The wines of Bordeaux
Big birthday dinner, an English evening outside Just occasionally the English weather plays a hugely positive role in a special celebration. For the last few weeks, we have been enjoying a warm, even hot, summer and the evening of my birthday was the last moment of this hot spell. We planned to have the first
Big birthday dinner Read More »
What can one expect of a bottle of Saint-Emilion Grand Cru? Due to the rules of the appellation, expectations should be limited as 50% of the wine is deemed to be Grand Cru. (If you want the really classy stuff the label needs to read Premier Grand Cru Classé – or of course you need
Ch. Cantin, St-Emilion Read More »
Wine study has many benefits. It leads to an accumulation of a great deal of knowledge, hopefully, accompanied by insight and understanding. It certainly gets you to amazing places, whether we are talking about grand, architect-designed wineries or the small shed from which the precious bottles emerge. But most of all it leads to great
Sometimes a picture (or two) are worth a thousand words. At the recent Institute of Masters of Wine annual Claret tasting the ‘helpers’ all got a turn to pour on the First Growths table. In a vintage like 2009 this was a straightforward pleasure. Although massively concentrated and youthful, this year produced wines with so
Pouring first growths Read More »
The idea of the ‘second wine of an estate appears to have started in Bordeaux with its large estates and volumes of wine. The very best grapes (hopefully from a good majority of the estate’s vineyards) will go into the grand vin leaving the producer with a problem with the remnant. If this was put
More than a hint of greatness? Read More »
Andover Wine Friends unusually had a fine wine supper in August … and also, atypically, indulged in a bit of blind tasting masochism. Speaking for myself I normally enjoy the considerable challenge of blind tasting, even though it is a very artificial exercise. This is not just for the rare moments of triumph when you
Blind tasting masochism? Read More »
Perhaps not surprisingly in mid-August, we had a rather reduced BBC 1 – just seven wines to try to identify and, more importantly, to enjoy. Looking back over the wines, of these seven only three were ‘should have got that’ wines. The others were impossibly difficult or just a bit odd as was one of
If seven people were independently to choose a bottle of quality wine from their own collections and bring them to a blind tasting what is the chance of them bringing similar wines? That two people brought Chardonnay was perhaps not surprising, even if both examples were from the new world. But in the same tasting,
Chardonnay and Chinon … twice? Read More »
The Overton-based blind tasting group took a new step into the dark last Tuesday. I encouraged it to break the remaining link which can give you some clue as to the identity of the wine – the person who brought it. In the past this has led to some useful clues and some wrong deductions:
Claret is for collectors. It is quite rare to be able to buy and compare wines from a top estate that are ready to drink and which allow you to compare across vintages. The Wine Society’s recent offer of a small mixed case of Domaine de Chevalier offered just that. It made the perfect basis
Domaine de Chevalier–shining knight? Read More »