it would be all right; fortunately it turned to be fine. It was quite dry on the nose but opened up on the palate and was well-rounded with notes of walnut. It went down remarkably quickly, always a good sign. Thanks to D and G for a great evening!

Friday night at mine

On Friday night, ACC joined G and me for dinner. I finished work, ran round the 'Trose, put on my AduV Party Mix, whipped up a batch of gougeres and made some pesto for the first time in my life. G rocked up and got the cremant on the go just as ACC knocked on the door. Perfect!

Still life with decanter brush

With our main course of salmon with the afore-mentioned pesto, we had a bottle of 2006 Meursault 1er cru Gouttes D'Or from Moret-Nomine. I've already written about this but this bottle was the equal of the first, like Meursault squared, heavyweight, nutty and powerful. Pretty to look at, too.

With our cheese course, ACC produced this fine bottle of Maranges from Maison en Belles Lies. I tend to think of Maranges as quite rustic and thought this would go very well with sausages, but it is at the more charming end of the spectrum as one would expect from biodynamic wine-maker Pierre Fenals.

In other news, I have continued my Duolingo French training and am now allegedly 47% fluent, a figure that would make anyone who has heard me trying to speak French chortle, I suspect. Fortunately we have now moved on from obscure animals and it is becoming more like a work of hardboiled detective fiction with sentences such as "She drinks, so I drink" and "If he talks, we talk". I wonder if there is much call for private investigators in Beaune?

Recent drinking round-up, 10th October

As so often happens, various things have been drunk but not properly recorded so some catching-up is in order.

I picked up this Vieux Calvados in Magnum in Beaune last year. We were doing some shopping on the Saturday morning and I was outside the chocolate shop next door attempting to avert disaster as a bottle of marc had made a bid for freedom from its bag - memo to self: beware string handles whose knots have a tendency to come undone! - when my phone rang. It was ACC telling me to get to Magnum tout suite. Seconds later, I arrived to find a bunch of random things sitting on the counter which were clearly recent arrivals. They included some old Roulot marc and this bottle of 1945 Calvados. An offer was hastily made for the pair of them, and I became the happy owner of this rarity.

It was so rare, in fact, that no entry could be found for this vintage on Wine Searcher or anywhere else but I knew that Calvados of this age is very, very expensive and subsequent research revealed that the 1937 vintage is available for 2,500 euros! Ouch. Fortunately for me, the proprietors of Magnum had not yet gone onto the internet to research market prices and I paid less than £100. I put it aside for a special occasion but then plans for said occasion were abandoned so it was decided that it could be opened after all. Hurrah!

Of course, I failed to make notes, but it was discernibly Calvados, with appley flavours and a slightly green tinge, as opposed to some of these old spirits where the boundaries between e.g. marc and brandy start to diminish as time goes on. I was surprised by how fiery it still was. We enjoyed it but I think my yearning for old Calvados has now been sated.

A few weeks ago I placed another order with the Wine Society mostly consisting of sherry and treated myself to a 50cl bottle of this Osborne Sibarita 30 year old oloroso. I brought a bottle of this to the SPNS last year (reported here) and enjoyed it very much. I enjoyed this bottle very much too! It really is something very special - seriously intense and complex - and although it costs £21, that price is better than anywhere else, and 50cl is a convenient size. After drinking this, it's been a struggle to go back to bog-standard normal sherry.

This Cremant d'Alsace finally arrived (thanks to the Burgundy Portfolio) and G and I have drunk one bottle so far. It's made by Vignoble des 2 Lunes who are a biodynamic operation, from Pinot Auxerrois grapes. I found it fresh, clean, and elegant with hints of apples and cream. It went down very easily and made a good aperitif. The back label indicates that it is from the 2011 vintage and while I don't think there's any rush, it's good to go and I doubt whether it will improve with age.

At the other end of the scale, as it was quarter end the other night, G decided it was time for another bottle of Latour and contributed this 1968 from his stocks. I hadn't done any homework on it so it came as something of a surprise - it didn't shout Latour in the way that Latour normally does. It was very smooth with a nice viscosity but there was basically nothing going on until you got to the finish when it blossomed. It was a very nice old claret, but not what I was expecting. Latour is normally majestic, complex and cerebral and this wasn't. We thought it went better with food and that it filled out slightly towards the end - it had been decanted about half an hour beforehand. G said that 1968 was a "minor vintage" and that this was considered the best of the wines made that year. It was interesting to have it, but I don't think we'll be rushing to buy any more.

Finally, we recently received some much-awaited halves of wine from Emmanuel Giboulot and naturally a vertical tasting ensued! This was the Bourgogne Hautes-Cotes de Nuits en Gregoire and the label has undergone some changes between 2009 and 2012. When comparing two wines the likelihood is that one will be go down better than the other and in this case I was surprised - I was expecting to prefer the 2009 but in fact the 2012 had it. The 2009 was quite earthy whereas the 2012 had that pure, scintillating quality that we associate with Giboulot's wines. I'll be interested to try more of both of them and see if this was due to bottle variation or if it applies more generally.

I have a short trip to Burgundy planned at the end of October to see how the 2014s are coming along. In preparation, I've been trying to improve my French using an online programme called Duolingo. This is quite fun although I'm not sure that my new vocabulary of sharks, whales, turtles, bees and monkeys is necessarily going to be much help in the cellars of the Cote d'Or. Fortunately I have a copy of Bourgogne Aujourd'hui to even up the balance! À bientôt!