Summer drinking

Today je vous presente general highlights from the last few weeks rather than anything particularly systematic. On most of the occasions below, notes weren't taken so this is mainly a photographic record of Nice Things I Have Drunk Lately

I was delighted to return to the Savile Club for a very welcome and long overdue dinner with T and G. G and I walked there and it was good to see Oxford Street buzzing with activity on a Friday night, complete with a lunatic-with-a-microphone at Oxford Circus offering up some entertainingly ludicrous theories on the causes of Covid-19. 

   

This English pink fizz provided by T got things off to a good start. The vineyard is in West Sussex and I believe it was the 2014 vintage, which is a blend dominated by pinot noir.

G brought along this 2008 rose from Chateau Musar which he had been saving for a very long time to drink with T, connoisseur of pink wines. Apparently T's previously experiences with it had been disappointing, but this time it delivered the goods. 

My contribution was this 2012 Barolo which I brought back from a wine shop in Turin a few years ago. 

 

And with dessert, a particularly unusual additional wine from G - a half bottle of Romanian "Cotnari". We had a similar half a while back with D (see here) although I can see that the labels are different, possibly reflecting different grapes. On that occasion, it was sweet, unctuous and fascinating. This one was very interesting and although we'd expected it to be sweet, had become almost dry over time, a phenomenon which G referred to as "swallowing its sugar". Great to get a chance to try it. 

G and I drank this 1976 Vouvray from Domaine de L'Epinay a few nights ago. It was part of the interesting mixed case I got at auction some time ago, none of which have yet let me down. It was a wonderful amber colour and very concentrated with honey, grapes, lime blossom and beeswax. Once again it had a dry finish and high residual acidity. We had it with a new "ethical foie gras" from Waitrose and brioche toast, which worked very well, but it would probably have gone with other things too. Fully mature but not over the hill, it went down very easily. We finished it off with some berries and cream, which brought out an interesting note of amaretti biscuits!

I'll do some more premier cru project reports in due course, but while I remember, G and I drank this Beaune 1er cru Clos des Feves Monopole 2012 from Domaine Chanson the other night, and had an unusual divergence of opinion on it. It had a wonderful exuberant perfumed nose, very Beaune, and for me continued to deliver on the palate with wild berries, a hint of sousbois, and a heady icing-sugar sweetness. For me it was complex, fruity and autumnal, a nice medium weight and provided a lot of sensual pleasure. It was close to a 10 for me (and the same when I polished the rest off the following evening), but for G it was apparently a mid-7. We're usually much closer in our scores, so this is a bit of a mystery. I may have to get another bottle so we can investigate further, and if G still doesn't think much of it I guess I'll just have to drink it...

Finally, last night I made my way over to Shoreditch, braving the assorted stag and hen parties which were out in force, and met up with ACC for dinner at Rochelle Canteen. I hadn't been there for some time, and they've added a greenhouse type section with good ventilation so we were able to sit "outside". ACC brought along this Volnay 1er cru Carelle sous la Chapelle from Perrin, with the vintage hand-written on the back as 2012. This was lovely stuff, fully mature and elegant. 

The John Dory which we had to share was phenomenal, as was my duck terrine and the malted chocolate chip ice cream! It was great to see Rochelle continuing to thrive, and definitely worth the trip east.

So that's July almost in the bag, and on Saturday I'm off to Iceland for a few days with D which can't come a moment too soon. I suspect this trip won't be particularly wine-related, but have spotted some crowberry liqueur on a restaurant menu so may be unable to resist!

Dinner at G's, 17th March

A couple of weeks ago, G hosted dinner at his flat and we were joined by D who showed up with a suitcase full of wine-related treasures.

We started with my penultimate bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet 1er cru Morgeot from Domaine de la Choupette alongside the first asparagus of 2019 and some fine prosciutto. The Chassagne was a light straw colour and drinking perfectly now. It has been classy, elegant and stylish with deft use of oak, and has a lovely weight. D found it creamy and I got lemon zest - so basically a lemon syllabub in a glass.

Then it was on to a pair of elderly clarets, Lafite 58 and Leoville-Las Cases 1961, provided by G. Possibly not the fairest comparison given the vintages.

The Lafite was significantly paler than the Leoville and was old but drinkable. It had gone a little soft in its old age and I found it somewhat dried out. D said it had fruit but no acid. We drank both of the wines over 45 minutes and it did improve with time, but the Leoville was definitely more my cup of tea. "That's good" said everyone with a sigh of relief. It had all the flavours I'm looking for in a claret - cedar, tobacco, coffee, leather. Proper old school claret at 58 years old. G told me he knew why I liked it. Apparently Leoville-Las Cases is separated from Chateau Latour by a small stream. Wikipedia confirms this - the Juillac tributary to be precise - not that I doubted G for a moment. A discussion of the great claret vintages followed and for the record, D says that 59 is better than 61 so I think some 59 Latour needs to be added to my bucket list...

I amused myself reading Andre Simon's "Wine and Spirits: The Connoisseur's Textbook" which had some unexpected information in it, including the fact that California has a border with Canada. Who knew!

Meanwhile, G produced this unexpected half of sweet wine. It was called Cotnari and was basically the Romanian equivalent of Tokaji. The vintage was 1984 and it was 12% alcohol.

The wine itself was almost exactly the same colour as G's new table. It had a heady nose - I got a big hit of unsulphured dried apricots while D got figs. Orange peel and tinned peaches were also mentioned. The palate was congruent and the wine was very unctuous with lots of glycerin. It was remarkable stuff and really rather excellent. Apparently this has never been on sale in the UK and the label was in French. The score for Roumanie was definitely douze points and I believe G has another half bottle stashed away somewhere for a future occasion!

Finally, D had brought over a lovely half bottle of Dow's 1977 which we had with our cheese. This was a lovely ruby colour, sweet and rich, with figs, prunes and sultanas and an amazing finish. "The 77s are finally ready" said G, and D agreed - it had all come together perfectly and we got it at the right moment. It was impeccable vintage port, and particularly great with a piece of Stichelton. Thanks very much to both of you. If only all Sunday evenings could be like that!

SPNS dinner, 18th May

Last weekend was one of those weekends where, after what seems like months of doing nothing in particular, suddenly there's a whirlwind of activity.

First up was the Swiss Pinot Noir Society which met at the Savile Club on 18th May. There were seven of us this time, as P's wife joined us, so we tasted more wines than usual, but had less of each.

We started with an Austrian sparkling red from P, called Strohmeier Rot Sekt. I have to hand it to P that he does come up with the strangest wines very much in the spirit of the Society! Unfortunately, red sparklers are not my bag and I only managed a couple of small sips before bailing out. The other verdicts were marginally more favourable but the similarity to fizzy Ribena was remarked upon and most found it interesting but not something they'd be particularly keen to have again. At least "undissolved paracetamol" was not mentioned this time!

Moving swiftly on, P presented a 2011 pedro ximinez from Chile. I wasn't the only one who had no idea that pedro ximinez came in a different style from the extraordinary sweet and gloopy sherry. For me, this was aromatic and went down a treat after the first wine (= it was cold and white!) but I suspect it was the sort of thing that would get boring after the first glass. D made an unusually sharp comment: "like a weak sauvignon blanc" and generally it was regarded as a little superficial but not bad. T said "This is fun; in the founding spirit of the SPNS". When P revealed that it cost less than £4 we were all pleasantly surprised.

We moved upstairs at this point to have dinner and it was on to the serious wines of the evening. First up was a Nuits St Georges 1er Cru Clos de la Marechale 2005 from Jacques-Frederic Mugnier, provided by ACC. I wasn't familiar with this producer but we could immediately tell that this was serious stuff, very classy, rich and quite heavy, with a great finish. Everyone rated it very highly and G and I both gave it a 10 - hurrah! The only debate was over whether it would improve with more time. P said it was infanticide to drink it now but my end of the table disagreed, feeling it was on the plateau and wouldn't get worse with age but wouldn't get better either. Quite honestly, I don't see how it could. Have just done some homework on Mugnier and see that a certain wine merchant has the 2008 for £69 - ouch. Thanks to ACC for sharing this with us!

Then there was a rose provided by T, from the Loire, called Les Nuages 2009. G and I both found peaches going on in this, and D got strawberries. It was unexpectedly fruity which led us to speculate that perhaps it wasn't actually pinot noir. P wrote something provocative in the book about rose wines being girly and pointless. He's entitled to his opinion but I don't agree.

Not very Chassagne

After that it was on to the reds, starting with my Chassagne-Montrachet 1er cru La Maltroie 1999 from Domaine Amiot. I got three bottles of this at auction and this was the last one. It was generally well-received but once again didn't seem very typical of Chassagne, being big and rich and with black fruit. Still only an 8.

Blockbuster!

D provided us with yet another rarity from the US, this time a 1996 Napa Valley Zinfandel called Edizione Pennino from Niebaum-Coppola. This reduced the usually loquacious T to a monosyllable - "Wow!" I found it lovely, soft and mature with big blackberry fruit. G said "an honour and a pleasure to drink" which sums it up very well. When are we going to raid D's cellar in the US?

Sadly, the Inverse Law of Labels did not apply in this case

Then we had G's wine, Smerenie 2009 from Romania.This claimed to be a mixture of shiraz, (syrah surely?), pinot noir and dornfelder. Perhaps the New World-isation of the grape name was a sign of things to come, as this was your typical "international" wine, completely failing to display any sense of terroir. It was also incredibly alcoholic and basically a headache in a glass. G wrote his comment in the book first and seemed to like it at that stage, but I think we all started to get diminishing returns quite quickly.

P provided a third wine, the hilariously-named "Rikiki - Elixir des Anges" which was apparently a 15% Julienas. Was this actually from Beaujolais? Once again, it was seriously weird, but interesting. "What the hell is that? Late harvest gamay? WTF?" wrote G. Some detected prunes and fruit jelly while I found it like Ribena with apple. We all thought it got better with time and chilling, and when T tried it with his blue cheese, that was declared to be a good combination. So, it grew on us, but whether it could ever be described as the elixir of angels is, frankly, debatable.

Finally, I'd brought along a bottle of Pacherenc de Vic Bilh but sadly this turned out to be corked, so it was just as well I'd brought the Chassagne too. I've noticed that the corked rate seems to be high for me at SPNS dinners - is it sod's law or just that I'm taking more risks than I usually would, in a hopeless attempt to beat D who always wins? Either way, memo to self to bring 2 bottles in future.

A mixed bag

My prizes of the evening: best white goes to ACC for the Nuits St Georges, best red goes to D (of course) for the Napa Valley Zin, and most in the spirit of SPNS goes to P for his trio of curiosities. A bientôt!